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Article from a Guest Expert
Tips For Expanding Your Target MarketIt’s come time for you to look into expanding your business, and you’re ready to get started. Increasing your product availability and target audience can mean great things for your bottom line. Try these business-boosting tactics and increase your profits. Research Before you do anything else, you need to put the resources and time into researching your target audience. If you plan on making a major expansion, you’ll need to revisit your business plan, and make adjustments accordingly. Assess your own company: where are you right now? Where do you expect to be in five, 10, or 15 years’ time? Find out which demographic you need to target to make your business a bigger success. Make use of the many analytical tools and software that are available to you. Track the people who visit your company website, find out who is interested in your product or service, and calculate ways to better market to them. This new audience may be very similar to your current audience, or they could require a completely different marketing strategy. Thorough analysis should let you know whether there is growth potential; if not, it will save you from wasting time and energy on an expansion that won’t ever become lucrative. Go Big, Go International Take examples from companies who have made it big by expanding internationally. Tipsy Elves ugly Christmas sweaters were originally only available in the United States. After becoming a huge hit, the company expanded their products to include patriotic apparel appropriate for any occasion. Their offerings include items designed for residents of Canada and the UK, which expanded their market exponentially. Find out how your service or product can translate into a foreign market. Does this area have a need for your product? Are there already comparable items readily available in this area? You’ll need to find an area that’s starving for what you produce, and capitalize on the fact that you’re the only or best source they can get it from. There are plenty of resources that can help you dip your toe into the process and find out if going international is a viable option for your business. Contact the International Trade Association, or if your company is on the smaller side, check out the information in the Small Business Export Guide from the U.S. House Committee on Small Business. Increase Flexibility Change is unavoidable, but company growth is not a given. No doubt your market has changed in the time since your business’ inception, but have you changed with it? Businesses must constantly adapt to better reach their consumer, and maybe your target market has changed. Or, perhaps your service has changed and you now need to target a completely different demographic. Whatever the case, be ready to tweak your goals, production techniques, or marketing campaigns if the need arises. Use Teamwork Cross-promotion can do wonderful things to increase your target market. Teaming up with another company that may produce a different product or service but caters to a similar consumer market can be invaluable to increasing your customer base. Think Spotify and Uber’s genius partnership: the ability for Uber customers to play their own music during their rides gives them an incentive to upgrade to Spotify Premium. A strategic partnership can increase business traffic without sacrificing resources on excessive marketing campaigns. It can be as simple as directly sending your customers to your partner, and vice versa—hand out coupons for your business partner, and let them do the same for you. How Can You Make Social Media Work For You? Connecting with your consumers can be of utmost importance to a successful business, but make sure your social media campaigns aren’t costing you valuable resources without providing a beneficial return. Remain with your core audience. If they’re not spending a majority of time on Facebook, don’t waste time and money campaigning to an audience that won’t be there. If your business is attention-grabbing, can serve a variety of people, and is something unlike anything else, social media can be a great tool to utilize. If your services are more adept to serving a particular niche that may not be active on social media, it may not be in your best interests to put too much effort into expanding through these specific channels. Finance Fanatic Planning and understanding your finances will become more important than ever when you decide to start expanding your business and target market. Before jumping in, understand if your pricing will be competitive within this new market. Will you be able to make a profit from this new venture? If the answer to either of these questions is a resounding no, then you may need to reassess your expansion. Expanding your target market means a lot of extra work and time, but it can lead to great rewards. Try these tips and get your business on the road to expansion.
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