If you have an online business, one of your most important goals will be scaling that business quickly, reaching new people and generating more revenue with higher operational output. But how do you accomplish this without expending too many resources?
The Call to Scale
Most entrepreneurs are incentivized to scale their online businesses because of two core motivations: they want to make more money and they want to have a bigger impact. They want to operate their business in its current form with a greater number of customers and much greater reach. This is especially true of inherently scalable organizations, like SaaS companies or companies with a digital subscription model.
The trouble is, scaling can be difficult. Just because you’re appealing to 100 customers doesn’t mean you can be appealing to 100,000 customers. And if you scale too quickly or too slowly, you might not be able to find a balance that allows you to continuously grow.
So what are the best scaling strategies that allow you to grow in a sustainable and measurable way?
Effective Scaling Strategies for Online Businesses
These are some of the best scaling strategies to try:
1. Video email marketing. With video email marketing tools like VIEWED, even a person with no technical experience can embed a video in the emails they designed; the video will be directly embedded into the body of the email, and will play when the recipient opens the email. The user just has to host their video on the VIEWED platform, copy the HTML code or ID that the VIEWED platform gives them, and paste this code into their email template.
And email marketing itself has always been a valuable scaling strategy. With email marketing, costs are absurdly low and almost any email marketing platform you use can be harnessed to reach any number of subscribers, even if you grow into the millions. Adding videos to the mix makes your emails even more effective, allowing you to engage directly with your users and present them with dense, thorough visual information. It’s also a fantastic way to distinguish yourself from the competition.
2. New products (and upselling). Some online businesses choose to scale by offering more products and services to their customers and upselling their existing customer base. If you already have a loyal following spending millions of dollars with you every year, you might be able to double or triple that amount if you can expand your product or service selection in a way that makes your customers happy. The key here is to find the right offer for the right people.
3. Referral programs. Customer referral programs are effective for several independent reasons. First, they require very little investment on your end. Second, they allow you to tap into the power of people who already love your brand. Third, people are highly likely to trust the recommendations of their friends and family members, so each referral will be warm and have a high chance of bringing new revenue to your business.
4. Social media marketing. Online businesses love social media marketing because of how cheap and accessible it is. Hypothetically, you can conduct an entire campaign for free, using only the free tools available to businesses. However, if you want to capitalize on purely organic reach, you need to make sure you’re offering the highest quality content to the right target audience.
5. Paid social media ads. If your organic social media strategy isn’t working, you can always try paid social media ads. Most modern social media platforms have very robust audience targeting and add planning tools that allow you to take total control over how your business is exposed and how people see your advertisements. Social media advertising is also highly scalable, so as your business attracts new people and begins to seek influence among new cohorts, it should be easy to expand your strategy.
6. Pay per click (PPC) ads. Paid ads are also useful in search engines and other contexts. In the pay per click (PPC) model, you’ll only pay for the ads that are actually clicked by your target audience; accordingly, as long as you’re leading those people to a landing page with a sufficiently high conversion rate, you’re almost guaranteed to see a return on your investment (ROI). Just make sure you experiment frequently to keep pushing your conversion rate higher.
7. Search engine optimization (SEO). Search engine optimization (SEO) is a long-term strategy designed to increase your rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs). With the help of content marketing, link building, and other tactics, you can increase your perceived authority as well as your relevance for certain target keywords. Higher rankings lead to higher rates of organic traffic – and eventually, more paying customers for your brand.
8. Geographical expansion. You can also consider geographical expansion, especially if your online business has historically focused on one particular area. Consider using local marketing to aggressively target new cities or new states. And if your business is big enough, you can even consider expanding to new countries.
Not every online business is cut out for aggressive expansion. Before committing to any scaling strategy, it’s important to go over the fundamentals of your business, evaluate your short-term and long-term goals, and identify the biggest risks you face when it’s time to begin scaling.
