Realistic Growth
Let’s be honest, as a small business owner or freelance marketer, it’s a challenge trying o find the time to sit and reflect about your progress.
But it’s so important, how are you supposed to achieve realistic growth if you’re not taking a second to check that you’re actually growing?
For this year, I’ve made it my mission to grow the freelance stuff dramatically. And although I may have girl-bossed a bit too close to the sun I feel like I would not be in this position without regularly checking in on my progress and planning from there. The devils in the detail, and ever since I sat my A-levels I’ve kept meticulous notes of EVERYTHING that was or wasn’t worth tracking.
The hobby has worked wonders for me as I’ve gone onto start my own freelancing business. Where nobody tells you that you’ve got to be your own sales, marketing, and finance team. 3 years on I’m still not the master if all of them, but I’m a lot further than I would be without planning and note taking.
This is the thing, all growth is good. So many people aim for instant vitality or instant success without much thought into how they’re going to achieve it. I admire the fact they’re shooting for the moon, but more often than not they’re humiliated that they’ve ended up amongst the stars.
What’s so bad about stars? Stars are great!
They’re so great in fact…I recommend starting with the stars. Realistic growth means starting low, learning to keep this level of success consistent, and preparing yourself to scale up - and I’m a huge advocate of it.
One of my key selling points when I bring clients on board is the fact our growth is consistent and scalable. It’s not overnight vitality that disappears in a matter of days, or a one-hit wonder social post with no understanding about its success…it’s consistent, attainable, and scalable.
So how can you establish realistic growth in your business?
What works for me might not work for you. So in the interest of providing insight I thought I’d provide some other methods for achieving growth both in and out of your professional career.
Lay the groundwork
Set SMART goals, understand your audience, and build the foundations before you build the house. What can you bring to the table? What are your weaknesses? What are your customers weaknesses? Before you do anything or invest your time anywhere you need to know what you’re working with. Coming from a corporate background I’ve always found thinking of any activity as an hourly rate and return on investment. If you spent 20+ hours building the wrong audience, you’ve not gained anything…you’ve just paid yourself to waste time.
It sounds silly, but if you’re a really sales focused person - it really helps gain perspective.
That includes market research
In the same vein, you need to work out what you’re up against. What are other people in your space doing? Is it working? Over the past few years I’ve seen a lot of businesses outright ignore the need for competitor research, or just do it on Day 1. Neither should be the case - just as your business will evolve and flourish, your clients will too. To make sure you’re consistently staying ahead of the game I would recommend seeing what your competitors are up to monthly or quarterly. Personally, I’ve got into the habit of saving competitor posts whenever I’m on Instagram (which is multiple hours a day), and then take the time to go through them whenever I’m creating new content. That way, I have the ability to compare their progress to mine, see if there’s any talking points I can add my own take on and make sure I do better.
Worth noting here that this isn’t me telling you to plagiarise someone else’s content, if anything its the opposite. Your competitors have the same services, solutions, and benefits as you. At one point or another you’re both going to talk about the same thing. So why not see what they’re shouting about online and try shout louder?
KPIs are key
I think one of the biggest factors of realistic growth is your key performance indicators (KPIS). How do you know you’re on the track for success? Personally I set super realistic goals and markers for success. Not because it’s easy, but because the small wins need to be the ones that are valued. If you’re hitting the mini goals then the big ones will soon follow.
When I was younger I was very much a “shoot for the moon, and if even if you fail, you’ll still end up amongst the stars” kind of girl, but that was way before I even thought about a career in marketing. Any client in their right mind would run a mile if you consistently “landed amongst the stars”. Now I much prefer the idea of setting daily goals and long term goals. Daily/weekly goals tend to mostly be vanity metrics (likes, impressions, shares), but ultimately tend to contribute to the long term goals…which solidify my clients social media presence and make them feel just that little bit untouchable.
I find it helps massively with preventing client wobbles and even freelance catastrophes: if you to check you’re meeting your KPIs regularly then you’re more likely to find and prevent issues in your accounts before they snowball.
Consistency over constantly
Honestly, every time a client has asked how often we should post on X social, I’ve wanted to cry. Sure, there is an ideal post volume on pretty much all platforms, but that does not mean you should follow them.
If we had enough content to post 7-10 times daily then I would 100% be able to facilitate that, but is it something you can keep up in the long-term? For most clients, the answer is no. So why don’t we set a schedule thats a bit more achievable? There may well be an article from 2011 telling you the secret formula to going viral on Instagram, but all accounts nowadays value consistency more than constant posting.
So we might post less, but we’re consistent, we engage, and we build a community that is ready to shout about our content the moment we share it? That doesn’t sound too bad to me.
Organise your marketing
The world of digital marketing might be fast paced and hard to take hold off. But when done right it can really set your business up for the long term. Take Pinterest for example; I’ve seen some of my own pins go viral 6-10 months after posting, and stay consistently popular for 2+ years. Instagram may circulate content for 2+ days but the audience you build there are loyal to your brand and hard to get rid of.
If you’re a small business or marketing newb then I would highly recommend hiring a freelancer to help you streamline your social and set you up for success. It means you’d be able to be completely hands-off (if thats what you want) while someone with the skills and know how sets you up for realistic growth.