How to Write a Growth Strategy: A Practical, Data-Driven Guide
For any business leader asking how to grow a business, the real question is often this: Do we have a growth strategy — or just growth goals?
Ambition alone isn’t enough. In a market where only 25% of companies manage to grow sustainably, the winners aren’t just more innovative or better funded — they’re more strategic.
Those that get it right outperform their peers by an average of seven percentage points in annual total shareholder return.
This guide lays out a step-by-step approach for writing a business growth strategy that is structured, scalable, and sustainable. It combines time-tested strategy models with up-to-date market benchmarks and execution principles to help you move beyond theory — and into growth.
Why Growth Strategy Matters More Than Ever
The failure rate for new businesses remains stark: 20% fail in their first year, 45% within five, and nearly two-thirds by year ten. Of those that fail, 42% cite lack of market need as the primary reason — a failure of strategic alignment, not execution.
By contrast, 71% of fast-growing businesses have formal growth strategies, and those with diverse leadership teams are 33% more likely to outperform competitors. A well-written, well-executed growth strategy isn’t a luxury — it’s the cost of survival.
Looking to grow your business but not sure where to start?
Lagom Consulting helps ambitious firms build and execute clear, commercially focused growth strategies — from market entry to scale-up.
Talk to us about your growth goals today.
Phase 1: Foundation
Understanding Where You Are
Every effective business growth strategy begins with a clear-eyed assessment of your current position. This involves a combination of internal review and external market analysis. Internally, evaluate the core drivers of your business: product performance, operational capacity, team capabilities, and current financial health. Externally, you need to understand the market landscape, competitive dynamics, customer expectations, and macroeconomic factors that may affect growth potential.
One of the simplest — yet still most powerful — tools for this is a SWOT analysis: identifying your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Done well, it can surface hidden risks, untapped assets, and clear market openings. Crucially, a SWOT should not be a one-off exercise but revisited throughout the planning cycle to guide decision-making and prioritisation.
Alongside this, robust market research and competitive intelligence are essential. Businesses that proactively monitor their competitors are more agile and confident when entering new markets.
In fact, 57% of companies list gaining a competitive edge as one of their top three strategic goals, while 56% of executives use competitor analysis to inform future growth strategy. Understanding your competitors’ positioning, pricing, digital presence, and customer reviews can reveal white space opportunities and avoid costly missteps.
It’s equally important to define your target customer segments. Segmentation today goes far beyond demographics.
High-performing businesses increasingly use behavioural data (such as purchasing triggers), psychographic insights (interests, values, lifestyles), and even predictive AI to forecast buying intent.
The more clearly you understand your customers, the more effectively you can serve and scale them.
Phase 2: Strategy
Choosing the Right Growth Path
Once your market position is clear, it’s time to map out a coherent growth strategy. This starts with choosing the broad model or combination of models that best suit your business objectives, capabilities, and context.
A useful tool here is the Growth Strategy Matrix — a framework that categorises 27 potential strategies across three core domains: Targets, Value Proposition, and Go-To-Market. Under “Targets”, businesses assess which markets, customer segments, or geographic areas to prioritise. Under “Value Proposition”, they consider how to evolve their product, service, or pricing to meet market needs. And under “Go-To-Market”, they explore the best distribution, sales, and marketing approaches to reach their audience.
Most growth strategies fall under four classic models.
1. The first is market penetration — selling more of your existing product to your existing customers. It’s the lowest risk option and often includes increasing marketing spend, improving conversion funnels, or introducing loyalty programmes. Strong market penetration is typically defined as 30% or more — a benchmark regularly exceeded in mature tech sectors.
2. Next is market development, which involves taking your existing offering into a new customer segment or geography. This can be particularly effective for companies looking to expand internationally or tap underserved demographics.
3. Then there’s product development — creating new products or features to upsell to your current customers. Done well, it boosts lifetime value and defensibility.
4. The final and boldest option is diversification: launching new products into entirely new markets. It’s high-risk but also high-reward, exemplified by companies like Amazon (books to cloud services) and Apple (computers to a full tech ecosystem).
The choice of strategy should be aligned to your risk tolerance, resource availability, and time horizon. For most businesses, a combination of these paths — sequenced carefully — offers the most resilient approach.
Phase 3: Objectives
Setting Clear, Measurable Goals
Defining goals isn’t just about setting targets — it’s about creating alignment and accountability across the business. This is where SMART goals come into play: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
Companies with structured plans grow 85% faster than those without and are twice as likely to succeed. But to track progress meaningfully, you also need to define key performance indicators (KPIs) that correspond with your growth levers.
On the revenue side, critical metrics include:
· Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC),
· Customer Lifetime Value (CLV),
· Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR), and
· Average Revenue Per User (ARPU).
These indicate how efficiently you're growing and what each customer is worth over time.
