Starting a business is not easy. It takes time to research the market, develop your product or service, built a client base, understand different marketing techniques and more, much more. It’s a risk, and that means all your hard work could leave you worse off; that’s if you don’t know how to maximise your effort and understand where you should be focussing your energy. That’s where we come in. Using our experience with startups, we have compiled a list of essential things you’ll need to know if you’re business is going to be a success.
Don’t Just Sell What You Want To Sell
It isn’t enough to just jump into business based on a product or service that you want to sell or provide. That alone won’t see you succeed. Usually anyway. Even huge successful startups like Uber and Airbnb were founded on services that were already already had proven markets. Taxis and hotels. What we mean is, make sure there is a market for your service. Make sure you’re selling what people are already buying. And try and find a niche in that market that you can make your mark in, and grow your business from. It is better to have a mouthful of cake than no cake at all.
Make Dough Fast
Without money coming in, you will not succeed. That’s an indisputable fact. Even the slightest flow of cash can keep you afloat while you establish yourself. A great way of ensuring this happens is by staggering the payments made to you for your services. Explain to your clients that you require an upfront payment of say 10% to 20%, and the rest they can pay upon successful delivery. This doesn’t just have to be the case for service-based businesses either. Retail can work in this way too. It is simply about how you phrase it. You could say that bulk purchases require a deposit to be paid while specialty items require an upfront payment as a means of insuring delivery is made within the specified time. The important thing is you get some money rolling in as soon as possible, otherwise you’re going to be heaping pressure on yourself.
Outsourcing
Outgoings can be the big killer, especially at the beginning. But there are ways of reducing your outgoings. For example, instead of hiring an a full-time designer, why not hire a freelancer. In addition to you reducing the risk of having full-time staff to begin with, it means you can pay for them to do a single task and, given the pool of freelancers is bigger than ever, if they don’t deliver to your standards you can hire someone else. They’ll also want to get the work done fast; it benefits them. Of course, this process isn’t limited to creative professions like design and content writing, you could outsource your HR needs or use this method for IT support. The list is endless.
Marketing
You’ll want to learn how to market, and fast. Yes, we just mentioned outsourcing, but marketing a cost you can keep down my learning the ropes yourself, which can be simple and cheap. Websites are the priority, and yet they cost virtually nothing; check out companies like Wix and RedSquare. The other big marketing tool is social media, which you can do on your own. It’s a matter of knowing what will work best for you; will it be Instagram, facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, all of the above. Research and then go for it, start promoting your business.