Growth: keep it steady or try and maybe fail at something new?

Yesterday I was chatting with another business owner about growth.

His business was growing online steadily but he wanted more growth. The problem was that he only had one solid customer acquisition channel and there weren't a lot of levers he could pull to control it (e.g. it would be impossible for him to double his effort or results).

The conversation ended with two choices for him:

1. keep up the steady growth he has now, or
2. invest in finding and building up a second acquisition source, and possibly having a few false starts and duds along the way.

A huge part of growth boils down to this:

You either stick with what you have now or you invest resources in finding a secondary source of customers that can help you reach your goals.

Big or small, new store or established store. Every business has to go through this. Some stores get "lucky" while others have to slog and fight for every step.

Soon you should point a critical eye at how you're attracting customers. Are they working well enough for your growth plans? Do you need to get better at them or find new sources?

Hard questions but if business wasn't hard, everyone would do it.

Once you attract a new customer, you have a direct line to them so marketing can get easier.

The first goal should be getting your customers to come back a second time. Mastering that simple process can be difficult, but builds a lifelong business.

Repeat Customer Insights can help you understand your customer's behavior. With its collection of behavior reports, you can see what they're actually doing instead of throwing darts at the wall.

Eric Davis