If it were easy to succeed as an entrepreneur, everyone would own their own business. The truth is that running your own business, whether it has a physical location, operates online, or both, presents numerous challenges for even the smartest and most motivated of individuals. The good news is that recognizing the most significant of these roadblocks in advance can help you to navigate around them as you work toward your ultimate goal of sustained success.
1. Attracting customers.
You might have the most innovative and exciting product in the world, but that won’t do you much good unless you know how to spread the word about it. Driving traffic to your physical location and/or website should therefore be one of your most pressing priorities and greatest challenges.
Addressing it effectively involves learning who your potential buyers are, including what they do, where they live, what pain points they have, and where they spend their time. Once you have some concrete answers to these questions, you can begin to build buyer personas. It then becomes a great deal easier to target your marketing and social media campaigns to reach the population that is best poised to catapult your sales into the stratosphere.
2. Creating buzz about your brand.
All great products are supported by a brand that gives them context and provides their parent company with credibility and a reputation that appeals to their customer base. Your small business might never reach household name status, but you still need to focus on making your identity important to potential buyers.
There are several things you can do in this regard. For one, co-market yourself by connecting with another brand, ideally one that is well-established and compatible with your products, mission, and culture. Doing so will allow you to piggyback on that company’s positive relationship and gain access to a large number of receptive contacts.
Blogging is another great way to cement your brand identity while establishing your credibility as an authority in your industry. As the word spreads about your frequent posts, you will gain added traffic to your website, as well as that all-important email contact information that can be used for later marketing campaigns.
Finally, don’t forget about the power of public relations. Generating excitement about what you have to offer can still happen via the media, including video ads, radio, and especially a well-written press release sent to a receptive outlet.
3. Lead generation.
There isn’t a business today that doesn’t struggle with converting online or in-store visitors into paying customers. Getting consumers to explore your physical or virtual showroom is important, but it is only half of the equation. If most people leave without making a purchase, your business is in trouble.
To turn prospects into paying customers, take the following steps if you accept online payments.
- Make sure each webpage contains a clear call to action.
- Use a tool that automatically places information from your online forms into your contacts database.
- Make custom landing pages for each marketing campaign.
Optimize your site by prioritizing the most important pages, and then use pop-ups and hello bars to keep customers interested and engaged throughout their browsing and buying experience.
4. Customer satisfaction.
When a buyer completes a sale, they should not just be neutral or slightly pleased about the experience; they should be enthusiastic. This is what turns shoppers into unpaid brand ambassadors who funnel friends and family to your store or website.
Transforming buyers into promoters involves the following.
- Understanding their pain points and how your business can continue to solve them.
- Being transparent about what you can and cannot provide and at what price.
- Consistently following through and meeting or exceeding customer expectations.
- Going the extra mile in unexpected ways.
- Continuing to innovate in finding ways to satisfy buyers.
5. Hiring the right staff.
A solid team of employees can provide the support network that takes your business to the next level. By the same token, apathetic or poorly-trained workers who do not understand your vision (or have not been made a party to it) will drag your enterprise down.
To gather the finest possible workforce, you must first know the persona of the ideal staff member you are seeking. Then come up with a recruiting strategy that will attract your ideal prospects. Don’t worry if this process takes time; assembling the right staff to ensure your success will be worth it in the long run.
6. Effectively managing and delegating work.
Even the most excellent staff will get burned out if there is confusion about what tasks they are to perform and your expectations around benchmarks and timelines. As the person in charge, your challenge involves how to manage this workflow to maximize employee motivation, efficiency, and satisfaction.
To that end, you need to put tools in place to monitor workflow and nip problems in the bud. These can include such things as suggestion boxes and surveys, regular in-person meetings with your direct reports, and occasional skip-level meetings, as well as examining feedback to identify what is working and where the obstacles lie.
7. Financial planning.
Money-related issues can arise no matter how diligently you work to prevent them. Chargebacks may have caused your payment processing partner to raise fees. An unanticipated sales downturn may be making inventory purchasing burdensome. Whatever the situation, these bumps in the road, while inevitable, must be addressed proactively.
Keeping these guidelines in mind can help you maintain your cash flow and stay on the financial straight and narrow.
- Be frugal in your use of business credit and loans.
- Keep an eye on costs, cutting expenses wherever possible.
- Pay invoices promptly, and stay on top of your customers to ensure that they make timely payments.
- Deal with credit card disputes and chargebacks promptly.
Remaining aware of funding issues and challenges can help to minimize their ultimate impact on your business operations.
Growing a business from the seed of an idea to a fully flowering operation is a challenge that many would-be proprietors are unable to meet. Good intentions and enthusiasm alone will not be enough to propel you from idealist to successful capitalist. To make that leap, you must combine these with concrete strategies, financial investment, and unwavering determination despite the odds.
