One of the best known definitions of ‘startup’ term was coined by Paul Graham and it says that startup is a company designed to grow fast. Startups don’t have to work in technology niche or to be newly incorporated enterprises, but their founders need to implement innovative solutions for boosting their growth and attracting new investors.
With this in mind, we decided to create a short list of tips, every entrepreneur should implement during their project development. Implementing these tips will boost startup’s productivity and enable it to survive first few difficult years during which more than 90% of newly incorporated companies fail.
Use of business intelligence tools
Business intelligence software is set of tools used for retrieving, analyzing and transforming business data. Advance use of this software makes startups much more efficient. It enables entrepreneurs to have better insight in business statistics, with turning business data in rich visuals.
Business data that’s presented in the form of interesting info graphics is more understandable to both entrepreneurs and employees and it enables more people to take part in decision making process.
Top notch customer service
Customer service is vital to overall startup health. It is the thing that customers will remember, and which provides great opportunities in the terms of word-to-mouth marketing. Most consumers connect customer service with product or service quality the company is providing.
This means that if customer service is bad, consumers will assume that product quality is on the same level. Since in recent years entrepreneurs finally realized the importance of customer loyalty, they should spend more time on improving their customer service, because these two parameters heavily correlate across all business niches.
Finding generous investors
First few phases of startup’s development are the time when entrepreneurs are mostly devoted to finding suitable investors, who will boost their project with necessary funds. Entrepreneurs need to learn how to hold effective presentation and how to write spotless and engaging business plans.
Investment quest doesn’t stop there. Entrepreneurs need to attend many investment conferences and conventions in order to reach as many individuals and holding companies as possible.
If their attempts fail, they can also start crowdfunding campaigns, on websites like Kickstarter, which give opportunity to business owners and other individuals with great ideas to promote their projects to the masses and ask for donations.
Picking good co-founders
Choosing suitable co-founders is one of the most important tasks for future entrepreneurs, and this decision shouldn’t be driven by nepotism. With choosing their co-founders, entrepreneurs are putting their future business at stake.
They should choose like minded individuals who are ready to follow entrepreneur’s mission and to invest a lot of effort in building a common project. One of the main questions that should decide whether some person is suitable to be a company co-founder is:
In what way will this individual contribute to startup development and growth?
Different people invest different things in companies they own. These can range from time and work, to funds and expertise. Individuals, who are ready to provide all of these four types of engagement, are the best candidates for co founder’s chair.
Advanced audience targeting
Audience targeting is one of the most important tasks for every marketing department. Company’s commercials and ads need to reach people who might be interested in company’s services and it is hard to choose, schedule and direct ads to certain groups of people, if you don’t know who they are and what they like.
That’s why audience targeting should enable entrepreneurs to find out who are their potential customers, and to create and direct their future ads towards them. Social networks and various digital ad platforms like Google AdWords, allows entrepreneurs and marketers to easily pick out their audience, with many different filters that are based on advanced demographic targeting that takes into consideration consumer’s age, location, marital status, interests, etc.
Market trends are constantly changing and entrepreneurs always need to be up to date with all new procedures and equipment used in their industry. They also need to use every spare minute of time they have, for figuring out how to make their startups more efficient and profitable. This way entrepreneurs will never be caught off-guard and they will be ready to use any market opportunity that pops up.
Nate M. Vickery is a business consultant from Sydney, Australia. His fields of expertise are company management and efficient work environment through latest technology trends, as well as internet marketing. He is also an editor in chief at bizzmarkblog.com.
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