Take a look at how you can organize and advertise to galvanize your enterprise
If you have recently given up your ultra-secure day job, your excellent promotion prospects and your regular wage in a quest to follow your dreams of launching your own startup, then there’s no doubt you are nervous about your new venture. While you might have one of the best ideas to come to market in the last decade or you are discovering an untapped niche with a new range of services, this will count for nothing if no one knows that your business exists. This is where the world of advertising comes into play. A nuanced marketing and advertising campaign can make or break a startup. With over 80 percent of startups not surviving their first eighteen months of trading, it can be daunting to go it alone.
It doesn’t matter what industry you are trying to break into, there will be a ridiculous amount of well-established competition who will be your rivals. To become a market leader, you need to understand your market and their needs and wants as much as the product you are aiming to sell. You need to be bold and dynamic when trying to bring something different and revolutionary to the market. Competition is healthy for business but only if it leads to improvements and a higher quality of product and service. Take a look at how you can organize and advertise to galvanize your enterprise.
Organize
From the embryonic stages of your startup idea, you should be utilizing your organizational skills to ensure your transition from full-time employee to mompreneur is as seamless as possible. Set about creating a vision and plan for your business before you even consider handing your notice in. Try and be concise and state the aim of your business in two sentences or less. By doing this, you will remain focused and on track to develop and grow your business as stated in your plan.
Ensure that you financially forecast your revenue and profits for the first two years of trading, taking into account any potential lulls and ways to mitigate them. This is especially important if you are in need of external funding from the bank or a business angel, or if you intend to crowdfund for startup costs. They are not just investing in your business, but they also need to be reassured that you are a worthwhile investment.
Organize your startup so that it is more or less ready to launch as soon as you leave your employed position. This way there will be no lull in your income, and you can hit the ground running with your new enterprise.
Advertise
When it comes to publicizing your business, it can be difficult to know what sort of marketing campaign to initiate. A marketing campaign takes a great deal of preparation and involves numerous media outlets and channels. Since the dawn of social media and millennials appetite for everything online, the Internet has become a huge place to advertise your products and services. You are now able to communicate with your customers and clients in a more informal and instant way. If your business is not on social media, you will need to sign up for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as soon as you’ve finished reading this article.
Set up a business blog and encourage interaction with your customers. You could detail discounts online, encourage your followers to share content to expand your readership and increase your online exposure exponentially. You may even wish to consider a viral marketing campaign. Although harder than ever to design effectively, when they pay off a la Blair Witch Project they can be financially lucrative and generate an unparalleled online buzz for your startup.
If you have a healthy budget, you may be tempted to look into the world of TV commercials. This expensive advertising medium is still the most effective way to reach as many people as possible. The construction of a TV commercial relies on market research to determine the sort of messages that your target niche will respond to.
You may even want to take a hands-on approach and direct and edit the commercial. You may need to hire actors, develop a script, and emulate your branding on the TV screen. For the young hipster style market, you might want to look into some cool rap beats for sale to add a soundtrack to your advert. Instrumentals are the best sort as they don’t detract from the message of the commercial with lyrics.
Radio is another avenue down which to travel with your advertisement campaign. Slightly cheaper than TV, radio (digital and traditional) is still a lucrative channel that accesses numerous markets.
If you don’t have the in-house expertise to construct a marketing or advertising campaign yourself, consider outsourcing to the experts. If you attempt to take the task on yourself in an effort to save money, this could be a costly mistake. Your market may remain untapped, and you could waste a small fortune on a pointless campaign with no real direction. Specialist marketing teams can listen to your requirements and design a strategy complete with a timeline. Multi-faceted campaigns involving online media, TV, radio, and print are now highly sought after and can result in a ridiculous amount of traffic to your website, new customers, new orders, sales and an increase in profits.
If you are starting out on the road of mompreneurship, don’t make the mistake of doing everything yourself and utilize experts when you need them. First and foremost you are a parent so you cannot and should not work fifteen hour days at the detriment of quality time with your family. If needed, take on staff, outsource and delegate.
Spend your money wisely, detail your advertising strategy in your business plan and always stick to your business vision. Cash flow is vital to the success of any new business so never try and run before you can walk however tempting this might be. Never forget that to galvanize your enterprise you need to organize and advertise.
