Effective Growth Strategies for Startups and SMEs
Although many SMEs business owners understand the value of an expansion, they wrongly assume that they lack the resources to fully invest in a strategy. Despite this view, it is possible to engage with your new users and grow your audience during a new product launch or an expansion of an existing product. There are numerous tools and tactics to befit any spending plan, however this requires a strategic approach to get started on the path to growth.
Let’s explore some tactics employed by companies of all sizes and varying budgets to attain sustainable and viral growth.
Prioritise value
It’s best practice to keep your eyes on the horizon while planning your expansion strategy. Your customer base, products or services are valuable assets.
Thus, ensuring that the demands of the users are met will help the business grow, as when customers find consistency and value in a product, they are inclined to spread the word with people around them.
Product-led expansion strategy
In the product world, “product-led growth” (PLG) is a key 2020 catchphrase. It is a strategy that positions your product as your company’s primary driver for customer acquisition and retention. PLG, which is immensely popular with B2C and SaaS enterprises, has been demonstrated to reduce costs and drive viral development.
Product-led businesses are known for developing high-quality products that offer value to its customers rapidly and consistently. Thus, Instead of investing extensively in outbound sales, product-led businesses may encourage customers to engage with the product instantaneously; this could be achieved through a trial or “freemium” subscription.
Therefore, offering customers the opportunity to utilise a well-designed product prior to purchase enables them to experience its benefits directly. An outstanding product created with this approach will reveal its full value to users without the need for persuasion.
As a result, it is possible to maximise how customers utilise your product and turn it into the ultimate selling point with strategic thinking. It is imperative to take into the consideration that the preceding statements does not imply that the rest of the marketing effort will be discarded. As many of the digital marketing tools will be used as part of your PLG strategy, therefore having one does not render the other obsolete.
For small enterprises and start-up’s, Keap’s comprehensive and marketing automation platform for small businesses combines basic contact management, CRM, marketing automation, and e-commerce features into a single, subscription-based SaaS application. These tools are great for SMEs that require a centralised location to manage their marketing and sales engagements. Surely, good marketing will always have funnels and it is critical to understand which tools are beneficial for generating leads and gathering vital customer data.
Viral loops and Customer incentives
Viral-loop marketing is a technique within product-led growth. This strategy requires the business to communicate with their present customers and encourages them to spread positive information about their products with their friends and acquaintances. Mailchimp has been able to execute this technique paired with its low starting pricing, this has allowed them to grow over a million active users.
Depending on the business or market, viral-loop marketing tactics may include:
User-generated content (UGC)
This is created by users of a business’s products or services. This could be comments, reviews, and social media posts etc. The Nielsen Consumer Trust Index found that 92% of people trust organic, user-generated content more than traditional advertising. This could be because marketers do not pay for UGC; it is unbiased and developed by consumers who solely like a company’s goods.
As a result, UGC is perceived as genuine and honest. User-generated content operates as social proof to promote one’s message to potential customers, helping businesses to raise awareness, instil trust in the target audience and potentially increase sales. On that account, businesses can provide their customers with in-app prizes and achievements to share on social media. (Fitbit and Apple Watch are superb at this).
Rewards for referrals
Referral rewards are incentives given to your customers to promote your products or services. When a reward is involved, the likelihood that your satisfied customer would tell a loved one about your company improves significantly. Thus a rewards program would increase customer engagement and retention.
As a result, it is important to consider the relevance of an incentive to your industry or the type of product or services provided by your company.
Here are a few examples of referral rewards :
Discounts: This type of reward is favoured by customers and provides great value to customers for making repeat purchases and to businesses in increasing sales as well as customer loyalty. Discounts can be either a cash value or a percentage off the total cost.
Gamification: This is a great way of spurring customer engagement and this enables users to add their loved ones to the apps. This program offers the ability to trail users performances and share resources.
A good example of this would be the pleasant learning environment Duolingo has created to keep its users interested and this has significantly boosted its user retention metrics.
