Business Focus
When your business grows, or when you reach one of those plateau stages, it is tempting to add another business line, and if you are not careful, you can fragment your business, and make marketing much more difficult. There is certainly a time to grow, and when the time is right, careful planning and intelligent strategies can help to simplify your marketing tasks, and keep your business on track.
A business can expand in two ways:
Adding companion products on a similar theme. This would be something like having shoes as your main product line, and deciding to add socks, or shoe care items, etc.
By developing a new, totally unrelated product line, or one that is different enough that it requires separate marketing.
If you build info sites, or join MLM or direct sales businesses, the issues are much the same. Either you are growing with similar additions, or different ones.
The marketing issues are much simpler with the first option. You can just continue to market as you have been, through the same venues, but with the addition of mention of the new items. It is far easier to keep your marketing efforts focused when you do it this way.
For some people though, expansion in new directions is a good option, and while it really can complicate marketing, there are tactics that can help to keep it more manageable.
The problem is that when you add another product line that is very dissimilar from your first, you now have to market that product separately. You can share SOME marketing resources, but not all.
If you expand in this way too rapidly, or without forethought, you can fragment yourself and your business, and find it difficult to keep up with the new marketing challenges.
To keep it more practical, you may use the following tactics:
Don't add something when marketing your existing businesses is already overwhelming.
Learn when you have to just let an opportunity pass you by. Keep a file of things you think are a good idea but which you do not have time for now. When you do have time, you can refer back to the list, and choose the best option.
Market a corporation or umbrella business. This only works in some kinds of marketing - online it works ok, because you can register a single doorway site for all of your websites. Create a home page, and then create a single description page for each one of your sites, that is linked directly to the site. Give a bit of universal or objective information besides just your business description on each page to add value to the pages, and get better search engine traffic.
Interlink your sites. Now, there is controversy over this! But you SHOULD at least interlink those sites that are relevant to one another. This will allow you to leverage the marketing of one site to the benefit of the others. Do not just link them on a Links page - use context links when appropriate.
Do NOT put more than two URLs into your signature line. It is best to just promote a single URL for all of your businesses in your sig line.
Make a list of article topics you can write about. Put the most appropriate URL at the bottom of them. Use article marketing to target individual sites or pages, do NOT use it to promote a doorway site. Article marketing has the most power when used to target highly specific traffic, and it will benefit you more if you use it that way.
When you grow your business in new directions, make sure you are able to keep up with what you are doing, and the extra burdens that the new line will place on you as well. If your current business is lagging due to lack of marketing, then you need to concentrate on marketing IT, rather than fragmenting yourself by adding another line that will just falter when you neglect it too.
Written by Laura Wheeler
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