10 Simple Steps for Starting a Business Today
#Business
There’s a saying that you have to “fake it till you
make it,” in life and in business. However, you also hear about
wantrepreneurs. So what’s the difference? The real difference to me is in the
action.
If you want to get started, but you don’t know how
to begin from zero, here is a simple and effective approach. Follow these
10 step-by-step instructions to get started on your business today.
#1. Write down your vision.
You can’t get somewhere without knowing what the
vision for your business and your life is. While the end result of your
business will probably look a little different than your initial vision, you
have to have the end result in mind to start. What do you want to do with your
business? Try answering these three simple questions about your product or
service and you’ll have a business vision nailed:
- What is it?
- What do I get?
- How do I get it?
#2. Research your market.
This is such a boring step. There’s no way around
it. It’s unsexy and it’s in depth. It’s for those exact reasons many
well-intentioned first-timers at entrepreneurship will want to skip over this
part.
Sure, you asked your family and a few friends and
they say your idea is great, so you’ve got a market, right? Wrong. You need to
look back at the questions that help you with your vision and drill into them
again.
What is it, and more important for your
research, why would someone want it? What do I get from you that I can’t get
from someone else or something else? How am I getting it and how is that
delivery method better, cheaper, faster or easier for me? These are all helpful
questions to see where the market is for your business and what pain points
you’ll need to solve for your market with your offering.
#3. Create something you can sell.
If you can’t solve a problem for your market, you
aren’t going to make any sales large enough to sustain a business. It’s that
simple. Make sure whatever your business is offering, it solves a problem,
because you can market and sell the solution to that problem for a viable
business.
#4. Get a website.
Now that you’ve figured out your market and product
offering, you’ll need a website. It doesn’t matter if you’re a retail or online
business; both need a website no matter what.
You don’t have to spend a fortune on a website to
start. Purchase a domain from a site such as GoDaddy or Host Gator. If
you’re handy with WordPress, you can install a theme for free or a small fee
and get started. If you aren’t handy with WordPress, use a build-it yourself,
idiot-proof site-building service such as Weebly.
If you really don’t want to deal with it, look
to Elance or Odesk and outsource your website design.
#5. Outline your automation.
These days, most businesses require some level of
marketing and sales automation to really scale. You hear a lot about passive
income, and getting your marketing and sales processes as automated as possible
will help you maximize the opportunities for truly passive income. Even if you
don’t want a passive income business and are actively planning to market your
business, you’re still going to want things such as product registration, order
tracking and purchases to have some level of automation. Examples include a
thank you email, confirmation or upsell offer.
Think about the total user experience from visit to
purchase on your site and outline what you think are good points for automated
messaging or sales offers. Build it on paper ahead of time. Depending on the
size of your budget and needs, look into the sales and marketing automation
standard for small businesses, Infusionsoft.
#6. Set up a sales funnel.
If you don’t need the robust offering of a site
such as Infusionsoft just yet for your business, look at sales funnel-specific
software programs such as Lead Pages or Click Funnel. These plug and play
into email service providers and payment processing vendors and can be a nice
option for small businesses just starting out until they’re ready to scale to
bigger platforms.
#7. Set up an email opt-in.
First, you’ll need an email service, such as AWeber or MailChimp,
or if you have Infusionsoft or another bigger service provider such as Marketo,
email will be part of the platform already. Once you have your email service,
you’ll want to ensure there are plenty of places for people to opt-in to your
email list on your website, on your landing pages from your sales funnel and
anywhere else it’s appropriate. The key to a great, scalable business is a
healthy, robust email app.
#8. Start a Facebook page.
Facebook is a great, free tool for spreading brand
awareness and linking to your landing pages and website. If you create and
curate really valuable content consistently, you’ll build up a following that
can help drive your business and your brand.
#9. Create valuable, shareable content.
You can post your content on your website,
syndicate it through services such as Rebel Mouse and post to your
own Facebook page. However, if you want the word to really spread, make sure
each piece you post is easily sharable so you can build organic traffic and
word of mouth.
#10. Refine, tweak and improve as you go.
You’ll never be done, but follow the previous nine
steps and you should be on your way to establishing your business and your plan
of action. As you implement each step, remember that you’ll need to
continuously learn from each part of the process to tweak and improve as you
go. The more you learn and make corrections, the better your business will be
positioned for success in the long term.
Source: Adam Toren
You can earn $20 per a 20 minute survey!
ReplyDeleteGuess what? This is exactly what big companies are paying for. They need to know what their average customer needs and wants. So big companies pay millions of dollars per month to the average person. In return, the average person, myself included, participates in surveys and gives them their opinion.