How to Succeed in Running Your Own Business

In the current economic climate, starting a business from the ground-up presents more challenges and opportunities than ever before.

While there is certainly more competition to consider, there are also more ways to communicate your message effectively to people all around the world.

This means you have a good chance at running it on your own, as long as you have some helpful tips to guide you.

1. Write a flexible plan

No successful business ever existed without a business plan, but it’s best to step away from rigid plans if you want to be successful. Though having key goals, budgeting, and analyses is essential, you must also make sure it can adapt to meet the ever-evolving business market.

To begin, detail what your business is, the success you hope to see, and how you plan to get there. This way, you won’t just streamline your business from the get-go, but you will provide security to potential investors. As time goes on, change your budgeting and future goals to reflect your growth.

2. Understand your competition

In one essential part of your business plan, you must show investors how well you understand your competition. Having a full investigation into who they are and why they are successful can help you in many ways, such as:

• Providing inspiration for marketing and product design.
• Enabling you to learn from their past business mistakes.
• Pushing you to create a higher-quality product.

In essence, you cannot ignore your competition. If you are to be successful, they will continue to be your competitors in the future. To ensure you truly understand whether you can crack the competition, you must ask yourself whether you have the potential to give your market something they can’t.

3. Find your workspace

It is unlikely that in the first days of your business, you will move into sprawling office space and hire lots of employees. In fact, 50% of small businesses in the United States are said to be home businesses.

This is largely thanks to innovations like drop-shipping and online businesses, which can be run from the comfort of a desk chair. There are also those businesses that provide local services like plumbing and interior decorating. In these cases, your office will be a work van.

No matter which one is most suitable for your business, assess how you can save money on workspace by rethinking how much space you actually need.

4. Secure investment

While some business owners are lucky enough to be able to fund their own business, others need to rely on government grants and investors to get them off the ground.

Popular options these days include fundraising on social media, and bringing angel investors into the fold. No matter which approach you take, your business plan will be essential here in giving funding providers the security they need to step forward.

5. Protect yourself financially

There are always financial obstacles for new businesses to overcome, but there are ways of minimizing the impact of these on your success.

Though securing funding is a big part of this, you must also protect your business financially. This means insuring many aspects of your company so that you are less likely to face legal repercussions in the future.

For example, those running home improvement businesses may wish to purchase handyman insurance for any projects, while ecommerce businesses will benefit more from commercial insurance.

6. Create a good product

It’s true that having a professional brand will enable you to connect with your target market more effectively.

However, much of your brand will rest on your ability to create a product people can believe in. To truly convey a message, a story or a brand identity, packaging should work in tandem with your product to create the best impact. The way your packaging feels and looks will go a long way in influencing their purchase designs. For many customers, the outside is reflective of the quality inside, and you would do well to remember this fact when you choose the right product packaging. If you market a product that isn’t of high quality, you run the risk of damaging your brand and putting people off making future purchases.

Instead, spend time creating a product that stands out in the current market. This could be anything from a finance app for older generations to personalized design services. In any case, running focus groups to test this product is a great way of promising its success in the future.

If there are any changes you need to make, you can then input these before the big launch. You can also lift the business by outsourcing your packaging with a custom packaging services provider in your area.

7. Make use of social media

Most successful businesses today have reached their goals thanks to innovative marketing strategies.

While some traditional methods have stood the test of time, marketing has moved on to embrace various technological advancements, like social media. This is only a good thing for when you are running your own business, as it can result in smaller marketing costs overall.

Many experts suggest spending no more than 12% of your budget on marketing - a number that can be substantially minimized with social media.

From contacting social media influencers to running a Kickstarter campaign, social media can help you through all areas of starting up.

8. Champion customer service

Having a great product will undoubtedly help a business be successful, but you should not ignore the benefits of championing customer service.

Last year, 84% of companies saw their revenue increase when they improved their customer service. This is largely because people like to know that businesses truly care about their satisfaction. Channel Reply states that great customer service also directly impacts customer lifetime value. 

Even if they are not happy with a product, having customer service in place to quickly resolve the issue will allow them to keep their trust in the company.

This is another area social media can help with, allowing smaller companies to provide personal service to everyone.