If you’re going to launch your own business, it’s vital to ensure you’ve got everything you need before you begin trading. Getting a startup off the ground is an exciting process, but it’s easy to get carried away. However, if you overlook the essentials, your business could flounder in its initial stages. To overcome the barriers that hold many businesses back, take a look at these six things every startup needs:
1. Products or Services
Of course, your business needs to offer products, services or both in order to have something to sell, but it’s essential to refine your range before you start marketing your business. Depending on the type of business you want to start, other companies might already be selling similar goods or services. Identifying how you can bring something different to the market and establishing your unique selling propositions (USPs) will help to ensure that your product or service range appeals to your target audience.
Furthermore, perfecting your products and services will give people a reason to choose your business over any others. This gives you the opportunity to grab a share of the market, outperform your competitors and gain the loyalty of your early customers and supporters.
2. A Corporate Persona
A corporate persona or brand makes your business unique and tells your target audience why they should engage with you. When you think of major corporations or global products, you associate certain values or characteristics with them, and this is where branding comes into play. Are your products luxurious, chic, and sophisticated or are they budget-friendly and affordable? Is your business known for its green principles and ethical trading strategy? Are you associated with outstanding customer service and considered trustworthy? Is a visit to your premises considered fun and memorable, fast and friendly or decadent and lavish?
Think about what you want your brand to be known for and ensure that your products, services, marketing, logos, and company name all reflect these values and principles. Every element of your organization has an impact on how your brand is perceived, so don’t overlook any aspect. Instead, take the time to consider what type of brand will appeal to your target demographic and shape your corporate persona accordingly.
3. Flexible Workforce
Every business wants to reduce its costs in order to maximize profitability, but it’s particularly important for startups to keep expenditure as low as possible. When budgets are tight, hiring staff can use up a significant proportion of your resources. Furthermore, a burgeoning startup might have varying labor needs, which makes hiring in-house employees a risky prospect.
By creating a flexible workforce, however, you can access the expertise you need at any time, but you won’t have to worry about investing in expensive recruitment drives or paying high salaries. Instead, you can hire freelancers on a temporary or fixed term basis to help you build your business.
Millions of professionals are supplementing their income by working as freelancers, which means you can work with experienced and talented personnel on an ad hoc basis. Even if you need to hire an in-house skeleton team, supplementing your staff with a flexible workforce gives your startup the ability to adjust to fluctuating demand and keeps your costs low.
4. Payment Systems
It doesn’t matter what type of startup you’re going to launch or what industry you’re operating in, you’re going to need to be able to accept payments. After all, you’ll be expecting clients and customers to pay for products or services, so make it as easy as possible for them to do so!
If you’re running a retail store or café, facilitating cash payments is a good idea. However, cash is becoming more obsolete as electronic payments continue to grow in popularity. Furthermore, facilitating electronic payments, such as credit and debit cards, enables you to accept payments online. If you’re not going interact with clients or customers on a face-to-face basis, this is critical to your success, so do your research before you decide which payment system to use.
Often, new business owners don’t realize that card processing fees have a significant impact on their profits. By finding the cheapest credit card processing services, however, you can retain more of the income you generate and enjoy greater financial success. With NadaPayments, for example, a simple surcharge system ensures that processing fees are kept to a minimum and passed on to the customer, rather than being funding by your business. The result? A secure and reliable system that enables you to retain 100% of the payment you’ve taken.
5. Customers
Customers are perhaps the most important thing a business needs, so make sure you have an effective acquisition strategy in place. It’s easy to assume that people will choose to do business with you once they hear about your startup, but this is rarely the case. Instead, you need to give them a variety of reasons to choose your brand over your competitors.
Some businesses use loss leaders to offer reduced prices to attract the attention of their target audience, for example. Others may release introductory discounts to prompt engagement, or you could choose to host a virtual event and turn your business launch into a star-studded event.
Attracting new customers might be your first priority when you’re launching a business, but don’t forget to incorporate a retention strategy into your acquisition plan. If you’ve worked hard and invested resources into acquiring customers, retaining them and transforming them into loyal brand ambassadors optimizes their lifetime value and increases the return on your investment.
6. Growth Plans
When you’re in the process of launching a startup, growing your business might feel like a long way off. If you don’t have a plan in place, however, you won’t know what you’re working towards or when your venture is ready to move the next level. You could even overlook the signs that your enterprise is ready to grow, which could mean that you miss out on lucrative opportunities.
Before you even begin trading, think about what your overarching objectives are and what you want to get out of your experience. If you’re hoping to launch a thriving business before moving on to another project, you’ll need an exit strategy in place. Alternatively, if you want to transform your startup into a global brand, you’ll need a growth strategy that takes you from a small business to a worldwide enterprise.
Although there are many ways to scale a business and grow a company, not every option will be right for you or your startup. By assessing your options now and identifying goals and key performance indicators (KPIs), you can monitor your success and ensure you’re heading in the right direction as your startup takes off.
Planning a Business Launch
New business owners are often eager to start trading and generating revenue, but the launch of your business is an achievement in itself. By using your launch as an opportunity to attract PR and publicity, you can use it as a marketing tool to increase brand awareness and prompt engagement. What’s more – you can use your launch as an opportunity to celebrate your success thus far and as a stepping-stone for future commercial triumphs.