Engagement metrics such as retention rate, churn rate, product usage, and trial-to-paid conversion rates offer a deeper look at user behaviour and satisfaction.
Finally, customer sentiment can be tracked through indicators like Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), which signal your ability to generate loyalty and referrals.
These metrics should not live in spreadsheets alone. They must be visible to leadership, reviewed frequently, and used to inform investment decisions, hiring plans, and marketing strategy.
Phase 4: Proposition
Crafting a Distinct Value Narrative
A powerful growth strategy is underpinned by a clear and differentiated value proposition — a statement that answers the essential question: Why should a customer choose you over anyone else?
This isn’t just about features. It’s about perceived value, emotional resonance, and customer outcomes. The most effective value propositions sit at the intersection of customer needs, your company’s capabilities, and competitor weaknesses — what some strategists refer to as the “Sweet Spot”.
Developing this requires deep insight into what motivates your customers. What problems are they trying to solve? What fears or frictions hold them back?
Strategic growth means understanding both drivers (what compels customers to act) and barriers (what gets in their way). By designing products, services, and experiences that lean into drivers while neutralising barriers, companies can unlock greater demand and brand loyalty.
Importantly, your value proposition must evolve as your market evolves. What worked at early-stage may not resonate as you scale. Revisiting and refining this proposition is a key part of maintaining strategic relevance.
Phase 5: Execution
Turning Strategy Into Results
Strategy without execution is just a wish list. The transition from plan to action is where most businesses stumble — often due to unclear ownership, poor communication, or scattered priorities.
The first principle of execution is focus. Trying to pursue too many strategic priorities dilutes effort and impact. Identify a small number of high-impact initiatives, assign clear owners, and allocate resources accordingly.
Second, use a strategy execution framework such as OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), balanced scorecards, or a simple roadmap model to structure implementation and track progress. These tools bring structure, accountability, and transparency to the process.
Resource allocation is another crucial consideration. This includes not only financial investment but also leadership attention, technology, and team time. Regular audits of how resources are being deployed — and their ROI — help businesses shift from reactive to proactive execution.
Finally, embrace change management. Even the best strategy can fail if the team isn’t bought in. Communicate the “why” behind each move, equip people with the tools to adapt, and create space for feedback. Organisations that approach change proactively outperform those that leave it to chance.
Phase 6: Optimisation
Measuring, Learning, and Adapting
Once your strategy is live, your job isn’t done — it’s only just begun. Effective growth strategies are dynamic. They are continually tested, measured, and optimised based on what’s working and what’s not.
Measuring ROI involves both financial and operational metrics. Financially, use tools like Net Present Value (NPV) and Internal Rate of Return (IRR) to evaluate long-term value creation. Operationally, monitor engagement, conversion, retention, and customer feedback to assess momentum.
Agile businesses also implement feedback loops — structured points where teams review progress, extract insights, and adjust the strategy if needed. The best growth teams review their KPIs weekly, hold monthly retrospectives, and recalibrate strategy quarterly.
Adaptability is not optional. Markets move fast, and businesses that don’t evolve quickly fall behind. Strategy optimisation is how you stay ahead of the curve.
Final Word: Write It. Execute It. Refine It.
If you’re serious about how to grow a business, you need more than tactics — you need a playbook. Writing a growth strategy is not just a planning exercise; it’s a strategic commitment. One that aligns your team, sharpens your focus, and makes investment decisions easier.
When done right, your growth strategy will serve as both compass and engine: guiding decisions and driving momentum. And as your business scales, it will evolve — just like the market itself.
Because growth isn’t just about doing more. It’s about doing the right things, in the right order, at the right time.
Need Help Writing or Executing Your Growth Strategy?
At Lagom Consulting, we don’t just write plans — we help bring them to life. Our expert team supports fintechs, financial services firms, professional services providers and tech startups with practical, data-driven growth strategies that actually deliver. From defining your market positioning and sharpening your value proposition to segmenting your audience, setting KPIs, and managing implementation — we support the full growth journey.
Whether you're scaling in the UK or planning international expansion, Lagom offers hands-on support that blends strategic thinking with commercial realism. We’ve helped firms launch new service lines, enter new markets, and prepare for acquisition — always with measurable impact and no fluff.
If you’re serious about growth, we’ll help you build the strategy — and make it happen.
Get in touch today to book an initial conversation.
Who are Lagom Consulting?
At Lagom Consulting, we pride ourselves on being more than marketing and management consultants; we are your strategic allies in building marketing strategies to market into financial services market.
Our ethos centres around delivering first-class service, underpinned by a hands-on approach that melds practical problem-solving with time-tested marketing solutions. We recognise that effective marketing is an ongoing journey, not a one-off exercise. We steer clear of ‘random acts of marketing’, opting instead for a comprehensive and sustained approach.
Working with Lagom Consulting means gaining more than a consultant; it means acquiring a partner committed to your enduring success