What To Do When Your Business Has Plateaued
The entrepreneur life is one of the greatest (and sometimes scariest) rollercoasters. It’s good to remember to enjoy the experience, and that all of your amazing skills and traits that do in fact qualify you as “tall enough to ride.” You’re doing an amazing job! We are so impressed by anyone passionate enough to start their own business, and consider ourselves professional cheerleaders for business owners.
Just like any ride, there are going to be slower parts. Times when like you are coasting along, with not a lot happening, wondering if an unseen drop is right around the corner. We want to discuss these natural and inevitable plateaus in your business, and what you can do during these times to follow them with an upward direction back towards your goals.
Take These Steps To Get Over a Business Plateau
Address Where You Feel Stuck
I’ll say it again - periods of feeling stuck as a business owner are totally normal! You begin with so much motivation and excitement, and keeping that up through all the phases of entrepreneurship is a hard feat for anyone. I dare say even Jeff Bezos had to feel pressure at times.
If you find you feel stuck, unsure of the next right move, a bit unmotivated, or even like you’re drowning in possibilities — address the source of this feeling. What area of your business feels like it is not progressing how you hoped? Which part of your business model, if improved or given a boost of energy, would set your entire company back on track?
Remember, is is not necessary to overhaul your entire business at once. Instead, chances are, there is one area of your business that could just use more of your attention at this time. If pinpointing what it that area is proving difficult, keep reading for our top recommendations for places to start. This are vital areas of business that are sometimes overlooked, or if given priority can shift the entire mood and direction of your business.
Hone in on Your Dream Audience
If you are not 100% clear who your target audience is, figure that out. Having a persona and demographic in mind when creating products and marketing them will streamline everything you do. This is the first step towards making sure people will respond to your products as you hope - by buying them out and raving to their friends about them, of course!
If you have not yet identified your dream audience, a brand designer on our team can help walk you through the branding questions needed to flesh out your vision and make sure everything you do will speak to those people! Contact us here to learn more about this process.
Even if you identified your specific group of shoppers at the beginning, now could be an important time to re-elevate. Here are some questions to ask yourself and your team: Why does our target audience NEED our product and how will it impact their lives? Is there a way we can take this impact deeper? How are our efforts affecting our target audience? Does our marketing foster an emotional experience for these identified people?
Evaluate Your Branding
Along with the questions to ask yourself above, another vital thing to consider is whether your current website and social presence can catch the eye of your target audience within seconds. With everyone’s tiny attention spans and the current digital nature of doing business and finding customers, a lacking branding will lead to lacking results. Branding = strong brand strategy + strategic design that will turn your company from amateur to powerhouse. To learn more about our branding services, and receive a quote completely customized to your business size and goals, contact our team here!
These vital branding investments apply to any sort of business — from creators expanding from an Etsy shop to their own website, to service providers, to mid-size businesses. In fact, you can read this post about why even influencers should invest in branding and a custom website.
Plan a Design Day Intensive
If you have already nailed down a custom website and your brand strategy is absolutely fire, but you have still hit a lull in your business progression, don’t worry. There are some more minor design elements that can level up your business (*Alexa, cue that trending tik tok song “level up”*)
Remember how excited you felt when your website launched? Generating hype from a launch like that can add so much momentum to your business, leading to more eyes on your products, more community engagement, and more orders to package and send to their new home. It is possible to generate excitement that way even with more minor launches, like a new product! But if you’re looking for something even faster, adding business cards, social media templates, or a website update to your business toolbelt can give you, your team, and your customers a fresh boost of motivation. And thanks to our newest service, these sorts of design tasks can be completed in JUST ONE DAY. It’s called “a VIP design day intensive” where we bust out high priority design projects so your momentum keeps building. Click here to learn more!
Outsource The Tasks You Don’t Excel At
A business owner wears a lot of hats, and sometimes they get too heavy. Feeling burnout is 100% natural and all too familiar for entrepreneurs, even seasoned ones. If you aren’t totally sure how or why to stop trying to do it all yourself, take some time to read this post. There we discuss how bringing on help in your business can save it, and your sanity.
Outsourcing the tasks that are overwhelming you most so that you can dedicate your energy to your areas of expertise is one of the best ways to get over a plateau. An outside voice can breathe new life into your business, and bring a perspective you could never get from the inside. And knowing the smaller things are being taken care of so you have brain space for the big picture is SO relieving. Trust me, I know from experience.
Give your business the rocket powered boost is needs to get moving again, and invest in a virtual assistant, business coach, or social media manager.
Invest in Brand Photography
If your sales have slowed down, it might not be because of your product. It may be because people aren’t seeing your amazing products in the right light — literally. Professional brand photographers have experience with the lighting, props, styling, and equipment needed to make your products (or YOU as a service provider) STAND OUT! Trying to DIY your brand photography can be a fine place to start, but for many business owners eventually stunts their growth. Check out this post to learn more about why we recommend investing in brand photography to boost your sales.
Investing in brand or product photography will allow your customers to picture themselves using the product, picture it in their home, and place an order immediately!
Focus on Brand Videos
As Instagram shifts into an even more video-focused app, and Tik Tok continues to take over the social scene, many business are finding refreshed success by prioritizing video content over any other kind. The days of perfectly curated photo squares mixed with well-placed graphic quotes are fading quickly - and casual, clever, short-form videos are taking their place.
And before the thought of making video content feels too overwhelming, here is the good news — videos like tik toks and reels are meant to be lighthearted, focused on trends, and filmed on nothing more than your trusty iphone. Yes, it will take some shifting and organizing to add video creation into your marketing plan more than ever, but the results are too good to pass up. And if you are already in the middle of a plateau anyway, it may be worth putting a pause on some of your other efforts to focus your time on video content and test those marketing results!
Mixing casual content like reels with some high-quality product videos will set your brand apart. Plus you can use video content in multiple places - on social and on your website to help people really connect with what you have to sell. In fact, opting for product videos on your product page can have waaaaay more impact than a photo, make it much easier to purchase!
How to Make These Steps Happen
If you are reading this post realizing you may need to focus in on multiple steps above, we got you. For reasons that you can read about in this blog post, we offer custom packages with multiple services included so that your business needs can truly be taken care of in one place. We want to make this process as simple as possible for you, to get you over the hump and fill your business with excitement (and lots of purchasing customers) again! Our team offers branding, web design, brand photography and videography and more.
Contact us here and take the first step towards your business goals!