Business confidence in Dubai is at the highest it has been for years. According to a new survey from the Dubai Chamber of Commerce & Industry, two-thirds of business leaders expect the business environment to keep improving. And with the UAE’s economy set to grow by 4% in 2021, this confidence seems to be justified.
So, if you are a new business owner or an entrepreneur who has recently moved to Dubai, now is certainly a great time to think about expanding your business. There is no single technique or methodology that a company should follow to ensure it grows. The specific steps you take to grow your company in Dubai will depend on the kinds of products or services you sell – as well as your own personal ambitions (do you want to become a major enterprise with hundreds of staff or are you happy with a small but profitable ‘lifestyle business’?).
That being said, the following tips can be helpful to any business looking to grow in Dubai.
Build a sales funnel
An effective sales funnel is an incredibly powerful tool for building your Dubai company. A sales funnel is essentially a method for generating new leads and converting them into paying customers. The exact make up of the sales funnel will depend on the nature or your businesses – and there is a fairly big difference between B2B and B2C sales funnels. Nevertheless, the fundamentals of a sales funnel are always the same. Common steps for building a sales funnel include:
- Identifying your customers, their problems and their needs
- Producing marketing content and advertising that is distributed to the places your target customers are likely to view it
- Building a website with forms to collect data about your customers
- Developing different kinds of marketing content that can be presented to customers at different stages of the marketing and sales funnel
- Ensuring your sales processes are efficient and appropriate to the customers’ requirements
- Actively pursuing leads and following up with more information
- Implementing processes to sign contracts and deals
- Making it easy for B2C customers to pay for your products or services
By building out your sales funnel you will have a much greater chance of attracting new leads to your business and converting them into paying customers.
Example: An IT firm buys adverts on Google to increase awareness of its services in Dubai. It also creates a website landing page describing the products and services it sells, as well as downloadable content that readers must provide an email address to view. Every time someone downloads this content, the company’s sales team follows up with them to nurture the relationship and find out more about the services they might be looking for.
Create a customer loyalty programme
It is a well-established fact that winning new customers is significantly more expensive than getting business from existing clients. And this is why offering a customer loyalty programme to customers in Dubai is a great idea.
By offering existing clients special discounts, unique deals, perks such as free shipping or even gifts, they are more likely to return to your business in future and remain loyal. By incentivising your customers to return more frequently, you increase profits and can reinvest them in expanding your business.
Example: A freelance photographer in Dubai offers his customers their 10th shoot for free. Knowing about this offer means they are more likely to purchase additional shoots from him so they can get the tenth one at no cost. It also means they’re less likely to contact other photographers since they have an incentive to use the first photographer’s services.
Form strategic partnerships
Dubai is a fantastic place to form partnerships with other businesses who are working in the same sector as you. Besides the fact that there is a huge business community throughout the emirate, free zones in particular allow you to quickly meet other firms working on products and services related to what you offer. By forming partnerships with companies that work in similar fields to you, you are likely to find ways of sharing business and meeting each other’s customers.
Example: A digital marketing agency in Dubai decides to form strategic partnerships with a number of other companies that are based in the same free zone where it is located. These include a graphic design company, a copywriting business, and a data analytics firm. Through these partnerships, they can offer their own clients more services while also being introduced to their partners’ customers.
Diversify your offer line-up
By diversifying the kinds of products or services that your company sells, you can expect to generate more revenue from customers. This approach will also allow you to cross sell and upsell much more easily. It is important to ensure that any new products or services you are offering are actually relevant and that there is demand for them in the market. But with a little research and some smart marketing and salesmanship, diversifying your offerings can really pay dividends.
Example: A travel business in Dubai decides to begin offering its customers additional experiences such as language courses, culinary classes or cultural immersion programmes. This means that when customers initially book flights through the company, their salespeople are also able to suggest these other products and services as an add on. Customers see it as an attractive and easy way of improving their vacations, so they choose to purchase these extra services.
Build an email list
Email lists are an invaluable way of building business and should never be an afterthought. And it need not be complicated! All that producing an email list really requires is to wite a consistent (weekly or monthly) message to existing customers and leads, describing what your business has been doing lately and inviting them to get in touch if they happen to have any requirements. It is about reminding them your company exists, and therefore increasing their chances of contacting you when the need arises.
Example: A solar panel installation and maintenance business sends out a monthly email providing tips on how to maintain solar panels and save energy. This keeps the business top of mind for existing and potential customers, and means they are more likely to choose the firm if they ever have any issues with their solar panels or want to buy new ones.
Acquire other businesses
Acquiring another business is a very effective way of growing your own company. If your business has the capital to buy another firm, this lets you access their intellectual property, quickly expands your customer base and increases the number of services you offer. Acquiring another business is challenging, however, and needs to be done with some serious strategic planning in mind. You need to ensure that the other business is in fact compatible with your own and will genuinely make sense as part of your company.
Example: A Dubai events business that specialises in medical events is aware of a small publisher that independently produces content related to the medical sector. By purchasing the publisher, the events business can expand its reach, gain new insights into its customer base and advertise its events for free in the publication.
Why work with Worldwide Formations?
Worldwide Formations helps businesses with all aspects of setting up in Dubai and the UAE. Whether you are looking to grow your Dubai business on the mainland, offshore or in a free zone, we can support with all stages of applying for a trading licence and getting visas for your staff. With the correct paperwork in place, you have everything you need to begin growing your business in Dubai.
