Starting a new business can be challenging. You’re up against the competition, and it seems like you have to work twice as hard to get noticed. But there are some things that you can do right off the bat to make sure that your small business isn’t going unnoticed in this competitive market. We’ve got four tips for starting on a good foot!
Let’s take a look at these tips.
1. Make Getting Paid – Simple!
If you’re starting a new business, one of the first things on your list should be setting up good billing practices. It doesn’t matter if you are selling products or services – this is an essential element to growing any company! Here are some tips for establishing solid payment processing:
- Create processes for how and when clients will make payments and what they need to do to get it done. This can include auto pay options that send invoices with due dates at certain times and other instructions like sending reminders via email or posting them online.
- Keep track of records by logging all credit card transactions into appropriate programs such as Quickbooks Online or FreshBooks; or if you have a physical store, use cash registers to keep track of transactions.
- Have an invoice or billing form available online and downloadable as needed for clients who need it. This can be in the form of PDFs that are emailed out on-demand or through a link on your website where they’ll fill out any necessary information (credit card, address).
- If you design products yourself and sell them wholesale – which is common among new businesses selling jewelry, DIY crafts supplies, etc. – create invoices for these items, so customers know how much their order costs before they purchase anything in bulk from you without seeing what’s inside!
2.Try Not To Disregard Your Social Media Presence
It’s easy to write off social media as a “kids’ thing” or something you don’t need if you’re not providing services. A Facebook page is just another website. Wrong! Social media should be your first marketing priority for any new business. It can help establish credibility and build awareness of what the company does before they’ve even had its grand opening. Here are some basics tips on how to get started with social media:
- Create an account on all major platforms, such as Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. It may seem daunting at first, but these accounts will pay dividends in future content creation and engagement opportunities for followers that could lead to potential customers down the road.
- Post quality content regularly and refer back to your website or blog post for more information on what you’re posting.
- Spend a little time each day managing the accounts. Don’t be discouraged if it’s not perfect at first, and consistent effort will yield results
- Consider investing in social media management software like Hootsuite so that you can manage multiple profiles from one place. Once set up, this frees up your marketing team to focus on strategy rather than execution of posts, etc.
- Create A Content Calendar: It’s essential to create content ahead of when it needs to go live because many bloggers find themselves scrambling around until they’ve managed their social media marketing. A content calendar will provide a clear overview of what you need to post and when making it easy for your team (or even yourself!) to focus on creating quality content without having to go back and forth with the platform’s analytics or looking up other sites’ best practices for their published posts.
3. Get Your Funds All Together
Find a business plan template and fill it out to get an idea of your start-up costs. It’s also essential to make sure you have enough for the first six months or so if things don’t go as planned. You may want to consider setting aside this money into savings, starting a small account at the bank, putting them on credit cards with no interest, whatever works best for you! When you create a home-based business, one of the most important things is to get your finances in order.
You’ll need money to keep up with expenses and be able to make purchases for supplies or even take time off if necessary. One way of doing this is by creating a cash flow spreadsheet that will show how much money should come into your account each month from income and where it needs to go out from expenses such as marketing costs, office space rental, hardware upgrades, and more.
4. Have An Emergency Course Of Action
If you’re a small business owner, your livelihood is likely dependent on the success of every decision and task. You can’t afford to make mistakes or have an emergency course of action that doesn’t work out as expected. To mitigate risk, take time before starting up to identify what could go wrong and devise concrete steps for overcoming those challenges should they come about. Having this plan will give you peace of mind so that there’s already a solution ready to put into practice when anything does happen.
The Bottom Line
If you’re looking for a way to start your small business off on the right foot, these four tips should help. We want your new company to be successful and profitable as much as you do!
