Consistently maintaining healthy habits is just as important in the life of your business as it is in your personal life. And yet, there are thousands of articles posted each year dedicated to personal health and well-being, but very few by comparison are focused on the life of your business. Today we’ll explore let you in on a little secret and show just how important consistency is for your business’ growth.
Obviously, for this secret to be effective, you must be consistently doing the right things. This is why today’s article is the last in our series, and not the first! Hopefully you’ve gained some insight along the way and have established some new business growth habits and you’re now ready to consistently practice them.
Here’s a look back at our Grow from Within series in case you missed an article:
- 4 Ways to Self Evaluate your Business (read here)
- 5 Ways Core Values Grow Businesses (read here)
- How To Identify Your Ideal Customers … And Find More Just Like Them (read here)
- Your Business’ Best Kept Secret: Consistency
How Does Consistency Improve Business Growth
In the same way eating healthy, exercising, and maintaining relationships require personal discipline, so too does improving your business. The two primary ways consistency improves business growth is through retaining current customers and creating brand awareness, which leads to the development of new customers. Let’s unpack each of these.
Retaining customer
Some reports indicate that it’s 5 times costlier to gain a new customer than it is to maintain an existing customer. This proves the importance of customer retention, which is primarily driven by consistently marketing to them through eNewsletters, mailings, visits, well-checks, and the like. The more engaging and beneficial interactions you have with a customer, the more likely you are to retain their business. Retention is strongly tied to the customer experience – how they perceive your value, how much trust they have in your services, how approachable and accessible you are, and the overall results you produce for them.
Creating brand awareness
Gaining a foothold in a crowded market is challenging. With an increasing number of communication channels, multiple competitors, and a shrinking attention span, it can be difficult to engage the attention of your target market. Remaining consistent in your marketing can feel like the long game, but it will produce results. You must remember that your competitors have the same struggles as you – they are also dealing with HR issues, working on culture, improving services, managing P&L, and working hard to gain new clients and grow their business. As you engage your market consistently, it gives you an advantage over your less-driven or less-focused competitors.
From a marketing standpoint, one of the best ways to create brand awareness is through the use of a marketing plan. This plan outlines your strategy, documents your marketing approach, and schedules every activity for the year. It is literally a plan for your marketing, and if you follow it, you will be more proactive, effective, and engaging than your competitors and you’ll also be laser focused on the right target market.
6 Areas of your Business that Require Consistency
Every business is unique. However, as you establish a more consistent focus on internal growth, here are 6 ideas that apply to every business, regardless of industry, market, or size.
- Perform well checks: I love the idea of well checks, but the medical industry is one of only a few who consistently offer them. When’s the last time you checked in on a client just because? Not because they called you or you read a press release about them, but you genuinely checked in to see how they were doing? Start performing well checks and shift your team from being reactive to being proactive.
- Communicate digitally: After you have your digital platforms in place and have created a digital marketing strategy, begin sending a monthly eNewsletter and posting weekly to your social media platforms.
- Provide resources: Writing and sharing a monthly blog article is an excellent way to become an expert within your industry, improve your search engine ranking, and offer resources that are relevant to your clients. We recommend writing at least 1 article per month.
- Offer excellent customer service: When you communicate with your clients, authenticity is key. It is hard to be consistent with anything if it’s inauthentic. We’ve all heard the mantra that the customer is always right, but what if the customer is always first, or always important, or always a priority?
- Maintain a healthy company culture: As you seek to be authentic in your external interactions, you need to look internally first – how’s your team doing? How healthy is your culture right now? Is your team well taken care of and supported?
- Uphold your core values: As we mentioned before, your core values are worthless if they aren’t consistently used. So, put them to work! This is a catch-all for you, as your core values should cover the most important focuses for your business.
Getting Started
Remaining consistent in the life of your business requires discipline. Sharing the load will ensure you remain consistent, whether that’s delegation to your internal team or to an outside agency.
If we can help you get started, don’t hesitate to contact us.