Building Your Business From Scratch: What You Should Know

Building your own business is an exciting adventure. However, it can be stressful, especially if you don’t know what you need to know. When you’re building your business, planning is the key to success. Preparing prior to launching your business will give you confidence and expertise to lean on in the beginning stages. By following these steps to build your business from scratch, you’ll be on your way to being a prosperous entrepreneur.

Define Your Purpose

Before you launch your business, you must define your purpose. You should have a clear “why” that you can look back on to motivate yourself. Why do you want to run your own business? Why this business? Think about what you are passionate about. If you start a business in an industry you couldn’t care less about, you won’t feel motivated to work on it and make it the best it can be. Starting a business based on something you are passionate about will drive you towards success.

Additionally, you should define your short-term and long-term goals. Do you want to drive brand awareness, sales, or social media engagement? Get specific on what your short-term and long-term goals are to inform what you should focus on.

Identify Your Audience

Next, identify your audience. You must find your target market to know where you should spend time and money to market, advertise, and sell. To identify your target audience, you should look at demographics and psychographics.

Demographics are specific characteristics that describe a particular group of people. They include things like age, income, location, gender, and career. Demographics can be collected through focus groups, polls, and social media analytics.

Psychographics are characteristics that describe a consumer’s values, including their attitudes, opinions, interests, and values. Pyschographics can be collected through opinion surveys and social listening.

By deciding what audience you want to sell to, you’ll be able to understand who they are and which marketing channels will be the most effective to reach them.

Design Your Brand

Once you’ve defined your purpose and defined your audience, you should design your brand. This includes the name of your brand, your logo, and packaging if applicable. Your brand design should set you apart from the competition and draw consumers in. 

For example, Coca-Cola has done a great job with brand design. They’ve created an iconic logo that is recognizable across all products. When consumers see the logo, they think Coca-cola. 

If design is in your wheelhouse, work on making a creative logo and brand name that will be memorable. If design isn’t in your skillset, consider hiring a graphic designer to help you with creative direction and design tactics. 

Craft Your Business Plan

Once you’ve defined your purpose and ideal target audience, you should begin crafting your business plan. Your business plan should provide an overview that can act as a guide as you are working through the first stages of running your business. It will help you plan out your goals, identify your strengths, and be aware of your weaknesses. You can look at it whenever you need a reminder of your advantages or use it to convince an investor of your strengths.

Traditional business plans include the following sections.

• Executive summary. The executive summary is a high-level overview that covers what your company is, why it will be successful, your mission statement, the product or service that will be provided, and the location of business. 
• Company description. The company description section should include detailed information about what problem the company solves, who the business will help, and what competitive advantages it has. For example, a handmade clothing company would solve the problem of low-quality clothing being the only thing accessible in some areas, it will help people have access to high-quality clothing pieces, and has an advantage over other businesses because it is handmade. 
• Market analysis. The market analysis includes an analysis of the industry, the target market, and competitors. 
• Service or product line. The service or product line is a detailed description of what you’ll be selling or offering, how it benefits consumers, and any plans for intellectual property rights, such as copyrights or patents. 
• Marketing and sales. The marketing and sales sections describe how you’ll attract and retain customers. 

You can certainly launch your business before your business plan is finalized, but it’s important to create a business plan before getting to a large scale so you will have consistent values and processes. 

Build A Website

Next, you should build a website. If you don’t have a website, consumers will have a harder time finding out about your company. The majority of consumers today conduct research on a brand before committing to buying from them. Aside from social media, the company’s website is the most used resource to research a company. 

Your website should include the following sections.

• About. The about page should provide an overview of why you started the company, what it values, and what it can provide consumers.
• Services/products. The services/products page should describe what you can offer consumers. You can choose whether or not to include prices in this section.
• Blog. The blog page is an important SEO tool. By having a blog on your website, you can increase your rank on search engine results pages and increase brand awareness.
• Testimonials/reviews. A testimonials or reviews section is important because consumers want to know what others think of your brand before committing to working with or buying from you.
• Contact. The contact page is important for customer inquiries.

These sections provide a strong basis for your website that you can customize based on your business needs.

Grow Your Customer Base

Once you have the beginning steps in place, you can begin growing your customer base. To get the word out about your business, start with friends and family. They will be your biggest supporters. Then, spread the word to your network through LinkedIn, social media, and networking events.

When you’re ready to take it a step further, experiment with inbound and outbound marketing. Create content to motivate prospects to come to you. Call prospects to generate new leads. Find what works for you and you’ll be on your way to building a solid customer base.

Scale Your Business

After building a solid foundation for your business, you’ll want to scale it. Focus on continuously improving your professionalism, products, and services. 

There are always ways to reach more people, reduce costs, innovate processes, improve customer experiences, and design new products and services. As you become more confident and experienced running your business, you’ll be able to add on to continuing growing and scaling your business.

Launch Your Business With Mythos Group

Are you ready to start your business? Mythos Group will help you define your purpose, identify your target audience, and more! Contact Mythos Group to get started today.