Efficient Business Expansion - Eric Statzer

If you're a small-business owner who is looking to expand through additional services or products, here are ways to successfully market your new offerings.

How to expand your business without expanding your work day

John OrlandoChief marketing officer for Constant Contact

What do the following three businesses have in common?

• A boutique specializing in maternity wear successfully launches a new line of baby clothes.
• A landscaper reaches out to existing clients to promote his snow removal service and cleans up every winter.
• A popular wedding D.J. announces professional photography and videography services and soon he’s booked a full year and a half in advance of the big day.
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• All of these small businesses have expanded their core products and services to reach new audiences and drive additional sales opportunities. And you can do it, too.
  If you’re a small-business owner that’s looking to expand through additional services or products, here are ways to successfully market your new offerings.

  3 Ways To Identify The Fastest Path To Growth

  In the examples cited above, it’s obvious which new areas were the easiest for those small-business owners to expand into. For those of you that want to grow but are uncertain about which direction to go, take your cues from your customers by looking at the following three areas.
  First, think about how your business fits into the lives of your customers and if there are natural synergies that extend your expertise and match their interests and needs. For example, a yoga studio might offer meditation classes or a kitchenware specialty shop could offer cooking classes.
  Second, consider the questions that customers regularly ask you and see them as opportunities. A great example here is a dog groomer that saw the upside in the pent up demand for pet sitting services so he expanded to offer those, too. Another example is an accountant that’s often asked for recommendations on financial planners. In both of these scenarios, there’s an opportunity for the business owners to either offer the service themselves, or monetize a referral partnership with a complementary business.
  Third, if you’re thinking about offering several new services, ask your customers first. Send them a survey through email or social media so you quickly gauge interest and need. Based on their feedback, you can determine where to focus your efforts. Though keep in mind that you’ll have the greatest success by tackling only one new area at a time. Once you’ve mastered it, you can consider expanding again.
  But if you try to expand too quickly, you’ll put your main business at risk.

  Driving new interest without losing existing customers

  While existing customers are always the best way to grow your business, expanding your offerings means that you’ll likely have to expand your target audience. Take the maternity shop example from above. For that business to be successful with its new line of baby clothes, the business owner needs to attract and engage customers beyond expectant mothers to include family members, friends and experienced parents.

  Here are some ways you can tap into existing customers to drive interest in your new offerings and reach an even wider audience. Along with posting signs about your new offerings in your shop and updating your website and social media pages, refresh your business profile on online directories such as a Yelp and Yellow Pages.

  You can streamline the efforts around updating your online business profile using a tool that automatically populates all the right websites on your behalf. This way, when potential new customers run a search for businesses like yours, your new, expanded offerings are more likely to show up in their results.

  Directly reach out to existing customers through email and social media to let them know that you’re expanding into a new area and how it benefits them. To really drive engagement, segment your email contact list and send personalized messages and offers. By taking a closer look at your contacts and email marketing results, you can learn a lot about your customers to create those segmented lists.

  Specifically, group them by location, interests, the content that was most effective in sparking their interest, and the offers they redeemed. Based on those factors and other information you’ve gathered about them, segment the list and send personalized messages and offers. For example, a maternity shop customer from last year would be an ideal target for the new line of baby clothes, while a new customer might be more interested in signing up for the baby shower registry. Also, remember to add a social sharing button to your email so that subscribers can easily spread the word through email and on social networks.

  Another idea is to expand the focus of your content. Let’s consider a spa that recently added professional makeup services. The monthly newsletter could talk about the health benefits of taking care of yourself from the inside out, highlight certain spa services that reflect the main theme, feature quotes and photos from customers, and include a special offer that rewards existing customers when they refer new ones.

  The final recommendation for attracting new customers to your new offerings is to watch where they’re hanging out online and tune into the topics they’re talking about. Don’t assume they’ll have the same interests as existing customers. Instead, listen and learn and once you have a handle on what’s going on, engage your new audience with relevant content.

  As you expand your offerings, don’t lose sight of marketing your core business. Key to striking the balance between the business that most customers know and your new offerings is to build on your foundation and weave your new expertise into the content that spans all areas. Then validate it with customer feedback whenever possible. When you do this, customers will see the natural expansion of your business while you benefit from steady growth.
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