Are you struggling with identifying your target audience on social media? You’re not alone. Many small business owners find it challenging to connect with the right people in a landscape ruled by changing algorithms. In this post, we’ll explore effective strategies for identifying your target audience on social media—from analyzing existing followers and leveraging social media analytics to developing detailed buyer personas. By understanding consumer behavior and psychographics, you’ll tailor your content to engage your ideal audience, leading to more meaningful interactions and growth.

Understanding the Importance of Identifying Your Target Audience on Social Media

Knowing your target audience is a game-changer for social media marketing and is critical for campaign success. By diving into analytics, brands can identify key demographics and psychographics that shape their audience. Identifying your target audience on social media allows you to tailor content to resonate, maximizing engagement and boosting visibility.

The Impact of Knowing Your Audience on Campaign Success

Understanding your social media target audience enhances campaign effectiveness. By knowing who you’re speaking to, you can craft a content strategy that aligns with audience interests. This targeted approach improves engagement metrics, strengthens brand reputation, and fosters connections with potential customers.

Audience knowledge also influences content types. By analyzing behaviors and trends, brands can identify popular topics, creating relevant, buzz-worthy content. This approach not only boosts visibility on social platforms but fosters community and trust, solidifying brand reputation.

Building a strong brand on social media isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s essential for increasing brand awareness and connecting with your target audience. In this post, we’ll dive into Effective Strategies for Social Media brand building, including defining your brand identity and developing a content strategy that resonates. You’ll learn practical tips for engaging with your audience and how to measure the success of your marketing strategy. If you’re struggling to stand out online, these Strategies for Social Media will help you navigate the crowded landscape.

Creating a successful digital marketing content strategy isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s essential for boosting your market share. In this post, we’ll explore how to set clear objectives for your content plan, know your target audience inside out, and select the most effective marketing channels. By the end, small business owners will have practical tools to tackle common pain points, such as low engagement on social networks and unclear messaging. With a solid strategy in place, you’ll be prepared to turn every piece of content into a powerful asset for your business.

Exploring Digital Marketing Techniques

Practical Tactics to Boost Your Market Presence

A strong digital marketing plan is a game-changer for business growth. It involves:

• • Setting clear objectives
  • Understanding your audience
  • Identifying effective promotional channels

Local businesses can leverage these insights to transform engagement challenges and complex messages into valuable narratives.

Developing the Strategy Guide

Focus on What Your Audience Seeks

The best strategies align with user searches—stories that resonate with their desire for knowledge, inspiration, or solutions. Social media platforms expand your reach, facilitate conversations, and help shape stories that foster stronger customer relationships.

Analyze Your Competition

Examine what competitors do well. Learn from their strengths to identify opportunities to differentiate your brand. Encourage every team member to contribute to conversations that grab attention and engage public interests.

Synchronizing Plans and Goals

Aligning Strategy with Corporate Objectives

Align content creation with corporate objectives through in-depth research. Discover what your audience craves, and craft stories that build connections and enhance your brand’s reputation. Stay unified and check regularly to ensure your approach remains on track.

Charting Goals Detail by Detail

• • Set specific goals (e.g., increase video views by a certain percentage).
  • Use editorial calendars to align efforts with these ambitions, boosting team productivity.
  • Monitor performance metrics and make adjustments to aim for constant improvement.

Reflecting Your Business Ethos Through Content

Prioritize content that aligns with your core business goals. Whether it’s improving engagement on newsletters or developing social media content that attracts followers, track progress and push your business toward success.

Understanding the Impact of KPIs

Defining and Measuring Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Gauge the effectiveness of your strategy by measuring tangible metrics such as viewer engagement and sales growth. A strong strategy also reviews social engagement—compiling likes and comments—to align business objectives with customer interests.

Uniting Diverse Team Perspectives

Fostering Collaboration

Team meetings are invaluable for uniting perspectives. Connect marketing, creative, and sales teams to create content that attracts clicks. Exchange ideas and tools to maintain a coherent and engaging narrative.

Insights into the Audience

Delving Into Audience Preferences

Knowing your audience’s preferences is key to capturing attention.

• • Explore different markets
  • Develop buyer profiles
  • Tailor your communication

Combine these insights with social media savvy to bridge the gap between product and purchase.

