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So, you’re young, with reasonable funds or investors, possess a brilliant and innovative mind, and you’ve decided to start your own business. Congratulations on becoming a young entrepreneur! Now that you’ve got the basics down, here are some tips on how to better manage your new start-up.
1. Know your audience
It’s extremely important that you know the audience that you are catering to. If you’re offering goods or services, you need to know how to attract and appeal to the target audience in mind. Have you considered researching more into your target audience? You must gain a deeper understanding of their wants, needs, and their buyer behaviour.
2. Produce a business plan
This is something that you should definitely drop everything to develop, if you haven’t done so already. Without a business plan, what is the purpose of your business? A business plan encapsulates everything that the business stands for, including the aims and objectives that it needs to achieve in a certain timeframe. A business plan can help motivate you and reminds you why you founded your start-up in the first place.
3. Research your competition
It’s also a good idea to do your research on your competitors in the same industry. With this knowledge, you’re able to ascertain their strengths and weaknesses, and identify opportunities where you can make your start-up stand out from the crowd. Additionally, you can learn from your competitor’s mistakes and meet the customers’ needs that your competitors couldn’t.
4. Find a mentor
Whilst you are already proving that you are an intelligent and creative being, with an excellent entrepreneurial spirit, every entrepreneur can benefit from having a mentor. Especially if you have recently emerged into the business world, a mentor can help guide you through and even shorten that learning process.
5. Network
As a young entrepreneur, one of the best things you can do for your start-up is to network with others - both peers and customers. Although networking can sometimes be a tiring social activity, it would be a great advantage for your start-up if you socialise with other entrepreneurs to build potential partnerships, as well as gain advice from those with more experience.
6. Market your start-up in simple ways
As a start-up, you may not have yet amassed a large amount of funds for the marketing budget. Don’t worry! There are cost-efficient, yet effective marketing strategies that you can utilise for your start-up. Why not experiment with out-of-home (OOH) advertising? There are OOH advertising solutions like Clear Start by Clear Channel that are ideal for start-ups and new businesses, so it would be worthwhile trying them out if you’re attempting to reach a mass audience.
7. Identify your niche
If possible, it may be wise to identify a gap in the market and focus on it as your niche, instead of offering a broad and conventional range of products or services like your competitors. For example, if your start-up is looking to focus on alcoholic beverages, you may choose to focus on alcohol-free drinks instead that have similar taste, smell, and look as its alcoholic counterparts, but also with sustainable packaging and ethically sourced ingredients.
And there you have it - 7 essential tips for start-ups run by young entrepreneurs.