50 Growth Strategies

Most every organization intends to grow. In fact, if an organization doesn’t continue to grow it generally must do the opposite because costs continue to increase whether the organization grows or not and it is difficult to continually pass the cost increases on customers without eventually experiencing decreases in unit sales.    

The ways in which an organization can grow are almost unlimited. Here are just some of the ways in which an organization may be able to increase its revenues and grow:

1. Sell existing products or services through new channels of distribution, for instance online or specialty stores
2. Increase brand awareness through wider distribution, increased marketing and more focused, more efficient marketing
3. Sell existing products or services using new sales methods, for instance direct marketing or retail focused teams
4. Increase brand accessibility through extended hours or flexible payment options
5. Sell existing products or services in new geographies
6. Sell existing products or services to new customer groups or markets
7. Explore opportunities within different ethnic markets
8. Sell your products or services as an ingredient brand within another organization’s products or services
9. Go upstream or downstream in the product or service production process (and profit generation)
10. Acquire and perhaps brand your own channel of distribution
11. Identify and pursue economies of scale
12. Pursue network effects
13. Create additional product skus (or service offerings) targeted at different customers or customer need states
14. Go upscale – create more upscale versions of your products or services
15. Offer a less expensive version of your product or service (but be careful to do this is a way that does not alienate your current customers)
16. Offer a wider selection of related products or services
17. Offer a wider selection of product or service quantities, that is package your products or services in different quantities at different prices points
18. Create a more expensive sku to increase the reference price for your other products within the same category – this will encourage customers to “trade up”
19. Cross-promote your products with other related or unrelated brands that may appeal to the same customers
20. Develop and sell a wide variety of accessories for your products
21. Bundle and sell two or more products together
22. Generate licensing royalties by licensing your brand to other organizations’ products or services that deliver against your brand’s promise
23. Invest in R&D to create entirely new products and services
24. Invest in a proprietary technology that will lead to competitive advantages for your products
25. If appropriate, find ways to make your products collectable
26. Offer your products in a series
27. Use each product to sell another product
28. Create a system of integrated products so that the purchase of one product from your organization leads to the purchase of additional products from your organization
29. Transform your brand into an aspirational brand or a self-expression vehicle for its customers
30. Create new demand for your product by creating new uses for the product
31. Through research, become the expert in meeting a particular market segment’s needs, offering additional products and services to become increasingly indispensible to people in that market segment
32. Through market research, identify and develop products or services for new market segments
33. Increase the individual average transaction by suggesting add-on sales
34. Offer discounts for larger or increased orders
35. Offer paid services associated with your products, such as installation, consulting and technical support
36. Offer financing and extended warranties
37. Offer extended service contracts
38. Offer customization opportunities
39. Merge with or acquire complementary businesses
40. Discover the compromises your industry is making with its customers and reconfigure your offering to overcome those compromises
41. Increase overall revenues through price segmentation
42. Identify where there is price elasticity and raise prices accordingly
43. Create a more compelling design for your products
44. Create more compelling packaging for your products
45. Apply the “timeshare” idea to your business to generate alternative markets for its products and services
46. Create versions of your products that play off of current societal trends
47. Identify new product or service categories to which your internal capabilities are well suited
48. Create a new product development function
49. Establish an internal venture fund
50. Select for intrapreneurship skills and motivations when hiring employees

I hope this list has helped you to think more broadly about the ways in which you can grow your organization and its products and services. And I hope it has created some optimism about its prospects for growth Finally, I hope it has generated some specific ideas for growing your business.