14 Innovative Ideas For A Company’s Growth

The headlines in the news are the companies that are struggling to maintain profitability due to slow economic growth. The covid-19 pandemic is a significant reason for the slow economic growth. That forces companies to think outside the box to source innovative ideas for a company’s growth.

To survive in the market, especially if your industry is competitive, you need some compelling ideas to enjoy a better market share. Let’s take a plunge into the article to learn the 14 innovative ideas for a company’s growth and stand out in the competitive market.

What is company growth?

Company growth is a stage where a business has gained stability to expand and make more profit. Business growth results in greater revenue, an increase in customer base, market share, and production of goods. Company growth can occur organically or inorganically.

Organic business growth means the natural growth of a business- this kind of growth happens within the business in the form of an increase in the number of offerings and business units. In organic growth, the owners of the company retain control of the business.

The strategies to drive organic or internal business growth include:

• Offering new products
• Process utilization
• Investing in new technologies
• Distribution of resources

On the other hand, inorganic company growth is a business growth driven from the outside, such as acquisitions and mergers. Acquisitions will increase the company’s shares. Inorganic company growth involves starting new stores or branches. There are key differences between organic business growth.

Whether your business model fits organic or inorganic company growth, you need innovative ideas for a company’s growth to keep your business growing and improve your profitability.

Innovative ideas for a company’s growth to improve profitability

The primary drive for any company in the world is profitability and the key performance indicator of any business is also profitability. According to Shawn Casemore, “A business that is not growing after everything, is dying”.
Shawn couldn’t have said it any better- the sign that a company is growing is that it is moving. The more money you make, the more you are closer to realizing your business goals. You also have more money to expand the business to make it bigger and better.

14 innovative ideas for a company’s growth

1. Create a new product line
2. Improve your customer service
3. Integrate AI into your customer support
4. Social Proof
5. Reward customers and offer discounts
6. Innovate your supply chain management model
7. Social media marketing
8. Content marketing
9. Hire talented employees
10. Utilize business automation tools
11. Customer Relationship Management
12. Positive work culture
13. Email Marketing
14. Corporate Social Responsibility

1- Create a new product line

To make your business distinctive, you need to think outside the box. There will come a time in your business you would need to improve or enhance the features of your current products or create an entirely new product line. That will help improve your position in the market and increase profitability.

To facilitate that, you need to perform market research. Market research is the backbone of every new product line.  You need to conduct comprehensive market research that includes analysis of support questions asked by customers and customer feedback about your products. You can use customer feedback about your products to see the features your product lacks, and integrate it into your new product.

Whether you are targeting new or existing customers, market research is key. You can expand your market research into non-customers to evaluate the chances of your new products with new customers. After comprehensive market research, you should validate the product. Though the new product is a product of customer feedback, it needs some validation.

Checklist to validate your new product

• Who are the users of the product? There is a 99% chance your existing customers are like your future customers. So, understanding their preference will help you satisfy your existing customer base and attract new customers.
• What problem(s) will the product solve? Every product has a big idea that it tries to sell. The big idea is the problem your product solves. Therefore, this question demands you to have deep thoughts about who your products will serve and how your product will help them.

• How does your product(s) stand out from its competitors? Your product is likely not the only product in the market solving a similar problem. So, you need to be creative enough to make your product stand out from others. A successful product is a product that does not just solve consumer needs but is also unique.

2- Improve your customer service

A business that will realize its goals and objectives must prioritize excellent customer service. And that goes far beyond using customer experience to enhance the product. Customer service can either make or break your business. 81% of customers say they are likely to make another purchase following a good customer experience. Imagine the growth of your company if it has an 81% retention rate. Your company’s growth will be exponential. You need to always review your customer service strategies to maintain quality customer service.

Below are innovative ideas for a company’s growth through good customer service: 

1. Train your staff with customer service etiquette. Training your team on soft skills like patience and empathy will help to enhance your brand and build a strong relationship with your customers.
2. Understand customer issues better to enable faster customer support.
3. Respond to customers in real-time. Responding to customers in real-time can help to reduce the sales cycle and increase sales conversions.
4. The tone of conversations. Studies have shown that personalizing your communications with customer support can build trust and promote customer loyalty.

3- Integrate AI into your customer support

Speaking of responding to customers in real time, integrate artificial intelligence into your customer support with the use of a chatbot.

Chatbots can increase customer support, improve customer satisfaction by 24%, and increase sales by 64%. While most consumers will prefer to interact with human agents, chatbots are increasingly becoming relevant in improving customer experience. You can combine both, which most companies do, to enhance your customer support and grow your business.

