Running your business can quickly turn from an exciting endeavor to a mountain of stress once things go south. If you want to keep your business running smoothly, consider studying these 10 common mistakes and making sure that you’re not making them.
1. Not creating a business plan.
Having a business plan is essential. It lays the foundation of your whole business and sets every expectation and standard that you will stick to as your business grows and evolves. Indeed, the business plan may not be the most exciting thing to create but it is well worth the effort to really dial in on this.
2. Doing what you love
It’s the old business adage to do what you love so that you won’t feel like you have to work a single day of your life however the reality isn’t as romantic. Just because you are in love with a certain product, or passionate about a service it doesn’t automatically translate into a quality offering. There are way too many people who are into good food but have no idea how to make a dish nor how to market it well. What would be more appropriate is falling in love with what you’re good at, and making money off that.
3. Not conducting market research
The first thing you should consider is whether there is a demand for your product. This is essential as it doesn’t matter if you make the best of what you offer, if no one wants it. There are testaments of creating a demand for a product out of nowhere but the successes of these businesses are few and far in between with an even longer list of failed attempts.
4. Ignoring your competition
Your competition covers the same ground you do, hitting the same target market.
If you ignore your competition, you run into the possibility of your competition innovating and taking over the market.
5. Not accounting for your strengths and weaknesses.
This applies not only to the strengths and weaknesses of your product or service in comparison with a competitor’s product or service, it also includes your personal strengths and weaknesses as well. As an example, if you don’t have strong social skills, you shouldn’t force yourself into customer service roles. Know what you’re good at and get better at it, and know when to cut off your losses when you’re not doing too well.
6. Not understanding your service or product.
Having a good grasp of what you’re offering and fully understanding the benefits that it provides to your customers is essential. Just because you are selling something, doesn’t mean that your product is what’s valuable. You are selling a result, or a promise of a result and you have to understand the essence of that.
7. Not ensuring that you have enough funds.
As a general rule, most businesses don’t make money overnight. There will even be businesses that struggle to make a profit for a few years before they taste success. Because of this, you need to be absolutely sure that you’re not putting all of your eggs in one basket hoping that they’ll all hatch. Make sure that you have enough funding for your business to survive and grow as well as enough personal money to keep yourself afloat without digging into your business budget.
8. Not investing in your marketing
Expanding on the previous point, you can’t rely on your product to speak for itself. There are a lot of businesses with products that function extremely well but have failed to market themselves, as a result, those products have failed to sell.
Much like the first point, your business plan should include a marketing plan and budget. Free marketing is very limited in its scope. Another important thing to remember is that you don’t need to have your product or service ready to go right away before you market it. You can always opt to build anticipation for your product through your marketing.
9. Ignoring online marketing.
We’re living in a digital age and everyone seems to have their community or bubble within the shared internet space. Online marketing allows you to reach targeted audiences in a cost-effective way.
10. Doing everything yourself.
Even though you might want to take responsibility for every aspect so that you have complete control over your business, this often turns overwhelming as you cannot achieve perfection on 10 tasks at once. Even if you could, you’d be constrained by the time you have in a day. Instead, learn to delegate and manage tasks so that everything comes together smoothly and efficiently.