Duolingo’s badges and streaks; Users of the app can review their progress by looking at their earned badges and the badges they receive can be shown off to the friends they refer, while streaks is a measure of how consistently people use Duolingo, combined with the ‘weekend amulet,’ which allows its users to take a weekend off without losing their streak. This promotes customer engagement and keeps them consistent with the app.
Community
Apps such as Slack, Dropbox, and social media networks are enjoyable with a group of friends. Dropbox, for example, provides new customers with two gigabytes of free storage after completing the sign-up process.
Target your loyal customers, ideally each new user or loyal customers invites more after a positive experience, and so on, leading to the potential growth of a business.
This is wonderful if you have a huge customer base and a high NPS score, but if this is not readily available, it is best to try something else.
Prioritise product design
The product must provide a solution to the problems it aims to solve; otherwise, it has no reason to exist. Aside from product design, cohesion and storytelling can offer a competitive advantage.
It might be beneficial to invest extensively in product design. As businesses can reduce costs, satisfy customers, and generate more leads than less design-centric competitors through completing several product-market fit studies and developing cross-platform strategies. Hence, if one’s product is prominent in their growth strategy, it is imperative that it looks superb.
One of the most detrimental mistakes in product marketing tactics is a poor user on-boarding experience. During development, provide your design team with all the data required, include them in each dialogue, where their contribution is useful, and solicit feedback on feature selections. Invest in an excellent on-boarding experience to capture your users’ attention and assist them in understanding your product.
Currently, apps can be swiftly installed and removed, ensure that prospective customers’ time-to-value is as short as feasible. This is especially important if a freemium model is employed, this a business strategy in which companies provide a free basic version of a product while enticing customers to upgrade to a paid premium version with more advanced features.
Developing consumer loyalty through feedback loops
Customer relationships are important and cannot be overlooked. Create feedback loops in your product to guarantee that your customers feel heard. These loops increase the engagement with potential or current consumers. According to a Thematic study, users who complained about not feeling valued were more likely to leave than those who complained about delivery or service quality.
For small businesses, it can be as simple as responding to social media messages or deploying a chat bot on your website to begin a dialogue with users as soon as they visit. It does not require a large budget or investment, and many growing businesses and start-ups have successfully implemented these loops. Whatever approach utilised, follow these key steps:
Collect information: Understand your customers’ needs.
Learn: Gain insights and determine what you can alter.
Implement: Apply relevant modifications and enhancements.
Close the loop meaningfully by informing customers of what you accomplished and thanking them for their feedback.
Freemium and FOMO
When you’ve spent resources creating a ground-breaking tool, it can feel paradoxical to give it away for free. Especially if you don’t have a large budget.
Freemium methods have assisted the exponential growth of companies such as Spotify and Canvas, as people become promoters when a good product is placed in their hands.
Give your users something valuable without requiring their payment card information initially. This welcomes them into your community and this begins the critical relationships required for long-term growth. When customers use your products, it piques the interest of others, who will wonder what they are missing out on.
A good example of this is Slack’s free plan , this fuelled a product-led growth strategy. As the app provides its prospects with basic functions indefinitely, however certain inconveniences are built in. Through word-of-mouth the app gained a large user base, despite the direction of many businesses at the time slack chose not to rely on marketing or sales experts to gain enterprise customers; instead, it did so through grassroots adoption, Employees used Slack and shared it with their co-workers until the lack of a company account became an issue.
Freemium may not work for everyone because many businesses will need to repay their development and production costs. It is also dependent on your business model. If your products can’t be given away for free, consider creating free relevant resources.
Tips for grow product adoption
Maintain the authenticity of your interactions. In most cases, small firms and start-ups compete with large brands that can offer a large marketing team and corporate budgets. Utilise your authenticity and narrative to your advantage. A business is likely to convert and keep customers who have a sense of what it stands for.
Getting too engrossed in customer incentives gives the impression that you care only about the business your clients can bring you, not about them as people. Make it a point not to pester them and don’t try to fool them into inviting everyone in their network.
The story should focus on the users. Showcase the perks of referring friends to the product. Clearly demonstrate that you value your current clients, otherwise you’ll have a high churn rate instead of new customers. Thus, a product growth strategy necessitates an investment in user experience and the encouragement of team collaboration.
