A business without the potential of scaling up means, wrap up. Not every idea is meant to be scalable.
According to a research,”90% of the startups fail within the first five years of their operation”. This is because; most of the entrepreneurs are hasty in taking action without considering the potential to grow.
Imagine scaling up your business from $0 to a million-dollar Company. It is only possible if you have an idea that is scalable. However, not every business has the tendency to lift off the ground without competent resources, mindset or scalable idea. Moreover, the investors will show little to no interest in investing money in a business that is not scalable.
The ability to scale your business depends on proven business model and a product. In this post, you are going to learn some of the ways on how to make your startup scalable.
Let’s get started.
1. Analyze Core Areas
Scaling your startup is useless if your core areas are full of glitches and vulnerabilities. 74% of failures are due to premature scaling, according to StartupGenome’s survey of 3,200 plus startups.
So what needs to be done at this stage?
Firstly, you need to analyze whether the product is capable enough to gain massive attention in the market. You can make further improvements from time to time based on user’s data and feedback.
The art of scaling your startup is dependent on finding the core users. If your startup product is limited to specific geography or chunk of users, stop thinking about scaling. Your idea needs to be evaluated from the beginning.
Identify the marketing channels with greatest ROI in a little budget. If necessary, look for funding resources so that you don’t run out of money. In a glimpse, you need to evaluate your core idea, product and plan in order to scale up your business.
2. Research and Development
Research and development is not a one-time process. You have to analyze the overall market situations, competitors’ strategy and weak areas recurrently. At times, research and development can help scale your business on a bigger scale. Take an example of emerging technologies that can be integrated in your business such as Cloud Computing (helping you to secure critical data and improve work productivity)
In other cases, you may need to change the plans in order to meet the fluctuating situations. For instance, if your competitor has adopted a new way to market its product and have gained massive traction – what strategy would you adopt?
In this case, the research department will help you devise a better plan or alter the existing plan to compete and stay competitive.
3. Attract Investors through Business Model
Investors are only interested in investing money if they find the potential of business to scale. Why would anyone risk investing money, if they don’t see the potential of growing? It all depends on your business model and plan that defines the potential of being scalable.
Make sure you have thoroughly reviewed your business plan before reaching out to investors. Include everything in your business plan from target market to customer acquisition strategy and your revenue model to your financial projections. If needed, you can hire some experienced resource to guide and develop a better business plan. Additionally, addressing potential business planning mistakes early on can significantly enhance your chances of securing investor interest and funding.
4. Focus on Marketing Campaigns
Marketing is the backbone of any business. It has the potential to make or break a business. If you want to scale up your startup business, adopt marketing strategies that would lead you to gain an audience on a massive scale. In fact, you can’t scale a business, if no one knows about you.
Traditional marketing is somewhat outdated and expensive. Direct marketing and word of mouth will never reap the fruit because according to Forbes, “direct marketing is not scalable and word of mouth does not scale”. Digital marketing is the new trend that would help you reach out to customers whom you have not even thought of. For instance, you can adopt content marketing, social media marketing, and email marketing to become viral.
5. Hire Experienced and Talented Staff
No matter, how great the idea is, how well you have managed your financial resources, without experienced and talented resources, nothing is going to work. The team must be on the same page and have clear goals in mind to scale up your startup.
If you are looking for right people, look out for these traits when hiring them.
The individual must be creative, have many ideas and think out of the box. Hiring the individuals who have multiple skills is best for startups. At times, you will require someone who could manage or assist in tasks that are minor but needs to be done correctly.
6. Developing Minimum Viable Product
Minimum Viable Product is the backbone of any startup product. Why is it important to develop an MVP before launching a full product? The reason is quite simple, as you can’t afford to invest your money on a product that is not tried and tested.
Minimum Viable Product development will help you gain insights on users’ feedback, product’s performance, and early signups. If your MVP is able to get massive attention, your startup business surely holds the potential to scale up in the future.
Moreover, MVP will help you save time, effort and most importantly money. If you are low on funds and can’t afford to risk your money on a full-scale development, MVP is the right approach. It will help you get an idea whether your business/product is scalable or not.
7. Outsource Your Work
Big companies usually hire in-house resources to handle different tasks like graphic designing, web development, SEO, Social Media Marketing and mobile app development. However, it is not possible for any startup entrepreneur to afford all of these resources at once.
For this reason, you can outsource your work to the talented professionals. You just need to pay for work done on an hourly basis and don’t have to pay for full time. If you just focus on your core competencies i.e. startup product development – you will definitely lead your business to scale up.
8. Don’t Ignore Social Media
The power of social media can’t be ignored, especially when you are looking to scale up your business. Social media is a platform where everyone will notice you. In the early days, it was important to handle social media campaigns carefully. You must be very much concerned about managing and growing your social sites rapidly. So you may read the GetViral reviews to know about their growth services for social networking sites.
Many social media websites will help you connect with the key influencers in your industry. Build PR and take advice from them. Building public relations and interacting with people associated with your business will help you scale your business on a wider scale, particularly when you are facing tough times.
Conclusion
Scalability needs the right plan and execution through existing resources. Before taking any action that would push you in shambles and leave you in tatters, make sure to analyze it. Not every business is scalable and not everyone can afford a huge loss.
If you think big funding means the path to your success, you are wrong. Recently, 10 of the best-funded companies who raised a combined capital of $1.7 billion closed in the first nine months of 2017. There were many reasons behind, but the core one was that the idea pitched was either too weak or could not address the problems of the masses.
