11 Proven Strategies to Grow Your Business in 2024

You may start your new business with a modest scope, but you probably don’t want it to stay that way.

Every entrepreneur longs to see their client list grow, their reputation spread, and their revenues multiply.

The question is, how do you make that happen?

While there’s no magic formula for growing a business, there are plenty of steps that can help you move in the right direction.

We’re going to share some of those tried and tested steps in this post. Use them to help you achieve significant, sustainable, and strategic business growth.

Start with the Right Legal Foundation

First and foremost, it’s important to position your business for lasting impact.

One of the best ways to do that is by choosing the right legal structure.

The legal structure you choose for your business can have a direct impact on how you pay taxes, how you handle daily operations, even how you handle potential lawsuits.

Choosing the right structure can ensure you have the personal liability protections, along with the administrative flexibility, to pursue lasting business growth.

While there isn’t one legal structure that’s right for all businesses everywhere, a majority of companies benefit from being an LLC.

LLCs provide the same kinds of personal liability protections you might expect from a corporation, but with a lot more flexibility and less regulatory overhead.

The specific steps for forming an LLC vary in the US, but the general outline looks something like this:

• Choose the state to register. If you’re a US resident that usually means the state where you’re based. So if you live and operate your business in Manhattan, you’ll want to register your LLC in New York.
• Select someone to serve as your Registered Agent.
• File Articles of Organization with your state, and pay the registration fee.
• Create an Operating Agreement to facilitate smooth day-to-day operation.
• Claim an EIN from the IRS.

Bottom line: By registering your business as an LLC, you may be giving yourself the foundation required for lasting, meaningful growth.

Other countries or regions will have their own versions of LLC. Explore those relevant to where you’re planning to operate.

11 Strategies To Help Grow Your Business

Once you’ve laid the right foundation, there are several specific strategies that have proven themselves effective at achieving business growth.

Here are some of the top options.

1) Invest in Digital Advertising

Digital advertising has distinguished itself as one of the most cost-effective methods for generating leads, converting customers, and building a robust sales pipeline.

Digital advertising can encompass anything from PPC ads to social media ads to video ads.

There are many reasons why digital advertising is effective. Foremost among them advanced targeting options.

With digital advertising you can ensure you’re only showing content to the people most likely to make a purchase.

That includes users who have previously browsed your website or shown an interest in your products.

You can use calls to action and landing pages designed to prompt your leads toward taking specific steps.

To get the right mix of digital media may require some trial and error. Always make sure you’re monitoring data and analytics to see what works and what doesn’t.

2) Optimize Your Website

Another important avenue for growing your business is investing in search engine optimization.

SEO positions your business website as both a lead magnet and a 24/7 sales machine.

Through strategic SEO, you can increase the odds that your site will be discovered by members of your target audience, including those seeking information about particular products or services.

Unlike with PPC and other forms of digital advertising, you don’t have to pay for clicks.

SEO is crucial for raising the awareness of your brand among the customers for whom such visibility matters most.

3) Be Active on Social Media

Social media provides another set of tools for growing your business and developing a broader audience.

Being active on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or LinkedIn makes it possible for you to communicate directly with your buyers, and to share information that may be of interest to them.

Social media is an excellent avenue for distributing information.

It can also help you monitor customer feedback, answer common questions, and establish your commitment to strong customer service.

Both paid social media activity and organic reach can be invaluable for building your business.

4) Reward Customers for Their Ongoing Business

Business growth isn’t always about bringing in new customers. Often, the best way to beef up sales is to cultivate loyalty and repeat business.

Customer loyalty and referral programs are a couple of ways to accomplish this.

You could design a customer loyalty or referral program to provide any number of perks, which could include anything from discounts to exclusive offers.

Providing points that can be redeemed for free products and services is another way to make this viable.

5) Perform Ongoing Customer Research

When you launch a new business, it’s always worth engaging in competitive analysis to gain a clearer understanding of the market as well as the competition.

This research shouldn’t be limited to the early days of your business.

Ongoing research, from focus groups to customer surveys, can illuminate new ways to reach a broader audience.

At the same time, it’s helpful to keep tabs on what your competition is doing.

Take note of everything from their product and service offerings to the kinds of content they produce.

Seek ways you can fill gaps in the marketplace or otherwise position your brand as distinctive.

6) Segment Your Market

The bigger your customer base grows, the more important it will be to break it down into smaller segments.

Doing so allows you to tailor your messaging to each segment, providing them with offers or with content that’s specifically relevant to their needs.

How do you segment a market?

There are plenty of options, ranging from geography to demographics. You can even segment your audience according to past purchasing behaviors.

You could reach out to people who have already viewed your website, customers who have bought a product, those with abandoned carts, and so on.

7) Developing and Iterating Your Products

Another effective way to build your business? Build out your product line.

In some cases this might mean adding new options to your catalog, based on what you learn through your customer and market research.

It could just as easily mean iterating your current products.

For example, you can keep your customers engaged by rolling out subscription-based pricing, or shifting toward more sustainable materials and packaging.

Any time you spend refining, improving, or expanding your products is time that’s well-invested in your business.

8) Being Strategic About Market Penetration

Market penetration strategies can encompass any number of tactics.

Some of the most common examples include:

• Finding ways to encourage current customers to buy more, such as upselling.
• Looking for ways to poach customers from your direct competitors.
• Converting non-customers within your existing marketplace, such as through price adjustments.

By focusing efforts on the marketplace where you’re already active, you can leverage your existing reputation to encourage growth.

9) Diversifying Your Business

If market penetration is about going deeper, diversification is about going broader.

Expanding into different industries or markets typically means launching new products or services.

There are a number of specific ways to diversify revenue streams, including:

• Seeking out opportunities outside your current industry or niche.
• Developing products or services that help appeal to different segments of the market.
• Entering markets that are new or simply have more minimal competition.

Diversification helps you add to your revenues by appealing to a wider range of customers and by capitalizing on emerging market trends.

10) Forming Strategic Partnerships

By collaborating with other businesses, you can gain entry to new marketplaces, take advantage of new technologies, or find ways to cross-sell to a complementary customer base.

The best partnerships tend to be the ones where both partners bring unique strengths to the table.

For example, if your specialty is product development, partnering with a distribution or logistics team might make a lot of sense.

11) Merge with Another Business (or Acquire One)

Finally, another method to achieve business growth is by pursuing a merger or acquisition with another company.

While this may not be something you aspire toward as a brand new company, it may ultimately be the best way to consolidate your competition or to leverage your resources most effectively.

Explore Different Strategies for Business Growth

Every business owner dreams of ongoing, sustainable growth.

From digital advertising to SEO, from strategic partnerships to product iteration, there are countless ways to bring in new customers, and improve sales.

Consider a combination of strategies to build your current business into something even more robust, impactful, and successful!

This is a guest post by Amanda E. Clark, a contributing writer to LLC University. She has appeared as a subject matter expert on panels about content and social media marketing.