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Why Your Customers Aren’t Buying (And It’s Probably Not the Economy)
When sales slow down, what’s the first thing you blame?
For a lot of business owners, it’s the economy.
People don’t have money right now. Customers aren’t spending. Small businesses are struggling. It’s just a slow season.
And yes, outside factors can absolutely impact your business. But before we blame the economy, we need to look at something else first:
What’s actually happening inside your business?
Because in every slow season, there are businesses that continue to grow.
If the economy were the entire problem, every business in your industry would be experiencing the exact same thing. But that’s rarely the case. There will always be businesses finding ways to grow, adapt, and reach their customers, even when conditions aren’t ideal.
So when sales slow down, instead of immediately accepting that there’s nothing you can do, get curious.
Ask yourself:
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What can I control right now?
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Are other businesses in my specific industry or niche still growing?
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What is my data actually telling me?
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What can I test or change?
One of the few gifts a slower season gives you is time to figure things out.
If you’re spending less time packing orders or fulfilling sales, that time needs to go somewhere. Use it to analyze your data, look at your marketing, test new strategies, and figure out where the disconnect might be.
And there are a few places I would start.
1. Look at Your Visibility
Sometimes what feels like a sales problem is actually a visibility problem.
When was the last time you looked at how consistently you’ve been showing up?
And I don’t mean this week.
Look at the last 90 days.
Compare a period when sales were booming to what you’ve been doing recently.
Has your email frequency changed?
Have you been less consistent on social media?
Did you stop going live as often?
Did you pull back on ads?
Have you hit a little bit of burnout and started showing up less without realizing it?
Slow seasons usually don’t happen overnight. Marketing compounds, whether what you’re doing is helping your business or hurting it.
When your visibility starts to decrease, customers can very easily forget about you.
That might sound harsh, especially when you’ve worked hard to build a loyal customer base, but people are busy. They’re seeing hundreds of messages, brands, products, and pieces of content every day.
You have to give them a reason to remember you.
Staying Top of Mind Is the Marketing Game
This is one of the reasons we talk so much about email marketing at Boutique Bestie Solutions.
Email isn’t always about sending something today and immediately making a sale.
It’s about staying top of mind.
If you have a storefront but you aren’t emailing, running ads, consistently posting on social media, or finding other ways to reach your audience, why would someone randomly wake up and think, “I should go see what that boutique has today”?
The same applies to an online business.
You have to give people a reason to check in.
Your customer may not be ready to purchase today. But when she is ready seven days, two weeks, or a month from now, you want your business to be the one she remembers.
Take a look at the last year and ask yourself:
When was the last time I showed up consistently for 30 days straight?
No gaps in email.
No disappearing from social.
No starting and stopping your ads.
No completely changing the way you market based on whether yesterday happened to be a good or bad sales day.
Consistency creates visibility, and visibility keeps your business in the conversation.
2. Take an Honest Look at Your Messaging
Let’s say you look at the last 90 days and visibility isn’t the problem.
You’ve been showing up.
You’ve been sending the emails.
You’ve been posting.
You’ve stayed consistent.
Then it’s time to look at your messaging.
One of the biggest problems I see is generic marketing.
If your messaging could be used by practically any other business in your category, you aren’t really giving your customers a reason to choose you.
For example:
Women’s clothing for the everyday woman.
There are thousands of businesses that could say that.
What makes yours different?
Generic messaging creates a differentiation problem. A potential customer lands on your website or social media and can’t immediately tell what makes your brand different from all the other businesses selling similar products.
Your messaging needs to make the right customer think:
“This business gets me.”
Look at your Instagram bio.
Look at your Facebook page.
Read the headline on your website.
Look at the language you use in your emails.
Then ask yourself whether those words could belong to one of your competitors.
If they could, you probably have some work to do.
3. Stop Selling Features and Start Selling the Transformation
There’s another messaging problem I see all the time: businesses solving the wrong problem.
You’re selling the product instead of showing your customer what the product does for her.
Imagine you’re selling a pair of jeans.
You could tell me:
They’re soft. They’re stretchy. They’re comfortable.
Those are great features.
But why do I care?
Show me what that stretchiness actually means in my life.
Show me that I can wear those jeans to dinner, eat the pasta, and still be comfortable afterward.
Show me that they give me the look I want without making me miserable all day.
Now you’ve connected the product to an actual problem.
People want businesses to make something easier, better, faster, prettier, more comfortable, or more enjoyable for them.
That applies whether you sell clothing, provide a service, offer coaching, or run an entirely different kind of business.
Don’t just tell people what your product is. Show them what changes because they bought it.
When your customer understands the transformation, price becomes less of the conversation.
And you never want to build a business that has to win simply because you’re the cheapest option.
4. Make Sure You Have the Right Offer
Your visibility looks good.
Your messaging is strong.
You’re selling the transformation.
Customers still aren’t biting.
Now we need to look at the offer itself.
