As a business owner, it’s only natural to want your company to succeed and grow. This prevents your business from growing stagnant and opens you up to new opportunities to make more profit and evolve your business.
One of the ways you can grow your business is to expand to a new area and widen your horizons. However, managing a business in one area is difficult enough, so how can you successfully spread your business to a new area and manage it effectively?
Here are some tips to help out.
Story Stages
Do Your Research
Expanding your business is a huge investment, and like any investment, it’s vital to do your research before putting your time and money into anything. This will delay the expansion, and sometimes good business practice means taking a few risks, but you don’t want to jump into a new market completely blind.
First, work out the best potential location for your expansion. Expanding your business nearby can be tempting, because it’s much easier to support the new business location. But you also might find that you’re competing with yourself and don’t widen your customer base as much as you’d like.
Different strategies will work for different businesses, and as long as you do the legwork beforehand, you should find a measure of success.
As well as working out where to move to, you should also determine the financial costs of the expansion as you acquire assets and get established. How long will it take for the new location to be profitable, and what kinds of profits can you expect?
All of this will mean that you’re much more prepared for the expansion when the time comes. A plan will also make it easier to acquire loans from banks or to attract more shareholders, which in turn will provide you with the finances needed to expand your business.
Spread Online
While it can take time to get established in a physical location, it can take no time at all to create an online presence. This always widens your reach to new customers, especially if your business can work with international clients and customers.
But even if you can only provide products or services to local customers, a business website can lay the foundation for the new location. Communicate with your customers and target audience through social media and make sure they know your plans to expand.
One of the best ways to grow your business is to make sure that people know your brand and how to communicate with you. The online world is perfect for that.
A website can provide a platform to talk about your business, as well as potentially sell products and services to customers. This means that, when your company does appear in a new area, it’s already familiar to nearby businesses and people.
Marketing
On a similar note, marketing is a great way to introduce yourself to a new community and the potential customers therein. Use the expansion as a marketing opportunity and build a campaign around it.
You don’t just want to let people know your company is coming to their local area, but you want to be welcomed with open arms. Offer deals for new customers, especially in a certain area.
Use the internet to boost your marketing campaign and focus on local, traditional marketing techniques as well. While digital marketing is an incredibly effective tool, traditional marketing still has an important part to play, especially if your business operates locally through a brick-and-mortar store.
Posters, radio interviews, local newspaper advertisements, and other marketing methods are all helpful ways to encourage local people to see the new business location for themselves.
Get Established in the Community
Moving to a new location isn’t where the difficulty ends. You also have to establish your business in the community itself. First, you need to make it easy for local people to contact your business.
Rather than only linking people to your headquarters, it’s a good idea to establish a local phone number and even a local social media presence so people can make specific enquiries. For example, new businesses in Hawaii can benefit from Hawaii phone numbers and an online switchboard.
It’s also a good idea to create a relationship with other local businesses and vendors. If there are any business expos or events, use them as an opportunity to get established and become a part of the local community. This isn’t just a useful marketing tool, but it’s a great way to learn more about the market, your competitors, and any potential vendors or other allies.
When it comes down to it, business is all about people. So good business practice means creating positive relationships with as many people in the community as possible.
Hiring Locals
Speaking of creating relationships with people, it’s important to consider hiring locals as soon as possible. One of the biggest difficulties with expanding a business is potentially stretching yourself and your employees too thin. This is especially true when you’re trying to manage two business locations at once.
Delegating some of the management duties is probably one of the best ways to lighten this load and allow the new business to thrive. You will also need to expand your workforce, which can provide some possibilities.
If you want your business to become part of the local community, you will need to hire some of the local community. True, it can be helpful to have people in the new location who you know and trust, but practicality dictates that local workers are probably going to become the backbone of your new business location.
In some cases, it’s best to train workers with fewer skills and train them up, as you provide them with opportunities for advancement while also cultivating skilled, loyal employees. You should also spend some time looking for qualified candidates in the area, so you can allow the new location to be as independent as possible.
