Contributed article in our entrepreneurial series. Enjoy! – Kimberly
Sometimes a little style, confidence and razzmatazz is just what’s needed to launch a new business into a prosperous future. It’ll show off your credentials and will cast away any lingering doubts or worries, instead investing you and your team with a confidence that may well lend itself to the first stages of opening a business up to new, competitive markets. This article takes a look at some of the best ways to start-up in style, using the invested money you’ve got to position yourself squarely in your industry without any hint of weakness or insincerity.
Launch Party
Every promising new business deserves a launch party, and yours should be no different. After all that preliminary work – most of it fairly dull paperwork – to establish your business as a trader, your launch party is a celebration of what you’ve achieved so far as well as a momentum-builder for the immediate future, filling everyone connected with the business with hope and positivity. Buy some bubbly and get some nice nibbles organized and prepare to bask, just for one evening, in the preliminary successes of your business.
As an aside to this, you’ll also find that a launch party is your first opportunity to announce yourself to those outside of your circle of friends, business partners and colleagues. Why not send invites out to your competitors to share in some industry chat, starting off on the right foot, or to potential future clients, who you’ll be able to schmooze from the get-go with an evening of informal merriment that could well serve to pay off in the long-run of business when you need a favor or two.
Secure Your Space
Too many start-ups are hosted in a garden shed, a garage or simply the spare bedroom of a flat. That’s not a place you’ll want to be when important business meetings start being scheduled – you’ll want a prime office space that projects power and confidence to potential clients and customers – not a by-the-hour rents conference room by a budget hotel. It’s one of those simple business decisions that a lot of start-ups fail to make: it may cost more, but entering new markets is all about how people interpret your business, and an office space communicates that you’re taking your outfit seriously.
This isn’t to say that you’ll have to get the money together to rent or buy an entire office, which will almost certainly be out of the price range of most start-ups. Instead, why not consider the shared office environment, which guarantees you some of the more fashionable and comfortable office spaces without breaking the bank. These can be found in most cities, often in converted state buildings such as post offices or railroad companies, with grand external appearances and charming ornamental touches inside, too – far from the sterilized feel of some office blocks.
Market Loudly
As a start-up, your objective is to move into a market in a specific industry, causing total disruption by offering something new, different, and desirable to consumers. That’s what you’re working towards, and that’s why you need to be loud and clear with what you’re offering. You can’t simply come up with a wonderful idea and back it up with a solid business plan without getting customers to notice you, so you should begin shouting from the rooftops as soon as you open for business. Pursue all channels and be liberal with what you spend in order to really truly arrive on the scene.
The industry wisdom here points any start-up down many avenues for marketing that as an entrepreneur you’ll likely be familiar with. From social media advertising, through posts and shares and promoted material, to targeted television, web or paper advertisements, you’ll want to produce a surge in material promoting your company. As far as is possible, you’ll also want to be able to measure the success rates of each method of marketing, so ensure you can build in a way of tracing the clicks or visits that each information dissemination method produces.
Create a Magnificent Website
Another show of your confidence and prowess is in the form of a brand-spanking-new website, with all the modern bells and whistles to make your site at least equal to, if not far more exciting and user-friendly, than those of your rivals. That’s part of the stylish start-up dream – to win the competition of the websites from the outset. You’ll need a design-conscious web designer on board to create this – don’t rely on poorly-polished skills to get you to this place, and outsource for the most professional and specialist skills where necessary. Professionals know how to optimize your site for Google’s algorithms, and they’re aware of what makes a website’s design the most ‘sticky’ for visitors, who often leave within seconds of arriving if they fail to find the content they’re after.
There are some specific elements that you ought to ensure are built into your magnificent new website. For starters, your site should be seamlessly multi-platform, which means it’ll be supported on laptop, tablet or phone without jumbling text or images together in an ugly and unprofessional way. You should also ensure that the navigability of your site is held with paramount importance – some experts say that you’ll need to usher visitors through to the purchasing page in no more than three clicks. Furthermore, complete integration with your social media platforms and payment systems like Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal will mean a fluidity of design that some start-ups fail to achieve. All these features are stylish, trustworthy and smart – they’ll set you on the path to success.
Start-ups are so often in the news as horror stories of lost investments and disappointing sales, and it may well be because of a certain tentative insecurity, betrayed through a lack of confidence and charisma. Make your start-up pop with energy, vitality and confidence by taking on board some of these tips, launching your new venture with a bang and ensuring you get heard amidst the hubbub of rival businesses.
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