Uncovering Market Preferences

Pay attention to customer tastes and create offers that lead to commitments and transactions. Analyze voice search data and track user behavior to uncover narrative opportunities.

Providing Comfort Through Problem-Solving Content

Address customer pain points with content that offers solutions. Ensure your content strategy evolves to meet shifting patterns of loyalty and trust.

Creating Bespoke Content for Different Audiences

• • Customizing Content for Specific Audience Groups: Tailor content to increase engagement and ROI. Use data analysis to monitor how different segments interact with your content and refine your approach.
  • Matching Content to Audience Preferences: Pair content with preferred formats to engage audiences effectively. Use SEO, social media, and targeted messaging to reach and activate your intended audience.
  • Selecting Preferred Storytelling Methods: Use visual content like videos, infographics, and tutorials to resonate with audience interests and objectives. Employ a content management system to track successful storytelling techniques.

Finding the Best Platforms for Engagement

Assessing Audience-Focused Platforms

Explore the platforms where your audience gathers naturally. Assess engagement on these platforms to tailor your narratives for maximum impact.

• • Integrating Keywords Subtly for SEO: Place keywords strategically throughout your content to boost visibility. Refine titles and tags to enhance SEO.
  • Fitting Into Social Media Dynamics: Identify where your audience feels most comfortable and craft platform-specific messages to drive dialogue and guide future content.
  • Generating Excitement via Email Campaigns: Craft emails with intriguing openings and dynamic content. Use personalization and segmentation for targeted messaging, building rapport with your audience.

Building a Content Strategy Quilt

• • Developing a Strategic Content Calendar: Create a content log to track campaigns and execution. Consistent messaging and strategic rollouts appeal to your audience effectively.
  • Planning Stories for Timely Relevance: Align your strategy with key dates and seasons. Maintain a diverse content inventory to keep your audience engaged.
  • Streamlining Project Workflow: Navigate project management with precision, focusing on both productivity and content quality. Listen to your team for adaptable insights.
  • Fostering Collaboration Among Team Members: Create a dynamic environment with clear, shared goals. Defined roles ensure strong collaboration, fostering creative content.
  • Maintaining Consistency in Brand Messaging: Develop a comprehensive brand voice guide to ensure consistency across channels. Curate content that reflects your vision and engages your audience at every touchpoint.

Measuring Success in Your Overall Plan

Regularly Reviewing Achievement Indicators

Regularly review indicators of success. Stay attuned to industry trends and adapt to reach ambitious goals.

• • Navigating Pathways Shaped by Data and Insights: rack your audience’s preferred experiences and incorporate these insights into future strategies.
  • Tuning into Your Audience: Curate and Adjust: Analyze results, make necessary adjustments, and keep the excitement alive by updating content to match audience interests.
  • Revising Approaches Based on Data: Analyze data insights to refine strategies and meet evolving audience expectations.
  • Taking Victories to New Heights: Keep content fresh by exploring new approaches. Find creative ways to make a lasting impression.
  • Staying Agile in the Digital Market: Stay on top of market trends and continuously innovate your storytelling. Be alert and adaptable to ensure your messages remain impactful.

Conclusion

Crafting a comprehensive digital marketing content strategy is essential for engaging audiences and driving business growth. By understanding your target audience, aligning content with marketing goals, and utilizing various formats and channels, businesses can create impactful narratives that resonate. Measuring success through analytics enables continuous optimization, ensuring content remains relevant and valuable. Ultimately, a well-executed content strategy fosters customer loyalty, enhances brand visibility, and positions businesses to thrive in a competitive landscape.

A comprehensive digital marketing content strategy is essential for any business aiming to stand out in a competitive digital landscape. At BestLyfe Group, we help brands build strategies that align with core business goals, creating meaningful content that drives engagement and supports growth. As a digital marketing company, our services—from SEO to PPC and beyond—are designed to enhance brand visibility and deliver measurable results. When your content strategy is aligned with audience insights and supported by the right tools, it becomes a powerful asset that builds trust, encourages loyalty, and keeps your brand top of mind. Discover how our tailored solutions can elevate your brand’s content approach and foster sustainable success.

FAQ: Crafting a Comprehensive Digital Marketing Content Strategy

What is a digital marketing content strategy?
A digital marketing content strategy is a plan that outlines how a business will create, publish, and manage content across digital platforms to achieve specific marketing goals and engage with its target audience effectively.

