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How to Grow your startup business?

Not all startups are successful. The reasons could be a combination of – business planning, revenue model, leadership team, target segments, product, and most often execution. I have seen startups that had almost all the elements needed to transition into a sustainable, high-growth business, but lacked guidance and experienced leadership team. Building a startup is difficult but converting it into a high-growth business is even more challenging, and often requires a different skill set than that was required in the early days of a startup.

So what are those ingredients for that secret sauce of building a startup, successfully?

Having right business mentors and startup consultants are critical success factors for a startup to be successful. According to the first research report of Startup Genome Project in 2011, it was found that founders who learn are more successful. Startups that have helpful mentors, track metrics effectively, and learn from startup thought leaders, raise 7x more money and have 3.5x better user growth.

Bill Joy, Founder of Sun Microsystems once said, “No matter who you are, most of the smartest people don’t work for you”. So it is best to avail professionals / mentors to support your growth mission; and in building a successful and sustainable high-growth business. You can avail mentor support across functions like marketing, sales, accounting, human resources, operational excellence, training, etc.

To ensure sustainable growth you need to have:

 Right business model that acquires customers

 Leadership with ideology, beyond just passion and vision

 Ability to seize opportunities

 Creating a high impact, marketing and sales engine

 Retention strategies

Have the right business model that aligns with customer acquisition. Do not build products / services that just excite only you and not your customers.Focus on long-term AND short-term goals and activities. Most often, companies tend to forgo short term profits thinking of reaping those profits in long term, but practically they are only digging themselves deeper.

Your ideology has to reflect upon your culture and beliefs. Like how Walmart’s ideology is focused on customers, Hewlett Packard – its employees, 3M – its innovation, Ford – its products, your activities and outcomes need to be consistent with your ideology.

Most often when you start to scale, you might stumble upon some great opportunities. Do not leave them since they are not products or services that you are currently pursuing. As long it fits the core of your ideology and purpose, do give it a try. 3M came out with Post-it product just by accident; Johnson & Johnson accidentally introduced baby powder which then climbs up drastically to have over 40% of their revenue share; Marriot Corporation got into the airport services business by accident and that became a roaring success. All these were once a small startup which later became large corporations. These successes are not attributed to great business or strategic planning, but show their abilities to seize opportunities. Explore options, pick what works for you and discard those that don’t work.

Most startups fail to scale due to lack of customers. There may be initial success but if you rest on your laurels you will get run-over. Set an effective, high impact marketing and sales engine. In my numerous meetings with CEOs and entrepreneurs, marketing and sales have been predominantly mixed up. Both are like chalk and cheese, so you need to have dedicated professionals for marketing (especially digital marketing) and sales functions.

Building revenues is paramount, a non-negotiable factor and laser focus on sales is very critical while you are scaling up. Hire ‘smart’ sales persons, and keep them on optimum heat so that they fire in the right areas. Fuel their passion and increase your revenue visibility.

Do not stop with lip service on customer satisfaction; honestly walk that extra mile to ensure that you stay on top of your customer’s mind, always. Incorporate customer feedback into your system and ensure that it is acted upon at the earliest. It is difficult to win customers, and if you lose them it takes more than 7x efforts to win another; not to mention, that their potential could be far lesser than what you had lost.

Your employees should be taught not to just please their bosses, but to ensure that their customers are taken care of. Make them treat customers like their CEO and success will look easy.

Your employees should be taught not to just please their bosses, but to ensure that their customers are taken care of. Make them treat customers like their CEO and success will look easy.

Beyond startup phase, while you are scaling up, it might be easier to afford more salaries to recruit key resources. While you might be able to attract talent, it is important that you have strong retention policies. Have small celebrations, cheer songs and team meetings to share corporate values and beliefs, from time to time.

Be tolerant for honest mistakes. We all know that while a startup is beginning to scale there are bound to be mistakes. Just make sure that the same does not crop up in future. Even large organizations do make mistakes. Allow them to experiment and bring out their best, as long as it does not become a corporate failure.

Finally, it is all about consistency; consistency in winning deals, consistency in getting customer appreciations, consistency in building robust products or solutions, consistency in delivering high quality services and consistency in collecting payments on-time that separates winners from those who also-ran!

Startup Xperts is a business growth and consulting firm with an objective to transform CEO’s vision into achievable, actionable goals that deliver results. Our mission is to help companies to steeply accelerate their revenue growth, profitably. Be it family run business, small or medium enterprise or a boutique firm, Startup Xperts have all the right answers to step up their growth. Startup Xperts help clients in a range of service areas including business consulting, strategic consulting, sales and marketing consulting, digital marketing, Sales Process Outsourcing (SPO), HR, Operations and leadership training, sales training, business mentoring and executive coaching.

