Organic Growth Overview, How It Works, Primary Strategies

Cloud computing start-up Cropdesk developed an app to connect farmers and seasonal workers during the UK lockdown. Help from Innovate UK EDGE allowed Cropdesk to secure extended impact funding and commercialise the new recruitment app. The contributors to the development and analysis of this survey include Kabir Ahuja, a partner in McKinsey’s Stamford office; Liz Hilton Segel, a senior partner in the New York office; and Jesko Perrey, a senior partner in the Düsseldorf office. For example, customers might be persuaded by a special offer or discount for buying in a bigger quantity, or you might offer free shipping alongside orders over a certain value. “As a smaller company, we can beat larger competitors by offering a better service to our clients.

• You may be happier and more comfortable simply growing at a pace that is in sync with your goals and your values and building your skills and your company over time.
• If you’re looking for rapid expansion, you may need to consider a merger, acquisition or investment.
• Some of these strategies include investing in high-return activities, tracking key performance indicators, and leveraging digital marketing to reach a wider audience and improve customer engagement.
• Similarly, if you sell more of your product or service (even if you don’t raise your prices), you’re yielding organic growth.
• They may not be fully ready to grow, and this can inhibit them from achieving their full organic growth potential.

Acquisitions can be accretive to earnings, but the implementation of the technology or knowledge acquired can take time. In other words, pulling the value out of mergers and acquisitions is more complex than taking credit for sales. Firms can choose to grow inorganically in several ways including engaging in mergers and acquisitions and, in the case of retail or branch organizations, opening new stores or branches. Expanding into new areas will follow similar strategies, but may require new thinking and approaches depending on the area. For example, a company that traditionally caters to a European market will want to adjust their usual marketing approaches if expanding into an American or Asian market.

Allocating resources to high-return activities, such as expanding production capacity or redirecting marketing efforts, can lead to increased organic growth. High-return activities are those that yield significant profits or return on investment, such as investing in options, venture capital, real estate syndications, rental real estate, and starting a dropshipping store. By tiering its products in this way, Mercedes ensures it has something for as many prospective customers as possible. By simply pivoting to offer several levels of product, Mercedes has effectively increased its organic growth rate.

Disadvantages of organic growth

You explore new territory slowly and carefully, building your knowledge and capacity at a rate you can maintain and afford. Organic growth is a business development strategy based on building internal strengths and capabilities rather than acquiring outside businesses. One of the most important measures of performance for fundamental analysts is growth, particularly in sales. Sales growth can be the result of promotional efforts, new product lines and improved customer service, which are internal, or organic, measures. Some examples of businesses that have implemented successful organic growth strategies are illustrated in the charts below for Dominos UK, Apple and Costa Coffee. At this point, organic growth is one of the most sustainable and stable ways of growing a business, as it reduces dependence on external factors and allows companies to maintain better control over their operations.

If pricing is elastic, then price increases will result in an immediate decline in unit volume sales, which can be catastrophic. Management teams seeking organic growth should consider the location and nature of the growth opportunities available to them while deciding which growth archetype may be appropriate for their company. We analyzed growth overperformers to understand if there were, within that group, different patterns of strength across the 10 activity/capability areas. We found two distinct patterns of strength—which we are calling growth archetypes.

A high customer retention rate indicates that your customers are satisfied with your products or services and are likely to return for repeat business. Measuring customer retention rate can help you identify opportunities to improve customer experience and loyalty, such as personalized communication and targeted marketing campaigns. At this point, businesses would need to explore new geographic regions or demographic groups that might be interested in their products or services. Usually, market research can help identify potential markets and develop marketing strategies that will effectively trigger them.

• Margins can decline when pursuing this strategy, as there may be additional marketing or expansion costs.
• How might a management team improve its own company’s performance across the 10 activity and capability areas?
• As well, it allows a company to grow much faster and almost immediately increase its market share.
• For example, a company that traditionally caters to a European market will want to adjust their usual marketing approaches if expanding into an American or Asian market.

Merging and acquiring other companies to foster business has been in place for ages as it immunes a company with a quick booster shot. The process includes expanding your wings—opening new outlets or branches or merging with other companies and joint ventures. By doing so, you are gaining access to their existing market shares and assets, and thereby, the overall capital increases. However, the abrupt diversion of your best accounting software for sole trader business owners business line and its management has its risks and benefits. For example, design has subcategories such as customer experience/engagement, optimized offerings/value proposition creation, pricing architecture, and go-to-market/channel strategy. In turn, each of those subcategories was broken down into a series of questions designed to assess performance in various aspects of the activity/capability area in question.

