Offering Expansion<\/strong>
\nFor product companies, the natural growth option is offering expansion, such as adding support, consulting and other professional services. When adding services, there are a number of considerations. From a financial perspective, services have a different margin profile and business model, and may impact your financial model. From an operational perspective, this requires adding a services organization and usually requires changing internal processes to accommodate the new business model.<\/p>\nAnother growth option is to add tangential products and move towards a solution offering, adding different hardware and software. The different solution offerings are usually third party products. Although this can increase revenue, the growth is incremental and doesn\u2019t open up new market opportunities. Additionally, this can have different margin and logistical impacts for the internal organization.<\/p>\n
Vertical Expansion<\/strong>
\nWith vertical expansion, companies acquire different partners in the ecosystem or decide to directly compete with these partners. The two most common vertical plays are expanding into the go-to-market (GTM) area and supply chain area.<\/p>\nWith GTM, this often happens in foreign markets where you utilize local partners to build a country\/regional market presence for your products. You need to decide whether you want to directly enter the market with your own sales force or acquire the local partner. With the supply chain, this often happens when a supplier has high margins and you see the opportunity to reduce your costs by making a competing product or acquiring the partner.<\/p>\n
New Market Expansion<\/strong>
\nWith new market expansion, you are looking for new markets to enter that are unrelated to your existing business. Usually, you enter new markets with high growth potential to increase your growth opportunities or to prevent disruption of your core business from an emerging market.<\/p>\nWhen diversifying into new markets, choosing the best market is always a difficult task. Questions arise around whether the diversification strategy should drive the best market opportunity, the company\u2019s core competency or other factors.<\/p>\n
Horizontal Expansion<\/strong>
\nWith horizontal expansion, you are looking for a strategic move in your existing market. Usually, you are acquiring new users through international expansion, for example, or through consolidating the market by acquiring competitors.<\/p>\nGrowth in your existing market is usually the best and easiest place to begin growth discussions. Until you are a solid #1 or #2 in your market, expanding into new markets may leave you exposed to competitors if the diversification move distracts you from your core business.<\/p>\n
Value Play<\/strong>
\nAnother important consideration in deciding on a growth strategy is to be patient and wait for the right opportunity. You may not have the resources or the market conditions may not be right. You can consider becoming a \u201cvalue play,\u201d reducing costs and increasing margins while you wait for the right opportunities. The goal is to preserve cash for now and wait for the right opportunities.<\/p>\nExit Strategy<\/strong>
\nAfter reviewing the different growth strategies, many companies decide that exit is the best strategy. Your partners or competitors may be better positioned to grow and expand the business. Understanding the market and competitive dynamics may lead to the conclusion that it is time to exit the business.<\/p>\nOnce you understand the different options, it is easier to evaluate each option individually and in comparison to the others. One strategy is not necessarily better than the other. Certain strategies will involve higher execution risk, and should be deprioritized. Additionally, when choosing a strategy, you should remember that the best strategy in the world doesn\u2019t matter if your organization can\u2019t execute on the strategy.<\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Companies inevitably face the question: how to grow the business outside your existing market? Emerging companies as well as established companies face this question. When a company is started, the best strategy is to focus on a single product and a single market to marshal all your resources towards winning that market. After a few […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":8840,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[87,100,98],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eisbachgroup.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8171"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eisbachgroup.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eisbachgroup.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eisbachgroup.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eisbachgroup.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/eisbachgroup.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eisbachgroup.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eisbachgroup.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eisbachgroup.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eisbachgroup.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}