Adapt When Necessary

So what do you do when you discover that your business has a scalability problem? The good news is that not every scalability challenge requires a massive investment of time and money. Sometimes it’s just about finding a smart way to pivot or make adjustments. A local restaurant we worked with found themselves overwhelmed when they launched their online ordering system. While getting slammed with new business might seem like a good problem to have, it’s certainly not good when 50 orders pour in during the same 15-minute window and the kitchen is unable to prepare them in time! They couldn’t build a bigger kitchen and there was no room for more cooks, so what was their solution? They simply added a pickup-time to the online order form, limiting how many orders could be scheduled during each timeframe. This small change balanced the sudden demand, kept the food quality where it needed to be, and kept customers happy without causing burnout of the kitchen staff.

Sometimes It’s Just Not Meant to Be

There are instances when a scalability issue isn’t caused by a business’s processes or websites, but by the business model itself. A mobile notary service comes to mind. Notaries have a cap set by the state on what they can charge for their services. This means their potential revenue is severely limited, only added to by charging a small travel fee. Scaling a business like this by adding vehicles and staff increases overhead without enough added profitability to make fiscal sense. In this situation, more customers do not equal more success. It’s important to look realistically at these factors before investing too heavily in marketing or other growth efforts.

What We Do

How does Wild Iris consider business scalability when we are approached for marketing?

1. Website Performance: Is your website fast enough to handle a surge of traffic? Are there processes that can be streamlined to ensure efficient information flow, scheduling, or ordering?
2. Inventory/Service Capacity: Does your business have the capacity to deliver the services or products an increase in demand might call for?
3. Limitations: Are there bottlenecks that might cause problems during unexpected demand? Scheduling, fulfillment or shipping chokepoints?
4. Profitability Scaling: Do new customers bring profit, or do they actually reduce it because of the resources required to provide additional products or services for them?

Answering these questions before making large investments in marketing is the best way to make sure your dollars go their furthest.

Balancing Your Marketing Budget

Smart business growth happens in stages, and with planning. Running an ad campaign designed to double your business when you can only handle a 20% increase in demand is a fool’s errand. You endanger your customer relationships and your brand image when you can’t fulfill your part of the contract. Investing in infrastructure, adjusting processes, and training your team to ensure they are all ready for growth is vital. As you do this, you should scale your marketing to match. This way you can be sure your business is ready for the demand a successful marketing campaign will bring you, without worrying about overwhelming your capacity and disappointing your customers.

That said, balance by its very nature works both ways. Just as it’s a bad idea to take on more demand than you can meet, it’s also risky to hold back on marketing until the pipeline runs dry. By keeping an eye on customer order flow and recognizing early signs of a slowdown, you can begin to market before that becomes a problem. This approach helps you maintain consistent levels of traffic and avoid the “feast or famine” cycle that so many businesses live by. Marketing isn’t just a tool to encourage growth. It’s also a safeguard to keep your momentum from slowing.