Stories about high school entrepreneurs selling their start-ups for millions of dollars are the stuff finance fantasy is made of. Those among you who remember the late 1990s digital meltdown will agree that making a success out of a garage enterprise is not as easy as made out to be by media. If you own a start-up yourself here are top ten challenges of 2019 that you need to be aware of and prepared to tackle.
#1. A bad team
As a start-up you cannot afford to lure the crème de la crème of business school graduates with seven-figure salaries and Bahamas holiday perks. Instead look for professionals who may not wear an Ivy College tag but know their work. Be open to hiring students, freshers, women getting back to work after motherhood or mid-career professionals looking to follow their dream.
Some like ThanksForTheHelp allow freelancers on board. You may be required to be a little flexible regarding work-hours and shifts but instead you will gain a highly motivated team. Another requirement is the ability to multi-task since as a start-up, your venture might require a writer to pitch in with public relations while a coder may have to some number-crunching too.
#2. Poor cash flow
As a new business, you will be very careful about where your cash is going since you need to steer clear of avoidable losses. So not only keep tabs on your profit and losses but also get your head around receivables, payables, overheads and ideally all cash-related factors. This is so that you have your finger on the financial pulse of your business and hence can not only avoid emergencies but be able to plan your growth better.
#3. Danger of data theft
What with business giants like Facebook admitting data breach, you need to doubly secure all your start-up related data. Go over your current method of storing, processing and retrieving data and analyse its flaws. Recent innovations like block-chain technology are creating quite a buzz with their promise of greater transparency and tighter security technology. In the end, it is your business and the decisions regarding their security will have to be taken by you.
#4. Weak email marketing
Decades ago, email marketing used to be the mainstay of a small business. But now with the smartphone, the World Wide Web is just a tap away for the customer. In such a demanding environment, you need to jazz up your email marketing skills. However reaching out to hundreds of actual or potential customers, day in and day out, can eat up a lot of your time and energy. So look for tools which make for seamless integration across digital platforms and categorize your emailing list according to physical location or demographic traits like age and gender. Template creation is yet another part of an effective emails campaign for which you can hire professionals from TopAssignmentExperts or PaperDoers. Finally keep in mind sales conversion and get tools that will make it easier for potential customers to hit the buy button.
#5. Ignorance about competitors
Remember that old adage about keeping your friends close but your enemies closer. Read up all about your successful competition and analyse what they are doing that you aren’t. If possible, even engage with them so that you pick up some valuable business lessons from ventures that have been around far longer than you have. At the end of the day, do not worry who is your rival – you give your best in terms of product and service and then let your customers and audience decide.
#6. Lacklustre content
Digital content has quickly shot up as one of the most powerful marketing tools for any business – whether an online portal or a brick-and-mortar store. And you as a start-up need to establish your presence in the digital world. For this though it is not just enough to pepper your content with a few keywords and expect it to appear at the top of search engine result pages. More importantly your content will have to translate its good ranking into actual sales. For this, see that your pages and contact details are updated, your content matches customer needs and most importantly, it expressed something unique about your business. Professional writers from BestOnlineAssignmentHelp and others are a good idea to hire for producing result-driven content for your website.
#7. No cover against risks
Running a business is bound to expose you to some amount of risk. your start-up is not only subject to the highs and lows of wider influences in finance and technology sectors but also to particular happenings like loss of an employee, a short-circuit fire or equipment breakdown. It is therefore necessary to cover most of such eventualities with the right insurance plans. Also backup important information like customer database and banking details so that if there is trouble online, you have not lost all your information.
#8. Disrupted supply chains
In this day of global economy, it is easy to get dependant on overseas markets for supplies as well as sales. However consider the complexities of international politics, business and even weather conditions which may interrupt your supply chains. Changes in tariffs and exchange rates of foreign currencies are other factors that could cause disruptions to how you are receiving your supplies. So cast a fresh look at your supply chains and have a plan to deal with exigencies.
#9. Ineffective Page Meta
With trillions of internet users surfing each day, your business needs to be found and more importantly, by potential customers. And since users hardly go beyond the first two pages of Search Engine results, the content on your website needs to use effective Search Engine Optimization. One of the ways can be by enhancing the page Meta which includes page title Meta tag as well page Meta description tag. Look for professional writers like from OnlineAssignmentWriting who are familiar with tools like Webmaster and Hubspot to generate, grade and write effective Meta tags.
#10. Lack of identity
Finally your start-up success will depend upon your identity and place in the marketplace. This cannot be done overnight since in the beginning everyone – from your investors to your team – will be putting forward on how things should be done. Ultimately from your business experience and your business instinct, you will have to chalk out a map of who you are and where you want to go.
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