If what you have been doing isn’t working anymore and your profits are declining, it might be time to make some drastic changes. Instead of changing just small things, which often has little impact, try reinventing your whole business from scratch to shake things up and get a stale business moving again.

Change Your Industry

One reason profits might be down is if the entire industry has been hit. If everyone else in your industry is having a hard time as well, the answer is to change industries. Of course, you can’t very well switch to a completely unrelated industry and abandon all your contacts and clients. Instead, try switching to a related industry.

When the economy crashed in 2008, many of the “help men get dates” businesses took a huge hit. Many businesses that used to be bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars a month were suddenly struggling.

One successful entrepreneur moved into the “help women get dates” industry. The move turned out brilliantly and helped him save his business.

No matter what industry you are in, there are probably half a dozen side industries you could move into. If your main industry is having trouble, try expanding to a different, but related industry.

Launch a New Product

Nothing brings in new energy such as the launching of a new product. Apple had been struggling for some time before the iPod came out. The Apple 3 was a colossal failure, costing hundreds of millions of dollars. The drama of Steve Jobs leaving and then returning cost the company bad public relations, but the iPod, and eventually the iPhone, changed all that. The launch of a new product brought a lot of new excitement. The same applies to smaller businesses. What new products or projects can you announce that would get people excited?

Try New Marketing Channels

What are two or three kinds of marketing channels you have never tried before that are completely outside the scope of what you have done in the past? For example, if you have done search engine optimization and pay-per-click, why not try advertising in a college newspaper or buy remnant radio ad space? If you have only tried buying advertising in the past, why not try partnering for a big joint venture deal, or try guest blogging on a few big websites. One reason for declining profits might be that your marketing formula just isn’t working out right. Instead of making tweaks, try making big changes to see what works and what doesn’t.

Changing these three things — your industry, your product and your marketing — can really help get both the excitement and cash flow up again.

If your traffic, revenues or profits have been consistently going down for a few months, then what your business probably needs is a jump-start–an infusion of new energy, vision and drive. Follow these tips to take a stagnant business and revive it:

Bring on Someone New

If you can bring someone new on board, someone who is excited about re-kindling the new project, that can work wonders for your own sense of excitement. New ideas and new spirit are often easier to bring in when they come from the outside. Outsiders haven’t been exposed to the gradual stagnation of the business and will bring in a much fresher perspective. This new person doesn’t have to be an employee. They could be an investor (even if it is a minor stake), an advisor, a business partner or even a friend who has a vested interest in your success. The bottom line is, bring someone new on board. This alone can reignite an old project.

Increase Your Hours

Businesses that stagnate are often due to simple neglect. If you are running multiple projects and haven’t put the time into your old business, then now is the time to change that. Decide how much time you want to put into this business and put it on your calendar. Tell other people about your new commitment so you have an incentive to stick to it. Sometimes, all a business needs to flourish again is to be given more attention.

Set New, Ambitious Goals

It’s not good enough to just try and keep a dying business going. It is time to get back into the state of mind of the time when you were very excited about the business, when you used to dream about its success, and how exited you felt to set goals for its success. In order to give the business a jump-start, it needs an infusion of “moving forward” energy. Set a few new goals for the business, what you want to accomplish and why, and how it would it change your life if you succeeded. If you have a strong enough reason why to succeed, you probably will. Money is a good reason, but it also helps to have other motivators.

The most important aspect of jump-starting an old business is just committing to its success again. At some point in the past, you probably lost your commitment to your business’s success. Rekindle your commitment. Bring on someone new if possible, set new goals and increase your work hours. Pour new energy into the project and watch it flourish.

If you are like most internet entrepreneurs, you will probably notice you spend a disproportionate amount of time checking Facebook, Twitter, your email or your web statistics. How much productivity does this cost you and how can you cut down on this productivity loss?

The True Price of Socializing

If you check your Facebook for just five minutes, two or three times a day, plus your email another two or three times a day, that doesn’t seem to be than very normal online behavior, but in reality, the costs are huge.

Let’s say each time you decide to check Facebook, it interrupts your concentration and costs you momentum in a project. In addition, it takes you an additional ten minutes or so to get back in the groove of what you were working on. While you are on Facebook, you might see a cool link or video, or perhaps a comment on a friend’s wall that you want to discuss; you then get sidetracked and spend an additional five or ten minutes. When you add it all up, each distraction could easily cost you fifteen to thirty minutes of productivity.

You can just check your email once at the beginning of your work day and once at the end and still address all the important emails in a very reasonable time frame. And even with 1,000 friends, you can easily view all the posts that were posted in a day in about twenty minutes by checking Facebook just once a day. The cuts in productivity aren’t necessary. You aren’t missing out on anything by streamlining your online social networking.