Why is a content strategy important for digital marketing?
A content strategy is crucial because it helps ensure that all created content aligns with business goals, maintains consistency in messaging, improves audience engagement, and enhances brand visibility across various digital channels.

What are the key components of a comprehensive content strategy?
Key components include understanding the target audience, setting clear objectives, identifying the types of content (blogs, videos, social media posts), determining distribution channels, establishing a content calendar, and measuring the performance of the content.

How can I measure the success of my content strategy?
Success can be measured using various metrics, including website traffic, engagement rates (likes, shares, comments), conversion rates, lead generation, and overall ROI from content-driven campaigns. Using analytics tools can help track and analyze these metrics effectively.

 

Retargeting is a form of online advertising that is informed by a customer’s previous engagement with your content. Once a customer engages with your content, be it on your website, blog, or any other medium, they will see targeted advertisements for your goods and services on other websites and social media platforms. This keeps your company fresh in their minds and encourages them to come back.

You can retarget potential customers for free or through paid methods. Obviously, free methods aren’t truly free; they cost time, and paid methods yield better results, so either direction you choose to go is the right one because you’re doing something for your business.  

The Benefits of Retargeting

Have you ever gone to a networking event where you didn’t know anyone? 

After glancing at the faces in the room, you spotted someone who looked vaguely familiar, and just like that, you were motivated to start your networking efforts with that person. Why? 

That sense of familiarity signaled to your brain that connecting with that person might be easier or more enjoyable than connecting with total strangers. 

Generally speaking, unless our initial contact with a brand or a person is negative, the more we are “exposed” to them, the more we develop a preference for them. The American Psychological Association calls this the mere-exposure effect. For instance, if you were to recognize that same person at a conference a few months later, you’d probably choose to sit near them instead of getting nestled between strangers again. You would be demonstrating a preference.

The mere-exposure effect works on potential customers as well. When you retarget them in different settings, you gradually increase their preference for your brand. You become that one familiar face in a room full of strangers. When they’re looking to book inflatables, concessions, foam machines, and more, they remember your face. They’ve seen your logo all over the place and countless positive reviews about your business since the day they first engaged with your content. On some level, they inherently trust they’re going to have an easier, more enjoyable time dealing with your company than with a random find online.

And that’s good for business.

FREE RETARGETING METHODS

This method only works if you can get the customer’s info, like an email or a phone number you can text.

Essentially, you want to retarget your customers with email campaigns and/or text messages based on the behavior they exhibited on your site and their points of interest. 

Did they add something to their cart without checking out? Send cart abandonment emails. Did they linger on the page about inflatable games? Send emails, testimonials, or links to your blog posts about inflatable games.

NOTE! You’ll need to send at least eight messages to your prospect because, on average, it takes eight encounters with a brand before customers commit to a purchase. To make it easier on yourself, your messages should be pre-written and scheduled to go out at intervals of time.

Make sure your content is engaging, and you’ve written interesting email subject lines. The last thing you want is for your emails to get ignored or end up in the spam folder. Test your email subject line with https://sendcheckit.com/email-subject-line-tester.

PAID RETARGETING METHODS

This is where retargeting gets exciting and yields phenomenal results. For starters:

1. 1. Input a Facebook pixel on your site. 
   2. Create events within certain URLs to target specific customers within your site based on their activities. 
   3. Set up a retargeting campaign for all users within the past X days that have been on your site, looked at an item, or put an item in their cart. You can also choose to retarget the top 25% of site visitors based on the amount of time spent on the site. The metric you use is up to you.
   4. Exclude users who checked out.

Now, it’s time to work that retargeting magic. Deliver a beautiful, dynamic ad about the experiences you offer, the benefits of choosing your company, and the many happy customers who were elated to have done business with you. Let your prospect build a preference for your brand over time.

And when I say “over time,” I mean it. Just like football championships are won one game at a time, retargeting is a “season-long” strategy that brings in the harvest if you stick with it.

CASE STUDY

Check out the success of the BestLyfe client below.

This table, best viewed on a desktop, not mobile, represents 3 months of different retargeting ad campaigns. The results are outstanding!

Our client spent $2,945.63 on retargeting ads we configured for their business.

Those ads resulted in $60,135.79 in purchases.

