Growth strategies are vitally important, whether your company is an established one or a promising startup. Strategies may differ depending on your industry and company size, but should always focus on customer acquisition or increasing revenue.
Ouellet suggests four strategies for expanding a business: market penetration, development and product diversification - each has different risk profiles and approaches can take years of work. Top-rated Calgary IT company can set you up with the right processes and structure to help you achieve your business growth goals.
1. Focus on Customer Service
As the cornerstone of any successful company, customer satisfaction should always come first. Be it through direct feedback or a quarterly survey, it is vital that customer grievances are tracked and addressed swiftly so you can meet client promises.
Excellence in customer service is the cornerstone of reducing client churn and increasing revenue. Acquiring new customers is typically six or seven times more costly than keeping existing ones around, with retention being key for long-term growth.
To be truly customer-focused, all employees must come together behind this goal. This can be accomplished by setting an overarching customer experience goal that incorporates metrics from all departments; encouraging non-customer facing employees to listen in on customer calls; and informing all about any positive feedback received from customers - this will inspire the team and show that your company truly cares for its clients.
2. Leverage Social Media
Social media offers businesses an immense and engaged audience they can leverage to market and expand their IT company. Humanizing their brand, targeting specific demographics with advertising campaigns and using analytics to optimize strategies can maximize reach and conversion rates online.
Raising exposure and brand recognition on social media can help an IT company establish themselves as industry thought leaders, drive traffic to their website/landing page, and generate qualified leads. Businesses may utilize Facebook, Twitter or YouTube depending on their goals in achieving these objectives.
Social media provides IT companies with several other advantages as well. Social media enables IT businesses to build new distribution channels for their products and services, which may help lower supplier costs, connect them to top talent more directly or open up lucrative markets - TikTok provides users the ability to share short videos that reach an engaged, targeted audience who respond well to marketing messages.
3. Develop a Marketing Strategy
IT companies that are expanding require an effective marketing plan in order to capture that expansion. Marketing IT requires more sophisticated strategies due to business technology buyers being knowledgeable.
Understanding their pain points, analyzing current suppliers and solutions, as well as knowing what's necessary to prevent downtime, cybersecurity breaches or other issues is the first step toward success. Research can often be completed on peer-to-peer review platforms like Clutch or G2.
IT companies need to develop new ways of meeting customer's evolving needs in order to remain profitable and remain viable over time. This may involve creating new products or services or expanding into new geographic regions with potential. Ouellet lists four possible strategies rooted in Ansoff matrix with different risk profiles: market penetration, development, new product/market development and diversification - each has their own set of pros and cons for IT businesses - not simply choosing what works best - it should always consider what's best for business, its customers and future.
4. Hire a CISSP-Certified Professional
CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) certification is considered one of the industry's gold standards. To obtain it requires extensive work experience and knowledge of a Common Body of Knowledge document as well as passing an arduous exam many consider among the toughest in cybersecurity.
Being certified CISSP employee is key for any IT company, as they provide their team with expert cybersecurity knowledge needed to protect against cyberthreats while meeting all regulations.
Therefore, the Certified Information Security Systems Protection Professional (CISSP) certification is increasingly in-demand in IT fields and may lead to higher salaries for those who hold it. Though taking on such an endeavor requires considerable hard work and dedication, its rewards far outweigh any investments you might make upfront. Gain more insight into this certification by attending a CISSP training; this will equip you with all of the tools and confidence to pass the CISSP exam successfully. CISSP-certified professional could become an invaluable asset on your team and help mitigate cybersecurity threats, so it is a good idea to hire one.