Whether your business is seasonal or not, everyone experiences a period of downtime. It might be frustrating when it’s going on, though, and you may even be questioning if this is the end of everything since those numbers don’t seem to pick up again and your regular customers are blissfully unaware of the dreadful silence.
Luckily, there are a few ways to make sure that you’re able to bounce back up again after a period of downtime – even if it has been going on for some time. The most important thing is that you try to figure out the reason for it, first of all, before you start to fix whatever needs to be fixed.
Here is a handful of clever ways to give your business the lift it needs in order to slay once more on the market. That way, you don’t have to pull your hair out quite yet and can rest assured that, while everything that goes up must come down, it can also be the other way around if you’re willing to put in the work.
First: Why is business so slow?
Once upon a time, you could hardly stock up before everything went off the shelves – today, on the other hand, you long for the days of stress and chaos. At least you knew that business was going forwards and, although it may have been a lot of work, you were able to make money.
Before you get down to business, so to speak, you need to think about what happened before you went into this slump; is the company morale a bit low, did you gain a number of new competitors, or maybe your products failed to live up to the customer’s expectations?
Whatever it is, you won’t be able to get back up on your feet until you’ve sorted this out. There are, after all, many ways to fix it and everything from a complete rebranding of your company after a disastrous product launch to a new marketing strategy or a focus on a different segment of the market may be the right remedy for this slump.
Yet, by not knowing what caused it, you may run the risk of working on the wrong end of the problem. If your products are wrong for the market you had in mind, you might want to check out a different segment rather than giving your business a rebrand – and, similarly, if your business’ reputation is kind of smeared, you should consider a rebrand rather than a different market.
Have a look at this article to read more about analysing and researching the reasons behind this slump so that you’re a bit more prepared before you get back to the drawing board.
No matter what you do, keep in mind that your business will benefit a lot from having a professional help them out with this; that way, you’re ensuring that it’s able to bounce back up again in a few months or even weeks from now.
Next: Interact with your customers
While you’re focusing on repairing the damage, it’s important to keep your customers in mind. Even if they’re not using your services at the moment, and even if they’re hanging out with your dreadful competitors instead, you still need to awe them and win them back somehow.
Social media is a great way to do this. Hopefully, you already have a few active profiles across the web with a large audience which you can start to work on right away. Create a few smashing blog posts, help them out with all of their queries, and try to make their days a bit easier to creating content that they might need.
Remember to keep the profiles true to your company’s tone-of-voice, by the way, and interact with your audience in a professional and honest way. Don’t make any promises you can’t keep and avoid spamming their profiles with different content as well.
Finding the middle ground between a completely quiet social media profile and an overly active one is easy enough when you manage to keep it natural. There is more info here, by the way, if you’d like to read up on even more ways to improve your business while it’s in this slump so that you can get back on your feet a little bit faster.
Is your business reputation suffering?
There may, as you know, be many reasons behind the business slump you’re currently in – and one of them may be that you have recently received some negative reviews or there has been some negative news about your business lately.
While this can happen to anyone, it will definitely have a big impact on how well your business is operating. People rely a lot on social proof these days and if the media or their circle of friends have anything bad to say about your business, they’re quite likely to take it to heart and stay away.
Try to reverse this by addressing the negative news or reviews, first of all, and acknowledging it if it turns out to be true. The next thing you need to do is, of course, to make it clear that you’re working on improving your business and that your customers will always come first.
Simply ignoring this issue is not going to fix anything at all – and you may run the risk of appearing like your business doesn’t really care. Try to work with a professional as well, by the way, to fix your business reputation and make sure that you’re able to bounce back in time.
Sometimes, a slump like this might require a complete rebrand of your business. While it’s not easy to admit and definitely a tough decision to make, you’re going to be very happy that you did it once you’re back on your feet and ready to open those doors again.
Maybe you’re even able to return a bit stronger and wiser, after all, and eager to woo your customers once more.