While it’s crucial to focus on generating revenue, you shouldn’t miss out on scaling it as well. For only with scaling you’ll be able to make it big. However, not all of the startups launched establish themselves as huge, renowned firms. The reason is the lack of basic concepts regarding how to grow and scale.

This blog tells you the importance of scaling your business and discusses five ultimate secrets to scale your startup by 20X and beyond.

What Is Scaling And Why Is It Important For Your Startup?

Scaling is a type of growth. It involves businesses growing their revenue exponentially without increasing their resources substantially. That is, they improve their profit margins while keeping their expenses low. In other words, they enjoy a higher output while maintaining a low relative input.

For instance, sending emails to 1000 people at a single go using email marketing software is a scaled process. This is because it involves the same effort as that of sending a single email.

Startups find the idea of scaling appealing because it eliminates or lowers the expenses associated with growth. If at all costs increase, it would only be incremental and not abrupt.

One firm that excels at scaling is Google. It has been widening its customer base and increasing revenue while keeping costs at a minimum. Currently, it has 271 products with millions or billions of users each. For instance, its Google Maps product has 5 billion users, Google Drive has one billion users, and Google Discovery has 800 million monthly users.

It generated ad revenue of $146.92 billion in 2020 alone. $52.8 billion of Alphabet Inc’s (Google is this firm’s subsidiary) revenue in 2020 came from Google services alone. However, Google has only 132,121 employees alone (September 2020 stats). And it uses 50% less power and energy in its firm compared to that of similar companies. Besides, it also recycles 100% of its electronic equipment.

5 Ultimate Secrets to Scale Your Startup by 20X and Beyond

There is no clear-cut path to effective scaling to builda million-dollar company. However, there are several things startup owners need to keep in mind. So, here are our five secrets to scaling your startup.

1.     Focus on solving your customers’ problems

Consumers look for brands that provide real value. When there are numerous brands to choose from, they turn to the one that offers a solution to a real problem they’re facing. One brand that made it big in India by focusing on solving consumers’ problems is Turtle Shell Technologies.

Turtle Shell Technologies introduced their healthcare product Dozee. It is a contact-free smart health monitor. It helps people easily monitor their health conditions at home and identify the early signs of different illnesses before a hospital visit.

Users just need to slip the device below their mattress. It will track their health conditions while they’re in deep sleep. This instrument thus addresses one of the common yet more impactful issues faced by people- bridging the gap between the availability of good healthcare and availing it in time.

2.     Employ automation

Startups often struggle with ‘human’ and ‘financial’ resources. This is where automation can effectively come to your rescue. You can streamline your startup’s repetitive tasks and unify the essential resources. It thereby would enable your start-up to focus on high profitability tasks. Here are several tasks that you can automate to facilitate scaling-

• Marketing
• Human Resource
• Competitive Analysis (such as price comparison)
• Supply Chain Logistics
• Customer Targeting (tracking customer behavior and targeting them accordingly)
• Order Processing
• Campaigning
• Customer Support
• Customer Feedback Generation

Besides enabling scaling, automating these tasks can also help you accomplish more with less effort, reduce errors, and become competitive in your industry. So, use marketing automation software.

3.     Prioritize customer retention

When you are just starting up, you should focus on customer acquisition. But when you’re scaling up, you need to direct efforts toward retaining them. That’s because it helps you increase your profits while keeping the related expenses low. Stats say that it costs five times more to acquire new customers than to retain existing ones.

Further, by increasing customer retention by 5%, you can enjoy a 25 to 95% increase in profits. Moreover, you enjoy a 60 to 70% selling success rate in the case of existing customers whereas, for a new customer, it’s only 5 to 20%.

Here are some of the best customer retention strategies for startups.

• Keep customers engaged with your brand after they’ve made a purchase from you. You can do this by altering them of updates, announcing new offers and discounts, introducing new features or products, asking for feedback, asking for referrals, and more.
• Re-target customers who’ve gone inactive for some time. You can do this by sending them exclusive offers and asking the reason why they haven’t got in touch with you for a while.
• Tackle buyer’s remorse by quickly connecting with the customer soon after his/her purchase. Take efforts to address their doubts and gain trust. This will make them your repeat buyer.
• Maintain product integrity. That is, refrain from promising something that you aren’t sure of.
• Consider customer complaints as a business opportunity and put on our best behavior.
• Make customer service your top priority. Train your staff in this regard.
• Delight your customers with thoughtful gifts.
• Gather feedback and testimonials from happy customers and use those as social proof. 

4.     Raise capital

Scaling up your startup would be easy and fast if you have money. For, it’ll help you leave a bigger footprint in your niche by diversifying your products, acquiring the best talent, and promoting marketing and sales.

You can raise funds for your startup in several ways. You can ask family members and friends to lend you. Or you can ask investors if they’re interested in investing in your startup. Or you can take credit from a bank  or reach out to companies that are into startup investing.

However, before you take any of these measures to raise capital, determine your capital need, the purpose for which you’ll use the capital, and if you’re okay sharing the authority on your startup with your investors.

5.     Coordinate your marketing and sales teams

Failing to align your sales and marketing teams can lead to the downfall of your startup whereas coordinating them can help them both accomplish their goals and boost company revenue. Here are some best practices to follow-

• Arrange for them to meet regularly (weekly and monthly) to discuss their proceedings.
• Create a team email alias to help them share vital information bi-directionally.
• Establish a content creation process to let sales reps pen down the feedback about the various customer interactionsthey had. 
• Align your content marketing campaign with the sales team so that the latter stays updated about the ongoing promotions and offers run by the former.
• Make it easy for them to together set their shared goals. 
• Ask your sales and marketing teams to keep their reporting and analytics open to each other. This will help each other identify the best working marketing strategies and channels, the various KPIs, and more.

Wrapping up

Scaling a business involves growing its revenue exponentially without increasing its resources substantially. The idea of scaling is quite appealing to startups as it eliminates or lowers the expenses associated with growth. Though there’s no clear-cut path to effective scaling, there are several strategies that work. This blog has discussed the top five of those to help scale your startup.