If business growth has plateaued, and your business feels like it is just going through the motions, it might be time to give it a new lease on life.

For many small businesses, there comes a point in the business life cycle where they feel like progress has stopped. This is the stage where businesses either leap forward into a new cycle of opportunity and growth or wither and die. This can happen due to boredom, lack of motivation, or an inability to know how to progress the business into a new phase of growth and opportunity.

Reviving your entrepreneurial spark

As a business owner, it was most likely your entrepreneurial spirit, combined with a passion for a particular product or service, that enabled your small business to grow from an idea in your head into the profitable small business it is now, with its own identity and branding. Harnessing and rekindling your passion is the primary key to generating a new level of growth.

Once you have that renewed spark (and it often takes a period of being away from the business to allow the spark to be reignited), there are various ways and means of harnessing potential growth. Not all of these will apply to your small business for varying reasons; however, I’m sure something here will spark an idea for you to consider.

Strategic relocation

When you initially set up your business, your location would have been carefully thought about and analysed for its strengths and weaknesses. Times change, and businesses need to be flexible in terms of relocating to where the customers are. Perhaps your retail centre has become run down, and the new shopping mall across town is now the cool place to hang out for your target market. If this is the case, no amount of marketing can replicate the move to a new shopping centre. Perhaps other circumstances have changed in your present location. While these changes may have been out of your control, moving to a better location is something that you can control.

Often, businesses that sell a particularly specialised product are limited in terms of being able to either up-sell or cross-sell other product lines to existing customers. If your product line is no longer selling the way it has in the past, then reinvention is needed, even if it’s a new way of selling or a new angle to get customers interested. Just take a look at the way fast-food chains constantly bring out new limited-edition products to keep customers coming back.

Visual appeal matters

Perhaps your products are still popular and will sell well, but it’s your store that needs a makeover. Picture yourself outside two stores selling identical products: one has a cool logo and shop front, and the other looks tacky and dated. Which shop would you enter first? Customers walking past your store need a reason to not just turn their heads but to follow their feet into your store. From there, product placement, pricing, and customer service take over, but none of those things matter unless you can get customers through the door.

Leveraging social media for growth

Did you know that only 25% of small businesses in Australia proactively engage on social media platforms? This presents an amazing opportunity for the savvy small business owner, especially when you take into account the fact that over 18 million Australians actively use their Facebook account and spend, on average, over 17 hours a month on Facebook alone (Source: Meltwater 2023 statistics).

Engage a social media expert to see if your business can be tailored to take advantage of the fact that not all of your competitors are online. Facebook can be used in so many ways, from offering exclusive deals to advertising your menu online or just introducing new products to the general public. You’ll often get a great sense of the likely success via this medium as well before investing too much of your much-needed cash flow. Of course, there have also been some social media horror stories where inappropriate materials or comments were posted online for the whole world to see, so the small business owner must take an interest and not leave the whole social media aspect to one employee or social media specialist.

Collaborative marketing

Another way to spruce up your business is to collaborate with nearby businesses to form joint marketing material or to conduct cross-promotions and advertising. This can either be a suburb-wide exercise or just tailored to your specific location. One small example is the number of flyers you see on the bench at most coffee shops. With customers standing around waiting for their coffees, they should be seen as sitting ducks for a well-targeted business message, perhaps in the form of a simple flyer or business card in an easy-to-see location.

Charting a course for business renewal

Whether any of these ideas apply to you depends on the nature of your business and location. The message is clear: doing nothing is no longer an option, nor can doing nothing be considered “playing it safe”; doing nothing is a recipe for failure. Brainstorm with your staff, or perhaps even your suppliers and a few well-known and trusted customers, and I can guarantee that something will come up. You don’t necessarily need to reinvent the wheel, but a new paint scheme or a bit more air in the tyres may be all the spark your small business needs to start firing on all cylinders once again.