How do you identify and prioritize growth opportunities for a business?

Always maintain a sense of curiosity and diligently monitor key metrics throughout your business, including customer growth in different markets, segments, and verticals. Pay close attention to funnel conversion metrics to identify where customers may be dropping off. Understanding the various factors influencing each metric is crucial for uncovering potential opportunities for growth. For example, we have observed a significant influx of mobile traffic that is negatively impacting our activation rate. Upon further investigation, we discovered that these visitors show a genuine interest in converting. However, certain features are unavailable on desktop which prevents them from activating. This situation presents an opportunity for us to create a more mobile-friendly approach that redirects this traffic to a personalized landing page, offering concise education and incentives to encourage them to switch to desktop for activation. Additionally, it opens up the opportunity to collaborating with the product team internally to prioritize the development of a mobile web experience that will enhance user satisfaction and provide a seamless journey for these individuals.

I like to follow some steps (I'll describe bellow) but It can be more complex in some industries.

I always start analysing the business SWOT Analysis or create it.

• Strengths: What does the business excel in? What unique resources or capabilities does it possess?

• Weaknesses: In what areas does the business fall short? What are its main challenges?

• Opportunities: Where are there untapped or emerging markets? What trends or changes could the business capitalize on?

• Threats: What external factors could endanger the business's success? This might include competitive movements, changing regulations, or market shifts.

If you have a team, you can delegate a Market Research, so these 2 steps can be finished together.

• Customer Feedback: Engage with customers to understand their needs, preferences, and pain points. Feedback can reveal product enhancement opportunities or entirely new product ideas.

• Competitor Analysis: Identify gaps in competitors' offerings or areas where you can provide a differentiated product or service.

• Trend Analysis: Track industry and market trends to uncover emerging opportunities.

After that, I start to break down your market into smaller segments to identify which have the highest growth potential, profitability, or are underserved. And make a financial analysis evaluating the potential ROI of each opportunity, and analysing fixed and variable costs associated with each growth opportunity.

With all these information in hands, it's time to prioritize the opportunities. Here I like 2 methods:

• 1. Impact vs. Effort Matrix: This is a simple 2x2 matrix where you plot opportunities based on their potential impact and the effort required to achieve them.

• 2. Risk vs. Reward: Analyze each opportunity in terms of its potential benefits against the risks associated.

In the end I need to align it with the business vision and mission to ensure that the growth opportunities align with the company's long-term vision and mission. This ensures consistency in brand messaging and strategy.

Other aspects you should consider is the feasibility and available resources. You need to know if you have the operational capability to pursue this opportunity. This includes manpower, technology, infrastructure, and other resources.

I see this process as dynamic, as it should evolve based on business goals. Furthermore, this process should be approached with an experimentation lens.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

• What are your business goals, first and foremost?

• What is the business really strong in versus what needs work? What are your unfair advantages?

• Where do your customers prefer to get their information?

In order to identify and prioritize growth opportunities, you have to consistently ask yourself these questions. Depending on your business, you'll be able to identify how to best experiment and determine what is working and what is not, and rapidly iterate from there.

While oftentimes you can take this approach much faster in smaller companies, the same principles need to be established in larger organizations to prioritize efficient growth as well.