One of the rising trends across the world is the growth of individuals starting their own businesses from home. In the USA alone, there are approximately 30.2 million small businesses operating. This equates to around 543,000 being set up every single month to give a figure of 6.5 million small businesses being formed every year. Combined with the growing trend of working from home and freelancing in other sectors, how we make our money is increasingly being placed in our hands. As Generation Z begins to enter the workforce, they bring with them an entrepreneurial zeal and a desire to strike out on their own. But, how easy is it to start a business from scratch?
Business Type
One of the most important decisions to make is what kind of business you might set up. This comes down to your background and skills or a unique idea you have had that you think could gain you investor capital and you could bring to market.
In the US, the most successful industries for small operations include business services and online retail. Indeed, business services are rising due to the overall number of smaller businesses rising, without marketing and account functions in-house. For those who want to learn how to start an online store, there are many choices to make: from picking the right platform that your online store will be hosted on – from Shopify to WooCommerce – to optimizing how your site will run and how you will disseminate information about your brand and products to your customers. Researching the sector you want to conduct business in and potential competitors is a key factor at this stage and can help inform the direction your business might take down the road.
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Getting Customers
Once your idea is in place, you’ll need to get it out there to begin attracting customers. This can be tackled from many angles. You can boost your social media strategy that will enable you to target potential customers based on information on social media. This can be useful for some online shops and brands that focus on the visual nature of their products or services. Other businesses could invest in a marketing budget to reach trade publications, send direct mail to customers, or conduct research on the perfect customer.
Ultimately, the best way to get your business talked about is to generate happy customers who will act as brand ambassadors and leave genuine positive reviews, as well as reinforce how good your business is to their networks. Most people struggle to find their clientele when they start out in business, but the best advice suggests that you have an idea of who you would like your clientele to be and work backwards from there. Many try to please too many disparate groups at once and end up appealing to nobody, so being selective can be beneficial.
Starting a business is easy – in theory. Ensuring that your idea is one you can pull off and have the skills for is a good starting point. Finding customers is more difficult. But it’s not impossible. If your business idea is strong enough, finding customers and convincing them to purchase your products or services should be straightforward.
