Dream Product Business Advice Hub

Are you achieving all your business goals? Are you wondering why you are not getting the results you are after? There may be several things at play here. Today I am sharing the top five reasons you are not achieving your goals right now and what you can do about it.

1. Lack of planning

So many people are running a business but forget to plan. They don’t know what their next six months, quarter, or even week will look like, let alone how much money they can expect to come in. Does that sound familiar?

Be honest, if you were going on holiday, would you plan your flight times, passport, tickets, travelling to the airport, transfers, hotel booking, and more? If you didn't, then you most certainly would miss your flight. Why do you not do the same for your business? Dedicate time to plan: your cashflow, your business goals, and your future ideas, and you will have a much bigger chance of getting the results you want. 

2. Distractions

How distracted are you when...

When it comes to growing your business, one of the most important things you can work on is learning how to create a sales funnel your customers will love. 

A sales funnel is really a way for you to turn prospective clients into actual clients. There are lots of different ways of creating a sales funnel but the best and most effective way is to make sure you do it in a way that makes your customer feel valued, excited, and makes them eager to become a paying customer. 

Therefore when thinking about creating a sales funnel you should always start with the customer journey at the forefront of your mind because it's all about turning cold leads into paying customers.

At the top of your sales funnel will always be your cold leads and coming out at the bottom of it will be your paying customer, and if you don’t create the sales funnel with those ideal customers in mind, you can end up losing them along.

“If you work just for money,...

We all want to get more sales for our business, and if we can do it for free even better! Discover 5 ways to market online for free! 

GIVEAWAYS

Giveaways are a great way of getting visible.  You might think that people will only enter because they want to win something, which is understandable, but on the whole, giveaways really are worth it.

How often you run a giveaway is up to you. Once or twice a year, depending on your offer, do whatever feels right to you.

You could run a giveaway for a day, or if you really want to maximize visibility, run the giveaway for a week and create a whole social media plan around it.  To really get the momentum going share it in relevant groups where your ideal client hangs out.

Don’t worry about giving away a high ticket offer either; you could give away something small, a guide, or mini-training if you run a product business use this as an opportunity to clear some old stock.  

 GUEST...

If you find yourself still sitting in front of your phone or laptop until way past bedtime, answering messages, emailing customers, and networking until all hours of the morning then it's time to create some business boundaries!

Not only will these save you time in the long run, but you will also look entirely more professional (would you expect Marks & Spencer to reply to your email at 10pm at night?) and get a good night's sleep!

Set your business hours

And stick to them! Turn off your notifications, so you aren't tempted to check your phone and actually take the evenings to relax, not get frustrated because you HAVE to answer that email/message/comment NOW.

Only check your messages twice a day

I found this one really difficult to stick to a first! My trick was to turn off the notifications and set my alarm for 9.15am, and 4.45pm, when I would spend 15 minutes answering emails and flagging those I needed to deal with later.  This saved me SO MUCH TIME throughout...

From working for my dad in my first business role to setting up my own award-winning homeware company and surpassing half a million pounds in sales in my creative business, there have been some things I've learnt along the way that I would like to pass on to you, so you can create your successful business too!

1) BE CONSISTENT!!  This one is so true!! You can't be half-hearted or give up.  Keep going, it's worth it, I promise!

2) Know your audience - get super clear on your target market (we have an amazing free workbook here)

3) Be as visible as possible online -  Go live, put yourself forward for guest expert slots in memberships, groups and podcasts, show up consistently!

4) Know your USP (unique selling point) - What makes your business, your offer so enticing and unlike any other?

5) Have a clear CTA (call to action) on your posts, so your ideal client can find you quickly and easily to take that next step!

6) Do your research - make sure there is...

Why did you want to start your business?

Why do you want to sell what you sell?

Why should a customer choose to spend their hard-earned cash with you?

These are super important questions because once you answer them you have your Business Mission!

Here's an example. My mission is:

"Support Business Mums to create a better work/life balance.
Boost sales in your business while still having the freedom to make memories with your family"

I have this printed out and stuck to my wall, just in case I need a little nudge in the right direction, or if I'm wondering why I'm doing all this. It's a great help!

So take some time, think about your Why, and once you have it written down, print it off, stick it to your wall and refer to it when you need to remind yourself WHY you do what you do

To help you get super clear on your mission I created this FREE printable for you!

https://www.dreambusinessassociation.com/businessmission 

Making connections with your ideal client/customer (target market) is a proven way for them to know, like and trust you. Which will lead to sales!

These 3 tips will help:

Call to Action!

If you want your ideal client to do something, tell them! They are so busy scrolling through social media, so if your post catchs their attention you need to keep it by giving them something to do next. A few examples are: Click here, Get it now, Discover it here, book a call.

Link

Add in a link after your call to action - Short links (like bit.ly) work best on Twitter (They're trackable too!), but use the full URL for Facebook posts. If you want to add a call to action on Instagram you can use a scheduling tool like Later.com to edit the link in bio so it's relevant to each post, or create a stand alone page on your website with your important links. You can see mine here: https://www.dreambusinessassociation.com/instagram 

Content

Grab a cuppa, your notepad and...

With over 1 Billion users on social media EVERY DAY (amazing huh?) it's even harder to get seen by your audience.

So read these tips, and get yourself some engagement!

Be consistent:

This one is number 1 for a reason - if you are finding after a few weeks you've still got only friends/family as followers then please don't be disheartened! This is how we ALL start! As long as you are consistent in your posts, your message and the quality of your images, you will gain an audience, but it won't happen overnight.

Photos:

These need to be the best of the best! Your customers can't touch or feel your products, so you need to get across in your photos how amazing they are! Natural light, consistent coloured background (I do love white!) and square cropped images are the way to go. If you can afford to get them done professionally I highly recommend it. I can share a few good product photographers - just get in touch!

Schedule:

If you can batch create your posts, and schedule them, you...

5 super useful tools that as a business owner you just can't live without!

Canva.com

This amazing website (and App) allows you to create amazing logos, meme posts for social media, posters, business cards, printables, and more! Totally customisable to your business branding (more on that later!) and the best thing is there's a free version! 

Hootsuite and Later.com

These are the 2 huge timesavers I've used for my social media for years - I couldn't do without them! I use both equally, Hootsuite is amazing for Facebook and Later was built with Instagram in mind.  Both have free versions offering 30 posts per month for free, so you can schedule your post and save some valuable time! 

Asana or Trello

These are 2 amazing 'To Do' List and planning my day/week/month tools!  I couldn't live without them!

Unsplash.com or Canva.com  

These are my go-to sites when I need free stock images!

Dropbox/Google Drive

Secure storage, sharing, and access to my...