How to successfully scale a tech brand
Scaling a business is always a growth issue. It allows businesses to steer challenges in the right direction and expand. Find out how to scale your tech brand successfully according to RingCentral.
To fully understand how to scale a tech brand successfully you need to understand the difference between growth and scale.
Growth is when business revenue is increasing by adding new resources. Hereby, resources can be assets, technology, new employees, and so on. In short, you could say growth changes the numbers on your balance sheet, income statement and profit and loss statement significantly.
Scaling on the other hand is done without adding new resources. You are growing your revenue with existing conditions. The aim should be maximising the output without giving input.
Tips to scale your business successfully
Right fit
A tech brand needs to be sure that it is targeting the right audience. If the product is not in the right market, targeting the right consumer base, scaling will not help to make the brand survive. The business has to meet the product-market fit. Another point is, having a steady financial revenue flow is a must.
Efficiency
Automation is a word we hear often but it is a very effective way to scale a brand. By automating processes businesses streamline time-intensive labour. Automating payrolls and billing, creating training videos for people joining the company, and so on. Everything which can be done automatically should be automated. Tasks that cannot be automated can be outsourced. The business should be doing its core offerings in house and delegate side tasks to a third party. Once the brand is scaled to the desired level, those tasks can be brought back into the company. Automating and streamlining processes is a way to make processes work without the head of the departments being available all the time. It reduces the risk of mistakes being made.
People
Another point is hiring. To scale your business successfully you should not go overboard with hiring new people. Middle managers and specialists should be hired cautiously as they might end up taking away the focus from your core competencies. Do not hire people to fire them later on. Human Resource Management should be done very effectively so the business can be scaled.
Customers are like an asset for most companies. Keeping them satisfied and happy will help tech brands to scale their business. Customers sometimes do not contact the company directly when they are facing problems, but they are very verbal on social media or other feedback platforms. By helping customers and listening to them businesses can boost loyalty. It also helps companies to build a predictable revenue engine.
In conclusion, to successfully scale a tech brand, businesses have to make sure they are ready to be scaled. Understanding the difference between growth and scale is the key. Businesses need to cut costs where possible and automate tasks to avoid mistakes. Efficiency is the best description of scaling a brand.
Let’s have a look at companies that managed to scale successfully
Pinterest is a master at scaling. When the platform first launched in 2010, not a lot of people were using it. Within a couple of years, Pinterest managed to attract billions of people to its page. Great marketing was the key to this success.
When Pinterest first started it was an invite-only platform. They hosted local meetups which was a great opportunity for Pinterest to get to know their ideal customer in the best way possible. DIY enthusiasts, bakers and crocheters who wanted to express themselves online were their main personas.
Pinterest had/has a super focused vision. The company set up a “growth team” in addition to their marketing team. This growth team’s job was highly focused on increasing the number of monthly active users.
The power of word-of-mouth
When Pinterest saw people referring their website to other people more often, the company started applying clever strategies. They opened their platform to new segments like part-time hobbyists, social media users and brand marketers.
The social media platform started offering a new feature next. The sign-in option through Facebook was an outstanding move. Back in the days, in 2010, Facebook had hundreds of million users. Much more than Pinterest had. This strategy was low-cost but very powerful to scale its user base. Whenever people logged in to Pinterest with their Facebook account, their connections who use Pinterest as well would pop up. Also, the creation of “pins” and “boards” that were shareable on Facebook was an advantage. This was the network effect they were hoping for. It gave users a better experience with the platform and it clearly worked as they attracted 40,000 visitors to their website in August 2010. At that time that was a huge success for Pinterest.
2 years later, Pinterest used its increasing valuation of the company to raise several rounds of funding- $100-million Series C at $1.5 billion valuations, $225 million Series E at a $3.8 billion valuation, and $553 million Series G at an $11 billion valuation.
In April 2019, the company opened its initial public offering at a $10 billion valuation, bringing in millions of dollars for its founders, key stakeholders and mand of the early employees.
Currently, Pinterest is worth $26.19 billion in market valuation and has 335 million monthly active users worldwide.
What you can learn from Pinterest
One of the most important processes of scaling your brand successfully is to understand your consumers fully. Put yourself in their shoes, talk to them and understand their needs. Pinterest’s strategy with understanding their consumers fully, helped them to come up with features and leverage the right channels (i.e., Facebook) for growth.
Amazon
And of course, we cannot forget Amazon. The e-commerce giant is the true winner of scaling. When Jeff Bezos quit his full-time job to start an online bookstore everyone called him crazy. He predicted the internet will grow by 2,300% every year, and he was not wrong.
The business has a unique way of developing products. Normally businesses try to satisfy the needs of consumers, however, Amazon develops those needs after launching their product. A whole process backwards. That is how the company found success in its products such as Kindle e-reader, Amazon Alexa, and Amazon Web Services (AWS).
When Amazon started acquiring other businesses, Bezos was keen to keep the C-suite talents. That’s how he secured know-how.
Have a look at Amazon’s aggressive scaling and expansion strategy across industries:
Today the e-commerce master is worth $1 trillion and employs close to 1 million people worldwide.
What you can learn from Amazon
Scaling has no end. It is a continuous process. In addition to that, a large part of the success depends on the quality of the people who work in your company. Amazon is still growing after all those years of operation. The standard of people fuels its growth till date.
Most tech brands scale their brand successfully when they start gaining good traction with their products. Knowing when you should scale is the key. When your existing processes start feeling small, customers start expecting more from your brand and when you find out about new potentials in this tech world.
Scaling is not a difficult process when you know what you are doing and when you should be doing it.
Liked this article? Why not read “HOW TO STAY RELEVANT AND TRUSTED AS A TECH BRAND”
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