According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, around 20% of small businesses fail after the first year. If you’re not fully equipped to put in the hard work it takes to make your business work, you’re going to find yourself among the ranks of the 20%.
Becoming an entrepreneur isn’t easy. It takes hard work, determination, and lots of long days. But as long as you follow these basic entrepreneur tips, you’ll get your new business off the ground in no time.
1. Set Up a Great Website
If you want to grow your business, you’re going to need a website. Your website doesn’t have to be anything fancy or expensive, just a visually appealing place where future customers can come to see all you have to offer.
Having a solid website can help you generate new leads and increase your conversion rate. Offer promotions online when customers visit your website to generate some buzz about it.
2. Know Who You’re Up Against
Once you get your website up and running, it’s time to take a look at the people you’re competing against. Take a look at what your competitors are doing. Figure out the places that they’re lacking.
You can learn new things from your competitors. Strategies they have mastered could be new to you. Plus, you can figure out how to fill in the holes they’re leaving behind.
3. Pride Creativity and Ingenuity
It doesn’t matter what niche you’re in, you’re up against a sea of competition. That’s why it’s so important to be able to stand out from the crowd in new and creative ways. Be open to new ideas and different perspectives from all the people on your team.
If you’ve got a good idea, tell the world about it. Use your voice to promote creativity within your business and don’t be afraid to try something new and out of the box.
4. Get Good at Customer Service
You can have all the best marketing, a gorgeous website, and have people flocking to your door to buy what you’re selling. But if you don’t have good customer service, you’re going to go down in flames.
Customer service is a vital part of any industry. Unless you’re able to treat the customer with respect, give them an amazing experience, and take care of any issues they might have, they’re going to leave and never come back.
People talk about the experience they’ve had. They’ll tell their friends if you’ve given them extraordinary customer service, but they’ll tell everyone if you’ve given poor customer service.
5. Survey Your Audience
In addition to customer service, you’ve got to understand who your customers are so you can figure out how to best serve them. No matter how universal you think your product or service is, you need to identify and target a core consumer base, otherwise, you’ll be spreading your marketing effort too thin.
Give your ideal client a name, age, and gender. Figure out where they’d shop, where they spend their free time, where they work, and what they like to do. All of this information will give you a jumping-off place for your marketing efforts.
6. Learn Social Media or Hire Out
Social media is a fickle mistress. The algorithms change on every platform almost like clockwork and no two networks operate the same. You may think that targeting all social media companies would be your best bet to reach the most consumers, but this could wind up hurting you in the long run.
Identify the main social media apps that your target audience uses and spend most of your effort on those. If you want to handle social media yourself, you’ll have to do a lot of studying, trial, and error to figure it out.
Many upstart businesses find it easier and more cost-effective to use a social media marketing professional instead.
7. Build That Email List
Because of the fickle and often unstable nature of social media, having a concrete email list to use if one of your customer connection points goes down is important. It doesn’t matter if people leave Facebook in droves and stop interacting with your content there as long as you have their email.
Use your website to grow your email list and consider starting a bi-weekly newsletter to update your customers about your business. Incentivize joining your email list with discounts or other freebie offers.
8. Network, Network, Network
Networking is never more important than it is when you’re in business. You never know where new opportunities will arise or who may be looking for a business to partner with.
Focus on building professional relationships with folks in your area. If you’re in a small town, consider creating a group of small business owners to connect with and work together to build each other up.
9. Focus on SEO
SEO, or search engine optimization, is the best way to make yourself visible on the internet. It involves targeting specific search term keywords and using them in strategic places on your website and company blog. But, like social media, it can be fickle.
You can try to do your SEO on your own if you’ve got the time and resources to put into learning a new skill. But you may find more value in hiring out for this process too.
Follow These Entrepreneur Tips for a Successful Business
When you search online, there is no shortage of entrepreneur tips out there. It can be hard to know what is good advice and what is bad advice! But if you follow these basic tips for running a successful business, you’re on the right track.
Being a small business owner is hard work, but if you put in the effort and don’t give up, you’ll find success as an entrepreneur.
For more business insider tips, keep reading.