Expanding a business can be exciting, but doing so successfully requires careful planning and execution. Without the right strategy, the results of expansion efforts can be disappointing at best and detrimental to your business at worst.
As a business leader, it’s important to develop a solid product expansion strategy to ensure there is a solid foundation for growth, minimize risks and maximize the chances of success in a competitive business landscape. Below, 20 Forbes Business Council members share specific actions that can be taken to create or enhance such a business’s product expansion strategy and why these steps are so effective.
1. Differentiate Your Business
For product expansion and improvement, it is very crucial to stay ahead of the curve and differentiate your business from the rest. The key is to create a waterproof business plan, including efficient data processing technology, complemented with a high level of market penetration. This added a wider base of target customers and increased acquisition through additional resources, which are best in the industry. – Rakesh Suri, EFL GLOBAL
2. Promote Bottom-Up Communication
You’ve done your research and have a plan to put your strategy into action, so what is missing? Communication! It’s crucial to know exactly where things might be getting stuck or where improvements need to be made as quickly as possible. When you allow time to be a factor, the problem multiplies and becomes more complex. If you encourage bottom-up communication, you’ll be on your way to success. – Ken Kladouris, Platinum Wealth Group
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3. Invest In Technology Initiatives
Create initiatives to focus on new technologies that could benefit the company and improve expansion strategies. Also, invest in marketing research and customer feedback initiatives to identify relevant and beneficial technologies and understand customer needs. – Ronke Komolafe, Integrated Physical & Behavioral Health Alliance
4. Implement Safeguards
As you are growing the business, you need to make sure you have safeguards in place that do not compromise the product. At Roots, our safeguard is the waitlist. To offset the demand, we created a waitlist and newsletter strategy so we have control over expansion. I like to say you should open the faucet but have auxiliary products so you do not lose focus or compromise your core product. – Daniel Dorfman, Roots Investment Community
5. Turn Customers Into A Community
Building a community of enthusiasts was an integral step in our expansion. These customers were willing to provide feedback on new product ideas and essentially give us insight into the appetite of consumers prior to a launch. This led us to fine-tune ideas and create products actually desired by our customers. – Matthew Gallagher, Watch Gang
6. Productize Your Offerings
Having been in the coaching and consulting space for a few decades, we recognized a shift in the market toward productization. In response, we began to productize our consulting offerings to help clients make a more direct connection between the problems they experienced and the value we could provide in helping them solve those problems. – Aaron Kopel, Project Brilliant, LLC
7. Make The Right People And System Investments
I read this book titled Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and it taught me the importance of investing in the right people and in the right systems to make a business move smoothly. It is not about asking yourself how to solve the problem. It’s asking yourself who I can hire that can help me solve the problem the best way possible. – Jeremy Leung, Ascend Capventures
8. Use Data To Find New Opportunities
To expand our international media production business, I analyzed market research and existing clients’ needs to find new opportunities in different markets. This helped us offer more specific choices and meet market demands. We used data and models to target profitable segments and reduce risks. We succeeded in several global markets. – Luca Rovinalti, Svet Solutions Media
9. Build A Consistent Identity
We intentionally created an identity to unite omnichannel multifaceted businesses to scale rapidly. The importance of creating that right “identity” is that it simplifies the mission and message, fostering a true sense of purpose and achievement across all elements of each business and the people connected to them, from manufacturing and customer engagement and service to end-use consumers. – Scott Andrew, Retail Service Systems and Tennessee Hills Distillery
10. Listen To The Locals
As a corporate leader, I prioritized market research to strengthen our product expansion strategy. We adjusted our product to fit local preferences by exploiting our unique selling features to get a detailed awareness of possible markets, customer requirements and competitors. – Khurram Akhtar, Programmers Force
11. Use Your Team’s Skills
I expanded my business by leveraging other people’s skills and expertise. The business expansion program was driven by the addition of other thought leaders with innovative and creative ideas to the team. This action was important because their ideas, inclusion and effort led to the ability to reach more people, create different strategies that appealed to certain people and achieved results that have made us successful. – Akinola Dominic, Domi Ventures LTD
12. Determine Your Target Audience
As a business owner, one thing you have to carefully determine is your real end user and the set of people that determine which products will survive or not survive in your sector. It is sometimes not the final consumer that is the determining factor of which product is best or not. For example, in a school, the consumers are the children but the determining persons are the parents. While maintaining quality services, endeavor to create policies and strategies that are targeted toward the determining persons. – Akerele Ajewole, Gidi Real Estate Investment Limited
13. Encourage Collaboration And Inclusivity
I prioritized cross-functional collaboration and knowledge sharing amongst teams. By facilitating this collaboration, I created an inclusive environment where employees from diverse areas worked together towards our business expansion goals. Their contributions were valued, promoting diverse perspectives, creativity and innovation and ultimately leading to a comprehensive and successful expansion. – Rafael Ortiz, BRAC Consulting Group
14. Leave Some Breathing Room
Once we’ve made the decision to open a new branch office or enter a new market, we take the P&L (profit and loss) statement off the table for at least several months. By then, the team would be aware of the range of possible outcomes. The components that allow an initiative to exceed expectations are a high morale workforce and the space to make mistakes without headquarters looking over everyone’s shoulders. – Matthew Wong, Tolunay-Wong Engineers Inc.
15. Prove The Value Of Expansion
The strong business case showcasing revenue growth and cost reduction benefits helped secure favorable health plan contracts. Demonstrating added value and alignment with health plan goals facilitated negotiations, leading to mutually beneficial agreements and an expanding market reach. – Alex Yarijanian, Carenodes (Value Based Care Advisory)
16. Get To Know Your Customers
I expanded beyond my target markets by getting to know my target customers. The majority of my time was spent finding them, talking to them and using market research. Having a deep understanding of who you serve and the best way to meet their needs leads to well-defined strategic planning, a competitive advantage and innovation. Ensures your financials support a direct ROI of your investments. – Amber Brown, Becton Dickinson
17. Surround Yourself With Like-Minded People
Building a cohesive team of professionals who share the organization’s purpose, work ethic and goals is crucial. It requires careful consideration of candidates beyond their qualifications to ensure alignment with the organization’s values and vision. A team of like-minded individuals who share a sense of purpose can drive the expansion of services, serve clients and achieve success together. – Elizabeth A. Douglas, Esq., Douglas Family Law Group
18. Perform Market Research
One specific action I took to improve our product expansion strategy was conducting extensive market research. By doing this, we were able to determine where the market and our customers’ needs were lacking and to develop new offerings that honed in on our strengths. This action was important to ensure that any expansion was well-informed and that the new products were successful in the market. – Myrtle Anne Ramos, PlaceWar
19. Get In Alignment
The most critical part of any expansion is the need to align on operating philosophy. Not doing this leads to disastrous results. Before any expansion, the senior leadership team and I at Phase 3 host the new party at an off-site location to reveal what drives each deal partner, establish a combined set of values, translate these to actions and then use these as a bilateral accountability structure for integration. – Alex Cooke, Phase 3
20. Year-End Business Planning
Our team gets together every October or November of each year to plan for the next year. In this meeting, we project our growth for the next year, identify what talent or hire we need to acquire and discuss any new software, workflow or system. – Jesse Sasomsup, Earnest Homes
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