Their return was 20.42 times their spending. 

Whether your business makes $50,000 a year or several million, when you don’t invest in retargeting strategies, you’re leaving money on the table.

The best part about all this is our client retargeted customers with benefit-rich ads showing cheerful kids, happy parents, and glowing reviews.

They didn’t have to pimp themselves out by flashing offers like $25 off, nor did they resort to showing everything they had in inventory, crossing their fingers, hoping at least one of those items would lead to a sale. 

They used advertising that built trust, and they got paid!

 

I know, I know!

We can’t have all three.

I’m with you.

We’ve all seen the Venn diagrams plastered in articles, blog posts, and essays, reminding us that there is a dark void where these three variables are supposed to coexist.

And yet, that mindset has a way of masking better options within reach.

The whole debate is like a wide-load truck, taking up three lanes of our mental bandwidth, forcing us to stare at its backend and miss the beautiful scenery beyond it.

One reason this debate limits our perspective goes back to the way we conceptualize the problem. The other boils down to the language used to diagnose the issue and describe its solution.

Word choices matter. They can imply limits where none exist. Much like being offered chocolate or vanilla ice cream at a party, you’re happy with your choice until someone walks up from behind and says, “I’ll take strawberry instead.”

Wait. No one said that was an option!

True. But no one said it wasn’t an option either.

It all boils down to how the question is phrased, doesn’t it? The word “or” implies the request is limited to two choices.

In this post, we’re going to take a fresh look at an old problem, but only for the sake of bypassing that wide-load truck blocking our view of the horizon. Who knows, maybe with a better view of the landscape, you’ll go on to discover additional options beyond the one we present in the article―there are plenty. If that’s the case, be sure to come back and post your findings in the comments section.

A New Lens

When entrepreneurs want something good done fast, and cheap, what are the pain points they’re trying to ease with these requests?

Going to the source of the problem is the first step in bypassing the blockers in our way.

I Want Something Good

Most of the time, a request for something good is a business’s way of addressing quality control issues. Businesses want to offer their prospects quality products or services because that’s what builds a positive brand image. Even when the product or service is “cheap,” companies still look for ways to promise quality to their prospects.

Take McDonald’s, for example. The company serves “cheap” food, both in cost and in nutritional value. However, they portray the consumption of their food as a “rich” sensory experience.

Their commercials feature crisp images of their food looking fresh and perfect: sizzling beef patties, flexible and juicy, sitting on a warm fluffy bun; deep red tomatoes that look like they were plucked right off the vine and sliced to make your sandwich; bright green lettuce, freshly washed and so crisp it crackles under the pressure of a hand pressing everything together.

Next, they zoom in on their soft drinks, magnifying the sound of every little pop until you can practically feel those tiny bubbles of sweetness dancing along your tongue.

The closer? They cut to shots of happy people sharing a meal with friends or an individual quietly savoring their meal alone in their “happy place.”

Now, before you rush out the door to get a burger, let’s agree on one thing: serious businesses look for ways to promise their prospects some level of quality.

When they’re asking for something good, they’re asking for something that makes the prospect happy.

Do we really need to kick quality out of the picture when “fast” and “cheap” enter the scene? Let’s see…

I Need It Done Fast!

When a business puts in a request for something to be done quickly, on the surface, it might seem like time is of the essence (it is), but the real gain they’re after is most likely relevance or opportunity.

Waiting too long to get an idea out carries the risk of losing relevance over time. The other risk of waiting too long is that another company could seize the opportunity to be first to market with an innovative idea while your business is stuck tinkering with the same thought.

When we dig a little deeper, we find that entrepreneurs don’t rush requests because they lack respect for craftsmanship, talent, or artistry, but rather, they have their sights on a lure that is quickly vanishing in the distance. They need to work with someone who can move fast enough to help them chase it down.

One myth creating blockers for many is that all good things take time, or if an asset takes a while to create, then it must be good. Deep down, we know that’s not always the case.

While some good things take more time to create, and the scope of a project could influence how much time goes into making it good―fast is a relative term.

The context and nature of your project determine what “fast” looks like. Amateurs take a relatively long time to put out subpar work, while masters of their craft can yield high-quality work in relatively little time, making them a valuable resource.

