So, you’ve just had that
“lightbulb moment”. You walked out of your comfort zone, and decided to embark
on a new, yet unfamiliar journey that lies ahead of you – that is, Business Startup.
In the past, successful entrepreneurs spent years and years to gain
achievements and experiences during their business journey with their
counterparts. It is only with determination, perseverance, confidence, and
passion that will drive their motivation in building up a pathway that will
lead their business to its favourable outcome.
We all know that growing a business is not an overnight success;
and if it is, it will soon become your company’s worst nightmare. Working day
and night to launch a dream startup is insufficient to take you down the
successful part, unless you realise the importance of being able to prioritise
and implement the right strategies at the right time to the right target
audience of your business industry.
Pause for a moment, and have a read at the following article by
Ehsan Jahandarpour, a startup coach who has helped organisations such as Microsoft,
Petronas, and BBDO Advertising Agency to grow their business, in which he
outlines five (5) essential pre-launch strategies which have often been
overlooked by the majority of startup entrepreneurs.
_____________________________________
Stop Perfecting Your Product
While having
characteristics like leadership,
passion and determination can help you lead your startup toward your
goal, you should be aware of the most dangerous attitudes that can result in
failure. You may be surprised, but being a perfectionist is one of those
dangerous attitudes.
The ultimate goal of
perfectionists is to beat their competitors by developing a perfect
product. Since there is no measurement for perfection, the only thing that
keeps happening is they keep revising their product and adding
features to make it better at the cost of forgetting to market and grow their
business.
The solution to this
issue is to include market research as one of the key activities, and
adopt a lean startup and an agile
development methodology. Building a minimum viable product (MVP) and releasing
it to a group of volunteers to provide feedback enables you to understand what
features matter the most to customers. This way, while you can develop your
product in different sprints, you have the time to adapt to market demand and
market your business.
Build Your Email List
There is a pitfall that
many entrepreneurs fall into when applying the lean startup methodology.
Ever since lean startup was introduced, many startups tried to embrace it and
run their businesses based on that approach. Unfortunately, a large group of
entrepreneurs have misperceived the concept of lean.
While adopting a lean
startup approach encourages agility and accelerates product
development, you must remember that lean itself is a mindset and promotes
balance. It’s inevitable that you can only succeed if you have the right
audience to promote your product, hence, you should balance your time between
developing your product, and growing your list of potential customers.
One of the most
important strategies that you must inaugurate is list building. While your team
is working on developing your product, you must focus on implementing the first
step of any growth hacking strategy. Generally, a growth hacking framework
is composed of four steps: attract,
engage, acquire and maintain.
Although there are several strategies that fall under growth marketing, customer acquisition is among the most
significant ones.
The first step to begin
your list building process is to set up a landing page that is engineered
to encourage visitors to leave their emails in exchange for exclusive tips,
early bird membership price, or anything that inspires them to opt-in.
Remember, never stop building or updating your list.
If you manage to increase your traffic,
you can boost your conversion
rate, and collect more emails. You should concentrate on participating in forums or
engaging potential customers in social media and leading them to your landing
pages. This way, you will have a valuable list of people who are interested in
testing or even buying your product. General rule of thumb is to never
launch if you do not have a solid email list.
Research
Market Trends
Conducting thorough market research should be part of your business strategy. Large
companies invest hundreds of thousands of dollars on a yearly basis to buy
white papers and forecasted facts about their industry. While it is
understandable that as an early stage startup you cannot allocate that much
money to purchase market research data, it would be a huge mistake if you
exclude market research from your strategies.
There are plenty of
affordable resources that you can rely on to conduct a comprehensive market
research. The most convenient and free resource to analyse the trends and
understand customer behaviours is Consumer Barometer by Google.
Rather surprisingly,
even smart entrepreneurs often overlook the fact that each customer segment
requires a unique value proposition (UVP). In fact, if you have
discovered more than one customer segment in your business model, you must
revisit your business strategy and make sure that your UVP is aligned with what
each customer segment demands.
Make Time for Blogging
It is an undeniable fact
that websites with corporate design themes are not as engaging to customers as
entertaining or educational websites are. The same principle applies to
e-commerce too. In fact, even if you have recently set up a fashion e-commerce business, not
many people will buy from you if you do not manage to prove your value to them.
If the nature of your
business is not that entertaining, or if you have spent too much money designing
your website that you do not want to change the layout anymore, you can
leverage content marketing strategies to engage your customers
in an efficient manner.
Taking customers through
an educational path can be both engaging and rewarding for visitors.
Today, you can quickly set up a blog at no cost, and publish valuable
content that address your visitors' concerns.
Keep in mind that
posting thin content, writing
promotional pieces that only focuses only on your product and publishing
too often can harm your business. The secret to success is to craft the type of
content that helps your visitors address their challenges for free.
Here's One Last Tip - Optimise Your page for Higher Conversion
A common mistake that
many entrepreneurs and marketers make is to direct all traffic to one
single landing page.
While your website can
act as your sales funnel’s entry, you can increase
your revenue by optimising your pages for higher conversion. Each landing page
should be designed for one customer segment and should be tailored based on
your customer's characteristics.
In fact, discovering
your customer’s persona enables you to enhance the customer experience and boost your
conversion rate. This way you are addressing different needs with different
offers and thus, it will lead you to grow your business faster.
Inspiration: 4 Essential Pre-Launch Steps for Startups
Image
Source:
(1) subscriptionschool.com
(2) freeiconpng.com
(3) buildfire.com
(4) theroar.in
(5) myoperator.co
(6) act-on.com
Chia Yi Jing | Bubbling with enthusiasm, bright ideas, and confidence, Yi Jing set foot in the PR world with Orchan Consulting, where she was offered permanent employment after a successful internship. She is determined to make her mark in the industry, and her bosses know that she will.
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