| Do you have a dead or a slowly dying business?
You have two options: either bury it or revive it. The decision is
entirely yours. If you want to cut your losses, the best option is to
just cut clean.
However, if you decide to fight it out and give your business another
chance, then there are several things you can do. Read the following
tips, which can, hopefully, revive your business.
Before doing anything, the first thing you have to do is to make an
honest to goodness assessment of your business. Do a SWOT analysis if
you like. Understand both your strengths and weakness to identify how
you can plan your revival strategy.
The main thing here is to be completely honest with your assessment. If
you like, you can hire an independent auditor to give you an honest to
goodness indication of how things are. After that, you can now develop
your plan but be sure to think about these tips:
1. Find out Why Prospects Aren't Shelling out the Dollars – This simple
and obvious search will give you insightful reasons about what they are
looking to buy and from whom if not with you. Let this be a candid
assessment and do not stop until a pattern emerges. When you discover a
patter, analyze it and are sure to address the issues. Ruthlessly
pursue what your customers want or at least give them something that
would resemble what they want.
2. Create a Robust Database - Your business card printing strategy or
color business cards are not there for décor purposes only. They are
there to be exchanged to create a robust database. There are a lot of
businesses that compliment what you sell and will be open to
co-promoting to your database in return for you talking to theirs. With
three or more companies working together, your reach expands
exponentially.
3. Debunk all Traditional Advertising Myths – Media channels have
admitted that they are seeing up to 40% drop in ad spending yet
businesses are reporting that customers are still buying. The reason
for this is probably that there are other media channels that are being
used, i.e. online marketing. Online spending of every type is steadily
increasing. Do not let your competition gain dominance that you cannot
afford to compete with later.
Ultimately, your objective is to win back consumer attention to your
product or service. You must be able to create a ruckus that people
will talk about. If you have not been visible, chances are people are
not aware of your anymore so the only resort is to call attention to
yourself. Overcome the fear and try something dramatic so people would
talk. | 
