By Adeniyi Ogunfowoke,
Launching a startup is one thing; accelerating growth and expanding it is an entirely different challenge. While patience is certainly a virtue, it’s not necessarily the best skill for entrepreneurs to adopt. Instead, the focus should be on rapid growth, return on investment and long-term success. How do you accelerate or boost the growth of your business? The following tips offer some insights.
Monetize early
Monetization may be the most important aspect for all startups. Many founders battle with the idea of whether to build an audience or monetize first. Don’t hesitate to monetize as early as possible. Put your revenue model to the test early and see if your idea holds weight in real market conditions. People only value what they pay for. And paying customers is the quickest way to validate your idea. Growing your audience to high numbers is comforting, but the product/service remains an unvalidated idea until you monetize it.
Experiment with pricing
Pricing should evolve as your company evolves. Only by charging money and testing pricing strategies can you truly understand how your audience values your product and their readiness to pay for it. You’ve found your optimal price when: a relatively small percentage of people complain that you are too expensive, another small percentage that doesn’t hesitate at all before paying and the biggest segment says the product is quite expensive but they are ready to buy because they see its value.
Add new streams of revenue
After you’ve been in business long enough, you’ll likely begin to understand your customers more and be able to hone in on what they really want. This gives you the unique opportunity to add additional streams of revenue. Jumia, Nigeria's no 1 shopping destination started as a platform for ordering electronics, gadgets and other household items. Today, the ecommerce platform is earning revenue from logistics, hotel and flight booking, payment gateway and online food ordering.
Increase capacity
The problem for most startups is that they quickly reach capacity and can’t perform at a higher level. If a startup can only hire enough employees to remain open 12 hours a day, it’s going to be difficult to increase revenues. The obvious answer to increase capacity is by hiring additional employees and staying open another five or six hours.
Narrow down customer acquisition efforts
Sometimes, time, effort, and money don’t bring about desired results. In fact, it may be a targeting problem, not a product problem. You can’t be all things to everyone so if you’re trying to market to everyone it’s simply a waste of resources. To accelerate growth focus on a niche audience that has expressed genuine interest in your brand.
