Amidst this current pandemic, our global economy has taken an unprecedented hit as businesses scramble to adjust to the norm. Startup businesses, however, have been flexible in adapting and are the primary drivers of economic growth. According to the Small Business Administration in the United States, about 64% of all jobs are created by young firms.
Don’t be mistaken, though. Although startups make it seem easy, these young companies have to face more challenges because of the currently fluctuating economy.
Getting Started
The first thing to do is to find a niche market you want to fill. You can do this by making a list of all things you’re interested in and researching the trends for each item listed. Tools like Keywords Everywhere and Google Trends are useful in determining the viability of each listed item.
Keywords Everywhere are used to check the search volume of each listed item on Google. Likewise, Google Trends is used to analyze upward and downward trends relating to each keyword. You’ll need these two tools to determine the viability of your selected niche in the long run.
You need to determine the business you’ll be getting into. You need to decide on whether you want to do a business out of hobbies you enjoy. The advantage being, the more you understand a product, the easier it will be for you to sell it. On the flip side, if you don’t follow popular trends, you might not make as much as you expected.
Keep in mind – you must prepare yourself for the long-haul. At the very least, it takes one year before any business develops a steady stream of customers. You need to prepare for the lack of income during that time.
Market
So you’ve figured out your niche, and you know what to prepare for. What about who’ll you’ll be targeting? There’s a difference between knowing your niche and knowing your market.
To truly understand your customers, you should be one of them.
- What are the things that you want to be sold to you?
- What prices would you expect?
- How would this person get me to buy their product?
Try to figure out what your market needs the most and be the solution for problems you want to be solved.
Branding
After determining your product’s viability and desired market, you need to think about your company’s branding. The mark of a well-made branding system is that it appears natural, is instantly recognizable, and doesn’t feel forced.
You want the brand to be recognizable in an instant to your consumers, either by name, color association, or logo. For this, it is highly recommended that you hire a design agency to handle your logo design as they will know how best to incorporate your company’s purpose.
Knowing your brand’s purpose and what it intends to do for your customers will help give you a better sense from now on of what your company is trying to do and the direction it should take.
The result is that all marketing production and client management will seem more solidified.
Software Helping to Make Startups Easy
When first planning on how to run a startup, we look at the most obvious things on the front end side of things – marketing, advertising, brand managing, production, etc. You could shave hours off of your workday if only there was a way to automate the most trivial of these tasks.
Purchase customized software development for startups as this is one of the best things you could do for your business, instead of standard software that hasn’t been tailored to fit your needs. They do similar things but are often cluttered with features you don’t need. With extra features you don’t need, added surcharges for said features, it may streamline your daily processes, yes, but not as efficiently as it could be.
Customized software functionality scales to match your company’s growth. As your business continues to grow, the software will grow with you. Also, some standard software has a cheap upfront cost but has monthly fees attached to it. Customized software is pricy at first but pays off in dividends as there are no more hidden costs.
Lastly, your company owns the customized software, unlike standard software, where you’ll only be renting the software.
