Five tips for starting a successful business with an app

Problemio.com highlights five crucial aspects of starting a business and how, if you do it right, your business can flourish.

What makes a good a business idea?

Many people want to start their own business but do not know exactly where to start. It is a good idea to first think about your personal and professional strengths before attempting to start your business. Whenever you think about what kind of business is right for you, align all your strengths so that you can give your venture the most competitive edge. Once you have a good idea and you talk to enough people about it, try to gain a sense of your complete business and product strategy.

Writing your business plan

There are thousands of guides on Google about how to write a brilliant business plan and even though it may seem overwhelming, it could actually be helpful. All the available guides online affords you the opportunity to do your research and become an expert in your industry. When you hand your business plan to someone, you are seeking something from them, right? Make sure that what you are seeking is clear.

Get feedback about your idea

Failing to do market research and validation is a common and costly mistake that entrepreneurs make far too often. To launch a succesful business, it is important to test your business idea on a small scale in the real world and observe how well it is received by your targeted market.

This way, you can cheaply discover early glitches in the process, areas to improve the quality of your product or service and where you are not meeting the needs of your consumers.

In doing so, you can also more accurately identify your target market since this is the first step of taking the idea out of theory and into the real world. Many people fear that their idea may be stolen when conducting market testing but the risk of this happening is not very high.

Marketing your business

Marketing is one of the biggest business challenges your business will need to overcome in order to be successful. Handing out brochures and business cards alone do not do the trick. Marketing is always better if you are creative with your approach and understand your consumer. Nevertheless, there are a few very standard ways of marketing your business successfully, such as:

Social recommendations - have an active presence on social networks and gain the trust of your audience. People are more likely to try products or services recommended by their friends.

Publicity - publications tend to be interested in covering innovative and different products and services.

Online presence - these days, when someone needs something, the first place they will search is the internet. For this reason, having a website is of utmost importance. Whether you own a store on a busy street or an internet site that sells antique furniture, being discoverable will always prove in your favour.

Advertising - this method is available to businesses that have a strong business model, bring in considerable revenue and can afford to spend some of that revenue to bring in paying customers.

Social media

Social networks may be free to use, but it has been proved an inefficient marketing tool for startups with minimal and budget for advertising. However, the good news about free social media marketing is that it is great for brand awareness boosting. Boosting your company's brand awareness can be easily achieved by engaging and gaining the trust of your client base. Offering your Facebook users quality content and engagement will better the chances of them recommending your product or services to their friends.

There is only one way to win in business and it is executing your idea to the best of your ability. If you strive to achieve all of these aspects in your business process, it is likely to deliver excellent results, which will go a long way to help the business grow.