We’ve all heard of “putting the cart before the horse” right? All too often businesses want to do exactly this. Consider marketing the “cart” and the following steps are the “horse”! We know marketing is flashy and fun, but without first setting your business up for success, “flashy and fun” will equal failure! Discover the correct path to success in growing your business with these important steps!
- Decide what business and do market research!
To start your business, you must first have a great idea! From there you can create a service or product that solves your customer’s needs. Before diving fully in, you’ll want to be sure that this will be needed! To move forward, do your market research. It’s important to find out from the research if there is even a need for the business you want to create in the first place. Market research is also vitally important to understand future customers’ needs, find potential niche markets, and identify issues that could arise with your products or services.
- Create a business plan.
The foundation of a successful business is a concrete business plan. This plan will serve a guide as you begin and manage your business. A well-defined business plan should include: a purpose statement, descriptions of services and products, as well as market and competitor analysis.
A great way to accomplish this properly is through hiring a business coach. A business coach will help you not only create a basic business plan but guide you on developing a comprehensive 5-year plan to move forward, which is crucial to your success! Following these plans will help you to work strategically and efficiently towards your goals.
- Establish a budget.
Knowing your budget is vital to running a successful business. It’s extremely important to determine your regular expenses, factor in for unknowns, and have a plan for the financial stability of your business. If this isn’t established from the start, many financial mistakes can take place that may be seriously detrimental to your business. While budgeting be sure to include marketing! Can you afford branding, a website, and social media presence? If you’re noticing your finances are not where you’d hope they’d be you can consider the following: get a small business loan, look for local funding or grants, or seek angel investors to back your business. There are also several businesses you can start with little to no funds: consulting, tutoring, childcare, dog walking, personal training, and more!
- Make your business official.
Once you’ve worked hard coming up with your great idea and backing it with all the necessary research, it’s time to level up by making it official! To do this you’ll want to register your business with your state. This allows you legal ground to move forward with your brand. You’ll also want to get a tax ID number, which allows the IRS to keep track of your transactions. This is also needed to open a bank account. Also be sure to obtain any licenses you may need, depending on the type of business you’ve created.
- Protect your business.
A lot of work, time, and money goes into starting your business, make sure you protect it! This means finding the right insurance coverage. With options such as general liability insurance, business income insurance, professional liability coverage, commercial property insurance, data breach coverage and more, we highly recommend working with an agency who can answer all of your questions from the start.
6. Create Your Sales Funnel
What is your sales process? What is your conversion rate?
By process, we mean repeatable steps that you use to help qualify, educate, and convert leads into customers. If you start investing in marketing before you have the systems in place to handle more leads coming into your business, people that approach your business will have a bad experience with you which hurts your reputation, and you will be dumping your marketing dollars down the drain. Be sure you can handle the influx before seeking out leads through marketing.
7. Create a Marketing strategy.
Now that you’ve built the foundation for your successful business- it’s time to spread the word via your marketing strategy. This includes having a unique and memorable brand! As many customers have gone digital, a marketing strategy goes far beyond print advertising and materials. Your marketing goals should at minimum incorporate SEO, social media presence through creative content, a website, and email marketing. Creating and maintaining a stable presence in the digital world will give your business a competitive edge in your industry. The more thorough your marketing strategy is, the more success your business will have!
Tind-All Creative Marketing is here to help you with all things marketing! Get started by scheduling a FREE 30 minute consult by text/call at 860-916-4561 or visit us at tind-allcreativemarketing.com
