Your IoT business is up and running. Congratulations! Many startups fail in their early stages—successfully operating in the highly dynamic and competitive IoT field is certainly commendable.
But now you want to take your business to the next level, expand and grow. So what's next? Here are our honest suggestions.
Choose your strategy
Business growth depends on sales growth. Broadly speaking, there are four basic ways to increase your sales. You can simply sell more of your existing products or services in the current market—this is a market penetration strategy; you can sell more of your existing products or services in neighboring markets—this is a market development strategy; you can develop entirely new products or services to serve the markets you already operate in—this is a product development strategy; or you can develop entirely new products or services to target entirely new markets—this is often called a diversification strategy.
Each of these approaches has its own advantages and disadvantages, as well as challenges. The best strategy for your business will depend on your own business environment. The key is to choose and develop the right strategy, as this will determine your activities, your budget allocation, and theoretically, the work objectives of each member of the team. The good news is that the Internet of Things is developing so rapidly and is so diverse that organizations often have the space to try any of these strategies.
Define your brand
As we all know, the Internet of Things (IoT) is a crowded and rapidly evolving field. Any business with significant growth ambitions in this area needs to communicate a clear message to its customers, both existing and potential. Given the experimental (trial-and-error) nature of many IoT businesses, and the common occurrence of such businesses shifting their focus after the first year or so, a lack of clarity in branding and marketing is also common among young IoT companies. Developing a new growth strategy is a great opportunity to examine your brand and consider whether it needs streamlining, consolidation, or cleanup.
Building partnerships
As is widely known, the Internet of Things (IoT) is fundamentally a collaborative ecosystem. Any IoT deployment typically requires input from multiple different companies, from manufacturers of connected sensors or devices to wireless connectivity providers and developers of analytics platforms that can understand all this newly collected data. Furthermore, many companies offer important enhancements, such as specialized IoT security services to protect connected devices from criminal interference.
All of this means that IoT companies can develop fruitful partnerships. Collaborating with complementary IoT companies can open up a wealth of new markets and enhance one's brand by partnering with well-known or respected IoT organizations. Many of the most exciting innovations in the IoT space have been achieved through collaboration between two or more specialized organizations.
Open to mergers and acquisitions
You might think this is something large, established organizations would consider. But in reality, mergers and acquisitions can be a natural progression of the aforementioned partnerships. If another company proves to offer a highly complementary product or service to your own business, and you can sell more products through collaboration, then a merger might be the best option for both companies.
This is by no means a common growth strategy for young companies, but it is certainly worth keeping an open mind. Again, the highly dynamic and diverse IoT environment means that this strategy can be a real possibility.
