4 Start Up Business Mistakes For You To Avoid

Launching a startup is undoubtedly challenging and takes a lot of hours. Even after their best efforts, many startups fail every year unravelling all their hard work. Lack of business experience and little knowledge on business world make most of the entrepreneurs fall into the same traps making the list of ‘why startups fail?’ short.

Many startup owners have zero experience in running a business. So, figuring out complex problems, situations arise and new field such as management, finance..etc as quickly as possible is essential in order to avoid most common startup failures.

Here are 4 commons mistakes many startups make for you to avoid.

#1 Overestimating product demand

Just because you feel like your business idea is great doesn’t mean that it’s actually going to work. Many startups face massive failures as they overestimate their product demand.

So, before you develop your product, it’s important to understand the real needs of your market. Researching your market, understanding what your market needs and current trends can be very helpful in testing your business idea. You can use surveys, forums and online or offline community related to your niche for your research.

Without a compelling offer, survival in the industry can be tough, as you have to compete with other competitors. So, a product with well-defined advantages is a must if you need to stand from the crowd.

Developing and creating a product takes a lot of blood, sweat and tears. Make sure to check your idea with your markets’ demands first whenever a business idea hits your mind. So your effort won’t be a waste.

#2 Not paying for experts

Let’s be honest. You are not a pro at everything. We all have our strong points as well as our week points.

Pretending that you know everything after searching google for several hours and downloading few free resources, is another big mistake many startups make.

Taxes. Legal stuff. Maybe even marketing or IT…

If you are not good at something, stop DIY trying.

It’s no waste in investing a little in order to learn more about the subject or get the things done properly. Because sometimes a DIY gone wrong, can cost much more money than hiring an expert. Maybe even your whole business.

So, if you are not willing to hire the right expert at the right time overestimating your skills, you might end up killing the future of your startup.

Am I really good at this?-Ask yourself. If you are not, consider paying for an expert for certain and effective results.

Experts do see a wide range and understand things in that particular fields better than you do. Get the help of an expert who really knows what he or she is doing and you’ll be amazed by the things they have to offer you.

#3 Underestimating the time it takes to make sales

I remember how one of my clients thought he could earn some profit within a two months of time when he hired me to write some blog posts for his website which wasn’t even alive at the time.

He had a good plan. A practicable one. But he didn’t get the results as expected.

Reason :The short timeframe which wasn’t enough to get expected results.

Closing some deals for the first time can be very daunting for new businesses.

When it comes to newbies who made their first few sales imaging to beat the big companies within your first few months is still impossible. Because,just having a business, a website and a good product won’t lead to a profitable business. There will be a lot of lessons to learn, experiences to take, and resources,strategies and tactics to figure out.

Many businesses think that making sales is easy after launching the business. And they run out of money in a short period of time due to the underestimation of the time it takes to make sales.

Keep in mind it takes a time to make decisions, take approvals and do adjustments. So, set practicable timeframe to archive your sales goal and plan the next financial steps of your business.

#4 Poor marketing

Yes,you have an awesome product. Yet, no one is going to notice it,if you not willing to do what it takes to get your product in front of your market.

In order to survive in the competition, you should promote your offers in the right channels. In the present world, marketing has become a cost effective task, with the surge of the online marketing such as social media marketing and content marketing.

Utilize these new marketing techniques for your business and receive the ultimate benefits of online marketing for a low budget.

Or you can always go for traditional marketing methods such as TV & radio advertising, printed promotions …etc if you feel like modern marketing tactics are not enough.

The most important task for a business (no matter it is a startup or not) after developing their product is marketing. That’s why you should make it one of your top priority too.

Lesser the attention for marketing is more the danger you put your startup in.

So, take necessary actions to make your marketing strong. Invest in good resources and build a strong marketing strategy assessing your strengths and weaknesses.

Success in the business world as newbie without any failures is nearly impossible. But if you have studied the other startups’ mistakes you will be able to avoid a lot of them speeding up your journey to success. Also that knowledge will help reduce the harm whenever you make a mistake as you understand what went wrong so you can figure out what to do next to stand up again quickly.

***This was a Guest Post written by Pavithra Premarathna from Snappy Script***

Pavithra Premarathna is a B2B freelance writer and the founder of snappyscript.com.

She helps B2B businesses in with writing snappy content and in-depth blog posts on B2B,marketing and travel topics.

Apart from writing, she is in love with cute succulents and scary dogs. Find her on Twitter and Linkedin.