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Posts Tagged ‘start-up small business marketing’

11 Surefire Ways To Make Your Start-Up Fail

Monday, January 18th, 2010

I stumbled on this post by written by Jacek Grebski of F3FundIt and wanted to share it with our clients. Great stuff!

Here are just a few ways to completely and utterly dig your startup into the ground, as such read them, and do what you can to avoid them.

1. Have a poorly defined value proposition. Having a poorly defined value proposition will cause you headache after headache when looking at and presenting your business model. You have to know who you are targeting, what you’re offering and why they would want to use your product or service. Who is your customer?

2. Setting unrealistic objectives in your development and deployment pipeline. No matter what you think you will not underpin the world in a year, you will not have income of €20.000.000 in year one, and you will be greatly disappointed.

3. Focusing on the bottom line instead of on the service / product you offer your customers. Your customers are your lifeblood, if they are unhappy your bottom line will suffer, if they are happy, they’ll be repeat buyers, and even help market your product. Simple as that.

4. Involving yourself and your business in ethically questionable practices. Unsavory marketing practices, overly creative accounting are just some of the things that will in the end ruin your business, don’t do them.

5. Developing a product without adequately deploying resources to market it effectively. Sure, you may have a product that could cure cancer, end world hunger, and fly humans to the moon, but if no one knows about it, no one will use it. Market it, and market it effectively.

6. Going on a spending spree. Meaning, poor cash management. You may have €250.000 that you received in the form of F3 (Friends Family Fools) Capital and you think it’s great so you pay a premium for services that could otherwise be outsourced, delivered in a more cost effective way, and get everyone a brand new Mac Pro to write e-mails on. Not a good idea.

7. Launching too early or too late. Timing is everything, think about the market, the economy, the sector you’re in, where is it now, where will it be in 3 months, 6, a year or two. You don’t have to change the world today, and launching today may lead to failure.

8. Flying solo. Think you can do everything yourself? You can’t. Involve others. Even if you’ve decided to start alone, bring in friends, talk to your network, and see if people will help you out. You don’t have to give them an equity stake in the beginning see how you work together. If you work well, ask them if they’d like to come on board.

9. Forgetting about scalability. Good ideas scale well, multi-million ideas scale at their core. How big can your product realistically get? Who is your customer, and how can fast can you grow without compromising service.

10. Secrets are no fun. Talk, and share your idea with people you trust, friends, family, colleagues, these people are inevitable to the success of your business, you don’t know everything, and collaboration can more often than not fix problems before they arise.

11. Doubting your idea early on. Doubt is natural, you will have ups and downs, this is completely natural, but if you doubt your idea within the first month, or three of your start-up career. Chances are you’ll become disheartened quite early on and quit. Save yourself the trouble and thoroughly analyze your concept before taking the plunge.

A friendly message from the people at F3FundIt, and with that. Good Luck!

Original blog post written by Jacek Grebski and found here.

badidea

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Posted in business start-up, entrepreneurism, entrepreneurs, marketing, operations, sales and selling, small business, small business consulting, small business marketing, start-up advice, start-up help, tips and tricks | 3 Comments »

How To Get The Most Bang For Your Marketing Buck

Sunday, August 16th, 2009

Every business owner wants to use time-proven, effective marketing tactics that build strong brand awareness and increase its clientele.   Small business owners today may not necessarily have the tools to spend an insane amount of money on television advertising, radio spots, or other costly advertising avenues such as billboards emblazoned with state-of-the-art graphics.  Other advertising methods exist that are cost-effective and have the ability to get the company’s branding message across.   We have looked at some of the most efficient and least expensive advertising measures from websites such as www.BusinessKnowledgeSource.com for small business owners that we believe will fit in with your budget while helping to create a profitable business.  These include:  

  1. Postcard marketing
  2. E-mail blasts
  3. Social networking sites (i.e. Twitter or Facebook)
  4. Podcasting
  5. Creating a website 

It is no surprise that 163.3 million Americans use the Internet whether it is to find out new information, shop online, or learn about a business.  For this reason, it is crucial for start-up and small businesses to leverage the power of the Internet instead of focusing on traditional advertising maneuvers such as print media and television advertising.  

Postcard marketing may seem slightly outdated, but it is important to highlight the massive effect of postcards.  Postcards printed on 4” by 6” index cards are highly noticeable in the mail because they can be flipped over and read in a matter of seconds.  Immediately, the message is sent across to the end-user without them having to peruse through a pamphlet or packet that usually instills a lack of interest or frustration.  

E-mail blasts are excellent for small business owners to send out to their network of contacts.  Even better, they’re excellent for building a database on a website.  E-mail blasts should be kept simple, to-the-point, and underscore promotional offers to gain the reader’s attention.  Moreover, they can be sent out to multiple parties from the recipient, increasing word of mouth buzz.  

Social networking sites have become a marketing phenomenon that is helpful for businesses in spreading their brand, mission, and services and/or products in the form of a user-profile.  Also, sites such as www.Twitter.com and www.Facebook.com have changed the face of Internet marketing by establishing the online sphere as a word of mouth metropolis.  Now is the time to take advantage of social networking sites.  

Another helpful marketing suggestion is to create a simple podcast.  Not sure how or where to start?  Make sure your computer has a web cam.  If it doesn’t, these gadgets can be bought at inexpensive price at large computer and electronic retailers.  Introduce your business concept through the podcast that is less than 30 seconds.  Podcasts are an excellent marketing tool because they can be posted on a website, sent through e-mail, and posted on sites such as www.YouTube.com. According to www.Quantcast.com, www.YouTube.com averages 72.5 million users per month.  

With the implementation of these media, businesses are likely to see an increase in interest.  The next step would be to create an intuitive, user-friendly website that summarizes the concept of the business without too many graphics or distractions.  For example Ethos 360 (www.Ethos360.com) offers affordable branding solutions for entrepreneurs. Following these steps can help an entrepreneur bolster their brand and reach their selected demographic.

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Posted in business, small business marketing | No Comments »