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Why are several entrepreneurs and startups struggling to grow their business? Could it be that you’re more concerned about how to implement business strategies? Or could it be that you do not have the mindset for business growth?
It could be both, or that you’re concentrating more on strategy implementation. Applying proven marketing tactics to scale your business is ideal, but you should also have a growth mindset to amplify your marketing efforts.
In other words, there’s a possibility you’re sabotaging your business growth without being aware of it. Why is that so? Because the enthusiasm for establishing a business as an entrepreneur can be overwhelming. The eagerness and energy can stop you from making useful decisions for business growth.
Also, self-doubt and a negative mindset could overpower you and make your business suffer the consequences. So how can you STOP sabotaging your business growth? In this article, you will learn eight proven marketing tactics you can apply today and stop sabotaging your business growth.
1. Determine What Is Sabotaging Your Business
To stop sabotaging your business, you need to identify the root course. It might be time to take a step back: you will actually be getting ahead by moving backwards. What are you or your team doing that is preventing your business from growing? Evaluate your business strategies, business mindset, implementation processes, and what your competitors are doing to thrive online.
Then look for areas where you’re lacking and make quick adjustments. If it’s your business strategy, mindset, or marketing tactics, re-examine those and adjust accordingly. Conduct a marketing audit to understand what is holding you back from growing.
In some cases, it could be that you’re procrastinating — allowing valuable time to pass before taking care of business at the last minute. Such a stance is an unproductive approach that is killing your business.
Therefore, improve productivity and grow your business by ensuring that you address vital undertakings on time. It will help you increase output and deliver on or before deadlines. As a result, you'll have plenty of time to focus on other important matters.
2. Create a Business Plan to Speed Up Growth
Do you have a business plan that will help your company run smoothly? One of the best ways to accelerate business growth is to develop a plan for your business. It serves as a roadmap for your enterprise. How? Because it offers directions on how to successfully run your company’s day-to-day activities with optimal results.
Your business plan also aids in defining your goals, business tactics, and other actions that will enable you to accomplish your business objectives. Moreover, it allows you to avoid unethical business practices and reach your goals quickly.
Here is what you need to include in a business plan to inspire you.
Hence, you will be able to communicate your brand message in compelling ways that would attract your target market and the right prospects.
For example, sailors used a compass that enables them to navigate the sea without issues seamlessly. The tool helps them to define their position in the sea and confirm the speed at which they’re sailing. It also helps them understand the course to arrive at their destination.
However, the digital age has brought much advancement in technology, meaning that sailors may be using more sophisticated chips instead of a compass. A modern chip makes sea navigation much more comfortable.
That compass or chip is like your business plan that will guide your company’s operations to success.
What to Add to Your Business Plan
Your business plan must have the following elements:
- Market research
- Your buyer persona
- Business goals - Here's what you need to know about setting up the right business goals for your startup, small or medium business and how to achieve them
- Operations
- Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
- Products and services
- Sales and marketing
- Competitive analysis
- Finance and projections
Notice that there are different types of business plans. But for this article, we prioritize the growth business plan. These marketing elements will give you a clear picture of your business’ operations and set you on the road to success.
3. Establish Focused Short-term Goals to Reach Long-term Vision
Setting a focused short-term target will help you ditch the overwhelm that is associated with daily activities of running a business. Also, although your company’s aim is long-term, a focused short-term goal helps in reaching your objectives faster.
For example, instead of musing on the broader vision of your company, you can split things up into bite-sized chunks that you can seamlessly reach.
So create attainable tasks you can complete without stress to help you reach your long-term aim. Let’s look at it this way; setting a specific target is more like making a resolution that you will accomplish the desired project.
This approach helps you understand what your company wants to achieve in the long run. However, if you focus on the broader aim of your business, it becomes overwhelming. That is why you should establish focused short-term goals that would lead you to reach your long-term purpose.
Here is what to have in mind when setting a focused short-term goal:
- Should be specific
- Ensure they're achievable
- Keep a positive mindset
- Break up targets into smaller sizes
- Get help from others
- Must be measurable
- Timely
4. Focus on Your Business Objectives
After you have successfully brainstorm what is sabotaging your business and also create your business plan with short-term goals, you need to concentrate on your business target. Why? Focus is essential to your business success since it is your access point to problem-solving and sustainable decision making.
Therefore, having the mindset of achieving your business goals is a motivation that will inspire you to keep pushing forward no matter what. Even when feelings of failure and incompetence try to engulf you, you'll remember why you started. And you'll put your mind on the ultimate result, which is profitability.
Here are a few business objectives you can focus on:
- How to increase profit margin
- Gain a larger market share
- Offer excellent customer service
- How to improve efficiency
- Improve employee training
- Etc.
Therefore, your enterprise cannot be profitable if you fail to focus on your business objectives.
Do you encounter problems finding the right objectives for your business? A great method that we recommend is to set a North Star Metric: it can be very powerful for your business.
5. Listen to Your Target Buyer
The United States comes first among the top global advertising spenders — investing over $220 billion in advertising in 2018. Nonetheless, US ads spending is predicted to increase to over $289 billion by 2022. That is, according to Statista.
