Categories: Business

Vital Startup Tips For Small Businesses

Running a business is hard, especially within these unknown times. With the majority of businesses failing within their first few years of operating it’s important to start on the right foot.

In this article, we will take a look at some of the best startup tips for small businesses so you can build a successful company.

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Focus On A Problem And Solve It

People may go into business because they have a passion within that area and sometimes that is fine, however as a business owner you should have a product or service that solves a problem. When you can fix that problem you are going to be in demand.

Dog walkers for example help busy people exercise their dogs when they are unable to. This may sound simple and it is, but some business owners will start a business, get a loan and then have no idea if there is a demand for their service.

You may also be too ambitious with the problem you want to solve. Some businesses are set up and want to tackle every possible problem there is. If you have the resources to do this it may work, but for most of us, jumping between different areas within a job is difficult.

For example, you may want to open a social media agency and you think that your customers will need PPC advertising, Social Media, Web Design, Graphic Design and much more. In some cases, they may need that but as a start-up, if you try and handle all of the above you are going to get into trouble quickly.

To get around this problem be sure to focus on one main service and do it well until you can expand your business. In the example above you could just focus on creating content for your client’s social media profiles.

Keep Costs Down

As a startup business and to established businesses, cashflow is vital. If you are spending your companies money on items you don’t need you could go out of business very quickly.

There are many ways to keep your costs down when starting a business and we will go through some of them below.

Only Pay For What You Need

Having office space looks good and in some cases, you may need it but don’t be too ambitious when signing up for your first office and be sure to explore the market before committing to a long lease.

You may also want to consider a co-working space first before hiring a full office. You may also be able to cut down on the space that you need by only using your space for vital equipment.

Be sure to condense your furniture, computer equipment and anything else you can think of before hiring office space. Old training videos can be converted to DVD and stored in the cloud. You can either do this yourself if you have time or use an online conversion service. While old training manuals that you may have purchased from a sales rep can all be digitalised.

Cutting down on your physical equipment may sound over the top but it could save you hundreds of dollars a month on your bills.

Getting Clients

Saving money is important to all businesses but if you don’t make any money it doesn’t matter how much money you save. Finding a consistent way of getting clients is going to make or break your business.

Every business is different and how you find your clients are going to differ from someone else, but here are some tested methods that can bring in more customers to your business.

Cold Email

Cold email is by far the fastest and most cost-effective way to do business if you sell B2B. All you need is an email account and some prospects.

Some people find it hard to cold email because they think they will get in trouble or have people shout at them from the other end of the internet, but if you send personalised emails this isn’t going to happen. Personalized emails are not spammy and as a result, people aren’t going to shout at you if you send them one. Getting started with cold email isn’t hard but sending personalized emails at scale takes a lot of effort.

Here is where I would recommend using email templates. Email templates can help you send cold email messages at scale while still keeping your messages personalised. One tip when using cold email is to not copy the templates word for word, use them as intended as a template and adapt them to the way you speak.

PPC Marketing

PPC marketing is a great way of getting customers quickly, the only downside is you need money to start and you can quickly lose money too. With PPC or pay per click marketing, you pay a small fee every time someone clicks on your adverts. This can however be abused by your competition and they can click on your adverts costing you money.

PPC marketing is hard if you are a beginner and there are many ways to fail with it. If you find your PPC marketing is draining money from your business you could hire a PPC marketing agency to run them for you.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is another excellent way for a small business to gain customers. When it comes to social media marketing you need to stand out to get people interested in your services or products though as every other business has the same idea.

If you take a look at your favorite social media app right now and look at local businesses you will notice that most of them simply post something such as “here is my service, buy from me now”. That won’t cut it when it comes to social media marketing. After all, would you follow a business that only self promotes? I know I wouldn’t.

Social media gives your brand a voice so make sure to find it. You could build a serious brand or a light-hearted one, or anything else you can think of, simply put, give your brand a personality.

Build Case Studies

As a startup business getting clients and getting your offer right is the hardest part. Once you have a few clients and have your offer nailed on you need something to keep growing your business. That something is case studies. Having case studies allows you to niche down on your potential customers allowing you to sell more.

If you can become the go-to service in an industry it makes it much easier to sell your products to potential customers.