Key Lessons New Entrepeneurs Need To Learn Fast

As a new entrepreneur, you’re going to face a lot of pitfalls. However, it comes with the territory. You’re trying to make waves in a new environment. It’s only to be expected that you’re going to make mistakes. Some are going to be worse than others. But it’s crucial that you don’t make a serious error when you’ve only just got out of the gates. If you trip up too soon, and you could stumble with an injury that puts you out of the race completely. That’s why we think there are certain lessons that entrepreneurs need to learn, fast. Most startup companies are going to fail; that’s just a fact. But yours doesn’t need to be one of them, and if you take our advice, it won’t be.

Here are some of the lessons we hope you’ll take on board.

Content Isn’t King, The Customer Is

Content might be the king in the marketing world. But in the business industry, the customer should always be your main concern. You need to make sure that they are happy with your business and what you are offering to them. You may think that your investors are your top concern. But if your customers aren’t happy, you’re not going to be making profits. Then we’ll see how much faith investors have in your business model. Hint, it won’t be a lot. So how can you ensure you’re offering what your customers want and need.

You need to start thinking about this before you open the doors of your company. Understand that it’s not about whether you can make a profit. It’s about whether you can introduce a product or service that they want to buy. If you can, by all means continue with your business plan. If you can’t, it’s time to go back to the drawing board. A big part of this is your target customer. If you don’t think that your industry has a target customer, or you think your product could appeal to everyone, think again. Every industry has a target customer audience. Within that audience, there are consumers looking to buy the product you’re selling. You might think your product appeals to everyone, but it doesn’t nothing does. You could take something simple like ice cream. Ice cream is delicious, and lots of people love it. But some people don’t, others are allergic. As well as this ice cream is a seasonal food. You won’t want it in the middle of winter. You see what we mean. No market is universally appealing.

Once you’ve found that target customer, you can start marketing towards them, and that brings us to our next point.

You Better Believe Marketing Isn’t Free

There’s a myth floating around the web that online promotion is free. If you want to market your business, just open social media accounts. Make sure you’re adding keywords and links to your site. Oh and don’t forget about adding hundreds of articles to your blog, right? After all, the more content on your site the higher your rank will be. We don’t know where to begin with these misunderstandings so let’s just jump right in.

First, marketing is free but only if you do it yourself. However there’s a problem because if you do it yourself, you’ll still be competing with companies paying for the best. Not to mention penalties. You might think marketing is easy, but it isn’t. If you do it yourself, you better make sure you’re not using blackhat techniques. An example would be adding lots of content to your site. If you add high-quality content, that’s great. But if you add rubbish and junk you’re going to be hit with a penalty. Even if you did add lots of content, the amount you’d need to get a ranking increase is astounding. Particularly, because for content to have an impact it needs to be shared and read. Two things you can’t guarantee but a marketing team can. The lesson here is, don’t be fooled by the idea of “free marketing.” You’re better off paying for marketing and promotion that’s good value for money. If you want to cut the costs of this, try outsourcing this issue. Do that instead of hiring a team of marketers within your company.

Don’t Write Cheques You Can’t Afford

A big problem in the startup game right now is entrepreneurs making a living on loans. They borrow massive amounts of money to fund their business. They then hope they get the support of the investors to pay off those costs. But the truth is that most don’t. Instead, they have to pay off those costs with any revenue they make. You should be able to already see the problem with this. As the company stays open on the market, the cost increases, made worse by businesses being run inefficiently.

A simple way to even out the costs your business has gone through opening is to make sure your company is efficient. You can do this in simple ways such as making sure you are using paper efficiently. You’d be surprised how much using excess paper could cost you. If you’re struggling with this, a business such as Scope BI could help. They’ve got plenty of ideas how you can make copying more efficient, and that’s just one example.

Introducing new tech in your company could also save you a lot of money in the long run. While the first fixed cost will be expensive, it will make your business more efficient. You’ll get a lot more done and reach far greater levels of profit.

Running A Company Isn’t Easy

The final lesson is perhaps the easiest to learn. But it seems that many entrepreneurs are overestimating how easy it is to open a company and make it a success. To be clear, opening a business is easy. You can get a business loan online right now. Within a couple of hours, you’ll have everything you need to start your company. But making it a success is a whole other story. It takes hard work, dedication, and considerable endurance. To paint this picture more clearly, here’s an example. You might have heard that professional bloggers can make thousands a day and millions a year. While this is true, it only accounts for about one percent of the bloggers online. The rest don’t earn enough to even make a living. But it’s not because it’s not possible to earn a living as a blogger. It’s because they underestimated how easy it would be.