Mistakes to avoid when starting a business

Having your own business is the dream of many people. But often a lack of business experience turns into a nightmare. In order to help you succeed in business creation, I present to you in this article the erto avoid when starting a business. Moreover, I tell you what you can do to ensure its sustainability.

Do you have questions or do you think you are not doing well? Take a look at our tips and learn how to turn the game in your favor! But to start, here are some Advice and strategy to create and develop which will allow you to develop your company or your business very easily.

1- Lack of planning

The number one business mistake is lack of planning. The most common mistake entrepreneurs make is thinking that all you need is a good idea to start their business. Unfortunately, that's not how it works for two reasons.

First, there are already many good ideas available. Then it's impossible to run a business without knowing its direction. Business creation therefore requires a minimum of basic knowledge.

“Does that mean my idea will never come off the paper or out of my head? »

None of that ! It just means that you need a lot of pre-planning and market analysis before risking your savings to start your own business.

Here are a few things you definitely need to plan for:

Business plan

If you are considering starting your business now, writing a business plan should be your first step! The business plan or business plan is a strategy document that you will use to convey your business vision to your team members or potential investors, answering questions such as:

• What is your product?
• Who is your target market?
• What do you need to put it on sale? (Financial and creative resources)
• What are your goals for the first 12 months?
• What actions do you plan to implement to achieve these objectives?

Developing a business plan will not only help you define your goals, but also identify the best strategies. This means you can direct your strengths and resources on what you really need to do, instead of wasting your efforts on actions that won't produce results for your business. Here is how to write a convincing business plan.

Audience study

Just as important as defining your business strategy, it is equally important to understand the avatar the product is intended for.

In addition to general representative aspects, such as gender, age and hometown, it is important that you analyze the consumption habits of your audience, know where they get information, what problems they face each day and how your product can solve them.

If your business is in its infancy, I recommend creating the single avatar card, which cuts down on outreach efforts. Over time, and as your business matures, you'll discover other audiences that need your attention.

Market analysis

Another thing to plan for when setting up a business is market research. Before creating a product, I advise you to know the segment in which you are going to work. In general, the more generic your product topic, the greater the volume of searches and, therefore, the greater your competition.

Once you have found the balance between what you love to do and a profitable market, do the benchmarking. Finding out your competitors' strengths and weaknesses will give you great ideas on what you need to refine your product or sales page.

  2- Lack of professionalism

The second mistake made when starting a business is the lack of professionalism. Just because you're self-employed doesn't mean you should be any less professional.

In fact, it's exactly the opposite. The success of your business is entirely up to you, you need to put in more effort and dedication to making results appear, which includes:

Have a work routine

As much as working from home allows you to have a more flexible schedule, it is important to establish one to start your activities, as well as an hour to end the day. This is the only way to ensure that you will have time to complete your tasks without feeling overwhelmed and overloaded.

Separate personal finances from those of the business

Every business must have cash flow to operate. In other words, some of the money from sales should be invested in improving your product. That's what we call corporate finance.

A very common mistake made by start-up entrepreneurs is to mix personal finances business finance. This is bad because you lose control of the company's profits and you run out of resources in case of an emergency. Therefore, it can lead to the bankruptcy of your business.

The best way to avoid this mistake is to have very detailed spreadsheets with your personal expenses and those that were made for running the business. Your management will be much more efficient if you keep your processes well documented, believe me!

3- Lack of dissemination

Fight to avoid lack of diffusion because “ what is not seen is not remembered ". No matter how good your product is, it must have visibility. There are two ways to achieve this visibility on the web: become an authority on the subject or invest in paid advertising. The difference between the two models is time.

To become an authority, you will need certain knowledge to practice SEO techniques and optimize your conversion channels;

With paid advertising, you invest more money, but you manage to reach your audience with less effort. Only your ads must comply with the advertising policies of the networks on which you want to advertise.

This does not mean that one strategy negates the other. You can create advertisements while working on your organic strategy, whatever the size of your business.

Whatever strategy you adopt, the communication used must be attractive and generate empathy in your audience to convince users that your product is ideal for the problem they are facing.

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4- Lack of quality content

The main objective of search engines is to show users the most relevant results for the search term. In the case of Google, there are over 200 factors analyzed to rank a site, all related to user experience.

One of the factors that determines the positioning of the page in search engines is undoubtedly the quality of the content. To differentiate yourself from your competitors, your greatest asset is to create content that generates the identification of your audience with your product.

If you have a website or a blog, you need to create content that adds value to people's lives, before you even submit your offer. By providing quality content without demanding anything in return, you contribute to the idea that your solution is the ideal solution for this prospect.

5- Lack of communication with other agents in your company

Even if you work alone, other people also influence your business. These are stakeholders such as suppliers, affiliates and employees, where applicable. Having a good relationship with these agents is key to increasing the reach of your product.

suppliers

Finding good suppliers for your business is luck. You may find professionals who are compatible with your brand right away, or you may have to deal with fewer deliveries than expected.

Whenever you find a supplier whose work contributes to the quality of your product, the ideal is to create a lasting relationship with them. Send feedback on the work in progress, be open to suggestions, recommend it to your friends. Remember: just as you choose contractors, they also choose who they want to work for.

Affiliates

On the main online sales platforms, affiliates still make the majority of sales. But, for them to do a good job, you need to provide them with accurate information about your product.

If you create a bad sales page to host your offer, people are unlikely to choose your product to promote because the affiliate will have more work to convince users to make a purchase. Your mission is to create a win-win relationship.

You gain greater visibility for your page and the affiliate earns a commission consistent with their efforts to sell your product. Learn more from affiliate marketing.

Employees

So, are you going to remember your professional experience before starting your own business? Were you motivated to work? Has your boss influenced the quality of your work? These questions will help you understand a simple norm: motivated professionals perform better.

So, if you want to get the most out of your employees, you need to involve them at all stages of your business and encourage them to provide feedback on what you can improve in your product. This involvement starts from the business creation stage.

6- Lack of buyer support

In the case of the digital market, it is common that people are still hesitant on how to access the product and make the most of its potential. To help these customers, you will need effective and accessible support!

The longer you take to respond to a request for information or doubt, the more time the user has to search for similar offers from the competition.

In fact, when you serve your customer quickly, you have the opportunity to answer their purchase objection and convince them that they made the right decision when purchasing your product. We talked more about supporting buyers with post-sales techniques for beginners.

7- And, finally, lack of modesty  

No, you didn't read it wrong! The lack of modesty is also an enemy of launching and creating a business. I will explain why. Even if your idea is very good, it is very important that you have different scenarios in mind, even those in which your idea is a complete failure.

Self-criticism from time to time is essential to optimize your work and identify the actions that produce the best and worst results in your business.

Of course, such an analysis should not only be subjective, but also based on the results obtained by your product in the first months, such as the number of conversions, the number of "Likes" on your page, traffic volume on your blog, etc.

In summary…

Having a good business idea in your hands is no guarantee of success. You will need to put in a lot of effort and have an extra dose of patience to get the best out of yourself.

However, if you want to take control of your personal finances in six months, I highly recommend this guide.