Led by a former hedge fund PM (Maverick, Citadel, DE Shaw, Schonfeld), this program begins where financial modeling training ends — with a deep-dive into how buy-side analysts build financial models to make key investment decisions. An early reference to «organic growth» appeared in Inazo Nitobe’s 1899 book The Soul of Japan. What if company B grew revenues by 25% because it bought out its competitor for $12 billion? In fact, the reason company B purchased its competitor is because company B’s sales were declining by 5%.

Insights and data: Creating customer and market insights for the business

It also has a rapidly developing presence in highly specialised and molecular clinical diagnostic testing and in-vitro diagnostic products. The pathway to growth that a small-business leader chooses to follow can determine how the company grows and where it ends up. Organic growth is one such pathway that can help a small company grow from within and expand in the most natural and waste-free ways. Small businesses need to follow a smarter, cheaper, organic model to survive and thrive on the same playing field with big businesses. Often, Nanette finds that her clients are in ‘do’ mode and would benefit from going back to basics. It’s always a good idea to take a step back and revisit the business strategy in order to identify areas to improve and opportunities for growth.

The importance of organic business growth

Defining target markets and focusing on specific customer segments enables businesses to develop specialized products and marketing strategies tailored to each buyer group, ultimately leading to increased sales and revenue. By concentrating on specific niches, businesses can carve out a competitive advantage and fuel organic growth. An in-depth understanding of customers allows businesses to develop products and services that cater to their specific requirements, enhancing overall customer experience and leading to increased sales and revenue. By focusing on customer needs and preferences, businesses can create a solid foundation for organic growth. It’s a great way to rapidly expand and acquire new assets when your company needs them.

What Is Organic Growth In Business: A Quick Look At Organic Growth

But we believe people expect businesses to behave the way friends
do—like they trust and care about each other. Businesses that get the point
know that modern consumers expect to be treated like human beings with
real-life wants and needs. The professionals in our Customer-Led Marketing
offering are here to help, providing the thinking, services and experiences
that can elevate how people and businesses interact, enabling them to engage in
more human and meaningful ways.

Through R&D and acquisitions, the Group draws on the latest developments in the field of biotechnology and analytical chemistry to offer its clients unique analytical solutions. Like a bonsai tree, thoughtlessly cutting off and rearranging aspects of your company will only kill it. To properly achieve organic business growth, you must be patient and encourage the company to grow naturally along the lines you wish it to.

Organic (or internal) growth involves expansion from within a business, for example by expanding the product range, or number of business units and location. Organic growth – whether that’s an increase in efficiency, higher revenue or a growing team – is integral for innovation businesses looking to grow and scale. When companies report earnings figures, they will often break out pieces of information to show the growth of internal sales and revenue. It’s common for a retailer such as Walmart, for instance, to report same-store sales from one quarter or one year to the next, and point to revenue from the opening of new stores. If the ‘inorganic’ company forgets about improving its products or creating new ones, it will be in trouble. Another source of bias is the seniority of the management making the assessment.

For example, selling internationally may mean that a business must sell through distributors, who will want a substantial price discount. A further option is to expand the number of distribution channels, for example by selling through retailers, an online store, and a catalog. Our survey research yielded a set of further insights that suggest potential priorities to consider as well as pitfalls to avoid—such as overrelying on conventional wisdom about organic growth. In some cases, organic growth strategies help to increase the effectiveness of inorganic growth, adds Fox.

The survey also asked respondents to self-assess their revenue growth rate relative to their peers over the last three years on a five-point scale, generating growth performance quintiles. This enabled us to compare activity/capability performance with growth performance relative to industry peers. Nearly 60 percent of executives identify one primary strategy for generating organic growth, while the rest of those pursuing organic growth say their companies follow more than one (Exhibit 1). According to respondents, a diversified approach is more common at larger companies than at smaller ones. It is also reported more often in developed markets than in emerging markets, where reliance on the creating strategy is most common.

The company could develop and launch a line of iced tea products, but this could take time and involve a great deal of expense. That’s why companies will turn to acquisitions—inorganic growth—to maintain their competitive edge and keep shareholders happy. Organic growth is generated from the internal operations of a business, while inorganic growth is derived from outside the entity.