3 tips to accelerate startup growth
Startups aren’t only contending with other businesses in their space – they’re competing with themselves.
Time is money, and the slower companies grow the closer they get to closing their doors for good. There’s no tried-and-true approach to shifting an organisation into hypergrowth mode, but these three tips should help get you started.
1. Maintain agile digital infrastructure
It’s odd to think, but a common setback many organisations experience is the growth itself. Their servers can’t handle the rising amount of new users, they lack the capability to add new functionality to their product or they simply don’t have the staff to deal with bugs and glitches in the software.
Managed services can take the pressure off your IT staff.
Third-party providers have made scaling digital infrastructure simple and cost-effective. Leveraging a vendor for IT managed services to maintain servers and other tasks can free up employees’ time to work on more mission-critical projects. Similarly, startups should avoid coding from scratch – utilising application programming interfaces (APIs) can improve the company’s speed to market. Proprietary technology doesn’t require complex coding.
2. Avoid expensive customer acquisition
It’s widely agreed upon that the cost of bringing in a new client far outweighs cross-selling and upselling, which is why small businesses should focus on the latter. This shouldn’t be through developing a new product or creating a digital add-on.
Devise training exercises and marketing collateral for sales staff so they can effectively explain the benefits of what they’re selling, without making it sound like the company is simply looking for more money, Forbes reported. Once you get to know your consumer base better and understand their needs, look for ways to build new streams of revenue to keep income flowing. You should rarely find yourself in a period of stasis.
Cross-selling and upselling are effective ways to avoid expensive customer acquisition costs.3. Continuously test everything
In the era of big data there’s no reason your company can’t continuously strive to improve. A/B testing should be the marketing and IT departments best friend. For the former, it allows them to consistently refine each campaign and make it specific to individual target audiences, which can boost conversion rates. The same goes for the website or product design.
Ultimately, this sort of information can help the company identify areas in the market they can grow into or where the software or application would fit well. These insights can also be applied to internal processes, allowing the business to refine its approach and reduce costs. Contact a LOOKUP representative today for more information.