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Tips to Avoid Startup Failure

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The unfortunate truth is that most startups fail within a year of existing. Of course, if you’re about to start a new business, you’ll want to do everything you can to avoid that fate. But if you rush in without considering what might go wrong and how your business might fail, you’ll be vulnerable to that very same fate.

We’re going to talk today about some of the things you’ll need to do in order to reduce your risk of failing in the first few months or the first year of your business’s existence. Each of these ideas will put your new business in a much better position, so read on to find out more.

Address a Need That Exists in the Market

First of all, you need to make sure that your business is addressing a need that genuinely exists in the marketing. If you’re trying to plug a gap in the market that doesn’t really exist, that’s not going to go too well for you. The most common reason why startups fail is because there’s not enough demand out there for what it is they’re trying to offer. So do your research and make sure you’re providing something you think people will really want.

Ensure Financial Stability

Financial instability and running out of funds is another one of the most common reasons why startups fail. You obviously don’t want that to happen to yours, so make sure that your finances are all properly planned out and you have a clear plan for how you’re going to fund all of the plans. That might mean having to look for external investors who can back your idea in order to push it forward. Don’t rule out that possibility.

Understand How You’re Going to Compete

Most startups are outcompeted when they’re starting out, and that’s understandable. Most startups find themselves up against more established and better funded rivals who simply know how to complete better than they do. That’s why you need to have a plan in place for how you’re going to compete with your rivals in the market and ensure you don’t get left in their dust. Put a strategy in place and stick to it over the long-term.

Learn What Makes a Good Startup

It’s in your best interests to really understand what it takes to succeed as a startup. Do your research and talk to the owners of other startup companies about their experiences and what they learned in their early years. By taking the time to understand the attributes of the best and most successful startups, you’ll be able to put yourself in a much stronger position moving forwards, and that’s the way you want it to be.

Build a Good Team of Ambitious People

Having a good team of people in place is something that’s really important. Building a team matters and if you don’t have the best possible people with an ambitious approach to doing business on your side, you’ll struggle to get off the ground. The team needs to be compact and well-balanced. Hiring too many people can be just as damaging as hiring the wrong people from a financial point of view, so try to keep that in mind.

Ensure Leadership is Strong

The way in which your new business is led will make a big difference. Early on, you’re going to experience a lot of problems and challenges along the way and the way in which the leadership of the business handles and overcomes those challenges will have a big impact on how successful it’s likely to be over the long-term. The company’s leadership needs to be clear and it needs to have vision if it’s going to steer the business ably.

Get Feedback From Customers

Your first few customers are, of course, very important to your startup. You’ll also want to make sure that you’re getting as much feedback as possible from those customers. They can tell you where you’re going right and where you’re going wrong. As a new business, you’re not going to satisfy customers 100% of the time, so it pays off to understand where and how they’d like you to improve.

There’s no shortage of ways in which you can help your new business find lasting success. But first of all, get through the awkward startup phase and create the foundations you can later build upon. You’ll be able to protect your startup and avoid early failure if you make the most of what we’ve discussed here.

5 Considerations for Thinking Like a Global Business

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Global Business|5 Considerations for Thinking Like a Global BusinessEvery entrepreneur is looking to tackle the world. When you are trying to build up brand awareness they say you should think globally. But thinking globally is not as easy as putting your platforms with a “.com” suffix. Instead, think about what it really takes to think in a global sense. Because it’s not just about marketing, or ensuring a product is able to travel far and wide, it’s about so many significant components.

Strategies

There will be opportunities to get the appropriate strategy underway. There will always be opportunities that others are not able to see or do. Learning to grow your business is about understanding where the market is going. When you start to have a sixth sense for which way the tide is turning, you can start to put little components in place. For example, when you are promoting your company, you can certainly take advantage of multilingual SEO best practices because this will cater to a wide client base, but in order to grow effectively, you’ve got to have the foresight to spot new trends. This is why thinking big is about strategy first and foremost.

The Global Vision

You must think globally from the offset. While you may believe that it’s about thinking on a grander scale, there’s a lot to be said for getting the right advice. For example, there will be numerous jurisdictions and regulations in place. You may also want to acquire tax advice, but also make sure that you have deep insights into your customer base. Growing a business from small to large is about scaling it up. If you do not have an insight into what the customer needs in Timbuktu when you are struggling to get the customers in Tampa on your side, it could very well be because you’ve not thought globally straight from the offset.

