Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay 

When it comes to growing your business, one of the best ways to do this is to diversify. People often forget about this and focus on continuing to do what they do and just trying to get more business. However, by diversifying, you could find that you end up with another business stream that means little work but far more money, or it could mean something as simple as adding payment gateway services and selling your products online.

To diversify well, you might need to think outside the box when you’re thinking about what else you can offer. It will need to be something that will complement your business. For example, if you are a cleaning service, you could you start selling cleaning products, if you are a photographer, could you start selling photo frames and albums. It doesn’t even have to be physical products either; perhaps you could offer a training service, or write an ebook for people to download. People will pay good money for decent information, so if you have that in your head, then perhaps it’s time to share it with others, just remember to charge for it as it makes good business sense. If you can’t decide, then start with these steps to work out what you can do to diversify your business.

Make sure you add value.

Don’t think about how you can make money; you need to always focus on providing the most value for the customer. 

Be an expert in the market.

What are you an expert in already? Whether you know what you’re doing already or you have an idea but know nothing about it, do your research. Learn and invest in yourself and your company and become an expert in whatever it is you’re expanding into.  

Build on your strengths as a company

By building on strengths that your business already had, it will be easy to explore and then implement completely new ideas for growing your company.

Have the right people in place

Before extending business in any direction, you need to prepare your team completely for the transition. Add some key talent to strengthen your teams and provide training across all departments.

Target other markets

Carry out plenty of research to work out whether there is any untapped customer demand. Are there any particular segments being targeted or ignored by your competitors? Use your business knowledge and experience to decide whether it’s likely to be profitable to target other markets, and if so, which ones.

Innovating products or services

Innovation requires investment and is not without its risks. However, it is a great way to diversify. You will need to assess if you have the financial means to innovate first and whether you’re in a position to take the risk. 

Before deciding to innovate, make sure you have carried out thorough market research so that you know you will have a customer base for it, and you’ve made sure that none of your competitors are ahead of you and already working on something similar.