Do you want to grow your business? This second series of articles goes beyond the basic ‘sell more / charge more’ advice to explore your options for business growth. In my role as Editor for The Business Show and Business Startup, I have talked with literally thousands of business owners and entrepreneurs about what they really need to know, not what a business guru thinks they need to know. This series is the result. Today’s blog looks at diversification.

Diversification

Diversification is perhaps the lowest risk method of growing your business. By offering complementary products or services, you not only extend your customers’ options, but you also add revenue streams without negatively impacting upon your existing business model. These revenue streams can boost your bottom line year-round, or they could offset quiet periods in existing revenue – whether seasonal or market driven – providing a more stable revenue year round.

By offering more products or services, you unlock the potential for effective cross-selling – or even upselling – to maximise the profit potential of existing customers. It could also bring in new prospects who are looking specifically for your new offering.

The principle is simple: if you sell someone a coffee cup, offer them coffee to put in it. And a kettle to boil the water, too. The most effective diversification makes full use of your existing infrastructure – whether that’s marketing, distribution, retail premises or more – to deliver new revenue opportunities for your business with the minimum outlay. Of course, the way that you can diversify depends on the nature of your business, so you’ll need to take a look at your business, then work out what kind of additional offering your customers might be interested in.

The benefit to your customer base is an improved service, the benefit to your business is increased revenue. Done well, diversification sees everybody win. If you’re concerned about diluting your core offering, the key is to view diversification as good customer service, rather than purely as an opportunity to wring more cash from your customer base. As long as the additional product or service is relevant and of genuine interest to your customers or prospects, then they may well be grateful that you can offer it to them.

As a professional copywriter, I’ll never be able to retire on fees earned from writing social media updates, but I know that many of my customers value the additional service. I might prefer higher value and more stimulating commissions such as writing a press release or devising a content strategy, but I pride myself on providing a complete service to my clients and they appreciate having one ‘content guy’ they can trust for everything.

Modern customers are busy people and value convenience – alongside value – so by offering them the coffee and kettle to go with their new coffee cup (or in my case, the Tweets to go with their new press release), you have made their lives easier. And for that, they will thank you.

 

Next: Adding A Second Location To Your Business

 

If you find the series – or any of the articles in it – useful, please share them via LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or your own blog. I’d really appreciate it, thanks. If you need professional copywriting for anything from your new web copy to marketing collateral and press releases, I’d love to hear from you. Get in touch today to find out how I could help your business.