For instance, a published author can complete a nonfiction book in six months, on average, or a fiction book in roughly twelve months. Yet, some authors can write a book of equal quality in two months. Why? Because they’ve mastered their skill and streamlined their processes. These authors produce results relatively fast, and their uncommon skills are incredibly valuable.

Think also of street artists who create stunning pictures or bizarrely accurate caricatures in less than 10 minutes.

While these examples are simple, the idea here is not to automatically resign yourself to the idea that fast and good can never coexist. There are times when they can. Evaluate the context around each project so that you’re not missing opportunities to have something done well and quickly.

“I already know you can have good and fast,” you say. “But it won’t come cheap!”

Well… about that. Let’s recap what we’ve seen thus far and then address the elephant in the room.

The Recap

At this point, we’ve established that a request for something good is really a request for a level of quality that stands to please the customer. The request for a job to be done fast is really a desire to stay relevant and capitalize on opportunities to be first to market. As for the dreaded request for something “cheap”…

Can You Do It Cheaper?

The word “cheap” is like a mule. It’s loaded with so much baggage we lose sight of everything it carries. Like when the word is used to describe something of inferior quality (not what we’re after) or to describe someone’s handling of money as being frugal to a fault (not how we want to be perceived).

If we bypass the word “cheap” and look at what motivates its use, we find business owners aren’t truly looking to save a buck. What they’re really after is value, profitability, and affordability.

Most of the time, when a small business asks for services “done cheap,” it’s because their budget is tight, and they cannot afford to come out of pocket to finance the creation of a product or service the way they want to. Plus, there’s a bit of mental baggage cluttering their thought process.

You see, some business owners consider value to be the same as profitability. So they try to create the biggest gap they can between the cost of the product and its price. Technically, there’s nothing wrong with doing that, but push your luck too far, and the game is a bust. You lose value, which directly affects the profitability of what you’re creating.

If there was a way to create the product or service you wanted without killing your budget, compromising on value, or holding profitability hostage, would you still ask creatives to limit their abilities and just make something “cheap” for you?

Value is determined by more than the difference between cost and price. Additional factors that contribute to the value of an asset created for your business are:

Originality and Creativity

Whether reconfiguring old ideas in new ways or acting on divine inspiration to create an asset for your business, novelty attracts prospects, and it does its part to drive sales. When we push for “cheap,” we kill all incentives for creatives to draw on the full range of their talents to produce high-value work for the business.

Durability

From lifetime memberships to an indestructible toy, working durability into your offer might not come “cheap,” but it yields a more profitable product or service. Customers value what doesn’t need to be repeatedly repurchased, fixed, or replaced, which translates to an increase in the lifetime value of the customer. They are more likely to purchase again and spend more with brands that provide durable products or services.

Ingenuity

Investing in solutions that simplify your prospect’s life usually has them whipping out their credit cards to make a purchase. Ingenuity is often the driving force behind products that are said to sell themselves.

When businesses insist on getting things done “cheap,” they often kill many elements that contribute to the very thing they’re after: value and profitability.

While originality, durability, and ingenuity don’t come cheap, they are certainly affordable with the right approach.

By swapping out the word “cheap” for “affordable,” our perspective broadens, and we end up with elements that can fill the void in the middle of that dreaded Venn diagram.

So, what’s the approach?

Say Hello to Value-Based Pricing

Although the concept of value-based pricing isn’t new, entrepreneurs could stand to use it more.

To be clear, value-based pricing doesn’t invalidate the good vs. fast vs. cheap conundrum. It simply side-steps the squabble between those three variables and forges a new path toward profitability.

What is value-based pricing, and how does it benefit your business?

Value-based pricing is a strategy of setting prices primarily based on a consumer’s perceived value of a product or service. (Dholakia 2022)

A classic example of this concept in action involves charging more for a product or service based on what the customer is willing to pay. Their willingness to pay more is based on their perceived value of the product or service; however, there is a way to apply this principle that makes it mutually beneficial in business-to-business arrangements.

Thanks to influencers like Chris Do, Blair Enns, and others, more creatives are willing to produce assets for your business by agreeing to transactions that resemble affiliate marketing payouts.

By setting fees relative to the asset’s profitability, their service remains affordable, no matter how much they are compensated for their work.

