Renu Sharma July 21, 2020 Do you have a good business idea and want to start a business, but don’t know how?
Don’t worry if you don’t know exactly how to start your business from scratch. This post will guide you through the step-by-step process of starting a business.
Just follow these steps and do your own research to change your dream into reality. Here’s a nine-step guide to help you start your own business.
1. Come Up with a Business Idea
There are many reasons to start a business but the most important one is having a brilliant business idea that fulfills an existing consumer need.
If you have a brilliant product or service idea, then you have taken the first step towards success as an entrepreneur. But, unique and relevant business ideas are difficult to come by.
What’s more, is that not every product or service has a significant need or potential demand for you to create a business around it. So, you need to vet your idea thoroughly and assess if it is even feasible to make a profit by starting a business around it.
Once you have complete confidence in your idea, then you can proceed to the next step, which is understanding the market.
2. Understand the Market
Before you invest in starting a business, you should know what you’re getting yourself into.
How easy or difficult is it to enter this market? Is this a blue ocean or a red ocean scenario? If it is the latter, then who are the other players in the market?
Do thorough market research and understand the market dynamics before entering it.
3. Identify Your Target Customers
Before you launch your business, you need to understand your target customers.
Who are the people who need your product or service? What current products do they use to fulfill this need? What more can you offer?
Answer these questions to form a basic idea for who your target customers are. Then do some research and understand them better.
If you don’t want to invest in research and analytics at this stage, then, at the very least, you need to clearly define your target customers. And, once you launch your website and get active on social media, then you can access free tools to gather more audience insights.
Pro Tip: Create a social media account early on to get a feel for your target audience and their preferences. Use these insights to fuel your marketing and product launch strategy.
4. Register Your Business
Once you have done the groundwork, it’s time to make things official. Select a name for your business that is related to your offerings and is easy to remember. Then get your business registered.
For this, you first need to understand the different types of business entities. Some of the common ones are:
Sole proprietorship: A single-person owned business.
Partnership: Owned by two or more partners.
Corporation: A legal business entity, separate from the people who founded it.
Limited liability company (LLC): A kind of a hybrid between partnership and corporation.
Each of these has its advantages and disadvantages. It is advisable to consult an attorney to help you choose the right business structure and register your business.
5. Create a Website
This step can be completed before or after registering your business. However, if you want to protect your business name and idea, it is better to make things legal first and then launch your website.
For this, you can use any one of the best platforms to build a website. These website builders can help you create and launch an engaging and mobile-friendly website quickly.
Pay special attention to your product and service pages. Create a separate landing page for each product or service that you offer, at least the most important ones.
Optimize your website content for search engines and use relevant keywords for each landing page. You need to do thorough keyword research to find the right keywords for your business.
Once you are done creating SEO-optimized content for your website, take care of the technical SEO aspects as well.
You should hire an SEO specialist to help you create and launch an SEO-friendly website right from the start.
This is an important aspect of starting your own business and you should invest in perfecting this even if you have to pay from your own pockets. After all—nothing ventured, nothing gained.
6. Prepare a Go-to-Market Strategy
If you have a physical product that you want to sell, then you will need a go-to-market strategy. This will include your sales and distribution strategy, marketing strategies that you plan to use, product pricing, product roadmap, etc.
If you have completed the first three steps properly, then half of your job is already done. Now, all you need to work on is the manufacturing and distribution of your products.
Will you sell from your own website or partner with an ecommerce store? If you plan to sell from your own website, how will you fulfill the orders?
How can you get your product manufactured at the lowest possible cost? Which offline distribution channels will you use?
If you plan to start a software product or service business, then you need to focus on product/service attributes and other relevant details.
7. Launch and Promote Your Business
At this point, the groundwork is done and you are all set to launch your business. You should get help from an expert at digital marketing to plan your product launch and business promotion strategy.
The key is to create buzz around your product/service before you formally launch it. This means that you need to start marketing your business before officially launching.
At this stage, your main focus should be on reaching the maximum number of people possible and creating brand awareness. Use a mix of digital marketing strategies like influencer marketing, advertising, and social media marketing to achieve these goals.
Also, focus on conversion rate optimization (CRO) for your website to ensure that a decent share of your leads converts.
8. Seek Funding
Once you have your business running and you know that the business model works, you can seek funding to expand and grow your business.
Remember, you can get funding at the initial stage of your business i.e. before launch, but that is not easy. Unless you have an extremely unique idea or are really well-connected, it is rather difficult to obtain funding just based on an idea.
So, it is better to go for seed financing at the initial stage and then look for ways to get more funding after establishing the business.
There are many ways in which you can seek funding for your new business. You can look for the best venture capitalists for funding or simply take out a small business loan. You can also opt for crowdfunding or angel investors.
Do your research and find out which source of funding you would prefer for your business. Each has its own set of advantages and disadvantages, so be sure before you choose.
9. Build Your Team and Expand
Once you have sufficient funds to run and grow your business, it is time to start building a team. You need to hire the most essential personnel first and then keep growing as your business grows.
Finding and recruiting the right people is a difficult task in itself, one that you may not be qualified to do yourself. So, hire an HR personnel first to help you establish the recruitment process for your business.
Stay abreast of the latest trends in recruitment to optimize and finetune your hiring process.
As your business grows, you might also consider expanding into more products or services. You could also open offline stores for your products and more.
Conclusion
Hopefully, this post has answered most of your questions and concerns about how to start a business. Use these nine steps as your guide to starting your business from scratch.
But, remember that you need to do your part in being as thorough as possible in conducting your research and making your business plan. Do that and improve your chances of running a successful business.
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