Sometimes you have the right product at the wrong time.
Maybe your summer inventory arrived late. The pieces are cute. They fit your customer. They absolutely could have sold.
But by the time you launch them, your customers have mentally moved on to fall.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the product was bad.
The timing was bad.
The same thing happens in service-based businesses. You can have an incredible high-level offer, but if the audience you’re marketing it to is still at the very beginning of the journey, there may be too large of a gap between what they need today and what you’re trying to sell them.
Positioning Matters, Too
You can also have the right offer and position it the wrong way.
Think about the difference between:
Get this top for $39.
Versus:
Invest in a piece you can wear season after season. Here are three ways to style it throughout the year.
The first makes your customer think about the price.
The second makes her think about the value.
Same product.
Different positioning.
Your goal is to make sure you have the right offer, at the right time, positioned the right way, for the right audience.
5. Pay Attention to Who Your Audience Has Become
There’s another piece of the offer equation that businesses often miss.
Your audience can change.
You may have identified your ideal customer years ago and built your messaging around her.
But your business didn’t stop changing after that.
Over time, your products, content, branding, social media, and marketing may have started attracting a different type of customer.
Now you’re creating marketing for the person you think is following you instead of the person who is actually there.
Pay attention to what your audience is telling you.
Who is buying?
What are they buying?
What emails are they clicking?
What content gets engagement?
Who is joining your list?
What products consistently perform well?
This is where your data becomes incredibly important.
Your data tells the truth.
Instead of continuing to market to the audience you assume you have, make sure you understand the audience you actually have today.
6. Ask Yourself the Hard Question: Would You Trust You?
Let’s say everything else checks out.
Your visibility is strong.
Your messaging is specific.
Your offer makes sense.
You understand your audience.
There’s one more thing to look at:
Trust.
People don't buy from businesses they don't trust.
It doesn't matter how great your product is if a potential customer is hesitant to give you their money.
This is especially important for someone discovering your brand for the first time.
Imagine they land on your Instagram page today.
Are there customer testimonials?
Do they see user-generated content?
Can they easily find reviews?
Do your photos look professional and authentic?
Does your website feel legitimate?
Is your messaging clear and human?
Is there visible proof that real people have purchased from you and had a good experience?
There are plenty of questionable companies online, so consumers have learned to look for signs that a business is trustworthy before purchasing.
This is where social proof matters.
Ask your customers for reviews.
Ask for testimonials.
Encourage them to share photos.
Show potential customers that other people already know, like, and trust your business.
The 5-Point Sales Diagnostic
So, before you decide the economy is responsible for your slow sales, run your business through this diagnostic.
1. External Factors
Am I immediately blaming the economy or something else outside of my control?
2. Visibility
Have I consistently stayed in front of my audience over the last 90 days?
3. Messaging
Is my messaging specific to my business and my customer, or does it sound like everyone else?
4. Offer
Do I have the right offer at the right time for the right audience, and am I positioning it in a way that communicates value?
5. Trust
Is there visible proof that gives a new customer a reason to believe me, trust my business, and spend their money with me?
Then I want you to take it one step further.
Look at Your Business Like a Complete Stranger
This can be uncomfortable, but it’s worth doing.
Pretend you've never heard of your business before.
Pull up your website.
Go to your Instagram.
Look at your Facebook page.
Read your bio.
Scroll through your product photos.
Read your copy.
Look for reviews and testimonials.
And ask:
If I were visiting this business for the first time today, would I immediately understand why I should buy from them?
Then ask the harder question:
Would I trust them enough to make a purchase?
Be critical.
Are your photos generic?
Does everything look overly edited?
Is your wording vague?
Does your website feel current?
Does your marketing sound like a real person or like it could have been copied from anywhere?
Look at your business through the eyes of someone who knows absolutely nothing about it.
You might be surprised by what you notice.
Look Inward Before You Look Outward
External circumstances can affect our businesses. They always have, and they always will.
But before we place all the blame there, we have to look at what we can change internally.
Look at your data.
Test your marketing.
Evaluate your messaging.
Reconsider your offers.
Pay attention to your audience.
Build trust.
Keep showing up.
The businesses that grow during hard seasons aren't necessarily the businesses that never experience challenges.
They're the businesses willing to look inward before they look outward.
Maybe there is an external factor affecting your sales.
But don't give that factor all of your power before you've done everything you can to strengthen what you control.
Businesses have found ways to grow through difficult seasons time and time again.
So why not you?
Need Fresh Eyes on Your Marketing?
Sometimes the hardest part is figuring out where the disconnect actually is.
At Boutique Bestie Solutions, we help boutique owners and e-commerce brands scale through email marketing, Pinterest marketing, SMS marketing, and proven growth strategies designed to increase revenue without adding more to your plate.
If you're ready for fresh eyes on your marketing, we'd love to help.
Learn more about our free marketing audits and our DIY and done-for-you marketing services at Boutique Bestie Solutions.