Expansion can be a scary thing for a business owner. Getting your business off the ground usually takes years of worth, especially until it becomes profitable. Why would you want to change the formula once you’ve found success?
There are a number of reasons why you’d want to grow your business, as well as ways to do so, whether it’s implementing performance marketing techniques like affiliate marketing or expanding your number of employees. But before you begin making changes, what are the signs that your business is ready for expansion?
1. You’re Ready to Grow
First and foremost, your business is ready to expand if you and your partners have thought about it. What could that look like? Realizing you’re ready to take on more customers, that you need more specialists in your company, that you want to corner another part of your niche market.
The matter of taking on customers matters most of all, as word travels fast—if you can’t fulfill orders/work for a client, they’re bound to tell others you’re at capacity. Don’t get lost because you’re falling behind. Consider expanding to continue growing your base.
2. Customers are Asking for It
Expansion might be in the cards for your business if customers are asking for it. For instance, if you’re a performance marketing company who specializes in affiliate marketing, you might have customers asking if you’ll ever expand into the influencer marketing or ambassador marketing space.
If enough customers start asking for you, you should consider making moves. It doesn’t have to be immediate, but it’s best to appease your customers however possible. Just make sure you don’t rush expansion if you’re moving into other fields of marketing—every product should be as stellar as the last.
3. Your Company’s Model Works
If your company works as is, that could be a sign that you should begin shaking things up. What could this look like? If your business has been successful for months, even years, without change, you could consider making some top-down changes to improve your business’s outreach. That could include introducing a new product, hiring more staff, bringing in more board members, expanding into another sect of your niche, and more.
The important thing is remaining true to your company: sticking to your mission, maintaining your personality, etc. But you should aim to grow all of the factors of your business, one at a time. Full expansion shouldn’t be immediate. Evaluate what works in your company and consider making improvements and developments one at a time.
4. You’re Turning Down Work and Opportunities
Similar to having customers asking for you to provide more marketing strategies and business offerings, you also know you’re ready to expand once you’re turning down work and opportunities. You could be turning away work due to not having the expertise to complete it, but it’s more likely that you can’t accept new clients due to being at the limits of your schedule.
As a business, it’s crucial that you take on customers and foster them into creating a long and stable relationship with you. Turning away customers is a surefire to avoid this. It’s important you consider expanding once you start turning away business opportunities. The simplest improvements can be made by hiring and onboarding more staff and internal teams.
5. You Have an Opportunity You Can’t Turn Down
Sometimes you have to turn away work. It’s part of running a business. You can’t accept every opportunity, even if you don’t want to. But sometimes you’re at your limit and you turn down a client that you need—one that is advantageous enough that you’d be hurting your business by not accepting it.
Whenever such a situation arises, you need to rethink where your business currently stands. Ask yourself:
- Why is it that I can’t accept this opportunity?
- What’s causing me to avoid taking this on?
- What resources don’t I have?
- What could my business be doing better?
In most instances, you’re turning away an opportunity due to a lack of resources: time, staff, bandwidth, etc.
With more staff, space, and time, you could effectively take on a client and integrate them into your schedule, making them the priority you so dearly want.
6. You’re Succeeding
Your business is profitable. You’re doing well, the numbers look good, and you’re happy with where your business is. You’ve put in the effort and it has obviously paid off. Now is the time to begin looking ahead!
Why look ahead once things are feeling good? Part of running a business is about upward expansion. It’s important that you’re good at what you do, and customers like familiarity, but you need to look toward the future. This means looking towards other business adventures, taking on new clients, widening your grasp of the niche market, expanding the personality of your brand.
7. You Feel Complacent
For some business owners, finding success is not enough. For them, comfort in their business is tantamount to complacency—feeling as if they’re running gears while stuck in place; that something bad is lurking around the corner because life feels too good.
Anyone in this situation should consider expanding their business into new territories. However, they should do so with caution.
Why caution in this case? Because this fleeting feeling might be caused by what we can call “work culture”—the culture where we are expected to grow, succeed, thrive, and fight in the workplace at all times. If you’re considering expanding due to a feeling of complacency, take a step back and ask yourself what’s causing that complacency, whether it’s your business or larger issues.
For all you know, you might find that your time is better spent focusing on your life outside of work. It all takes some consideration.
8. You’re Not Worried About the Risk
Lastly, now might be the time for expansion if you don’t feel any worries when thinking about it. To you, there’s no risk; there’s no struggle at the thought of it. It simply feels right for the moment.
If that’s how you feel, all the power to you and your business. Time to get to the drawing board and beginning plans for expansion!
