You can't launch a successful business without this one thing

You can't launch a successful business without this one thing

It's crazy to me how many people launch their businesses without thinking of a detailed marketing plan.  Many people think they have the best product or service and never think much past that point, but they should.  They might actually have the best thing in their industry, but if they don't know how to get that product or service in front of potential buyers, they will fail miserably every single time.

I've talked to a bunch of entrepreneurs and start up business owners who can't answer simple questions like "How are you going to get sales?"

• "Where are you going to get traffic from?"
• "What are your competitors pricing their software at?"
• "How much competition do you have"
• "How many people are searching for your product?"

Sadly, they can't answer any of these and that just means they haven't thought much past their own product or service launch.  If you want to be successful online, you need to have your marketing plan ironed out as soon as you start setting up your website or developing your service or product.

It may seem odd to you that someone may not know their competition, how they were going to get traffic, or how they were actually going to capture sales with their service or product but you'd be amazed at how many startups don't think of these things.  Many of these companies out there who are just starting up usually slow down right when they go live because they don't know what to do in terms of marketing.  They ramp up to launch and then hit a wall because they aren't prepared to get traffic and make some sales.

If you aren't building your customer base, you don't really have a business and this is something that is ignored by a lot of companies out there who think they're going to be the next big thing in their industry.

A lot of the bigger excuses I hear, are:

1. My product will sell itself, I just need to post it on social media and it will blow up!
2. When we're ready to advertise, we'll get out there.
3. We'll worry about marketing after we're done launching our product

These are all responses from a cocky person who thinks they're going to blow up in sales soon after launch, and sadly, this is what most people think when they are first time business owners.  In order to be successful you need to merge marketing into every aspect of your business plan so you're always selling.  Marketing is much more than posting once on your facebook page and maybe setting up 1 ad.

If you want to have an effective marketing plan, you must do the following:

1. Figure out your customers needs, what the market size is, what challenges you need to overcome, and what type of revenue you will be getting from sales.
2. Guide the growth and development of all product or service features and configure distribution if needed.
3. Build a brand and carry it across your website design, app design, marketing materials, packaging, etc.

Here are 5 things you can think of and work on to make your startup ready for success:

What is your demand and how you can increase it
When you're working on something for yourself and building a business, it's exciting and you could get lost in a dream before reality hits you like a ton of bricks.  One of the biggest killers to a startup is the fact that there might not be any demand for your product.  Creating demand for a product is something only million dollar companies can do, or you can try by creating viral videos of your product and hope they catch on lol.  Do the market research and figure out if your startup will actually take off or if you're wasting your time.


Bootstrap everything you can
When you think of marketing, you probably think it is expensive, but it's not.  You can focus on SEO and your own social media marketing in order to build up your company over time.  These are free methods you can do but will take time to learn in order to do it effectively. 


Get some help if you don't know what you're doing
I understand you are building a product and you think you know everything, but in reality, you don't know nearly as much as you should.  If you run into problems, you need to learn how to ask for help.  You need to put your pride aside and ask for helpso you don't screw up anything and set yourself back a week, a month, or even an entire year

To find help, you'll likely need to hire a consultant to come in and show you what needs to be done in order to run an successful company.  Sometimes this is cheap but other times it's fairly expensive.  The price depends on how well known the consultant is and how many times he's helped other companies become successful.


Work with influencers
I've written up plenty of discussion going over how you can find influencers for your industry without wasting too much money all while increasing your ROI.  Yes, you will lose some money, but the likelihood of having a positive ROI if you follow all the things I say in my other discussions will boost your sales and awareness  

Here is a link to all of the influencer related discussions here on SEOclerks.com:  https://www.seoclerks.com/faq/q/influencer


Adapt to your market and adopt the best practices
You need to figure out what your successful competitors are doing and adopt their practices.  They are doing something right, and you shouldn't take that as a negative thing because they are basically teaching you what to do in order to make money in your industry.  If you don't follow what they are already doing to be successful it's like purposely going up the down escalator because you want to make it more challenging than it has to be.



In conclusion
When you are setting up a service or a company, you will need to work on your marketing campaign before you go live.  Marketing needs to be in every part of your company so that you can increase your sales and not wait an unpredictable time frame for the money to start rolling in.  So many companies think they don't need marketing while in the brainstorming faze, but those are the companies that have extremely slow starts and their competitors overtake them in the authority race.



Remember to follow me!
https://www.seoclerks.com/user/Razzy


Thanks!

Razzy