The road to success is fraught with potholes
What do Snapchat, Uber, Airbnb, Spotify, Jawbone and SpaceX have in common? Unless you’ve been living under a rock for a very long time, you must have guessed correctly that these are all startups that made it big. Their success is inspirational and essentially acts as a catalyst to drive the emergence of other startups.
Success breeds success. That’s what they say. But with 90 per cent of startups failing to make a mark, this particular statement isn’t quite right for the startup ecosystem.
While it’s not easy to get a startup up and running, it is even more challenging to ensure its longevity and success. There are several factors that contribute to the success of a startup. And there are several more factors that contribute to its failure!
To know the factors contributing to startup failure helps you avoid them. So let’s take a look at potential pitfalls:
1. Not having the perfect website
As a startup, you may have plans to provide the best product or service. You might even have the best marketing plans and promotional activities lined up for the same, but without a perfect or near-perfect website, all your attempts to retain potential customers will be futile.
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Create a website before launching your startup. For this purpose, choose your best resources that can assist you in building a website, which has everything your startup needs. It needs oomph, fantastic UX and dependability. Your website will be your most important customer-facing company asset. If you get it wrong, your target customers won’t be pleased.
2. Not asking questions
Not asking questions — particularly the right questions — can be detrimental to your startup. For instance, if you decide to have an e-commerce startup, you need to ask questions that will be relevant to your business. Do you have sufficient resources to begin with? What about the suppliers: Have you verified their authenticity? Do you have the wherewithal that can handle all the work that needs to be done in a day? Such questions and more can help you plan ahead for your startup and make it a success. Not doing so will do the opposite.
3. Not having a business plan
Another crucial factor that plays an important role in determining the success or failure of a startup is a business plan. Having a robust plan in place helps steer the life of the startup. Yes, how you nurture it is in your hands, and it all starts with a business plan. This includes knowing the competition, measuring ROI, establishing ground rules for marketing and promotions, allocating budget, and so forth. Without a plan, you’ll have nothing to fall back upon if anything goes wrong. This ultimately leads to startup failure.
4. Not having a budget allocation strategy
When you don’t have a budget allocation strategy in place for your startup, you tend to blow up all the money on things that deliver very little ROI. Suppose you want to hire a web designer and a graphic designer for the startup. Hiring talent for both the roles can be an option but instead, you can save your funds by hiring a resource who can take on both these roles.
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This is one of the perks of a startup – you can hire talent that can don multiple hats, and in this process, you end up saving a major chunk of the company’s funds! When you are already a well-established name on the market, you can go ahead and invest in more resources. But in the initial stages, it pays to save some cash and use it elsewhere.
5. Not making efforts to promote
Marketing and promotions are two mainstays of any company and not just startups alone. However, they play an important role for startups, as you will need more visibility than established firms. Although you do need a budget allocated especially for this purpose, there are ways you can promote your startup at a low-cost. For instance, you can look for alternative promotional methods that don’t require a lot of money.
- Make use of social media marketing by choosing the platforms that fit your startup the best.
- Use free tools and resources to create marketing collateral instead of hiring someone to do it for you.
- Run giveaways on various platforms to gain visibility.
- Attend corporate seminars, webinars, podcasts and anything and everything that helps you network.
- See what your competitors are doing.
- Keep your eyes and ears open for any unique marketing strategy that comes your way.
- Have a unique approach to everything and build your personal brand from scratch.
6. Not launching at the right time
Timing is extremely important for startups. Make it a point to launch your startup at the appropriate time, and there’ll be no looking back. For this, take into consideration factors like:
- Do the people really want the service/product?
- Will the competitors pose any challenges?
- Does a local/national/international event have a direct impact on the launch?
- Will it gain traction by launching at a particular time?
- Is the product/service ready for marketing?
- Are all the marketing collateral and website ready?
- Are you prepared to answer the queries that may come in after the launch?
All these factors will help you determine whether your startup is ready to go on the floor, or if you need to wait further before taking the leap.
7. Not establishing deadlines
Establishing deadlines needs to be the order of the day for startups. Time is money, and losing any of it will eventually lead to massive failure for your startup.
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Whether it is launching the website, carrying out an outreach strategy, answering customer queries or hiring talent, everything needs to be carried out on time. Without deadlines, things can go haywire and leave you in a messy situation. Avoid this situation by creating deadlines and breaking them up into smaller deadlines, which can be easily achieved by you.
Calling it a day
We are living in an age that is apt for launching startups. People are open to accepting new ideas and innovations and are becoming aware of upcoming technologies by being constantly connected to the virtual world. However, startup success can depend on a combination of factors, and knowing these best practices can help you find that sweet spot.
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Image Credit: petzshadow / 123RF Stock Photo
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