Shannon Ho - The Content Marketing Blog

It is hard to believe that you are finally ready to get your startup business up and running. You have been planning and organizing for months, ensuring that every detail was perfect before the big launch.

Yet somehow, after just a few weeks in operation, it feels like things are not going according to plan. Could it be that you made one of these startup mistakes?

Now, it’s worth highlighting that every new startup is guaranteed to make mistakes. It’s how we handle them that matters.

Thus, you’ll find six avoidable mistakes startup owners make and advice on how to overcome them in this article.

Not Active on LinkedIn

Whether you’re serving businesses or consumers, having an online presence is crucial in this digital age. All successful small business owners have one thing in common: they’re adaptable and transform their businesses to match the times.

Some business owners may argue that there’s no reason for them to be active on LinkedIn. After all, other social media platforms may be more likely to have their target audience.

Nevertheless, many successful small business owners who won with LinkedIn would tell you that the platform should be part of your marketing strategy.

LinkedIn is where the professionals are. It helps you build connections and network with others in your industry. And with most people preferring to do their independent research before making a purchase, LinkedIn has become a reference point for trustworthiness and authority.

Other than your website, LinkedIn is often a stop for potential customers to learn about your startup. Therefore, write up a winning LinkedIn profile – both for yourself and your company – quickly so that you can see those leads coming in.

No Prioritization

It is easy to get sucked into a whirlwind of startup activities. But if you’re not careful, the priorities can get messed up, and it will take much longer to achieve your goal.

Try reorganizing your resources so that your efforts are directed towards specific channels with your target audience.

When you’re a startup owner, you’ll want to ensure that you’re not stretched thin. Instead of getting higher reach and visibility, these investments may only lead to greater costs and message dilution.

Besides LinkedIn, which other social media platforms do you think would give your business the best traction it needs?

Trying to Do Everything Yourself

If you’re starting up a business, there are high chances you’re wearing many hats to make sure you succeed. However, if you want to grow and scale your startup, it’s time for that “jack of all trades” mentality to go away.

You have the opportunity now in this startup phase to focus on what is most important: closing off your business deals. As such, it’s important to delegate tasks to your startup team.

For example, some things that you may delegate to others are:

answering phone calls
accounting and money management tasks
customer service
data entry
content writing
research
web design and development

A successful small business owner knows the strengths and weaknesses of their team members well. Hence, it would help if you tried taking more initiative in getting to know your team better.

Aside from their qualifications, they might have other handy skills you’d never know about unless you start asking. They’d likely be more than happy to bring them to the table as well!

Unrealistic Goals

If you want to build a startup, be realistic and have a good plan in place before you start.

While all startup owners should be ambitious, basing your startup on outlandish ambitions is not the way to go.

Instead, go with more realistic plans that match your current capabilities and what you want to achieve. Realistic goals will help ensure success in the present to grow your startup while making it sustainable for the future.

There’s nothing wrong with having lofty goals, but if they are unrealistic, you may make one of those startup mistakes where you end up wasting time and resources to get back on track.

To ensure that you’re planning the right milestones for your business to achieve, think about where your customers are in their buyer’s journey.

The buyer’s journey has four stages: Awareness, Consideration, Decision and Loyalty.

Depending on where your customers are in their journey, you can tailor your startup strategy accordingly.

Not Having an Exit Strategy

When designing your startup plan, think about what will happen next if things don’t work out as planned.

Will you still want to continue with this vision of yours even though there may be some bumps along the way?

Or have you thought about possibly selling part of your company at certain milestones so that you could move onto new opportunities while also receiving cash from these shares that you sold?

Giving yourself an exit might sound like planning for failure, but it’s not. Instead, it’s simply a way to plan for everything and anything that might happen with your startup, big or small.

Not Having a Blog on Your Website

Websites with blogs are proven to have more leads compared to those without them. 67% more, in fact.

Reasons why having articles or other resources will help boost your business growth:

1) It gives your startup a more credible and authoritative voice

Google recognizes pages with content as being of higher quality, thus boosting search engine rankings.

