4 tips to follow when expanding your business into a new market

Expanding your business is a goal for most business owners. However, if you want to expand into a new market, especially in this difficult economy, many business owners are finding it difficult to find the right opportunities. Still, there are several ways to find business growth, even in uncertain times.

In this article, we will share some useful tips for small businesses to help with expanding your business. 

When expanding your business, you need to know exactly what you are aiming for. It is important that you are clear with your reasons why you are entering a new market, and why this strategy is a better choice than developing your product or service further. When you are able to articulate the ‘whys’ of your goals, you will start to see how you might attain successful expansion. It is very often a good idea to mine your existing markets before trying new ones, so make sure you are doing this consistently and well, before you take a slightly riskier step. We have worked with many companies, where they haven’t made the most of what they already have before moving into a ‘shiny new area’, thinking it’s going to be easier somehow. It hardly ever is.  

• What is the timeframe of launching your products and services to the new market? 
• Is the new market in its infancy, or is it mature? 
• What will the expansion contribute to your brand value? 
• Aside from additional revenue, what will the brand expansion provide? 
• How much market share are you looking to gain? 

When answering these questions, it is important that everyone in your team - from the executives through to marketing and those who make or deliver your services - understand your goals and why you are taking this step. If you don’t, people will make guesses as to what you’re doing; and guesses lead to uncertainty. One of the most common ‘guesses’ we have heard is ‘They are going to sell the company; we are going to get new bosses and we will probably lose our jobs’…and this can be pretty unsettling.  

Expanding into the new market does not mean abandoning your current business operations. You need to make sure that your business is going to keep growing organically through your existing customers, along with the demands of managing your new market. To ensure that this can be done, you need to review what the new market will mean for your current operations. Consider these questions: 

• Are your current team members required to split their time between the current business and the expansion? 
• What experience do you already have in the team that will help with the new market? 
• Do you need additional support or resources to win in this new market? 
• Will the expansion require greater leadership demands from you? 

Answering these questions will help you know if the expansion is even worth your time. 

Take the time to learn and understand the market where you are expanding. Researching will help you learn the strategic changes and operational execution of the expansion. In short, to understand your new market, you need to understand everything that is included in it from what products or services work and how your competitors are doing. 

We have worked with companies who have spent a lot of money before they’ve really thought things through – and there’s not often a second pot of money to call on when things haven’t worked out well.  

When researching your new market, make sure to look at customer pain points. Some of the information you may need to look into are: 

• What are your audience’s problems? 
• Where are your customers located? 
• What job or jobs do they need doing? 
• What are their interests? 
• How would you define them demographically? 
• Who are the key competitors in the market? Where are they? How are they marketing themselves? 

With good research, you can deliver information that will help you and your team to understand your market expansion. As a result, when you start investing time and money, you will most likely succeed.   

Expanding your business into a new market can be tricky, time-consuming, and may fail even when you do a lot of things well. The best way to improve your chances of success is to partner with firms who can help you towards market expansion success. The right partners can help you not only with creating the best strategy but also manage a range of other business-related processes like social media and PR relations.