Five Ways to Fix Slow Business and
Give Yourself
a BIG Second Chance.
by Dr. Kevin Nunley
articles
index
This would normally be
a busy time of year for Margaret, but business is slower
than usual. She worries things will get ever slower in
the months ahead. Greg came up with a terrific idea for
building a second income from the Internet. Months later,
his web site and advertising have only brought in a few
sales. He is afraid all his time, money, and enthusiasm
were wasted.
I hear similar experiences
from dozens of people each week. Some are start-ups, others
are mature businesses. Most business ideas flop on
the first try. The key to success is knowing how to
give yourself a BIG second chance. Sometimes you will
need to try a third or fourth time before your new product
or service brings home the bacon.
Here are five simple
ways to give your business new life.
1. Give your business
a tighter focus. Many businesses are too broad, trying
to interest too many different kinds of prospects. Being
too general will leave you lost in a crowd. America has
more stores than at any time in history. Retailers are
finding their markets split into tiny fragments as shoppers
have a bewildering choice of places to spend their money.
Meanwhile, the Internet is exploding.
How do you compete when
there are so many others? Tighten your business focus
to include a narrow, very well defined audience. The man
who sells John Denver memorabilia from the 1970s has a
very specific, almost peculiar business. But he is selling
his product like crazy on the Internet. He is filling
a niche that deeply interests a particular group of people.
2. Make your prices
more competitive. For the past few years consumers
have told us they want quality and service with price
being much less important. The tightening of the economy
has changed that. Now consumers are ranking price as one
of the most important reasons they buy from one business
and not from another.
Think of ways you can
tighten your belt or redefine your product or service
to offer it at a lower cost. Maybe you can limit your
service to fewer, but still important features. Perhaps
your prices are already lower than competitors. You just
need to emphasize your lower prices more in your marketing.
Lower prices are suddenly an important way to get people
to buy.
3. Choose the product
or service that sells best for you, then expand it.
Go wide and deep. Offer more versions of the same product
or service. If the green one is selling well, come out
with a red one and a blue one to offer along side your
start performer. Look for more related products or services
you can offer. I write press releases for people. I have
also found those same people want me to write articles
for them. That is a related service I can offer along
with the popular press release service.
4. Sharpen your marketing
materials. With all that competition in the business
world, you profit when your marketing and advertising
stands out and hits home with consumers. Give all your
marketing pieces a headline. Busy prospects need a way
to quickly find out "what's in this for me" before they
will take the time to read your sales letter, brochure,
classified ad, or web site.
Relate the features of
your product or service to the benefits the buyer will
get. Your "Widget 900" has a clever lever. Tell prospects
how that lever will save them time, money, and make their
day more enjoyable. It is the benefits that your buyers
really care about.
Take a closer look at
where you are putting your advertising dollars. It is
tempting to place all your cash into big media that reach
a lot of people, but are all those people your best prospects?
Marketing is generally
more effective when it can be closely targeted to a well
defined audience. If your audience is made up of lots
of your best customers, you get sales. Consider advertising
in trade publications, email newsletters, and neighborhood
papers. Postcards are cheap and prospects read them without
having to open an envelope.
5. Expand your promotional
effort. It takes a LOT of advertising, marketing,
and promotion to get into the heads of your busy prospects.
People are constantly bombarded with ads and commercials.
You need to hit your best prospects over and over again
before your message sinks in.
Look for several ways
you can CONSISTENTLY market your business. Find affordable
methods that reach your best customers and use those methods
over and over again. When marketing doesn't work, it is
almost always because the business ran out of money and
gave up too soon.
Give your business a
big second chance. The children's story of the "little
engine that could" might as well be a $1,000 business
seminar. The best way to clobber competition and build
your business into a cash cow is to give your business
a tight focus, make prices more competitive, expand what
works, improve marketing materials, and promote big and
consistently.