The Importance of Restless Innovation

We may have one core product, but it may not prove effective in a variety of environments. Each company has to build upon innovative products. But this isn’t where the line is drawn. It’s about making sure you have an open mind to be successful. Having a constant drive for innovation is about going into new territories, literally and figuratively.

Using Guerrilla Marketing Tactics

Marketing is vital. From search engine optimization to sponsorships, you need to establish credibility, and from there, you can start to build a solid marketing strategy based on providing impeccable customer service with a solid product. Getting an understanding of why you need to set the prices at a certain level is about guaranteeing the right customers can access your products, so you can build upon this, ensuring that you have a business that is global in stature, while also being accessible.

Analyzing and Measuring

In order to determine if a business is working on a global scale, you need a transparent system for measurement. It’s not just you and the marketing team that needs to understand what is going on, but every member needs to realize what their part is in the success of your company.

Useful Tips To Help Your Business Run Smoothly Post-Pandemic

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Post-Pandemic|Useful Tips To Help Your Business Run Smoothly Post-PandemicComing out of this pandemic will be a pain for everyone, but even more so for businesses trying to adjust and come out strong.

Things will have, no doubt, changed in some capacity. If they haven’t, well, maybe you should consider freshen up your look, style and technology.

So, let’s consider some key points once you’ve planned to open.

Getting Back To Normal

Being closed for potentially up to a year has been devastating for many small businesses, larger too but usually they have the capital to survive.

Therefore, it stands to reason that you may not know how to return to operating a business once everything is safe to do so.

Consider your employees, if you have any. It’s only right and fair that they are involved with the discussions of reopening as much as possible.

Once open, try and reintegrate yourself and the whole team on a smaller scale. Don’t take too many orders and don’t open everything on day one. Take your time, have fun with it, don’t overwhelm yourself or your team.

Using New Systems

If your business hasn’t been operational for a while, then it may just be that a few of the old methods and systems are out of date.

That’s okay though, fortunately this is the perfect time for you to try and look for new things. Maybe your software/hardware needs updating? Or maybe it’s your actual equipment that needs looking at? Have a browse around your industry area and see what’s new, or if you’re innovative, then now is the perfect time to start creating and discovering.
Even if you decide you want to stick with what you know and what you’ve got, you can’t go wrong implementing a computerised maintenance management system, or CMMS for short.

If you’re not too sure what this refers to, it is basically a system that centralises all maintenance requests and general information. Making it easier than ever to get issues fixed, track down old reports and get updates as you go.

It’s really worth investing into a CMMS. It will save you money long term when it comes to fixes, and will make you feel incredibly professional too, which is a big bonus.

We are living in the future now, where CMMS itself is evolving into an even greater beast, a mechanically organised beast.
Introducing, Intelligent Maintenance Management Platform, otherwise known as IMMP. It’s the next logical step in maintenance software, giving you real time-saving predictions, intelligent suggestions and even task automation, based on data collected from all kinds of native apps, integrations and even IoT technology.

Rebuilding Customer Loyalty

If you’ve been gone a while, maybe even longer than some competitors, then it’s possible that your customer base has been damaged. Whether they have moved on to rivals or just not interested in your products or services now.
So how do you regain that customer trust again? You really need to work hard on personalisation and customer service.
Prove to them why you’re the best at what you do and what you’ve got to show them.

How to update your website for a profitable post-Covid push

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COVID-19 has raised serious questions for businesses, primarily how can they respond to the crisis and what changes will it cause going forward for consumers? Businesses are always looking for new ways to survive the peaks and troughs of consumer behaviour, and with lockdowns starting to lift, there are several ways for businesses to strategize to make the most of the post-COVID period.

Be clear about brand purpose

Many brands stuck to the side lines with traditional marketing until the outbreak was under control. But post-COVID, ensure that the marketing you put out to your audience is purposeful and considered. You don’t want to appear to be profiting off the misery of the pandemic, nor is it the time to poorly execute marketing campaigns in a bid to be seen as a ‘good’ company. Make sure that the messaging on your site is clear and simple, and above all sensitive, without being overly salesy.

Evaluate product offerings

It’s no secret that the pandemic has forced us to rethink how we live our lives each day, so businesses need to take this into account when it comes to their products and services. Some products will now seem irrelevant to the users’ needs while others will be more important than they once were, given the situation we now find ourselves in.

