First Step Marketing

Two important questions to ask yourself after you’ve completed the interrogation: First, what do you like about the way they run their business? Second, what is one thing you noticed about their business that you would never use in your own? Remember, if you’re entering an area where your business will be facing competition, as long as you can focus your business in a way where you’re doing something that your competitors are not, you have an excellent chance to make your business stand out despite the competition.

Another way to scope out your competition is to notice the changes they experience over a period of time. If you’re thinking of starting a magazine, for instance, look at a full year of back issues of your closest competitor. Is the current issue carrying significantly more ads than a year ago? Do certain times of the year result in issues that are thinner than others? If you could take over the business, what would be the first changes you would make?

Your discoveries will go a long way in establishing your own customer base while rightfully winning some followers from your competitors.

Will your Business Fly?

This may be the hardest question for an aspiring entrepreneur to answer when it comes to her new baby, her business. “Of course it will fly!” she replies, indignant that anyone would doubt her ideas as well as her intelligence.

Here’s the hard truth: Four out of five businesses that are around today will no longer exist five years from now. There are certain industries that have an even greater mortality rate, among them restaurants and retail stores, which ironically, are two of the more popular businesses to start.

By no means should you be discouraged from following your dreams. On the contrary, by reading this post you’ve taken a serious first step toward long-term success by carefully planning your business instead of starting it in a haphazard way.

Researching the need for your business as well as envisioning how it will fill that need is the single most important task you can do to ensure that your business will make it to its fifth birthday. In doing so, you’re taking bigger and wiser steps than do the majority of people who start their own businesses.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
What did you learn from running business?

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 at 2:42 am and is filed under Business Management, Business Plans, Home Based Business, Startup. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.