To know more about Startup Xperts, visit us at www.startupxperts.com or write to us at info@startupxperts.com

Author Shyam Sekar acts as a Chief Mentor and Strategist at Startup Xperts and provides business consulting and execution support to numerous startups and SMEs, helping them build their enterprises successfully.

The views expressed in this article are that of the author’s and Startup Xperts is not responsible for this content. In case of any objection in content, IP violations, incorrect or inappropriate information, please inform us at ceo@startupxperts.com. We will do our best to act on it at the earliest

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Startups – how to get your digital marketing approach right?

Startups typically have two major challenges to overcome – Time and money. Though time is money by the old age saying, here we are considering the importance of both separately.

  • In a short period of time, startups have to create the impact, grow their business as it is a question of survival. Either grow or perish seems to be the order of the day.
  • At the same time, most startups do have limited resources (money and people) to create that impact in that short period of time. So the question unfolds as to how this can be effectively achieved in today’s world?

Doing things right Vs doing right things

You cannot do everything right. We are not in a perfect world, so you need to take right steps; doing right things are more important.

  1. Do you really know who your customer is and their need?
    Focus on your customer and their need. Rather than creating a product or service, trying to spend your resources and energy into selling it (I am not referring to blue ocean strategy here) do understand your prospective customer’s pain and/or gain. If you are not solving a big problem (like Uber, booking a taxi with a click of a button rather than waiting on the streets), or not able to demonstrate a big gain (like Apple iPhone, that created a bigger impact through rich user experience) then you may have to seriously relook at your offerings. Else create a ‘differentiator’ that stands apart. Bear in mind, you don’t need to be miles ahead to win a race, but just nose ahead!
  2. Create and expand your brand identity digitally
    It is a no brainer that startups need to create their brand identity, and not think that the brand building initiative is only for established or large enterprises. It is all about creating differentiation, building trust; and digital will be an easy and cost-effective way to build your brand. The first step is to create a website that resounds well with your business. With good dot-com names virtually not available, this might need a lot of searches to arrive at the right name that can strike a chord with your customers as well.
  3. Cheap digital marketing Vs cost-effective digital marketing
    I do keep receiving mailers that say that they can get website page rank in top search results; and that too at very cheap rates. I do wonder how this may even cover the cost of such resources if it has to be done in the right way it is supposed to be. To top it all I get zapped when they list out strategies that were used a few years ago, that’s not going to work in today’s scenario. Of course, how many do really know Google’s new algorithm released this year? Many startups have come back to us after experiencing these cheaper options, as they realized it is just a drain of money and time. Here the important aspect to note is that, time loss is a precious loss; and you have already burnt sufficient amount of your limited resources (funds) hoping that digital is going to create that impact. If it didn’t work, don’t blame digital; just that you didn’t do it right! So go for cost-effective digital marketing that has a well thought out strategy and execution planned, with clear timelines.
  4. Pick the right strategy
    You all very well know that no one size fits all. Digital is beautiful in that way, because custom strategy can be carved for every one of you – be it a boutique, services firm, product startup, retail outlet, etc. I have stressed the need of SEO many a times in my earlier articles; a balanced approach to SEO, SEM, and SMM is important for you to succeed in this business. There are strategies (pre-launch, during launch, post-launch) that you need to pick depending upon the stage of your startup.
  5. Do not put all eggs on one basket (Rephrased: Do not spend all your money on just one strategy)
    It is always advisable to go for A/B testing. Create two or more sets of messages (needless to mention across social channels, Adwords, etc.) to see which one works best. Fine tune and try to see if improvement in performance is seen. Result is always a moving target and so constant fine tuning is essential to get the overall momentum and impact right. I do notice, many make the mistake of spending their precious funds on a particular message, and come to a conclusion that digital hasn’t worked. I was not surprised because the messages were not right, or the audience was not chosen right, or probably wrong timing. Be it LinkedIn, or Twitter, or PPC, you need to take a balanced call as to which combination can maximize your visibility and achieve your set objectives and goals.

It is easy to say ‘go digital’. But digital is not just a technique; it is a tactic (strategy). Digital certainly can be done in a cost effective way, and more importantly measurable. You will be able to see where your dollars go, with reference to your spends on various buckets. So, starting this New Year 2016, are you ready to go digital more effectively?

Startup Xperts is a business accelerator supporting startups, small medium enterprises, boutique firms, by driving their go-to-market strategies, digital marketing, smart sales initiatives, to accelerate their revenue growth.