Top benefits of integrating AI into your customer support to drive the company’s growth

• Resolved complaints in real-time 24/7
• Provide detailed and expert answers to simple queries
• Friendly and approachable
• Instant response
• Easy communication

4- Social Proof

More than 80% of consumers say trust is a decisive factor in purchase decisions. For this purpose, you need to adopt innovative ideas to build trust with your customers and increase your company’s growth. Such an innovative idea for a company’s growth is social proof.

Social proof is showcasing positive statements your existing customers are making about your products or services. Your potential customers want to see the testimonials, reviews, and recommendations from existing customers before they make a purchase.

Testimonials can increase conversions by 34%, and 97% of consumers say online reviews influence their purchasing decisions. While 82% of consumers make their purchasing decisions through recommendations from friends and families. So, adding social proof to your website, landing page, and social media platforms can help build trust and increase your profitability.

5- Reward customers and offer discounts

A high customer retention rate can lead to a raid company’s growth, don’t take my word for it. According to a Brian & Company report, a 5% increase in customer retention rate will lead to more than a 25% increase in profit. Now, imagine a 20% increase in customer retention. So, customer retention is a key KPI to measure the company’s growth.

Rewarding loyal customers and offering discounts are innovative ideas to retain customers and increase company growth. You can reward your loyal customers by offering them discounts or providing a substantial reward for every referral. With that, your customers will be willing to recommend your business to friends and families.

Another innovative idea for a company’s growth through customer retention is to offer discounts for customers after attaining a specific spending height. You can make your existing customers feel special by giving them early access to newly launched products.

Other ideas for customer retention

Besides loyalty programs, other innovative ideas for customer retention, and increasing your company’s growth include organizing events, user-friendly website, content marketing, and starting a YouTube channel. Involving your customers in your branding and content creation can also help with customer retention.

Also, make them feel part of the company and celebrate your anniversary with your customers. You can sell your products at a discount rate during your anniversary, change the packaging, offer free shipping, or free usage of products or services. Real-time engagements with your customers on social media platforms can also increase your company’s growth.

6- Innovate your supply chain management model

Innovation does not end in product creation, if improvements are applicable to how products are made or shipped, then there should be an improvement in the supply chain management model.

Supply chain management deals with the process involved in transforming raw materials into finished goods including sourcing raw materials, production, and distribution. Supply chain management also covers customer returns. With an effective supply chain, products can get to customers fast at a reasonable cost. Effective supply chain management can make you avoid supply shortages, hence, improving the company’s growth.

The innovative ideas you can use to improve your supply chain to improve your business growth:

UPS recently launched an e-bike program to make deliveries swift in urban areas.
The program allows the company to meet delivery promises in the most congested urban areas.
And of course, electric bikes are climate-friendly, which means the program comes with an added benefit to reducing the carbon footprint. That is a great innovative idea you can borrow to make deliveries swift and boost profitability.

 

Another innovative idea to solve the supply chain crisis and drive business growth is the Amazon Flex program developed to mitigate the truck shortage. While the program does not solve the truck shortage, it provides some relaxation and creates side hustles for hundreds of people. The idea of the Amazon Flex program is that anyone who wants can be a delivery person.

Amazon flex program is like Uber, but in this case, you are transporting a package and not a person. Amazon has used the program to solve a major supply crisis at the same time create economic benefits for the people.
This is an innovative idea you can implement or make better to improve your supply chain and increase your profitability especially if you are faced with a similar challenge.

On-demand warehousing is another innovative idea companies such as Blueground, Bernie International, Juvo Plus, and Westside Baby are using to increase profitability. They outsource their warehousing instead of owning one, thus, reducing operating costs and increasing profitability. They use on-demand warehousing platforms like Flex, Stord, and FlowSpace to connect companies with space for their warehousing. This is an innovative idea for companies needing additional temporal space and companies that want to open a new warehouse, especially start-ups.

7- Social media marketing

Social media users are expected to increase to 4.89 billion users in 2023. That means most of your customers are tweeting right now, scrolling through Facebook newsfeeds, viewing pictures, or watching videos on Instagram.
These days, the best place to market your product and services, and interact with new customers is on social media. If your marketing efforts do not include social media marketing, you should include it. That’s where you can connect with your existing and future customers.

8- Content marketing

Content marketing generated a revenue of about 66 billion USD in 2022. 82% of companies use content marketing to increase revenue. If you are not using content marketing, it is about time you start.

Content marketing is targeting your consumers with relatable content. The goal of content marketing is to be the source of information for your target audience. Becoming the source of information for your target audience will help build trust with them and they will feel easily connected with you. With that, it won’t take much to win them over to your side and improve your profitability.

Remember content marketing is not about you, but for your target audience. That may require you to post content outside your industry. For instance, if your target audience is Gen Z, you need to post what excites Gen Z to woo them to your business. That could be about health and wellness, technology, and electronics. 57% of consumers are reported to increase their spending on a brand they feel connected to and 76% will choose such a company over the competitor. That connection is what content marketing gives you.

