3 Things You Need to Do to Grow Your Business Naturally Stop focusing on growing your company and start improving your offerings.
By Jonathan Long •
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Building a successful business requires laser focus. Every entrepreneur wants to grow his or her business, but it's that focus on growth that ultimately stands in the way of the desired growth.
Confused?
The point is that you can focus on growth all you want, but unless you find a way to provide more value, your growth will be slow. Take Amazon for example. They are constantly finding ways to provide more value to their customers -- from free same-day shipping to testing 30-minute drone-delivery -- and that sets them apart from other e-commerce retail options.
The same value-focused approach can be applied to any business.
I'm constantly networking, and since I spend a considerable amount of time in Oklahoma City these days, I have met several local business owners, one being Grover Walker, CEO of SaonMedia, a digital marketing, promotion and distribution company in the music industry.
While speaking with Walker, we discussed business growth and the importance of providing value. Below are three value components that can grow your business naturally across every industry.
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1. Helping your customers become more successful and happier.
"Our artists love creating music and performing, and our goal is to help them succeed and "make it' in this extremely competitive industry. With each client comes a different sound and unique personality, which we develop the marketing campaign around. Simply helping our artists do what they love has resulted in countless referrals and further business relationships within the music industry," explained Walker.
This approach applies to everything -- from business-to-business online marketing tools to consumer health and beauty products.
An online invoicing and accounting tool helps a business be more efficient, allowing them to dedicate more time and focus on other areas of their business -- helping them to become more successful. A consumer product like my teeth-whitening brand grows exponentially simply by making customers happy -- in this case, by helping them whiten their teeth.
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2. Being more innovative than your competition.
SaonMedia's current focus is digital distribution to major digital and mobile retailers, and in the early years of development, they were limited to just music digital distribution to a select few digital retailers. However, after securing a deal with distribution giant The Orchard, they emerged as a leading distributor in the music industry.
"It took careful research and hands-on experience to realize that distribution alone was not enough for our artists," explained Walker. "We realized that content marketing and promotion created valuable engagement between our music artists and their fans. We then developed a platform for artists to market and promote their music in a more efficient manner."
Now, SaonMedia offers their marketing platform, consisting of music and video placement, content creation and radio play, to all independent artists. This approach allows music artists to deal with one company rather than several.
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3. Giving your customers something your competitors can't.
Walker's company introduced this new marketing platform for independent music artists, which was something that his competition wasn't focused on, explaining, "We believe that a direct-to-consumer strategy is an important key to success in the digital marketplace, so we made it a priority to offer this to our artists to help them succeed in a very competitive industry."
This point circles back to the beginning, where I used Amazon's 30-minute drone-delivery service as an example. They were the first to come to market with this, but one would be foolish to think that other e-commerce giants won't follow behind.
That doesn't make Amazon's efforts any less meaningful -- natural growth is about constantly finding new ways to provide extra value that isn't found elsewhere. "If you are struggling to come up with ideas, poll your customers. Simply asking them how you can deliver more value will often provide you with the feedback required," advises Marc Anidjar, attorney and co-founder of Anidjar & Levine, P.A.
