Simply put, a scale-up is a business that is in the process of expanding, with at least a 20% average annual return in its last three years. In addition, the company must employ at least ten employees to be considered a scale-up. The scale-up phase is an incredibly challenging period for any business, requiring special planning and effective sales and marketing strategies to push the company forward.

Sales Strategies for Scale-Ups

To create the most effective sales strategies, business leaders of scale-ups must follow numerous steps and strategies. Starting the process of scaling up your business can be exhilarating, but it can also take a lot from you. However, once you start scaling up, you can take in more work without compromising your revenue, quality, and your relationship with your team. 

The key to successfully scaling up is to grow steadily with constant reassessment and regularly prepare for every obstacle you might encounter. However, you should also follow these steps to help you:

• Determine your audiences. Who are you selling to and why?
• Have a deep understanding of your market, customers, services/products, and consumer pain points.
• Create consistent internal communications with your sales team, ensuring they are aligned with your brand promise, understand what they are selling and why, and create a channel where sales pipelines are discussed. 
• Create strong external communications to reach your target audiences.
• Communicate to your current and prospective consumers how your services or products are the answer to their pain points and back it up with data and testimonials.
• Adopt the latest technology and software to reach your markets speedily and efficiently, allowing for fast and trustworthy sales transactions.
• Obtain buyer feedback to optimize your products and services.

Marketing Strategies for Scale-Ups

After defining your audience and establishing your sales strategy, designing and implementing equally strong marketing strategies is essential for your business to be agile and attract new customers and even investors. Social media marketing is at the heart of digital marketing, with Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Tik-Tok attracting potential leads and sales and harboring confidence in the brand. 

Your marketing moves are critical and will help you bridge the gap while growing slowly. Some steps to adopt can be: 

• First, optimize your marketing budget to be as cost-effective as possible. 
• Build trust with your customers by always having transparent and constant communications through social media and newsletters.
• Implement website management and strong SEO.
• Measure your KPIs and learn your numbers by doing an audit so you can address things that aren’t working or replicate what is working. Thus knowing who your target audience is. 
• Utilize automation and data to work smarter.
• Using thought leadership pieces and positioning your business as leaders and SMEs can give your customer the push they need to reach out to you. 
• Create engaging content for your ideal audience that will nudge them to visit your account and website more often. The right content can bring in more customers. 

Networking is key! Trade events are an excellent way to get people together. Companies can apply strategic marketing tactics to nurture prospects, build brand awareness, and enhance industry relationships.

If your team doesn’t have the capacity to establish change, you can always get external support with the right market/business expertise. Hiring an advisor can help you keep your scale-up smooth, compete successfully in the market, and prevent setbacks. Moreover, having the right sales and marketing strategies in place will set your scale-up company up for longevity and success in the long run. Your business will continue to grow with the right business goals, content, data, and proper communication. 

Fuel your business growth with a tech-savvy and strategic marketing plan. Our advisors help you see the bigger picture to discover possible opportunities you didn’t know. With a marketing-as-a-service approach, scale-ups and startups can focus on keeping the flame alive at the forefront of your business while our trusted advisors keep the fires burning behind the scenes. Contact us to learn more about what we can do for your marketing plan and strategy. 

*This blog post was written by Jason Amalia, Senior Marketing Advisor and head of the Service Practice at DuartePino.