In any enterprise organization, continued growth is key. While certain growth levels are unsustainable in the long term, it’s still important to make annual gains in productivity, efficiency, and revenue. However, this isn’t as simple as it sounds. Since enterprises are large entities, it requires a great deal of coordination to ensure continued performance bumps.
Often, your growth strategy needs to include an expanded knowledge base and the right software platforms. If you don’t have the necessary tools in your kit, you’ll lose the added benefit of an efficiency increase. This makes it that much harder to maintain an upward trajectory. If you’re looking for ways to scale your enterprise in a smart, sustainable way, here’s what you need to know.
Expand your knowledge base.
Without ongoing education and current knowledge, it’s much harder to continue growing. You’ll hit a knowledge plateau at a certain point and find it nearly impossible to scale your business. You need to invest in education, not only for your decision-makers, but for your individual departments as well. As technology advances rapidly, you need to keep your enterprise current or risk falling behind. Of course, this is no easy feat. After all, depending on your business’s scope, you may need to tackle a handful of thought specialties at the same time. This requires a fair amount of juggling, delegation, and foresight for effective planning. How do you prioritize knowledge base expansions?
First, it’s important to find growth opportunities that directly benefit your business. If you’re using an outdated method when you reconcile credit cards and balance invoices, it could lead to profit losses from human error and inefficiency. Modern software platforms make it easier to handle financial needs, maintain ongoing compliance with various regulatory organizations, and speed up somewhat tedious processes. Of course, you can look at other areas of importance outside of finance. Are you familiar with the latest cloud connectivity and integration advancements? Do you know how a distributed network could benefit your operations? When you’re looking to scale your enterprise, it’s important to seek out these key knowledge gaps and develop a plan to remedy them.
Invest in robust goal-setting.
One area of enterprise opportunity lies in goal-setting. Too many brands set vague or unfocused goals that offer little-to-no overall benefit for the enterprise. While discussing growth concepts, it’s important to understand that a goal as simple as “expand” or “continuous growth” isn’t measurable or realistic. That’s why so many enterprise businesses invest in the OKR framework. OKR, or objectives and key results, is a goal-setting framework that helps brands set more sensible, effective goals. An OKR’s purpose is to help you focus on concepts and areas of opportunity instead of relying strictly on analytics and KPIs. While both of these metrics offer a great deal of brand insight, they aren’t holistic growth tools. An enterprise requires a multifaceted approach for the best overall results.
OKRs have numerous benefits. For example, they work on multiple levels. Typically, you’ll set goals at the company level. These could pare down to increasing signups over Q2 of the next fiscal year or taking the next couple of months to integrate a new software platform across your enterprise. While these broad, ambitious goals are beneficial, OKRs also assist your team members on a departmental or even individual level. Having your employees set and track individual goals is integral to continued growth and success on a larger scale. OKRs also help when it comes time for performance reviews. Since your tracked key results provide something of a balanced scorecard insofar as employee performance is concerned, it’s easier to track employee engagement levels and make adjustments as needed.
Goal-setting is only as helpful as the guiding principles behind it, however. It’s important that you not only set goals but actively pursue them as well. Without the drive or dedication, your enterprise is much less likely to see sweeping results that can benefit your brand. From OKR platforms to coaches and consultants, there are plenty of ways to leverage the methodology to your advantage. It requires a measured approach, but it’s certainly worth the investment.
Develop stronger marketing campaigns.
If you’re not currently partnered with an enterprise SEO company, you’re likely doing your brand a disservice. Too many larger organizations depend solely upon paid search and advertising efforts. While these offer rapid results and short-term gains, the second you stop paying your ad spend, you lose your incoming leads. Instead, it’s best to use a combined approach to your marketing. While you should definitely have a revolving monthly ad budget and make necessary performance tweaks, you also need to invest in SEO that works on a larger stage.
While your in-house marketing team may have ideas for an SEO campaign, you’re likely to see the greatest return on investment from an agency partnership. This is because your in-house department is likely stretched across every facet of your marketing. This includes social media management, paid advertising, media buying, and email campaigns. You’ll also need team members dedicated to your web development and management, customer service, and CRM management. With an external partnership, you free up a great deal of your time and resources for greater growth pursuits and search engine gains. While you may end up paying a larger monthly retainer, you’re also much more likely to see efficiency gains across the board.
It would help if you found an agency that takes a measured approach to SEO. Find an SEO company that prioritizes both breadth and depth of marketing knowledge. From on-page optimization to stronger content creation and link-building, your SEO strategy is often the cornerstone of your entire digital presence. As such, you can’t afford to neglect your online efforts or invest in one singular approach to your marketing strategy.
Apply multiple concepts.
You’re liable to have the most success if you use several of these tactics in tandem. While you may see boosts from an SEO campaign or increases from stronger goal-setting, a combined effort makes a greater difference. If you want your enterprise to continue its positive growth trend, you need the right ammo in your arsenal. The ideal platforms give you a competitive advantage, especially in today’s saturated markets.