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Business Growth – The Ultimate Way to Scale Your Business

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Business Growth - The Ultimate Way to Scale Your Business

Every business seeks, in some way or another, business growth through time and expansion to improve its financial, economic and recognition situation in a market that becomes more competitive every day.

This growth is conditioned by many factors or elements that achieve this goal.

There is no magic formula to achieve the expansion of your business. It does not matter if you are a large or small company owner.

The dedication, desire and determination to meet this goal can help you achieve it.  

You often think that it is a very distant challenge to achieve and that your company is not in the best situation to do it, but it is not like that!  

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Read on to learn all about business growth and how, little by little, it can help you fulfill the dream of expanding your business.

Business Growth: What Is It?

This concept generally relates to the evolution and development that businesses go through throughout time, such as ongoing improvement, increasing profitability, attaining goals, improved brand positioning, etc.

Normally, companies grow when they discover a greater demand than they can cover, and they need to broaden their horizons to reach those customers who demand the product or service.

Therefore, it resorts to investing in resources to cover this demand, such as infrastructure, machinery, and production.

What represents the first step to growth.

But business growth does not refer only to this. But it is also about improving your services, especially when it comes to customer service, and how is this achieved?

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The training and constant teaching of employees will improve management and generate greater productivity and efficiency to expand your opportunities.

Certain indicators can show you if your company is growing:

  • Need to hire more staff, because the one you have is no longer enough
  • Greater recognition in the market
  • An increase in the flow of customers and, therefore, sales
  • Faster product rotation, that is, more is sold than before
  • You see yourself in the scenario of having to create more attention channels because the ones you have are not enough
  • Among others.

Sometimes no matter how small the change may be, it can reflect that you are facing a panorama of business growth, and you have not even noticed it.

How To Make A Growth Plan?

First, you have to know what exactly a growth plan is?

It is a document containing each of the company’s objectives and all those strategies that you plan to implement to meet them.

The objective is to establish a set of steps to follow that may be changed along the journey and tailored to the conditions that may arise or that in some way obstruct the goal’s achievement.

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Let’s have a look at how to make an effective business growth plan.

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1. Conduct A Thorough Analysis Of Your Business.

To start making your plan, you must identify each of the elements that are part of your company, including weaknesses, strengths, opportunities and threats that may arise.  

Customers, the market, and the competition – are all external factors that can influence or intervene in achieving objectives.

This way, you will be able to see exactly:

  • Where do you need to improve?  
  • Where is it weakest?
  • What are the problems you face?  
  • What is the strong point of the company?
  • What opportunities do you have?

With this clear, you will have a starting point to start your growth plan by knowing where you want to go and not starting without a clear premise from the beginning.

2. Set A Budgets

The financial and economic issue is crucial at this stage, so you must establish what your company can really spend to achieve expansion or growth.

Being realistic is very important in this step since you must make sure you have all the necessary resources to achieve the objectives and goals you are setting.  

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Include each expense that you think may arise.

Therefore, you’ll have a clear picture, or at least a close approximation, of whether you can take on this risk or whether you’ll need to seek outside funding to do so.

The idea is not to have to limit yourself by money; to grow, you need investment. Otherwise, you will always be postponing it.  

3. Marketing And Sales Actions

Now that you know what the objectives are and how much you need to achieve them, it is time to define several important points, such as:

  • Which clients are the objectives directed to?  
  • How will you publicize the new product or service?
  • What type of advertising will you use?
  • How are the market and the competition?
  • How will you distribute it if you provide the shipping service?
  • Can you include any other sales channel?

You can successfully answer any questions if you implement actions related to digital marketing in your growth plan.

When developing a website, keep everything to the point, including web hosting, web design, intuitiveness, loading speed, responsiveness, and so on.

Social networks are a great ally to achieving many of these objectives, so you must include them in the action plan for growth.

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The goal is to reach as many people as possible and give you recognition.

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4. Decide A Work Team

In the business growth plan, it is good to include the continuous improvement of your staff or work team.

This will be a crucial factor for them to grow together with your company.

If you are looking to grow, you cannot leave anyone out and having a prepared team focused on developing their skills and being more efficient will help you along the way.

In addition, they may then be able to guide new employees you need to hire due to growth.  

Likewise, it defines the processes and actions to improve them so that the management of your company is increasingly compelling.

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You will achieve everything with the help of each one of them, that each one specializes in their area and generates better results for you.  

The 5 Stages Of Business Growth

Those who run businesses know that the path a small business must take to become a large one is filled with many challenges and opportunities.

Knowing the stages a growing business goes through will give you an edge in making smart decisions at each of these phases.

First Stage: Existence

This is where most companies start, the main priority at this stage is to sell the products or services offered to customers.

This stage is characterized by the fact that the founders or owners are the ones in charge of the entire operation of the business.

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Second Stage: Survival

At this stage, the business is already considered viable, it has customers who generate income to keep the company afloat.

Now that the business is growing, the entrepreneur needs to start hiring staff and making strategic alliances, which are key to driving the growth of the company.

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Third Stage: Business Success

In this stage of growth, the work of the owners is more of supervision, since now their functions must be more focused on strategic planning and not on micromanagement.

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Fourth Stage: Takeoff

This stage is perhaps the most exciting!

If you decide to invest in growth in Stage 3, you want to keep up that pace of investment here, as your business will be entering a phase of rapid growth that you should be very cautious about.

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Fifth Stage: Maturity

This is the final stage of the model, but a company’s journey never ends.

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You should take advantage of many opportunities here.

The company enjoys stability and resources to maintain its consolidation in the market.

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Foundations For A Successful Business Growth Strategy

The growth of a company must be constant.

Not because you have reached the goals in a certain period, you will lower your guard and let the sales be lost for another period.

We must constantly update and improve the goals that we set for ourselves. For this, we will show you what steps you should not neglect:

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Focus: what do you want to do? Where do you want to go?

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Here we refer to the vision and mission of the company.

Of course, in a growth strategy, the main thing is sales and generating income, but having a clear focus will help you align your efforts.

 

Culture: we must adapt to the current situation and change for the better.

For example, if we need to invest in new technologies to improve our processes, people must be willing to change positively.

 

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Processes: they must improve as the company grows, producing more and improving your customer acquisition, sales, and loyalty processes.

 

Infrastructure: If we achieve growth in sales and, therefore, growth in our company, our organizational structure will automatically grow.

People: As we already mentioned, when a company grows, its list of collaborators increases, which it will need to ensure the quality of the processes.

However, successful growth will also depend on people’s commitment to the company.

What Does A Company Need To Grow?

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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