All businesses are constrained by limited budgets, time, and manpower, especially smaller businesses.

Marketing strategy sets the overall framework to guide choices in developing products, setting prices, positioning against competitors, and how to communicate with customers.

Done right, creating a brand means your business has a strong message, image, and presence that comes to mind when people need to buy.

If you grow your offering, it can benefit from the existing brand. It takes time, but good branding is a long-term gift that keeps giving.

The key to long-term growth is acquiring new customers, especially in industries with high customer turnover.

It requires a clearly defined strategy, ongoing measurement, and adjustment based on the results. It also means taking on a long-term view and having sufficient cash flow.

Growth is typically achieved through generating larger customer bases, not selling more to existing customers.

For most businesses, the fundamental need for long-term sales growth is to gain new customers, rather than up-selling, cross-selling, or even retaining existing customers.

This is especially true in industries with a high degree of customer churn, like fitness or restaurants.

Customer retention, cross-selling, and up-selling all have a role in gaining additional revenue for a business. They can provide quick wins. But it can be a game of diminishing returns. Most businesses need an affordable way to gain new customers, replace the revenue from lost customers as well as find extra ones for growth.

Most businesses find that the bulk of their revenue comes from the many customers who are light buyers, rather than from the smaller number of super-loyal customers. Read our article How to Grow Sales in a Small Business Through Customer Acquisition for more.

For this reason, it’s usually better to target many typical, lighter buyers in a market, rather than a smaller number of super-loyalists.

Buying habits are changing and businesses need to adapt for 2024.

Since 2020, we’ve seen consumers significantly change their buying habits. 2024 looks set to continue that trend. Most markets have had to adapt to survive and remain relevant.

This is especially true for small businesses, who have the added pressure of large brands entering and disrupting markets, like JustEat, Uber and Booking.com

These changes often mean reframing the brand message, adjusting the product/service, adding new payment options or doubling-down on areas of advantage, like personalised customer service (where large brands consistently under-perform).

There’s a growing demand from consumers to be able do everything they need with ease through their mobile phone.

Larger businesses have developed their online presence, fulfilment capabilities and payment options. Most small businesses must adapt to keep pace with these consumer expectations if they are to stay relevant.

Many businesses should offer customers online bookings and payments as standard.

A personal fitness coach, for instance, may be comfortable running their own social media, but find their customer base is only growing through word-of-mouth. This may show that their social media is not really helping to gain new customers in the way they expected – a website might be needed for customers to self-serve their bookings and payments.

Shifting more of your business online may also mean you diversify your revenue streams and scale the business more efficiently.

Financial growth is rarely achieved through a series of actions over a short burst. Developing a customer base to support growth is no different.

Marketing a business to gain more customers requires a deep understanding of both existing and potential customers, a clearly defined strategy, and a plan of action that spreads advertising spending over a longer period of time to reach as many in the market as possible.

Product adjustments may be needed, backed by a new brand launch. All of this takes time. But it provides the necessary building blocks for a successful growth plan.

Payback comes later but the effect can last well after the initial campaign has ended.

Setting up a reporting structure to measure results means the business can adjust the plan over time, to enhance performance and protect spending.

It’s important to be easily noticed by consumers. Distinctive branding will help you do this.

Consumers rarely take much notice of any single brand in a market, even for the ones they purchase. Busy lives and the volume of choices we now have means there’s little risk or reward to devoting yourself to a single brand.

Businesses need to ensure they are distinctive from their competition, so they are easily recognised when a customer needs to make a purchase. Listen to the branding and design conversation we had with Laura Hodgkinson.

Developing distinctive brand assets, in what the brand says, how it looks, sounds and feels, can really help.

A lot of small businesses tend to use the same mix of marketing channels to promote their business – social media, a website, word of mouth, maybe a printed advert or leaflet.

While these are often key channels, other options can provide an opportunity to reach the market. In areas you rarely see competitors. Such as email, direct mail, PR and even TV advertising. Read our article Moving Beyond Facebook, Instagram & Word-of-Mouth for Customer Acquisition. Our Experiences Using More Effective Marketing Channels for more.