You can also consider taking larger steps to establish your business in new markets and territories, such as entering export markets or establishing joint ventures and partnerships.

Whichever options you choose, you will need to make them integral to your marketing plan

Sell into new markets

One of the most radical ways to grow your market share is to move into new markets. The rewards can be significant, but the risks are higher than when getting the most out of your existing business and customer base.

Set your sights

Before you start, make sure that you have clearly defined goals - it's essential that you set targets at each step of the way. If you don't carefully benchmark your progress at every stage, you can spend a lot of time and money on an unsuccessful expansion effort. If you can't set clear goals, you may be better served trying to exploit your existing customer base more efficiently.

You'll need to spend time researching the market fully, so you understand your potential customers as well as you do your existing customers. You also need to understand the competitive environment in the new sector you plan to enter - it won't be the same as your current market.

Market effectively

It's essential that you create and commit to a marketing plan. While you can adapt to circumstances as you proceed, you must have a clear framework in place to boost your chances of success.

Remember that you should try to reach the most likely customers first. The best way to do this is to segment your target customer base.

Selling overseas

Exporting can have a significant impact on your sales figures but it will also involve trading in a different way - customers are more remote and may need more management.

Team up

You can sell into new markets by joining with other businesses, either in formal joint ventures and partnerships or more informal arrangements. These routes can help get you established in new sectors more quickly and give you easier access to a range of potential customers. However, you will need to spend time managing the relationship and will sometimes have to compromise to keep your partners happy.

There are probably many potential consumers or businesses that don't buy from you. You can grow your market share by bringing in these potential customers in a similar way to your existing customers.

This can be an effective route to increasing your market share as you may only need to make minimal adaptations to your products, services and systems to meet potential customers' needs. This simultaneously reduces the financial risks of expanding and can help protect your margins.

Find potential customers

You can use formal market research such as market reports and demographic studies to identify groups of potential customers. It's a good idea to follow this up with a combination of quantitative and qualitative research such as surveys or sampling with a significant number of responses followed by smaller focus groups to make sure you are focusing your efforts wisely.

Remember these customers won't be exactly the same as your existing customers so it's essential you understand what makes them buy as well as you do for your existing customers.

You could also ask your existing customers for referrals. If you have a strong relationship with them, your customers will often be happy to let you know of other people or businesses they know who may be interested in buying from you.

Reaching potential customers

Once you have identified your targets, you will have to promote your business to them. There are a variety of options and it's best build a clear strategy combining them. You can consider:

·                     Direct mail. Sending mailshots, either by post or email, introducing yourself and what you offer.

·                     Cold calling. Door-to-door or telesales, depending on the nature of your business and your understanding of potential customers' buying preferences.

·                     Advertising. Local newspapers, trade magazines, radio, television or Internet can all be useful. Make sure you're using media that your target customers will see or listen to.

·                     Word-of-mouth and recommendation schemes. A cost-effective strategy, rewarding existing customers for getting new business to come to you. Make sure the incentive you offer is valuable to your existing customers. Common examples include gift vouchers or free products for customers who successfully recommend new business.

If people have bought from you before, they may not buy from you again. You need to find out why they stopped buying from you and apply that knowledge to regain their customers.

Find out what changed

Identify why customers stopped buying from you. Was your product or service:

·                     No longer necessary?

·                     Too expensive?

·                     Unsatisfactory?

·                     Beaten by a competitive offer?

Rebuild contact

Research suggests the reason many customers stop buying is because they don't feel that they have sufficient contact with their suppliers. If you don't have some form of regular contact - eg monthly or quarterly phone calls, formal or informal visits to customers, mailshots or email newsletters - customers may feel they are being ignored and look elsewhere.

If you have lost a customer for these reasons, your first step is to rebuild contact and prove that you understand and are focused on their needs - eg a letter expressing regret that they have stopped buying from you and making them a time-limited offer.

It's worth trying a few times, but don't keep persisting if you aren't getting any response. Many businesses have a limit to the amount of times they contact lapsed customers - usually five or seven times.

Make an offer

When you know why the customer is no longer buying from you, consider ways to make your business more appealing.

For example, if your price was viewed as too high, consider a time-limited discount to encourage them to start buying again, eg 20 per cent off for three months. If your service was unsatisfactory, ask what you could do to make it meet your customer's expectations and assess if it is possible and profitable for you to adapt your service for the former customer.

Be realistic

While you may be able to tempt many customers back, remember that you don't want them at all costs. You want to build a long-term profitable relationship. It's not usually a good idea to make long-term offers that don't contribute any profit just to get a specific customer back, unless there are compelling strategic reasons to do so.

All these actions should be built into your marketing plan. The faster you contact a lapsed customer, the greater the chance they will come back to you.

Every business needs to think about getting the most out of its marketplace. If you're not increasing turnover every year, your business is shrinking in real terms.

Many businesses simply try to pick up extra sales wherever they can. While this opportunistic approach can be effective in the early days, it is unlikely to sustain longer-term growth.

There are several strategic options you can pursue to get the most out of your marketplace, as follows:

·                     sell more to existing customers

·                     focus your customer service and marketing efforts on retaining customers

·                     expand your customer base to include similar people who are not currently customers

·                     sell through new channels or into new markets

·                     use your core competences to create new products or services

Assess your customer base

There are many ways to sell more to existing customers and potential customers like them. But before you start trying to maximise your market share, you need to make sure you fully understand how you are perceived by both existing and potential customers.

Work out the key questions

The first stage is to address the core questions about who buys from you, how and when they buy. You need to be clear about:

·                     who your customers are

·                     what they buy

·                     why they buy

·                     how they buy

·                     who else could buy from you

·                     the typical budget of existing and new buyers

·                     where else they buy from

Position for the future

Remember that the reasons customers buy from you now will not necessarily be the reasons they buy from you in six months or a year's time. And if you consider expected trends in customer behaviour and your market, you may be the first to exploit a niche and gain market share quickly.

For example, how will your customers prefer to place orders? While they may prefer a phone call or face-to-face visit now, is there a trend in your market for online ordering systems? If you are one of the first businesses in your sector to offer the facility, you could gain significant market share.

Predicted future developments in your marketplace could also provide significant opportunities for growth. For example, with the growth of home PC use, IT support has developed from a mainly business-to-business service to a larger customer base of consumers.

Use your research to get as clear a picture of the future as you can. It's often difficult to predict with certainty - but the more you know about how your customers and market will look in the medium to long term, the more likely you are to successfully build your market share.You can use commercial market research to assess trends in your sector.