Starting a business is not easy. And making it successful is itself a huge task.
As you know, thousands of new websites and companies are created all over the world every year. And 70% of those do not survive the first five years of business. Reason? Probably they fail to make their business stand out.
You must understand that this is the 21st century. Your product or idea can be copied in 6 months and some other business may provide the same at a lower price with better advertising. To make your business successful in the long run, you’ll need to create a personality of your product. It’s more about the way you’re doing business that what business you’re doing.
When I was working on my first brand, Floma (it wasn’t Floma.in then!), I was trying to get into manufacturing of customised products. My idea was to manufacture custom wall clocks as per customers’ preferences. In the first few months, I realised one important thing: If I need to stand out from the other people who are doing the same thing, I need to give a better presentation about my brand and service. So I started focusing more on making my ‘offer’ unique and creative rather making it cheap and attractive. And my this strategy has paid off well till today. Being in the process of making my brand stand out, I learned a few things. Here I’m sharing my experience with you, hoping it’ll benefit your business.
5 things you can do to make your business stand out in the first year and beyond:
1) Try to be good. Being good is different enough.
Though obvious, many businesses do not follow this. The first thing that’ll make your business stand out is quality. Quality speaks louder than the advertisement.
Do your homework and study your product and industry carefully. Find ways to make your product of the best quality possible. From sourcing raw material to hiring people, always think about the long term.
2) Your brand is your identity. Make it appealing.
It’s not just about having a good logo or a fresh brand colour. Branding is creating a personality of your brand. Believe it or not, your brand is a person. It is a separate entity. And it’s required that to take necessary steps to make it appealing.
- Choose a name that’ll signify your vision
- Select colours to suit your product
- Select a tagline that says why your brand in unique
- Focus on the features that make your product different from others
- Think of your office culture, advertisements, the way your people present themselves to the clients
- Make ‘quality’ and ‘reliability’ as your first priority
Businesses who stay true to their work eventually always find success.
3) Ask Feedback from every person who matters.
Don’t think that you know it all or do it all perfectly. Whenever possible, ask for feedback from your advisers, clients and people who you trust. Their feedback about your product, service quality and branding will help you improve what you didn’t even know was wrong.
Always ask for feedback from your clients because they are the people who can directly benefit your business. I love this quote about improvement-
“Always do the best with what you know. When you know better, do better.”
4) Beat your competitors at presentation.
When I launched Socinova in June 2014, my biggest question was: How do I beat my competitors? Yes, there were only a handful agencies that provide affordable social media marketing services, but still, they were established and I was new. So I decided, if I can’t beat them at popularity at the moment, I’ll beat them with my presentation.
I presented my branding, website, service features, customer support, communication better than them and this worked well. Even though I had no portfolio of clients and limited experience, I got great clients only due to the better presentation.
And that’s what I think you should focus on. Let their offering be better than you for the time being, but you can always beat them at presentation.
5) Make constant improvement a necessity.
You know why most of the businesses fail in 5 years? They become over-confident with their business. They think what they’ve done is the right thing and now they don’t need to change. This is where they go wrong.
All businesses, and especially tech businesses, should make improvement a necessity. You should review your product/service, business operations, customer satisfaction and other elements regularly. No product is perfect and there is always scope for improvement. Most of the businesses know this, but fail to apply. That’s where you can be better than them.
In my native language (Marathi), there is a proverb- Stop and you die.
This applies very well to the new age businesses, I think. Your company represents who you are and you should be serious about it.
What do you think, are these points helpful? Would you apply them to your business? Or do you have few things to share? Let’s talk in comments!
