If you listened to last week’s episode and decided you need to love and be inspired by your business again, then this episode will show you how to successfully pivot your business.
At the moment, it’s getting hard to find content inspiration. Having a spring clean in the garden has inspired my one-day intensives to breathe fresh new life into your business. You can find new inspiration from every day activities. And it can be from the simple things.
It is easy to focus on what we can’t do but instead, if we focus on what we can do – we will find inspiration. Then we can breathe fresh air into our businesses.
How to pivot like Madonna
It may seem a strange comparison, but Madonna has consistently reinvented herself to stay relevant within the music industry. Her personally branding has evolved. And while she has reinvented herself, she has a strong personal brand that is recognised. There are golden threads that are carried through each pivot.
Stay relevant
Another example of relevancy is Janet Murray, who is ending her successful podcast and creating a new, more relevant one. Yet, she is keeping the golden thread and her area of expertise. What Janet is doing is shaking up her business.
If you are experiencing a lot of rejection from your ideal clients then it may be that your offer is not relevant for them. At this point, it is time to go back and look at what is relevant for your client. Then understand the impact that our current situation has had on you ideal client’s lives. It may be that their goal hasn’t changed but the delivery has. Or that the goal has become harder. In which case, you need to make it easier for them to reach this goal.
Your ideal customer wants and needs have not changed but they may have more problems that you need to solve.
Danger in changing you messaging
You need to bring your messaging back to these three things to anchor what you are saying:
- Your ideal client’s one core problem
- Your client’s one core goal
- Who you are serving
If you feel the need to broaden and try to help everyone, you will lose sight of who you are serving. Serving everyone will leave you serving nobody. Marketing is weakened without the anchor of a very defined client. How your client identifies needs to be sharp within your marketing messaging.
All these three things together help define your marketing. And it helps your client see you as the expert who can help them.
If you pivot, you want to do so from a strong position to another strong position.
Yet if your three anchor points have not changed, what you need to do is enrich your messaging with a slightly different angle.
James Wedmore is an example of this. James was very strategy based and enriched his messaging with talking about mindset. He brought in experts to talk to his clients around mindset as well. James still sell the same programme but enriched the product and messaging with mindset to better serve his clients. It also freshened up his business.
Freshen up your business
You can freshen up your business for you clients. This helps will the lifetime value of the client and encourages them to come back for more of what you offer.
You do not need to do this constantly because you will be getting in front of new people. And your message for them will be fresh.
How is your message different?
You need to look at how many other people are using the same messaging as you. How are you different? And what are you saying that is different? What is your unique magic bullet?
Your audience might be new to you – but are they new to the message? Consider if you can talk about the same things but in a different way.
Level up your service
My epiphany in business is niching. When I first started business coaching I focussed on niching because that it what changed things for me in business. And I wanted to help more businesses do the same thing. Five years later, I have created a market leading business. My coaching business has moved on this time and I’ve now changed my messaging to become a market-leading coach and expert. This is what I help people to do.
You can see how the evolution in the messaging has changed as I have evolved and become more experienced. There has been a lot of in investment in myself – including time and mistakes – that I can share with others.
If you are taking people further then there may be a change to the goal and the problem. It also may mean that your ideal client has changed as well. You may be ready to serve a different client further along with their journey.
You can look at the customer journey and pivot to help your clients further along this path.
There are three stages to pivot your business
Clarity Stage
What is it that has changed? Look at what is different and what is fresh. This is everything that we’ve covered so far in this blog. Then bring this back into your business strategy.
When you have the clarity you can move onto
Creation stage
What needs to change within your business in terms of your outward messaging and marketing? If you have a content funnel that is working for your ideal client – you will need to change a lot of things in your business. You just need to make a start on this. You cannot change internally and not change the outward things.
However, you don’t need to do it all at once. You can start with your website copy and then start to nurture people. There are different ways of nurturing people depending on where they are in their journey. What do they want their experience to look like?
You will need to look at your business strategy and your funnel. Plan out the best thing to do first and create a plan of action. It may even be that you need to create a new funnel for existing clients rather than start something from new. And then downscale the products for new clients.
Overall, you need to understand what is your entry point. And this may need letting go of a previous audience. Pivoting means letting go of what no longer serves you.
Communication stage
How do you communicate this pivot? You need to stick your flag in the sand and say this will be different. Communicate this to your current clients and to new clients. It’s important to be transparent and communicate with your audience. Yet, lots of people put this off because they are worried about their current clients. Or they lack conviction in the pivot.
If you lack conviction, go back to the first point and make sure you have those three things in place to anchor your pivot.
Check in with yourself
It’s key to check in with yourself on each of these stages. And if you need help to understand how this translates across your business, book in your Re-design and Relaunch your business intensive here.
Check out last week’s episode here.