However, in 2015, the United States disbursed more than $183 billion in ads. In spite of the enormous spending power, marketers made lots of loses. Why? Some of their ads campaigns were unfruitful.
According to research, their promotional activities were not connecting with target buyers. And when buyers are not relating to your brand message or marketing tactics, your business will gradually disappear from the scene. In other words, the ad campaigns were out of reach for consumers.
Why Marketers Fail In Ads Campaigns
It is because advertisers didn’t listen to their target buyers. Shoppers were not connecting with the products and services they were promoting, and advertisers failed to notice. As a result, it led to lots of loses.
Hence:
What Can You Do to Avoid Similar Mistakes?
Not listening to your target audience, not gathering feedback and not acting on it are common mistakes to avoid during your entrepreneurship journey. Listen to your target buyer. Understand what they need most — issues they are trying to solve and provide helpful solutions. You can use growth hacking tools to listen and learn what users are saying about your product or services.
This step is essential because their needs might have changed with time. You can also do surveys on various social media platforms and interact with them where they are consuming content to have a better understanding of their pains.
These activities will help you serve them better and increase your business growth.
6. Be Alert to Crucial Business Measurables
Are you in the habit of ignoring critical numbers of your business operations? If you answered yes, you need to reconsider your action. Business measurables are key performance indicators (KPIs) that show your company’s performance over time in achieving your business goals.
These metrics can help your enterprise understand the effectiveness of your marketing approach, and how well your products or services are performing in the marketplace. Put differently; they bring to light your company’s strengths and weaknesses — meaning that these metrics are vital to your success.
What KPIs Should You Monitor?
There are plenty of them. However, you can start with the following:
- Leads
- Website/content performance
- Monetary resources
- Profit margin
- Cost per lead
- Break-even points
- Return on investments (ROIs)
For example, measuring the break-even points will assist you in understanding what expenses you can make and positive actions that will cover the cost and also make incredible profits. So ask yourself; do you know your company’s expenditure on growing your business?
So be alert to crucial business measurables as they will dramatically improve business growth. If you’re not conversant with financial statements, we advise you to hire professionals.
7. Invest In Your Business and Learn from Others
Do you consider yourself an Island? We don't think so. That means you cannot possibly work alone. So you must learn from others who’ve been there before you. Make friends with others in your industry and learn from them.
You can go a step further and get yourself a coach or mentor. This person is someone which excellent experience in your niche market, which will hold you by the hand and show you the ropes. It helps improve your skills dramatically and grow your business faster.
In other words, invest in your business. That is why you hear people say, “you must spend money to make money,” it helps grow your business quickly.
8. Delegate and Outsource Tasks
Did you know? Delegating tasks and outsourcing projects are similar in meaning, but they are different. So let’s have a peek at these terms and see how they can help you stop sabotaging your business growth.
Delegating
Delegating is essential to business growth and success. Delegating is the process of allocating jobs to your team for rapid, timely management and fast return on investments (ROIs). However, some entrepreneur business owners love to work alone. It is, in fact, an unproductive business strategy that is sabotaging your growth.
Not delegating tasks will make you achieve less and can result in exhaustion. But when you allocate work to team members, your entire workforce and company will thrive.
You’ll also enjoy:
- Increase output in terms of productivity
- Save time and accomplish more
- More efficiency in the workplace
- More sales and revenue
- Etc.
Nonetheless, you may be a small business owner who does not have team members. In this case, delegating becomes impossible. Thus, you can outsource work to freelancers.
Outsourcing
Startup founders, entrepreneurs, leaders, decision makers and business owners love outsourcing. Outsourcing is comparable to delegating, but it is slightly different. It is the method of contracting projects to another company or individual, such as a freelancer, to perform your task promptly. These outside sources can handle tasks and provide services you usually do.
For instance, as an entrepreneur with a small or mid-sized business who runs a blog, you may not have time for content creation. Or it may be that you don’t know how to write compelling content copy that connects with your audience. Besides content marketing, there are many other outsourcing ideas for new and experienced entrepreneurs.
Outsourcing such projects to freelance writers will save you time, help you avoid plagiarism, and consistently publish highly informative blog content on your business blog. Google loves fresh content, so this approach will help to improve productivity, increase search engine rankings, and boost your business growth.
Furthermore, outsourcing enables you to take business management to the next height since it lets you focus on other vital areas of your business. Like delegating, this marketing strategy will help you with more benefits, including:
- Improve business effectiveness
- Reduce labor costs
- Increase time management efficiency
- Focus on business targets, and so on.
By outsourcing projects, you will have plenty of time to channel your efforts in other areas that will help in growing your company faster.
Wrapping Up How Entrepreneurs Can Stop Sabotaging Business Growth
There are several ways to STOP sabotaging your business growth. However, the eight business strategies outlined above are tested and proven steps that will help you in your efforts to stop sabotaging your business.
By applying the above tips, you can get a hold of your business and STOP sabotaging it. What other tips would you like to add? Please, tell us in the comments!
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