When no risks are taken, there is no chance for a reward to be achieved. For a business model to continue seeing success, it needs to evolve over time because people evolve over time. Technologies are continually improving. If a business gets stuck in a world where they keep doing things because “that’s the way we’ve always done things,” then that is a journey which will inevitably lead to failure.

Target Canada is a prime example of this. In just two years of operation, the 133 store chain has decided to leave the Canadian market for good. It’s mistake? Assuming that operations in Canada would be similar to that of the United States. During the announcement, Brian Cornell stated that Target Canada had lost money every day.

More Marketing Doesn’t Save a Business

Many executives have a theory that goes something like this: maybe if we spend more money on marketing and make ourselves attractive to [fill in your favorite customer demographic], we’ll be more successful.

Unfortunately this thought rarely creates success. More marketing is not a substitute for ineffective business practices. If you’ve already got customers coming into stores like Target Canada had and they aren’t buying things, what will happen with more marketing? You’ll get more customers into a store that are still choosing not to purchase anything.

Sometimes going on social media is the approach. Engaging customers is a great tactic to use, but it also comes with a certain risk. People generally talk about the negative experiences they have with a business online and rarely talk about positive experiences. Businesses are expected to provide a positive experience. Engagement usually creates some feedback that is difficult to hear, which means it is ultimately ignored.

Social media must be part of a holistic approach. You’ve got to change the actual dynamic. You must choose to innovate. Once that happens, then you can begin a new marketing effort

Businesses Choose Whether or Not to Become Innovators

Change means risk. There is a chance that a risk may not pay off. Circuit City discovered that the hard way by losing over $100 million on their DivX product. Sometimes ideas are ahead of their time, like Microsoft’s tablets, which came out a decade before the iPad. Even looking at the struggles of McDonald’s right now show how quickly a company can begin to decline when changes aren’t received as well as expected.

Small businesses are not immune to the need to change. Failing to innovate and change is one of the top reasons why small businesses fail and die. Innovation has to be a component of change, which means change cannot happen without risk. It is a choice that every business makes, whether they realize it or not. Avoiding a risk is a choice to not evolve or challenge history, tradition, or the other roadblocks that might stand in the way.

How to identify places where innovation can thrive can sometimes be difficult. Adapting new technologies into traditional routines inevitably creates growing pains. Throwing more marketing at a problem, however, doesn’t make that problem go away. It just means more people become aware of it. This creates a negative spiral that inevitably ends in failure.

Evolving your business model can be uncomfortable, but it can also create enormous success. That’s why change, not more marketing, is so important.

Karima-Catherine is the co-founder of Red Dot Digital, a digital agency that strives to deliver top-notch solutions to various clients.  Red Dot Digital drives real, meaningful, quantifiable business outcomes for companies. Karima-Catherine is also the co-moderator of #MMchat, a Twitter weekly forum which focuses on business, marketing and social media.  

Connect with Karima-Catherine:

karima@reddotdigital.net

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