We have well and truly entered the age of the entrepreneur, with a plethora of technology at our fingertips; business no longer has to be about big budgets! Perhaps you’ve started to toy with the idea while your daydreaming at work? Maybe you’ve already got a fully-fledged business plan and the budget to back it up? Whatever stage you’re at, we all have to start somewhere. Let’s take a look at ten hot tips on making your dream a reality.
Stick to your passions
You may think you’ve got an innovative and fabulous money-making idea, but you need to consider if the business is true to your passions? With any job, if you’re only in it for the money, it won’t be too long before you become dissatisfied. When you become dissatisfied, you lack motivation, and your work will suffer. When you’re coming up with an idea for your business, it’s best to stick to your passions. Perhaps you’ve never properly used your degree, and now is the time? What would you ideally be doing for work in a best-case scenario? What are your strengths, and how can you utilize these into a business? From marketing app to online casino software or a craft business; start with your passion first.
The perfect brand
Branding is everything these days, so it pays to put a lot of time and effort into your brand. You can think of your brand as the personality of your business; it’s everything that represents you, from your logo and tone of voice to your values and ethics. It’s useful to think of your brand as how your audience perceives you; think about how you want to be perceived and figure out how you’re going to achieve that. Your branding will largely depend on your industry; you might want a brand with a formal and serious tone or something more light and quirky. Once you’ve got your values and mission in place, you can go about creating your target customer profiles and think about how you can best communicate your branding to them.
Customer profile
A customer profile is essentially a description of a customer-defined by their interests, values, hobbies, and demographics. You’ll need to do your target market research to find your ideal customers and then create a profile so that you know exactly who they are. The more detailed that your target market research is, the easier it will be to find your ideal customers and market your business to them.
DIY
When you’re starting out, you may not have a huge budget. With this in mind, it’s advisable to DIY as many tasks as you can as opposed to outsourcing them. You can do your marketing using social media plus create your own website using whichever free tools that you prefer. You can also write your blog, not forgetting to use some SEO tactics to draw people in. Blogs can be an excellent way to establish yourself as a thought leader and represent your knowledge. When it comes to marketing, video marketing is the way forward. Videos allow you to showcase your brand personality and get shared on social media (videos often get more shares)!
Embrace technology
As the technological world advances, entrepreneurs should seek to embrace technology as much as possible. If you want to future proof your career and your business, it’s an excellent plan to use all of the tools at your disposal. Social media is a great way to build your brand and form a relationship with your customers. It’s also a good idea to use project management software to assign your team projects seamlessly and keep productivity levels up. When it comes to your PPC marketing, Google Scripts can be a great way to improve the functionality of your campaigns. There are so many great pre-written scripts out there which can automate your bidding, budgets, and more. Scripts are great as you don’t need any coding know-how to make use of them.
Invest in UX
User experience (UX) is a design process used to make products that provide the best experience to their users. The experience should be both meaningful and relevant. UX design is often used to design the best websites. Users of your site should find the design pleasing to the eye, plus find everything easy to navigate. The process of interest to sale should be seamless, and nothing should require explanation to use; it should be simple. If you fail to get the UX design of your website right then, you’ll only drive potential customers away. Your website is a great way to show of your personality, so it’s essential to make an impression.
Diverse teams
The best operations are built with diverse teams. There’s no use hiring a bunch of people with the same backgrounds, skills, and attributes, as your organization will lack creativity as a whole. To build a creative team, it’s essential to hire people with a range of skills, education, ideas, and strengths. If you do this, you’ll build a team that can bounce off each other; and come up with innovative solutions.
Strict budgeting
If you’re making money, you could lose it just as fast if you fail to budget. Ensure that you thoroughly calculate all of your expenses so that you can track everything and see where you can stand to make savings. In the beginning, you’ll want to save as much as possible until the larger profits come rolling in. Many businesses begin as a remote company to save on rent and hardware costs. With a plethora of software out there, from video conferencing to collaboration tools, it’s possible to run a fantastic business from the comfort of your own home. If your business is struggling it can be a good plan to go back and rework the budget.
Lastly, starting your business as a side project can sometimes work better than quitting your day job. Of course, this will depend on your needs and time. Generally speaking, it can be a lot of pressure to give up your day job before you’ve found your feet. Starting your own business is an exciting venture but it does take a little planning. Attending a few seminars aimed at entrepreneurs isn’t a bad idea to start learning and networking.