Imagine launching a brand-new online course. You’ve got everything put together, and all you need is for someone to design a high-converting landing page to sell the course. You find a copywriter on a freelance platform, and here’s the deal: they’ll do all the work you need, to the best of their creative ability, for a small deposit (affordable) and 10% of the revenue generated by the page. Would you take the deal? Post your thoughts in the comments section.

What if they take no deposit but ask for 25% of the revenue generated by the page? Would you prefer a deal like that instead?

In either case, the fee paid to the creative is relative to the profitability of the asset they make for you, ensuring that it is always affordable. The creative also has a vested interest in the success of that asset, so they are likely to draw on the full range of their abilities to see it thrive.

Why fight over good, cheap, and fast, when you can have good, fast, and affordable? In other words, why play the game with the three cards you’ve been dealt? Reach into the deck and pick another card.

Caution! Don’t kill your golden goose.

Creatives and service providers who make high-value, high-quality, high-converting assets for your business can be difficult to find. When you find the right person or company for the job, pay them well and pay them on time. Always nurture their incentive to create high-quality work for you.

While value-based pricing can take on many forms—and it is not the answer to every scenario out there—it does create an avenue for you to get what you need, when you need it, without sacrificing quality or affordability.

The next time someone limits your outlook by telling you what you can’t have, or by using language that doesn’t reflect what you’re aiming for, kindly remind them of what you can have and focus on actions that support your true intentions.

 

Fasten your seat belts, entrepreneurial daredevils because we’re about to take a daring dive into the compelling world of slow economies. While it might sound as thrilling as watching paint dry, rest assured, this expedition promises to be as lively and captivating as stand-up comedy. Let’s stride ahead, shall we?

Picture this: the economy decides to move as slow as a sloth on a Sunday afternoon, and business growth feels as challenging as running on a stair climber set too high while juggling flaming torches. The immediate instinct? Curl up, pull the covers over your head, and wait for the economic sunshine to return. However, prepare to have your minds blown as we embark on a journey of how to level up big in a slow economy.

How Past Companies Managed an Economic Downturn

Here’s where we drop our first truth bomb. According to a detailed study conducted by the lovely sages at the Harvard Business Review, most companies get swallowed up whole by a recession. I’m paraphrasing, of course. Many small business owners and leaders were forced to close their doors for good, while others, once leaders in their field, slipped so far back that they came within inches of the recession’s “wood chipper.” And yet, there are always outliers, 9 percent, to be exact¹. These companies did better than survive a slow economic growth period; they thrived!

Their secret sauce?

A perfect blend of defensive strategies (think cost-cutting measures) and offensive strategies (think investing in innovation for future growth).

Half of this sounds like a no-brainer (of course, you should cut costs) but the other half―like throwing your weight behind a business growth strategy during an economic slowdown―seems as counterintuitive as putting pineapple on pizza.

Now, I can sense you scratching your heads, your eyebrows creeping higher than the adrenaline of a skydiver on a caffeine high. So, let’s delve deeper.

What Strategic Spending Looks Like

Before I get into the topic of strategic spending, can we agree that, for many businesses, when an economic slowdown hits, the tendency is to go into energy saver mode? Many competitors will step off the gas, opt for a pit stop, or even park themselves for a while. Maybe they believe they have enough of a buffer to stay ahead. Maybe they feel that if business opportunities are sluggish for them, they’re sluggish for everyone: there’s no chance other businesses will catch up to them.

In fact, they behave somewhat like the hare in Aesop’s famous fable, deciding to catch forty winks under a tree and leaving the tortoise a clear path to victory. In business terms, it’s an unparalleled opportunity to step up your game (if you’re the tortoise in this story) and seize many new opportunities.

“Wait a minute,” you might argue. “I’m barely keeping my head above water. Talking about investing in innovation feels like planning a space mission while struggling to pay for gasoline!” Absolutely valid point. But remember, we’re not advocating for a spending spree here. It’s about making wise, calculated investments that fuel your long-term business growth. As the saying goes, you can’t accumulate if you don’t speculate, and no, this wisdom nugget wasn’t derived from a fortune cookie.

Where To Channel Your Efforts

Focus on the Market Share You Already Have

While it’s tempting to chase after new customers with brand-new marketing strategies, a fantastic starting point for your marketing efforts would be to nurture your existing customer base. Research by Small Business Trends suggests that a whopping 65 percent of a company’s business comes from existing customers². So, it makes sense to focus on customer retention, and the efforts yield handsome dividends, both literally and metaphorically.

