WHAT ARE THE BEST BUSINESS STRATEGIES FOR START-UPS?

What are the primary differences between your company and your competitors? How is your

venture unique, and why will your goods or services appeal to customers?

In other words, what are the underlying strategies for your business? One must have an answer

to these questions before starting a business. Before we go any further we must know what is

‘Strategy’? Strategy basically means your business plan to start and implement any business

initiative which is essentially needed if proposal is feasible or not and what are the intricacies

involved in terms of its setup, financial & other requirements as well as timelines for it to

become a fruit bearing enterprise for you. Majorly the following steps constitute to formulate a

strategic plan:

Purpose and Intent Defining your purpose is important because it makes you aware of what you want to achieve out

of the proposal. Broadly it should be your vision which defines your mission for starting the

venture. This will let you know what you want to sell (product/service), who are your potential

customers, what are your competitive advantages, what is your plan for growth and so on.

Goal Setting Goal setting is a meaningful exercise undertaken to determine where we are today and where

we want to be after one year or five years or so. In a new business, one needs to go through

some research and development before predicting the outcomes for longer time periods. Two

sets of goals are to be created i.e. Short term: range from six to 12 months, Long term: maybe

two to five years.

The goals have to be as specific as possible and some exercise for goal setting can be done by

answering some relevant questions like:

As an owner/partner of the business, what do you want to achieve?

How large or small do you want this business to be?

Do you want to include family in your business?

How many people you want to employ for the business?

The quality, quantity of the product(s) you want to produce and the service and

customer satisfaction levels.

How would you explain your primary competitive advantages?

How do you see the business making a difference in the lives of your customers?

This kind of exercise will help in proper goal setting.

Working out Strategies for Achieving the Goals:

Before actually working out the strategies it is important to understand and define the guiding

factors for working out the strategies. Some of which can be:

1. Understand the Target Customers and their requirements:

It is important to choose the target market carefully and understand what the unmet

needs of your prospective customers are. How your business would meet those needs.

Is it something the customer does not have or is currently being met some sources for

which you will provide a better alternative? What problems does your product or

service solve? What are the negative and positive perceptions that customers have

about you, your profession and its products or services? Identify both the negative and

positive consequences. You will be able to use what you learn when you start marketing

and promoting your business.

2. Learn From Your Competition

We can learn a lot about our business and customers by looking at how our competitors

do business. We must know some basic facts about our target market like: What

competitors do we have? How are they approaching the market?, What are their

weaknesses and strengths?, How can we improve upon the competition’s approach?. We

have to have knowledge of the lifestyles, demographics and psychographics etc. of our

prospective customers.

3. Financial Constraints

The financial parameters will determine the boundaries of our strategies. This will

depend upon how we make money? What is our break-even point? How much profit

potential does our business have? We have to prepare reliable financial projections

beforehand which will take into account the collection period for accounts receivables

(outstanding customer accounts) as well as the payment terms for suppliers. Like we

may be releasing payments in 30 days, but collection cycle from customers may be 45

days or as early as 15 days. We would need to fulfil the gaps in the cash position and

work out strategies accordingly.

Marketing Strategy

Working out most suitable marketing strategy for the business is a very tedious job which is

required to be done very carefully considering all the relevant factors such as:

a) Identifying all Target Markets: Who is going to be our ideal customer or target

market? It has been experienced that 80% of business of many companies comes

from 20% of their customers. It will therefore make sense to direct time and energy

toward those customers who are most important.

b) Determining the Customer Profile: The purpose of this step is to determine which

customer profile meets the best odds of success. The strategy is to position business

at the same level as the majority of the buyers are targeting. It is critical to figure out

who are the best customers and how to best position our company in the

marketplace.

c) Identifying Tools, Approaches and Methods: Marketing is the process of finding,

communicating and educating your primary market about products and services.

We have to choose a combination of tools and approaches, that when combined,

increase odds of success.

d) Testing Marketing approach and Tools: The assumptions that we do not verify

are typically the ones that have the potential to create business problems. Therefore

we have to test all business assumptions, especially when we are making major

expenditures.

Synergising Offline and Online Marketing Strategies The advent of Internet combined with the rise of social media has resulted in shifting the (to a

certain extent) marketing focus towards online channels. However, traditional “offline”

marketing strategies still remain major tool for reaching the customers. With the target of

maximising sales revenues in mind there is a need to synergise both for achieving the set out

goals.

Some Marketing Strategies

Ads on print, radio or TV are usually expensive, therefore one has to make sure that

the product or service to be advertised demonstrates itself to be profitable and is of a

high quality. May be to start in a local area to keep spending at a minimum can help in

having a targeted ad campaign.

Brochures, Business Cards & Flyers etc. can help in disseminating information about

your business. These need to be distributed in large public areas where there is plenty of

human traffic. It can give definitive information about the congregation of your

prospective customers/clients.

Putting Sticker Ads on Cars buses, trains and other modes of transport is also a

affordable way of advertising. Similarly, shirts, hats or any similar clothing with

company logo and URL can be distributed for publicity.

Mobile Advertising can be done by contacting the customers on mobile phones.

Similarly direct Mail campaign is also effective. It makes an immediate impact as it

gives customers the convenience of getting to know more about your business and your

products while in the comfort of their own homes. Collect physical addresses of your

customers using a subscription method you can package into your products. You are

capitalizing on their interest in what you’re offering. You can also spend on targeted

mailing lists that fall in line with your target audience to reach potential customers

Connecting Online and Offline Marketing The joint potential of offline strategies and online strategies can be realised by bridging the gap

between the two. For example Social Media isone of the fastest medium of spreading

information at an unparalleled speed and influencing the current generation in the process. It

can be made to work for publicising offline marketing strategy by promoting events through

your business social media pages. Even your online “fans” and “followers” can be given an

incentive for showing up by providing them exclusive promos and discounts. The social media

addresses (along with official website address) can be printed on all offline marketing materials.

The employees can be educated to use social media to convert leads into customers.

To avoid confusion at the customer’s end, It is important to have a uniform brand in all the

marketing campaigns i.e. same slogan and logo etc. . This also means putting your website’s

URL, as well as your social media accounts’ URL, on each and every promotional offline material

you have as stated earlier.

The offline campaign can be tracked online. Plenty of analytics tools available to see if the

offline marketing is working by setting up unique tracking URLs and placing them in your

traditional marketing materials. Integrate these URLs with your QR codes for maximum

tracking efficiency. Doing this lets you distinguish changes in your website’s traffic, conversion

rates and more, whether they’re a result of your online strategy or your offline strategy instead.

Offline marketing is a great avenue to bolster your business’ overall campaign. By running it in

conjunction with a concrete online marketing strategy, you get to cover much more ground. The

result is an increase in your brand recognition which, in turn, can lead to more sales. The tagline

is to keep both balanced.