Growth Strategies For Startups

Why Is A Startup Growth Strategy Important?

When it comes to running a successful business, new entrepreneurs must have a customized startup growth strategy. Why? Well, more than 50% of startups don’t make it past the first five years. This is usually a result of poorly-thought-out policies and a lack of clear business strategies for startups. So, if you want to see your startup succeed and make it past the five-year mark, having a detailed startup growth plan is important.

How To Develop A Startup Growth Plan?

To survive and ensure that your business grows year on year, some necessary steps must be a part of your startup growth plan. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at these:

Clearly Defined Value Proposition

The first and most crucial step of a sustainable startup growth strategy is defining your business’ value proposition. A value proposition is a definitive statement that elaborates on how your products or services help your customers. This proposition highlights how your startup is equipped to solve consumers’ problems. It also allows your target market to understand how your offering is different from that of a competitor, boosting your startup growth.

A clearly defined value proposition is also important to show investors how your product will benefit customers. It helps them understand how your product or service will fare in the market, making it easier for them to decide whether they want to invest in your business.

Identify And Understand Your Target Market

As American Marketer Philip Kotler says, “There is only one winning strategy. It’s to carefully define the target market and direct a superior offering to that target market.”

The second most crucial step of any startup growth strategy is identifying the target audience. In this step, it pays to be as precise and detailed as possible.

Here’s how you can identify and work on understanding your ideal target market:

Market Research: Whether you partner with research firms or do it the old-fashioned way, relevant survey data is important in supporting all sales-related, marketing and operational functions of the startup’s growth stage. Market research will help you find out how much your audience is willing to spend on the services you offer. It can also offer insights on what features they prize over others, what pain points your product will solve and how you can advertise to them.
Analyze The Competition: Your competitors are a treasure trove of information that’ll help you build a sound startup strategy. By accessing insights and information from these competitors, you can learn which marketing platforms offer the best returns and engagement. In addition, you can also learn which competitor products sell well and what customer groups they sell to. Such data can help you identify and define your target group and sell effectively.
Create Buyer Personas: Based on the insights and data you gather, create a buyer persona. This persona is a fictional approximation of your ‘ideal consumer’ and focuses on their average income, buying behavior, unique qualities and more. With a buyer persona, it’s easier to identify price points, pick ideal marketing channels and even develop new products.

Market research will prepare you for the next step.

Set Realistic Long-Term Goals

When it comes to your startup’s growth, long-term goals are indispensable. Here’s how you can set realistic long-term goals that’ll fuel your success right from the startup’s growth stage. These should be:

Specific: While planning and implementing business strategies for startups, each business goal should be as specific as possible. Managers and team leaders should clearly outline every goal regarding expectations around time, output, budgets and employee involvement. Specific goals help you plan and execute sales, marketing, administration and supply-related tasks more effectively
Measurable: Ensuring that your startup strategy mentions measurable goals will help you track progress over time. It’ll also help ensure that you allocate advertising and marketing budgets appropriately and get the most returns on your ad spends
Time-bound: A startup’s growth and progression depends heavily on goals that have a set timeframe. Giving your teams a deadline helps motivate them and ensures that your business progresses in the right direction

These should be reflected in your long-term goals.

Hire The Right Talent

Any startup that wishes to establish itself as a market leader can’t do without a team of skilled, talented and dedicated employees. This is why hiring the right talent is an integral part of any startup’s strategy.

Pick employees who have skills to help your startup’s growth. For example, growth hacking for startups is one of the most critical experiment-driven business strategies for startups. However, since it combines sales, marketing, data, development, design, engineering and even analytics, it takes a whole team to execute. In this scenario, the best way forward would be to hire experts to streamline the process.

If you lack the budget to hire the best in the domain, you can pick skilled freshers who are enthusiastic about working in a startup environment. In such cases, training your employees becomes an integral part of your startup growth strategy.

Train and Upskill

Whether we talk about growth hacking for startups, crafting compelling marketing communication, landing high-value clients or effective prospecting, proper training makes all the difference.

Now that you know all about a good startup strategy, how do you go about implementing this knowledge in real life?

Grow Your Startup Now

No matter what your startup sells, it’s vital that you account for training and upskilling your staff. A hands-on approach is essential for mid-level and senior managers as they refine their management and teamwork skills.

If you’re serious about taking your startup’s growth potential to the next level, check out Harappa’s Select A Strategy pathway. Strategy is essential to growth, and this pathway will set the foundation for building a strategy, following it, and, if required, reevaluating and revising how you approach it. Our lessons are delivered by seasoned industry experts and can help your team equip themselves with all the necessary skills needed to thrive in today’s competitive startup environment.