To know more about Startup Xperts, visit us at www.startupxperts.com or write to us at info@startupxperts.com

The views expressed in this article are that of the author’s and Startup Xperts is not responsible for this content. In case of any objection in content, IP violation, incorrect or inappropriate information, please inform us at ceo@startupxperts.com. We will do our best to act on it at the earliest.

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Are you missing out in Digital Marketing?

The way that we have done business in the past and the way it is now have undergone a transformation, a digital revolution indeed. A few years ago, Facebook was hardly known; LinkedIn’s presence was not felt. But today digital is all over the place. With marketing undergoing major transformation, and will continue to evolve as we move forward, as a CEO or a CMO, have you utilized the ‘Power of Digital Marketing’ in your business?

This article could help uncover areas that your businesses should explore to make your company stand out, improve upon your brand image, reach out to more customers and building a solid foundation to your business.

Business buyer is today a lot sophisticated, and they have a need to buy. They now have plethora of information, lot of data to analyze, and more so, their purchasing decisions are influenced by the complexity involved in the buying process.

The first step is to define your Digital Marketing Strategy.

  • What are we trying to sell?
  • Who is the target audience?
  • What is the message that we would like to share with the audience?
  • What are your marketing objectives and how do you plan to track the ROI through these efforts?

It is essential that the management and marketing team addresses the above questions so as to have clarity and objectivity. The message needs to be consistent across various channels. Hence integrated messaging is the key and it should flow across both ways, both from your company and from your audience.

There were days when the buyer relied heavily on information from a manufacturer or a service provider, in order to buy. Today the customer has more than enough information at their finger tips. So treat the ‘Data like a King’, and ‘Content like a Queen’. The crux is that the context should be relevant to the customer. Proper use of information and analytics will help weave a perfect story which your audience wants to see or know about.

Another disruption in marketing has come up in the recent past, which is the ‘Mobility’. Organizations need to have a mobile strategy in place. Web and mobile strategies must meet, and it is becoming mandatory to have a mobile site that renders the website well across desktops/laptops, smartphones, tablets and e-readers.

Digital marketing is measurable, customizable, and can be executed effectively at a lower cost. It has various components and each of it needs to have a specific objective and results tracked. It starts with the website that should have a good design (good UI), clear messaging, ease of navigation and speed. SEO, SEM and Social media are some of the components one needs to pay close attention to.

SEO: Search Engine Optimization helps to optimize your website. It also increases visibility of your content through proper usage of keywords. It helps in ranking up your site based on your keywords, its density, etc. This is organic and cost effective, but takes time for results to be seen.

SEM: Search Engine Marketing is ad based where you bid for keywords. You can play with your budgets but sometimes minimum bid amount can itself be higher.

Social media involves social groups, networks, blogs, videos, reviews, etc. Most popular amongst them are LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.

Companies can derive significant benefits if they are able to leverage the power of Online Marketing. It can be further classified as ‘traditional’ and ‘gorilla’marketing.

Email marketing and banner advertisements can be classified traditional where as gorilla marketing helps to generate inquiries and close sales through cost per acquisition deals, affiliate programs, CPC (cost per click), etc.

The points discussed above are just the tip of the iceberg, and the marketing team needs to include a well thought out Inbound and Outbound digital strategy.

Inbound marketing can be done through blogs, videos, social media, SEO, discussion forums, whitepaper, etc.

Outbound marketing includes email campaign, webinars, virtual conference, display ads like Google adwords, etc.

A right mix of inbound and outbound marketing is the key, when you are looking at targeting prospective buyers for your product or a service or a solution.

Customer today has multiple touch points before they make their buying decision. Hence it is essential that we provide one integrated message, across all channels of communication.

With so much of avenues to reach out to your customers, and with lots of action happening in the marketplace, be conscious to cut the noise, make yours stand out, and fish where the fishes are.

Startup Xperts is a management consulting firm with an objective to transform companies into the next level of growth. Our mission is to help companies to steeply accelerate their growth. Be it family run business, small or medium enterprise or a boutique firm, Startup Xperts have all the right answers to step up their growth. Startup Xperts help clients in a range of service areas including business consulting, strategic consulting, sales and marketing consulting, digital marketing, HR, Operations and leadership training.

To know more about Startup Xperts, visit us at www.startupxperts.com or write to us at info@startupxperts.com

The views expressed in this article are that of the author’s and Startup Xperts is not responsible for this content. In case of any objection in content, IP violation, incorrect or inappropriate information, please inform us at ceo@startupxperts.com. We will do our best to act on it at the earliest.

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