When you run a business, one of your main aims, the reason for making the decision you make and doing the things you do, is to grow. Expanding your business is something you will need to put a lot of thought into, but after increasing your product range and your prices, what else can you do? Here are some interesting ideas that could, if done right, help to boost your business massively.
This is a contributed post. Please refer to my disclosure for more information.
New Locations
A physical location may or may not be something you want to achieve in your business, but if you do have one, what are your plans for when you’ve exhausted it? A time will come when your customer base stops growing because everyone who needs to know about you in your local areas already does, and if they want something from you, they’ll visit. If not, they won’t.
Expanding online is one option, although ideally, this is something you will have done in conjunction with running the store or office or branch you already have. What’s next? The next step is to open your business in new locations. Where else are they going to want whatever it is you sell? Do some market research to determine exactly where the best place to open a second location is going to be, and then go ahead. You’ll immediately be able to double your profits. As time goes on, you might expand even more and open a third, fourth, or even fiftieth location.
Buy Another Business
One of the fastest ways to grow your business is to buy another and merge the two. It’s not necessarily a simple idea, nor is it a cheap one, but if you can find a similar business that is being sold and has a pretty good balance sheet, it might just be the ideal addition to what you already do.
Depending on exactly what you’re buying, you might be able to use the idea to open up a second location as we mentioned above, only this time everything will already be in place – you just need to change the name of the store or restaurant to yours and potentially put in some new systems.
As long as you do due diligence (or, better, hire a lawyer to do it for you), then there should be no surprises, and your business can grow from strength to strength. Again, this is an idea you can repeat as many times as you want, or your budget allows.
Become A Franchise
If you want to make more money but you don’t necessarily want to do more work, why not set your current business up as a franchise? Take a look at Franchise Direct and you’ll see the types of franchises other people are selling. Could your business expand in this way?
What’s great about franchising your business is that you’ll not only raise money from the initial sale, but you’ll make money regularly too since franchisees usually pay a percentage of their profits to the franchiser each month.
If you go with this idea, your brand will be in many places, but you only need to focus on the franchise development, not running the actual individual stores or businesses themselves.