For example, if your products or services are primarily aimed at outdoor or in-person events, these may not have been necessary to your audience throughout lockdown. It’s important that businesses take this opportunity to reevaluate their audiences’ needs so that they’re as relevant as possible for your target audience, which can also help you mitigate any dip in sales from the past year.

Consider the customer experience

With more of us at home than ever before, businesses need to develop new strategic perspectives and reshape the customer experience. One way businesses can achieve this is to consider the user’s journey and the added functionality they can include to improve the customer’s digital experience.

“We improved the functionality of our website during the pandemic to improve user experience and enhance the online shopping journey of our customers”, say printing specialists You Love Print. The business enhanced their site to automate shipping costs as customers added products to their cart, for a more efficient shopping journey and to provide real-time information to users. Consider similar ways in which you can improve your website to create a better experience overall.

Reassess SEO

Businesses with an online presence should already be optimised for search engines, but post-pandemic, it’s more important than ever that your site appears high up in the rankings for your key search terms. This is even more crucial for brick and mortar stores who haven’t been able to rely on foot traffic to gain sales.

With more people shopping online than ever before, SEO should be a priority for any business, post-COVID, but companies need to take a different approach going forward. Businesses need to improve page loading times and speeds, to help customers navigate your site more easily, and create evergreen content within your niche. It’s also important that Google My Business listings are optimised for local search.

Ramp up digital interactions

Use this opportunity to promote apps, mobile tools and digital transactions. If your business doesn’t already utilise these tools, now is the time to consider how you can innovate to deliver your product or services in a digital way. Think about how you can offer further assistance to your customers and use digital tools to deliver these offerings in a personalised way.

Buyers want organisations to treat them as individuals and digital interactions can be an effective way to achieve this level of personalisation. Post-pandemic, customers will be seeking out more personal interactions, which is something businesses should strive to offer.

Final thoughts

Case numbers are finally starting to decrease and while it’s difficult to know when normality will be completely achieved, businesses can start to consider ways to ramp up their activities to increase sales. Your business should find ways to mitigate the losses experienced during the pandemic by adjusting marketing strategies, innovating and focusing more on SEO to make the best out of this challenging situation.

The Types of Business Model You Might Want to Consider for Your First Company

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StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |Business Model|The Types of Business Model You Might Want to Consider for Your First CompanyThere are many decisions that need to be made when you’re looking to go into business for the first time. If you want to find lasting success, it’s important to get the fundamental decisions right. Among these is the question of what kind of business are you actually going to operate in terms of its business structure and its function and purpose within your chosen industry. We’re going to explore some of the options today, so read on to find out more.

Manufacturer

First of all, you might want to consider operating as a manufacturer within a particular niche. The manufacturing of supplies, products, parts and plenty of other things is always important and always will be. Manufacturers are relied upon by lots of different businesses operating within many fields and sectors. The startup costs can be high, but the profit margins can be strong too with the right setup and approach.

Distributor

Logistics and distribution has long played a vital role in the functioning of modern economies, and that’s truer now than ever before. Getting products and supplies to where they need to be in a timely manner is important, and any holdups in distribution can have knock-on effects for all kinds of other businesses too. That’s not something anyone wants to be dealing with, and it’s why reliable distributors matter.

A Franchise

If you’re looking to start a business that’s going to be less challenging to startup and that comes with a ready made idea, it makes sense to consider a franchise model. You can start a tax preparation business, a fast food chain and pretty much anything in between with the use of a franchise model. It definitely takes some of the hard work out of getting your very first business off the ground.

Retailer

Selling directly to the public is one common way to form the premise of your business. Retail companies can also focus on B2B sales within a particular business niche however, so that’s something that you might want to explore too. Succeeding with a retail business means having good sales people and offering strong customer service, as well as an ability to deal with all kinds of problems as they arise.

Ecommerce

If you want to get into sales but you want your new business to be online-based, it makes sense to consider the ever-expanding option of ecommerce. Of course, as we’re all buying online more than ever today, ecommerce is bigger than it ever has been, and there are certainly opportunities out there for you to take advantage of if you want to. It’s definitely a business model worth exploring if you want to keep startup costs low.

Each of the options we’ve discussed here is worth exploring because each business model we’ve mentioned is important and matters in its own right; there’s no doubting that. But what’s right for you will depend on where your skills lie and what you want your business to be, so give this some thought.