If you’re a budding woman entrepreneur with a great idea ready to bring to market, the road ahead is exciting, rewarding, inspiring to other women, and certainly challenging. You will be launching your new business to the world, your audience, and to everyone online. This makes planning everything essential in order to have a successful launch.
Are you up for the challenge? We are sure you are, and you’re not alone. In fact, there are over 11 million women owned businesses in the US. And women owned businesses have generated nearly $2 trillion in revenue. Those are some pretty amazing statistics.
Exciting? Absolutely. But to ensure you have a successful launch, you’ll need to know a few tips and tricks to make your woman entrepreneur journey a bit easier. The following five tips can serve as your starting point. Let’s take a closer look.
1. Planning makes perfect for a successful launch
Budding women entrepreneurs ready to start their first business need to get a few startup basics out of the way. With the basics out of the way, you begin to lay a strong foundation. Here’s what you need to get off your plate from the get go:
- Create your business name
- Write a strong value proposition
- List our your offerings (products and/or services)
- Create buyer personas in your market
- Develop your story (why, when, and how your business came to be)
These five planning points are the best place to begin. If you find your business strapped for cash or expertise, it’s best to outsource your research efforts by hiring one of many policy research firms, which will help steer you in the right direction via data-backed decisions. They allow you to get a very clear picture into what you’ll need for success, as well as what you’ll need to accomplish before moving forward.
2. Get your business online
One of the most important elements of a business is its website. Your website is the backbone of your business online, where your customers will gather to learn about your business, evaluate your offerings, and make purchases. If you already have a domain, which should be your business name, you may need to learn more about transferring website domain registration to your new business site.
If you are starting from scratch, you can easily create a strong, high performing website using WordPress and a quality hosting provider. WordPress is an obvious choice, because almost 30 percent of the Internet runs on WordPress, and building a site using WordPress plugins is pretty simple.
3. Make your online presence even stronger with social media
Having a website is the best way to start. However, there are a ton of other ways to reach more of your target audience online. This means you will need to get social with your business. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media networks can give you 24/7 access to potential customers, since they have smartphones in their pockets or near them at all times.
This is unprecedented. You will need to know where your target audience is hanging out online though. For instance, if your focus is B2B, LinkedIn and Twitter are obvious social media channels to market on. Facebook is always good, since they have great ad focus that is very affordable.
4. Ensure legal guidelines and requirements are met
Once you have all the business basics covered and your online presence is in place, it’s time to do some paperwork. You will first need to set up a business entity by registering your business in your state as a Limited Liability Company (LLC), or Corporation (Inc.). Then you will need to get your Employer Identification Number (EIN) from the IRS.
Once you have your business registered via the state and federal government, it’s time to get your banking set up. You can do this at your local bank, preferably where you have your personal accounts. It makes the process a lot easier.
5. Create powerful marketing campaigns
Now that your business’ foundation is securely in place, it’s time to get marketing. With the right marketing campaigns, you can easily attract new people to your website and convert them. This is when a sales funnel comes in handy.
For instance, you can use Facebook ads to create awareness about your business, products, and/or services. Next, have great call to actions and information on your website for the evaluation stage. And finally convert with a remarketing email campaign. Sales funnels can be very different, it just depends on what marketing strategy works best for your business.
Are you ready for a successful launch?
There are certainly a lot of tips for a successful launch out there. The above are the tip of the iceberg, but a few of the most important and easiest to get done right out of the gate. Budding women entrepreneurs are growing in numbers, and you are joining the ranks of many successful women entrepreneurs doing great things. Have a great launch!