What to Do about It

As mentioned above, one very effective system is to just check your email or Facebook once at the beginning of the workday and/or at the end of the workday. If the interruptions feel like an addition, consider getting a site blocker for a short period of time. Even if it is just for two weeks, it can help you get in the habit. Set up the site blocker so Facebook.com, Gmail.com, Twitter.com, etc. aren’t accessible during work hours. That way you won’t even be tempted to access those websites.

Also consider trying a productivity monitoring system. These are systems that will watch how much time you spend on email, on work and on websites such as Facebook and report it to you at the end of the day. You will probably be shocked at how much time social networking takes when you see the numbers.

You now know how much online social networking can be costing you in terms of productivity. You also know a number of ways to break this habit. Remember that adding just an hour or two to your daily productivity can mean a lot of real money added to your bottom line in a few months of time.

Creativity is what will propel your business from being only average to being superb. Few businesses succeed by just being copycats. Instead, creativity in your marketing, your product and a number of other considerations all add up to giving you a powerful edge in business.

Creativity in Marketing

Creativity in marketing comes in many levels. At the top level, it is in the form of deciding how your company is branded, how you want your company represented in the minds of your users, and how you can create that impression in the long run.

At the next level lower, it comes in the form of deciding where to advertise, and whether you should use pay-per-click, search engine optimization, magazine ads or radio ads, or whether you should do something completely different, such as standing in a shopping mall parking lot handing out free samples.

One more level down, you have creativity in the actual advertisement and what clever ways can you come up with to catch attention and convince someone of the virtues of your product in the split second of attention that you will have in an ad.

As you can tell, creativity comes into play in just about every level in marketing. Marketers who just follow the traditional path can succeed; but marketers who understand the fundamental principles will see exponentially better results.

Creativity in Product Design

Even if you are selling something that has been sold for years, you can still come up with a unique product that makes your product or service unique. For example, Domino’s Pizza came up with the “Delivered hot in 30 minutes or it’s free” pizza. A laundry company came up with the “hang it outside your door and we’ll pick it up” concept. The secret is letting your creativity run wild, while also keeping a keen eye on what will work in the real world.

Creativity in the Little Things

Creativity can come into play in many other ways: The message on your voicemail, the shape of your business card, the freebies you distribute at conferences; the list goes on and on. The goal of creativity is to do something better than the way it is traditionally done. It is surprising because you are doing something that others wouldn’t normally think to do. It can be a little scary, but the rewards are worth it. Most success in business comes from the entrepreneurs who have the creativity and tenacity to reach for it.

As you can see, creativity can play a crucial role in just about every aspect of business, from marketing to product design to all the little things that go into the running of your business.

Customer loyalty can make or break your business. A loyal customer isn’t just someone who will buy from you time and again. They will also publicly talk about your business, defend you against criticism, refer their friends and family to your business, and in general do everything in their power to help you win.

How can you cultivate more customer loyalty? How do you create a culture around your brand that people want to help?

Connect with Your Customers Regularly

The companies with the most loyal customers are those companies that connect with their customers often. That means you are not just a distant brand or a faceless organization. You are real people behind a real business creating real value in the world. This connection can be through a company blog, through Twitter, through Facebook, through email or through in-person events. The more your customers feel as though they have a connection with you, the more loyal they will be.

Always Think and Talk in WIIFY Terms

WIIFY, or “What’s In It for You,” basically means you’re always putting the customer first. Instead of doing what might make your company the most money in the short term, you plan your business around what would benefit the customers most. Your customers will notice. Anytime you write a blog post, make sure your readers and customers will get something from it. This may seem obvious, but so many bloggers make the mistake of posting just what is interesting to them or their company, rather than writing something that will genuinely improve the lives of their readers. Always, always put the customer first. Think in “What’s In It for You” terms.

Ask for Feedback

How do you always deliver what the customer wants? By asking! Before you can deliver what they want, you have to first be absolutely certain about what it is they want. Feedback can take the form of surveys, focus groups or just a simple telephone call. Even if you have thousands of customers, you can still learn a lot just by picking up the phone and calling half a dozen of your most loyal buyers.

Over Deliver

In the end, it is only your product that matters. It has been said again and again that at the end of the day, your product is your brand. Marketing can help increase sales in the short term, but in the long term, the quality of your product(s) will become known on the marketplace. Make a great product and over deliver and that will be your reputation. The reverse is also true. If you want people to truly be loyal to your brand, then do everything you possibly can to over deliver.

If you do these four things – connect regularly, think in WIIFY terms, ask for feedback and strive to over deliver – you will very quickly build a company to which your customers can be fiercely loyal.