When your business is doing well and going strong, you may find yourself wanting to expand to a point where you serve your entire country. This is not entirely a bad idea. National expansion means you can serve more customers than can positively impact your revenue.
But while it is logical to think that expanding to more areas in your country means bigger earnings for your business, it may be easier said than done.
Note that this is a major undertaking that can either cause your business to blossom into a national corporation or can cause it to die a slow death. This decision requires intensive research that aims to identify your preparedness to serve the greater population.
With that, let’s look at what you should know before expanding nationally.
What Every Business Owner Should Know
Physical Expansion
With a national expansion in mind, it is only fair to ask yourself how you are going to do it.
Most businesses see expansion as opening new branches to key cities in your country. This essentially means finding out where you can expand first and starting from there.
You would want to do this in major metropolitan areas where a huge amount of people work and reside. This is recommended for initial expansion since you are putting yourself and your business in front of a bigger audience.
Opening a physical branch in another location can also make it easier for your customers to reach your products and services. This can be a testing ground for you to find your customer base and establish a decent target market for your products.
But of course, physical expansion means you have to allocate a bigger budget for your business’ overall costs. This may include additional costs on operations, as well as compensation for additional employees.
Physical expansion can mean a wider reach for your business and can also create jobs for people in other areas.
Online Expansion
If you are not completely sold on the idea of spending extra on another location, you can always exploit the resources provided by the internet. Billions of people actively use the internet, and the network that social media brings is virtually unending.
The online realm can be a venue for your business expansion. Social media marketing, as well as e-commerce, has been steadily growing in the last few years and has since been established as a useful avenue for your products.
You can use social media accounts and pages as your digital storefront. These platforms are a good way to engage with your customers, resulting in customer acquisition and retention. Furthermore, these pages are also a good way of communicating to customers about sales promotions and product launches.
Websites
Creating a website is also one of the most popular ways to create a home online. This makes sure your customers find you in one place on the internet. As long as an area has a good internet connection, your customers can access your site.
Websites can achieve multiple business objectives. They can house multiple web pages for your contact information and the products and services you offer. Apart from that, you may also create a website where your customers can make orders to buy your products.
This is the advantage of websites. It allows you to have a single hub where most, if not all, of your business transactions with your customers can take place. This allows you to reach more people without actually being in their location.
Delivery and Payment
One major factor about using online platforms to expand your business is how you can send your products to other areas in your country, and how you can receive payment.
This means you may have to partner with shipping and courier companies to make sure your products get to your customers on time, and in the right condition.
Apart from that, you may also have to arrange ways for your customers to send their payments. Since you are aiming to serve most areas in your country, you may also have to take payments through money remittance services to make sure everyone can avail of your products.
More options for accepting payment can make it convenient for your customers who have varying payment preferences.
Your Products
Of course, if you do go this route, you have to make sure that your products do not perish during transit. For this reason, if you are a food business, it may be smarter to open up physical stores in other areas.
If you do offer non-food products such as clothes or electronics, going online may help you spread the word about your business faster and easier.
Growing your business will prove to be challenging. For this reason, business owners should always take time to plan and think about their business decisions. Good planning and decision-making can surely lead to better business growth.
