If you have just started your own business, then you might be worried about a particularly popular statistic. That is 90% of new businesses will fail within their first year.
While this is true, there are a few key points to take into account here. First, this is simply the law of averages. Not everyone can succeed because if they did the market would be overcrowded. Second, there are simple things that you can do to give your business the best chance of success. Here are some examples.
Payments
When you run your own business you will need to think about which payment options to offer your customers. There are plenty to choose from but they must be accessible for all. Within your business you could use POS devices, these will accept payments right there and then. Think about what you offer on your website as well, as these could be different to what you have in store. Online you could offer a buy now pay later scheme, here you will make money but your customers have longer to pay off the items they purchased.
Website
Your business doors will close at some point, it is important your website is strong enough to cope with orders coming in throughout the day and night. It is common knowledge for shoppers to do the majority of their online shopping during the hours of 7pm and 10pm. Make sure your website doesn’t go offline or down for maintenance during these times as you will miss out on vital profits and sales.
Marketing
Next, you should think about marketing. By marketing your business you can guarantee that your company is more likely to be successful. The important thing to remember here is that there are right ways and wrong ways to market your company. For instance, you could be thinking about using email marketing to promote your company which is fine, but you have to be smart here. In other words, you shouldn’t assume that a standard email is going to work. Instead, you should try and ensure that your marketing is more targeted. One of the best ways to do this is by segmenting your audience into specific categories. This means that it’s more specific and therefore increases the likelihood of a conversion.
Branding
Finally, you need to make sure that you are thinking about branding and building your brand identity. If you build a brand identity, you can create customer loyalty and ensure that customers are ready to buy from your business, purely because they recognise who your company is and what you sell. This is also a great way to reduce marketing costs because you won’t have to focus so much on marketing if your brand is well known.
We hope this helps you understand the key steps that you must take if you want to give your new business the greatest chance of success on the market. In doing so, you can avoid a situation where your company is left struggling to compete.