9- Hire talented employees

As normal as this may seem, prioritizing hiring talented employees can accelerate your company’s growth. The difference between a successful company and a struggling company can be the employees. And the growth of a company depends on the quality of the employees.

Quality employees are not just staff with experience and high IQ, but employees that are disciplined enough to abide by the company’s policies. In addition, organize training for your employees consistently to improve their skills, and customer relationships and be able to add value to the company.

10- Utilize business automation tools

Business automation tools have come to stay. If you want to cut costs and increase growth, try deploying business automation tools for your business. It is one of the innovative ideas for a company’s growth that can help you improve efficiency and increase profitability.  These tools will help you automate your business thereby improving your business operations and serving your customers better.

An example of a business automation tool to improve a company’s growth is Hootsuite. If you want to streamline your social media outreach and engagement, consider Hootsuite. With Hootsuite, you don’t need to post to individual accounts or logging-in on to multiple devices. Hootsuite has made it easier to harness social media marketing for your business. It will help schedule and post content to all your social media platforms. As a result, boost efficiency and improve your business growth.

Quuu is another automation tool for a company’s growth- it will help you automate your content creation.
If you want to completely automate your social media marketing efforts, try 99dollarssocial– it will post relevant content to your target audience every day.

Automated tools like Asana and Basecamp make team communication easier. You can easily assign tasks and communicate with your team without exchanging lots of emails.
If you need to cut costs and time to grow your business, then this is what business automation tools will achieve for you.

11- Customer Relationship Management

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is often referred to as technology and software that can be used to manage external communications of a company with its customers. However, it also refers to the conglomeration of all aspects a company uses to relate to its customers.

How can CRM help you to grow your business?

• You can use CRM to organize and centralize information about your customers, which will help promote quick customer support.
• You can use CRM systems to improve sales, customer retention, and marketing.
• Data analytics with CRM systems is also easier and it allows you to keep track of various projects, determine trends, infer conclusions, and create interactive dashboards.
• Another way CRM can increase the growth of your business is its customer service. With CRM you can easily store customer interactions, which you can recall to solve a customer complaint and a customer does not have to repeat the complaints. You can enjoy high customer satisfaction with this.

Types of CRM technology

There are two types of CRM technology you can use to improve your business growth- CRM system software and CRM cloud-based solutions. Both systems house customer information data including biodata, purchase history, and previous complaints. That can help promote the companies-customer relationship making it productive and efficient.

But there is a key difference between CRM software and cloud-based systems. With cloud-based CRM systems, you can have real-time access to data from anywhere and any device- laptop, tablet, and mobile phone. However, convenience comes with some cons. Cloud-based systems cost more than CRM system software and a company might have compatibility issues if it moves to a different kind of software.
It may be difficult for a company to have access to its customer information if it faces financial issues, acquisition, or going out of business. Examples of CRM software include SalesFlare, Salesforce, and Zoho.

12- Positive work culture

One of the things that kill a business is high employee turnover. Though employees will leave at a time to start a new career, your employee turnover would be minimal if your employees are happy to work. Happy employees develop a healthier, more creative, and more productive approach to foster the company’s growth. You can make employees happy through employee recognition, career development, good salary, reduce workload, and hospitality.

13- Email Marketing

If you want to grow your business, you need to get new leads, and that is one of the benefits of email marketing.
Email marketing is persuasive, personalized emails to convince your target audience to take a specific action including booking a demo, making a purchase, and registering for a webinar. The first stage of email marketing is educating your email list about your product and services before telling them to take action.

For email marketing to work for your business, you must have a growing email list. In addition, try to make subscribing to your email list easier by putting a form on your website, creating a landing page, or putting a signup form on your social media platforms.

14- Corporate Social Responsibility

Many companies don’t value Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), but it is a key innovative idea for a company’s growth. CSR will put your business in a positive light in the eyes of society as your company gives back to society. Consumers take corporate social responsibility seriously, you should too. Consumers prefer to do business with companies they can relate with. If you don’t have a CSR project yet, you can invest in CSR projects that solve social and environmental issues.

For instance, the majority of consumers believe companies should take people and the planet seriously. And consumers shift towards companies that try to solve social and environmental issues.
Post about your CSR activities to solve hunger, discrimination, and social justice. Also, donate to charities and good causes, and consumers will take that into consideration when comparing companies. However, try not to support a cause that is politically motivated. It may tarnish the image of your company, thereby causing a decline in your customer base, and thus, slowing down your company’s growth.

Conclusion

It’s obvious that a company not growing will soon die. We’ve detailed innovative ideas for a company’s growth that will help to improve the growth and increase the profitability of the business. The innovative ideas encompass different aspects of business operations including product creation, marketing, and customer relationship. You can easily integrate these innovative ideas into your business and watch your company’s growth.