Founding a business can be challenging but rewarding. You learn a lot in the first few weeks and even months of operating a company. Once you’ve solidified your team, services, and contacts, now it’s time to grow.

Growing a company can be a different set of skills to founding one. The solidity and stability of your business oftentimes relate to how well you have structured it. Growth, however, reflects the relationship others have to your company. Whether that’s customers, your network or your industry, the more people that know about your business, the more it will grow. Therefore, a lot of entrepreneurs spend a lot of time with marketing and advertising to get the word out about their services in hopes of drawing in new people.

While this is a valid approach, it’s also an expensive one. As a new company, you might not have the marketing budget that can match your competitors. Social media may be free, but the people who create and manage it are not. Things can add up quickly. So, how else can you grow your business without expending all your time, energy, and money?

Growing Your Business

On season 6 episode 20 of the Making Bank podcast, Stephen Somers discusses the different ways to grow your business. As the co-founder of Marketplace SuperHeroes, Stephen knows how to build your company from the ground up – and to reach incredible heights like an eight-figure worth. There’s more than one way to expand a business, and Stephen believes that some approaches are more effective than others.

Your Current Customers

Converting people into customers can be a challenge. Statistically, very few people who come across your brand will ever convert. Even online, most people drop out of your funnel early on. So, Stephen encourages entrepreneurs to mine their current customers. Obviously, you always want to be working towards accumulating new customers. However, Stephen attributes much of his growth to expanding his services with existing clients.

Listen to Your Clients

The first and most important thing to do when looking to expand your services is to make sure you’re expanding in the right direction. To guide you in this process, turn to your customers. What are they saying? What is their feedback?

Stephen points to Facebook groups as a large source of information. By creating a Facebook group for your company, people can post their questions, feedback and more. This level of communication not only informs both parties but strengthens the relationship and loyalty your customers have to your business. By creating a space for open communication, your customers will feel heard, and you will gather important feedback.
Maybe Facebook groups make less sense for your particular business. Perhaps you reach out to customers via surveys, emails, or other forms of feedback. Whatever the case, it’s important to pay attention to what people are saying. Their questions and comments will reveal additional services they’re in need of, or simply just want. Some services may be obvious, while others may not. Either way, you will come to learn what your customers are looking for in you and what they are not finding.

Creating an Ecosystem

Once you have an idea of what your customers need or want, you can start implementing that. Sometimes, it might be expanding options under a certain service. Other times, it may look like creating a related service, or a new one altogether.
In doing so, you’ll start to create an ecosystem of services. Anything that your customer can want or need, you will start to provide. Stephen believes that if you can create an ecosystem of services, you will not only capture more clients, but keep them as well. You can attract clients for different services, then slowly start to convert them to other options and programs.
For example, many pet businesses offer a variety of services, from daycare to boarding to grooming. When walking into a pet center, customers can also buy food, toys, and other equipment for their animals. That way, if someone is looking for a grooming service, they will find you. Maybe in the following weeks, if they ever need a boarding service, they will come to you. Perhaps someone wants dog training initially, then sees the option to also do daycare. If they’re happy with the training, they’re more likely to come to you versus the next daycare center.
An ecosystem of services does multiple things. It draws in a wider net of clients, as people need different products originally. Then, your customers see the other services you provide, which plants the idea in their mind. Whether they were initially seeking that product, matters less. What’s more important is that they’re now aware that you can provide it.
So, if they – or someone they know – ever needs that service in the future, they will come to you.

Building Out the Connections

The great thing about creating an ecosystem of services is that you’re expanding into related fields. You’ve already built the connections in a certain field, so when you expand your products, you can leverage your existing connections. Someone you already know can help set you up.
If you’re expanding into a field that is less related to what you’re currently doing, you still may know someone who can help. Perhaps someone in your network, or someone in your network’s network, can introduce you to those circles. Either way, expanding into other fields will expand your network.

Whether you move into new fields with help or not, you’ll still bring over your skills, expertise, and talented team. You’ll still learn along the way, accumulating more knowledge for yourself and your team, which you can then incorporate into the company’s skillsets. The experience will equip you with the confidence and the information on how to enter new fields, so that in the future, starting and growing another company will go smoothly.