BUSINESS GROWTH STRATEGIES FROM DHL EXPRESS IRELAND
How to grow your business
Every small business owner wants to grow their business to some extent — from expanding into a profitable crossborder business to becoming a global mega-brand. Whatever your ambitions, as one of the world’s largest and most international companies, DHL can help you with advice and tips on business growth planning. Each small business needs to decide what business growth means to them — growing your customer base, expanding your product range, higher revenue, higher profit, selling in more countries. Once this has been locked down there some strategies you can consider to support this expansion.
Create a business growth plan
A business growth plan will force you to look ahead. It is an outline for where you see your company, usually with a timeline over the next year or two, and goals for each quarter. At the end of each quarter you can see which you have met and which you haven’t. This will help monitor market share, help recoup early losses, minimise future risk and show concrete revenue plans.
Use customer research
If you can pinpoint what made your current customers buy your product, you can decide what marketing strategies are working for you and what may not in the future. It’s also vital to find out your customer pain points and challenges, so you can improve your products and processes, to increase loyalty and attract new customers. Free tools like Google or Adobe Analytics can also provide essential data about how your customers engage with your website, allowing you to optimise accordingly.
Use your competitors
Competitor research can be extremely useful as part of business growth planning. Look at what your competitors are doing, what works for them, and what doesn’t. Look at what their customers are saying about them in reviews, and draw insights from that. Similar Web and AdBeat are great tools to research competitor sales funnels and uncover their online strategies.
Extend to new markets
If you’re not already selling your products cross-border, exporting them is a sure way to grow your business. And if you’re already doing so, why not think about new countries to sell to? To start with, consider creating a country-specific webstore rather than a bricks and mortar outlet. And when it comes to shipping your goods to a new market, rapid, reliable logistics are essential. At DHL we can ensure it all happens smoothly.
Be socially responsible
Corporate and social responsibility (CSR) is a huge issue for every business right now. Many people will only work with, work for, or buy from businesses that practice good CSR. That means making changes to become a greener business, producing sustainable products and giving back to your local community. On the other hand, if you publicise the fact that you insist on a logistics partner who uses electric vehicles for delivery, for example, or you’ve changed to sustainable packaging, or your employees are volunteering and cleaning up the local green spaces, this will all help build your brand – and create goodwill among current and potential customers.
If you would like more information, advice and tips on expanding your small business then scan the QR code below to take you to our dedicated website. Alternatively you can contact ie.ecommerce@dhl. com to speak with one of our representatives.