Running your own business is a lot of fun! Setting your own hours, picking what projects you work on, designing dream products, working from anywhere in the world, and everything in between. As you grow your business, there will be times when you're not totally sure what decision is best for your business, and sometimes that means we make mistakes!

But mistakes are only human and something we should expect as entrepreneurs. The real question is, what do you do next? We can learn, adapt, and grow, or our mistakes can hold us back. We want to help you run the most successful business you can, so we're going to walk you through the solutions to a few of the most common mistakes and frustrations we hear from digital planner business owners and our Digital Planner Academy® program students.

There are three reasons why you may feel like you're making mistakes that aren't resulting in a return on the investment you've put into your business:

1. You're not making enough sales

2. You don't have any custom digital planner design inquiries

3. Clients and customers leaving negative feedback

You feel like your stationery business is failing

First of all, feelings of failure are completely normal. And while that fear may never completely go away, there are some circumstances that can put doubt in our minds. There are three of these situations that we can work through that can lead to potential mistakes or may be the results of a struggle we're facing.

You're not making enough sales

If it's been days, weeks, or even months since you've made a sale, you can start feeling like your business is failing. When businesses come to us looking for help making sales, there are usually a few reasons why they're struggling:

1. You don't have a niche - when you aren't creating your products with a specific target audience in mind, you won't know who to market your products to, or what problems your planners solve. This can mean you're using the wrong colors in your designs, selling in the wrong places, and advertising your products in places where your target audience isn't hanging out, which can lead to you feeling frustrated and like your business is failing.
   

2. Your planners aren't solving a problem - are you wondering why your digital planners aren't selling as successfully as you had hoped? Solution-based products are a nearly foolproof method to making money online. When you see a problem people are struggling to solve, you can create products that fill a gap in the market. This will make your shop in demand instead of just getting by.
   

3. There's no sales strategy - to encourage people to buy your products, you need to create a customer journey. This is a predicted set of steps your target audience is going to take as they interact with your brand. It starts with the initial point of contact – such as on social media. From there, they may read your posts, watch your stories, and start to build a relationship with you. Next, they click the link in your bio, find your shop, read your product description, and then add it to their cart and hit the purchase button! Having this sequence outlined means that you can determine what you need to do at each step in the journey to make sure they make it to the end! When you don't have a clear customer journey, potential buyers are going to be confused and leave your shop before making it very far.

You don’t have a launch plan

You’ve designed your products, now what? There’s more to launching your business than adding a few planners to your Etsy shop, we want to make sure that when you announce your products, you have a super interested audience lined up and waiting to buy from you! This means that you need a launch strategy.

But we need to back up a step first — what even is a launch? Launching is a method used to build an engaged audience that resonates with your brand and wants to buy your products when they are released at a predetermined time. A launch plan will help you feel less stressed during the weeks leading up to when you share your business with the world and you’ll feel more confident that the work you’re doing will all pay off.

So instead of giving in to that urge to drop products as soon as you’ve finished designing them, we suggest packaging them together in collections that you can launch only a few times a year instead of each week or month.

When it comes to launching your digital stationery, there are three common mistakes we see:

• Not completing the whole launch plan - in our free training and signature program Digital Planner Academy®, we teach a four-step launch plan that aids you in having as successful a launch as possible. When you get a bit too excited and start skipping steps, important parts of your launch may start falling through the cracks and cause you to not make as many sales as you could.
  

• Not building a waitlist - one of the most important parts of a launch is the feelings we create. A successful launch will excite your audience and get them to celebrate your new products right alongside you. A waitlist is an email list where you can nurture potential customers and give early-bird access to your products so you can get feedback before the rest of the world has a chance to shop your launch.
  

• Not doing research - a lot of us started our businesses with an idea in our minds, but how far did we pursue that idea? Did you dive into the creation phase and skip over market research and niching? When you aren’t sure what people need your products or where to find them, you’ll have a much harder time selling your products. This is why we recommend involving your audience in the product creation phase of designing a planner!

Lead Magnet and Freebie Strategy

We just talked a little bit about building a waitlist for your brand, and to do so, you need to be email marketing. To start getting people interested in an exclusive email community, you need a lead magnet. This is a free reward for people joining your email list. Think of it as a trade — potential customers give you their name and email address and in return, they receive free value to help them reach a specific goal!

Starting an email list without a lead magnet strategy is a common mistake we see, but it’s also an easy one to fix! Select a lead magnet based on your audience’s struggles. What problems do they have? How do your products solve those problems? How can you help them get one step closer to finding the solution to their problem? It has been said that the best lead magnets are the ones hurt a little to give away for free. Your lead magnet should be packed with value!

✨ Pro tip: You can see this advice in action through our free 5-day training, it’s the most value we’ve ever packed into a free event to help you design and sell your first digital planner! Learn more here.

Here are three different lead magnet ideas you can set up in an afternoon:

1. Product sample - first-time digital planner purchasers may be a little hesitant to dip their toes in before they invest in a digital planner. A risk-free solution to this problem is by offering a free sample! You could offer a mini digital planner or a digital notebook as a free lead magnet.
   

2. Free quiz - people love to feel involved! An interactive quiz is a perfect way to keep your audience interested while helping them answer the questions that may be on their minds. A quiz caters to the unique needs of each person in your audience since a quiz will have multiple outcomes determined by the quiz-taker’s answers, but a random freebie lacks that personalized strategy that ultimately leads to success. We teach all about how to scale with quizzes in our signature program the Digital Planner Academy®, learn more here.
   

3. Digital planning guide - this is your chance to educate your audience on the world of digital planning and position yourself as an expert. Prepare your potential customers for the transition from paper planning to digital planning by helping them find the tools they’ll need, choosing the right planner, downloading the right apps, and answering their frequently asked questions. By the end of your email sequence walking them through the transition, they should be ready to buy one of your planners and you can offer them a discount code as an incentive to do so!

When starting your digital planning business, there are a lot of steps to consider to have a successful launch of your Etsy shop. We want to give you the confidence you need to improve the lives of your customers! In Digital Planner Academy®, we'll teach you each element of six milestones you need to run a successful business and grow it to reach your goals! You can read all about these six milestones and hear how we've helped hundreds of students build the businesses of their dreams by clicking here!

Pin for later!