Thomas Edison once said, “The value of an idea lies in the using of it.”
All successful businesses start with an idea, followed by thorough implementation.
This emphasizes the above quote which explains the need to implement ideas effectively.
However, this article is not going to address any idea. Rather, it’ll discuss processes and things to implement before starting your business.
According to Codeless, 20% of businesses fail in their first year of operation while over 70% fold up after ten years.
As a business person, you don’t want to be in this situation as the goal of starting your business is to remain in business and be profitable for as long as possible.
For this reason, here are 5 key things to do before starting your business. Adhering to this guide will improve your chances of success.
1. Research Your Industry
Logically, you do not go blindly into a business you have little or zero idea about.
In addition, having ideas about a business should not be on the surface, but rather, in-depth knowledge and understanding of its risks, potentials, and operations.
Each business has its intricacies and uniqueness. Hence, take time to study what drives yours.
Below are the core things you should research about:
A. Established Companies In Your Niche
Having been in business before you, they have witnessed more challenges but scaled through. This means they’re doing something right.
Study them to learn what they’re doing and their processes.
The truth is no existing business would reveal its secret of success to anyone, just as Coca-Cola and KFC have kept their recipe a secret for decades.
Regardless of their level of secrecy, you can learn a lot from their advertising strategy, branding, and how they keep evolving.
Take time to study thriving businesses in your niche, and pay close attention to details as everything matters.
B. The Market
This will help you gather and analyze data to fine-tune a strategy that will work for you.
Various tools can streamline and enhance the accuracy of your market research; they can help identify trends, analyze competitor data, and understand customer behavior more effectively.
Here are some of these tools:
- Exploding Topics: It identifies rapidly growing topics and trends, helping you stay ahead of market changes.
- BuzzSumo: It analyzes the most shared content across social media platforms, providing insights into what resonates with audiences.
- Crimson Hexagon: It offers deep social media analytics and audience insights, allowing you to understand public sentiment and trends.
- MonkeyLearn: An AI-powered text analysis tool that helps you understand customer feedback and extract valuable insights from unstructured data.
- IBM Watson Market Insights: It leverages AI for detailed market analysis, competitor insights, and trend predictions.
- Semrush: A comprehensive digital marketing toolkit with market research features to analyze competitors, track keywords, and understand market dynamics.
- Tableau: While primarily a data visualization tool, Tableau’s AI capabilities can help analyze complex market data and present it in an understandable format.
C. Your Audience
This allows you to gather information about the people in your audience [prospects] and to understand their needs, values, and attitudes.
Doing this will prepare you for what to meet and how best to satisfy your prospective customers.
2. Create A Business Plan
“To fail to plan is to plan to fail.”
If you are starting your business without a concrete business plan you may be heading toward failure.
A business plan maps out essential parts of your business like creating branding strategies, picking a location, and creating pricing strategies, all before starting your business.
You will get a holistic view of your business idea when you create a business plan, and you’ll also get clarity on how to bring it to fruition.
Below are five reasons why you need to create a business plan:
- Gives your business clarity and a foundation for success.
- Legitimize your business.
- To secure funding from investors.
- To employ the right hands.
- A guide to remind you of your needs.
3. Devise a Marketing Strategy
The next step is to use the data obtained from the two above-listed steps to draw out a marketing strategy for the business you are starting.
Marketing will push your business across to your customers, so you have no choice but to get it right.
There are things you can do that will enhance your marketing when starting your business.
It is the social media age; you can start by posting about your business idea, the progress you have made so far, and how your followers should look out for your brand in the next couple of months.
This builds up audience anticipation for your business.
There are Facebook and Instagram ads, alongside many more social media platforms to advertise on.
Also, do not just pour money into advertising as non-yielding results can become frustrating.
Instead, gather enough data to understand the types of advertising that work for your business model because not all business models follow the same marketing strategy.
4. Build A Brand
Each company and business has a uniqueness that makes them stand out and also makes their customer identify them, and that is called brand identity.
Brand Identity involves logo, name, and design.
Logos like that of Puma, Versace, Toyota, Adidas, Benz, and many more have stuck with us. And we can identify them as popular and trusted brands.
As you are starting, you need to make your business stand out and easily register in the subconscious minds of your customers.
You can start by designing your business logo for free on Canva or similar graphics platforms.
5. Create a Financial Plan.
How you plan to manage the inflow you make is crucial to the success of your business.
After carrying out your market research and writing out your business plan, one core thing you must follow through is your finances.
There must be a budget for every expense, and proper documentation too. This will help cut down unnecessary spending and maximize business profits.
Take Action On Your Ideas
Having an idea is not enough. Following it through is what will make your idea a success.
Take your time to break your ideas into plans and follow every key step listed above, and your chances of building a successful business will be higher.
Featured Image by RDNE Stock project on Pexels
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