Nurturing your business’s customer base is like giving your adorable houseplant, Philodendron Phil, staple nutrients that keep it alive and healthy. You ensure he’s watered with returning clients, well-lit with retargeting ads, and loved through excellent customer service. In return, Philodendron Phil sustains slow and steady growth, even as competitors begin to whither.

Lean Into Innovation

Again, we’re not talking about getting wild ventures, like investing in a fleet of drone cars so your taxi service is guaranteed to beat that light off Route 23―the one that has everyone sitting there for five minutes, contemplating the direction their life has taken. No, there are clever ways to innovate, even during the lean years. A 2020 study conducted by McKinsey & Company revealed that companies who stuck it out with their quest to invest in innovation did 10 percent better than their non-innovating peers during the recession and roughly 30 percent better 36 months after the recession³.

It’s like waking up to the sounds of a violin. You discover it’s coming from Philodendron Phil! All your nurturing has given him abilities no other plant has. Suddenly, Phil is more than a houseplant, he’s the Mozart of the plant world, and everyone is drawn to him.

Discover the Profitability in Team Building

Not all investments require money. Investing in your company’s culture and your team’s well-being is another vital aspect of leaning into growth. Gallup research has shown that businesses with highly engaged teams show 21 percent greater profitability⁴.

Also, when you stand by your team during tough economic times, you earn their loyalty and commitment. It’s similar to Philodendron Phil’s remarkable resilience. Through a curated plant food diet and maybe a little fertilizer, you see new buds forming, and you realize Phil has more to offer than you initially thought.

Cutting Down on the Right Costs

A key element to successfully leaning into growth during a slow economy is strategic cost-cutting. Note the emphasis on “strategic.” We’re not suggesting a frenzied, cut-everything-that-moves approach. Instead, it’s about trimming the fat, focusing on efficiency, and cutting back on non-essentials. It’s like realizing that Phil doesn’t need a personalized greenhouse. You can perfectly maintain ideal conditions for his growth and development from your windowsill.

Capitalize on Opportunities to Expand

A sluggish economy is also an excellent time to expand your market. Contrary to the instinct of hunkering down, reaching out to new markets can pay off, big time. A trend that has been noted in the Profit Impact Marketing Strategies (PIMS) database is that companies that cut back on marketing enjoy a higher Return on Capital Employed during the recession. Still, during the recovery years and after that, they quickly lost out to the companies who never let up on marketing⁵.

So, don’t hesitate to introduce Philodendron Phil and his violin skills to a wider audience, buy new instruments for Phil at a fraction of the cost from competitors who are too weak to play them, or team up with other businesses that have complementary interests. Who knows, you might just start a new band in the world of musical houseplants: Philodendron Phil and Collins, the Drum-playing Cactus. Now, that’s an act many would pay to see!

Summing up, in a slow economy, leaning into business growth isn’t just a wild gambit; it’s a calculated, strategic move that can position your business for accelerated success when the economy bounces back. It’s not about playing Russian roulette with your resources; it’s about playing a masterful game of chess, where each move ensures that you emerge as the ultimate victor, even if it feels like you’re playing chess at a turtle’s pace.

So, to all the entrepreneurial gladiators out there, remember, in the race of business, particularly in a slow economy, the tortoise often wins. It’s time to shake off the hare’s overconfidence, embrace persistence, and lean into growth. A sluggish economy isn’t a death sentence; it’s an opportunity to reassess, reinvest, and rise stronger.

Black and white line art of a sloth, illustrated in landscape mode.

And I know a lot of this is easier said than done.

If you’re reading this and you feel like you could use a little coaching to help scale your business, guess what?

I’ve got 30-minute slots available for serious business owners who want to break out of their current status and level up.
Fill out the form below and choose Business Consulting.

 

1. 1. 1.  Roaring Out of Recession, Harvard Business Review
   1. 1. CUSTOMER RETENTION STATISTICS – The Ultimate Collection for Small Business, Small Business Review
   1. 1. Innovation in a crisis: Why it is more critical than ever, McKinsey & Company
   1. 1.  Employee Engagement on the Rise in the U.S., Gallup
   1. Marketing During Recession: To Spend or Not to Spend?, Nigel Hollis, 2008