7 most effective business development strategies.

Business development can be described as the process of acquiring new customers and opportunities to ensure the company's growth and profitability.

Business development strategy in its turn is a document describing the strategy you will use to accomplish these goals.

7 most effective business development strategies are

1.Networking

2.Referrals

3.Advertising

4.The Client List Strategy

5.The Expert/Inbound Strategy which has a new face due to digitising.

6.The old client strategy

7.The existing client strategy

1. Networking strategy means making your business grow by establishing good relations with your potential customers.

It covers attending business-related events, lunches, meetings to identify these potential clients.

Advantage - you can find potential clients who are not in your client list.

Disadvantages - it may be costly and time-consuming taking into account that the clients may be busy themselves. If we are speaking about the classic approach then this strategy is not so targeted.

If you apply this strategy make sure you use new newer digital networking techniques can help with the cost and time.

2. Referrals

You can get these referrals from your repeat customers or as a result of your networking strategy.

This system is based on making your repeat customers recommend you to others and rewarding them in case of conversion.

However, the problem of the referrals is that they tend to be passive.

The referrals sources may not be aware of all the services you can provide. And suitable referrals may remain unrecognised by them.

Making your specific expertise more visible with the help of the new digital strategies can help you here. This allows people to make better referrals.

3. Advertising including sponsorship can be very expensive especially for small companies. The return on investments can be difficult to track.

However, if to use retargeting (advertising only to those who visited your website or whom you met before and who are of your target audience at the same time) then it will be less expensive. You can also make advertising to your target and restricted audience.

According to researches advertising can provide only a slow growth to the company until it is used together with other techniques like arranging webinars.

4. The client list strategy is when you determine to research, creating or buying this list of potential customers and decision-makers.

It can be applied via email marketing or cold calls.

This strategy's advantage is that it is focused and can be the most effective if to target the right customers at the right time with the relevant message.

As for disadvantages if it is not done properly it can fail and just result in losses. This business development strategy is considered to be one of the most challenging. Business developers should be ready to face a certain level of rejections.

5. The Expert or Inbound strategy historically proved to be successful and passive at the same time. Its essence is that the business developers create the perception of their expertise level in their field. They start writing blogs, articles, books, speaks at conferences about how their knowledge can solve the problems of potential customers and wait until the client's contact with them.

The advantages are that it is a working targeted strategy. It may be very suitable for entrepreneurs and small businesses. The customers contact themselves and don't feel like being sold.

Disadvantages are that this strategy is very passive. It can take a long time to attract customers. It may be difficult for those who lack the needed expertise.

Nowadays technologies have reshaped this strategy.

I.e. it is now easier and much faster to establish your expertise with a target market. Due to search engines, relatively unknown people and firms can become known even outside their physical region. Webinars are replacing public speaking, and blogs and websites give every firm a 24/7 presence.

At the same time, these changes give more space to the competition.

At the same time, content marketing strategy started to be used more. Content strategy is the piece of your marketing plan that shows who you are and the expertise you bring to your industry.

Here are some questions you have to answer before applying this strategy:

1. Who will be reading your content?

2. What problem will you be solving for your audience(s)?

3. What makes you unique?

4. What content formats will you focus on?

5. What channels will you publish on?

6. How will you manage content creation and publication?

Source: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/content-marketing-plan

6. The old client strategy.

Advantages of this strategy are that:

It is always easier to renew the relationship with an old customer rather than to attract the new ones.

The old customers will be more interested in listening to the business developer.

Disadvantage - applying only this strategy without attracting new customers is risky.

If any of your big customers stop working with you then it will have a big impact on your company's revenue.

7. The existing customer strategy is close to the previous one.

Its advantages and disadvantages are almost the same as for the old customer strategy. Even it will be much easier to offer new goods and services to the existing customers and to search for the common areas for business development.