2) It provides a more personal connection to your startup

Successful startup owners know that it’s crucial to engage with their startup community in an authentic and personal way. Blog writing can be a great way to humanize your startup and help build relationships with customers because you show that you’re willing to share your knowledge and expertise and not always focused on selling.

3) Other websites, blogs, or social media channels may cite your content

These editorial backlinks will bolster your brand visibility and drive even more traffic to your website.

4) You’ll be able to establish your startup’s niche or industry expertise

This will allow you to become a recognized expert in this field, leading to more opportunities and partnerships.

Conclusion

If you’re a startup owner, there are many things to consider when setting up your business. These six startup mistakes provide insight into what you should be looking out for and what you can do to rectify them.

All the best in your startup journey!

Around 60% of marketers create at least one piece of content a day. We all know content marketing brings success to businesses. However, new challenges have arisen with content marketing. With around 5 billion internet users today, how to produce personalized content that reaches exactly the right audience?

Not only does your business need to find a unique brand voice, but you also need to make sure your content is attracting the right audience. What’s more, if you’re a small business owner, you may need a LinkedIn engagement marketing tool to help boost your content reach effectively on LinkedIn.

For right now, the very first thing to discover is: Who is your audience? There is one classic method to profile your ideal customer, which never ceases to go old, that is building a buyer persona.

Here, we will guide you through creating a perfect buyer persona in 4 simple steps. Take a piece of pen and paper, your laptop, or anything to get ready for brainstorming.

What is a buyer persona?

A buyer persona is a holistic profile combining the most common traits of your ideal customer group including their background, demographics, goals, motivations, and more.

How can a buyer persona help you?

Understand your ideal customers’ challenges and goals
Understand what should be the topics, writing style, and focus of your content
Capture your ideal customers’ attention
Produce quality leads for your business

Preparation

You need to have a solid knowledge of who your existing customers are. Open your Google Analytics, website statistics, customer database, or even Facebook audience insights. Remember to keep referring back to these places and collect information to answer the following four sections.

1. Demographic information

What is your persona’s name? Use the formula [adjective] + [first name] like “Work-driven Anna” so it’s simple and memorable.
What is their gender?
Which age group do they belong to?
Which country do they live in? Do they live in the suburbs or the urban areas?
What industry do they work in and what is their job title?
What is their annual salary?
Are they married? Do they have children?

2. Psychographic information

Psychographic information via Adioma — Via Adioma

Think of 4 adjectives that best describe their personality. Use the image on the left as a reference.
What motivates them to do their everyday work?
What are their current short-term business objectives for this year or quarter?
What are the long-term business goals they wish to achieve?
What serves as a roadblock for their success?
What are their biggest fears?

3. Behavioral information

What are their hobbies and interests?
What do they enjoy doing in their spare time?
Where do they search for information and seek help?
How do they prefer to interact with business?
Which social media platforms do they use the most?
Do they have a device preference?

4. Switch back to your perspective

Now that you’ve gotten every information you need, it’s time to uncover the content you should produce and the channels your business can utilise to reach out and help your buyers.

The demographic information allows you to niche down your content. The more niche your content is, the better it is going to resonate with your prospects. If you are targeting small business owners based in London, talk about the local business trends that small business owners in London should be aware of. If you are targeting married small business owners, talk about ways to balance family and business.

The psychographic information determines your writing style and the various problems your content should solve. Some prefer to read about how-to articles with actionable examples, while others enjoy in-depth articles that provide food-for-thought for them to ponder on. Don’t forget to address how your business can lead them to success by overcoming their roadblocks and biggest fears.

Create a simple marketing message using the information you have and include them in your articles and posts following a simple formula of [Call to action] + [Their challenges or goals] + [Time range to achieve the ideal results]”. If your ideal customer faces the challenges of generating engagement, an example would be “Download our free resource now to multiply engagement by 5x in 1 week”.

The behavioral information determines the platforms and channels you should be distributing your content as well as the touchpoints you should target. For mapping out your touchpoints, you can follow the buyer’s journey.

Conclusion

There we have it, all the steps for creating a simple yet comprehensive buyer persona. Some businesses need multiple personas to understand the various types of customers they deal with, but for now, it’s okay to start small and choose one group of customers based on what you already know.