What a business needs
If you are creating a business, you will need to have a few things in order. We do take into consideration that you can start a company with relatively no budget, but it would be wise to start off with a base and do research on your local market. We will go over market research in a moment.
Having capital
You should have a small savings of 2 thousand dollars that you can use to get started. This money will be used to purchase your Domain Name, LLC, Business Bank Account, POS, Website, Marketing, Tools for the website, Marketing material, Business phone number, and Business email.
Supplier
Whether you are selling cookies or selling websites, you will need to find a local brick-and-mortar vendor that has customers similar to your market. Network with the owners and give them an incentive for every new customer you convert.
Acquire 3 to 5 vendors, the more the better. Each vendor can supply you with 1 - 2 customers a month for high ticket offers and 2 - 3 customers a day for a low ticket offer.
once you have a good relationship with some of your local vendors, you will then need to establish your brand.
Domain Name
Domain names can be a great way to allow the search engines to rank you higher in your local market. You can purchase multiple domain names and link them back to the same website.
Premium domains are also available for a higher price due to them automatically ranking higher in search engines.
Once you have your budget, you will then want to start by purchasing the domain name for your company, which should be around $12 dollars
Website
This content management system is also known as a CMS. Your CMS will allow you to have more authority by having information about your products and services accessible. People will be able to go online type in your domain (www.example.com) and book appointments, write reviews, contact staff members & more.
You can do a lot with your website so make sure you do not overlook some of the features they provide.
A website can be purchased from a CMS like (WordPress, Wix, Squarespace… Ect) for $300 on a yearly subscription. If you decide to acquire a designer, it will normally cost $200 a page for it to be set up and designed properly.
Having a designer will speed up your time to market and increase conversions, make sure when looking for a designer, make sure they have a live website with fixed prices. You don’t want your developer to hold your website hostage from you.
This does not include marketing or any plugins.
Business Phone Number
The reason you need a business phone number is that you can use it to route 1 call to multiple cell phones. This will allow you to capture new customers and assist existing customers.
A business phone number will also give your company more credibility. Lenders & banks take this asset into account when looking to acquire capital. Our preferred service to use is “Grasshopper” this will cost you $45 dollars a month.
Business Email
Another service you will need to acquire will be your company email. Your business email is a very important part of your company if you ever wish to expand. You will be able to hire multiple employees without having to sacrifice your personal details. This email will also allow you to have access to some additional commercial services that wouldn’t normally be available without one.
The cost for a private business email will run you around $3.00 a month or less per email.
Pricing
One of the most important things to figure out would need to be your price, make sure you perform some market research and call your local competitors. Find out what is the average cost of that service or product. Keep in mind that you will need to account for all associated costs to perform the service. How much does it cost to fulfill the order, How much will it cost to cover your marketing campaign, and how much will the business profit.
Profits should be divided into Taxes, Employee payroll, Tools & Finally…“Net profit”
LLC / EIN
Your Employer Identification Number is also known as an EIN will allow you to establish a business bank account separate from your personal. It takes less than $400 dollars on LegalZoom to establish an LLC that will create your EIN, it takes a few weeks for your information to show up in the system but once you have the EIN you can establish your business bank account.
Business Bank Account
Your business bank account is extremely important because once you establish it, you can use this account to keep track of “accounts “ & “accounts paid” it can also be used to help you get funding.
Go to either Chase, BOA, Truist, or any bank you feel comfortable with. A bank will ask you for your EIN and your ID with $100
“Chase” won't charge you if you have more than 2k dollars in the account.
POS
The point of sales is a place where your customer pays. “Do you know that thing you swipe your card on at the store?” That box is a POS. Money will go from that box’s account and then you transfer it to your business bank account.
Make sure you are depositing money into your business account 2x a week. Our primary POS system preferred is called SQUARE & STRIPE. It's Free
Marketing
Now depending on if you are selling a low ticket product, a high ticket product or a high ticket service or even a low ticket service will determine how your marketing efforts should be established.
Once you figure out pricing and your margins, you can then start determining how you are going to market.
The price of your service or product will provide you with a baseline of what type of incentives you can give your potential prospects.
For example (20% off on your first order) or (FREE DEMO)
Now that you established what incentives you want to display to your customers you will then need to locate your ideal customer avatar.
Your ideal customer avatar would be someone you know that uses a service complementary to your service. For example, If you are marketing towards “small business” you would more than likely find success advertising to the people who have previously purchased from “Legal Zoom”
The best way to figure this out would be to look at comparable companies in popular states and model your ads after theirs, as well as look over who they are primarily marketing to.
Use your comparable companies to find which strategic platforms you would like to target.
For each platform, you can usually get some results with $500 each platform.
90 day challenge
If you want to establish a real customer pipeline, for the next 90 days you will need to market your company. Typically it takes a prospect 90 days to trust and make a decision about purchasing from your brand.
Market everyday, you will be able to do this by calling potential clients. Try 50 to 100 calls. Next you will need to post Ads everyday on your strategic platforms & try to establish relationships with social media influencers. Make sure you are capturing first & last names, emails, phone numbers and what interest do they have.
Follow up with these people using email drip campaigns, call backs & re-targeting ads.
Hire Us
Alot of people want to start a business, but most people dont want to deal with the day to day operations of it all. Thats no problem, just give us a call and we can help you knock this list out.
Sensoji Solutions will help you with the website, getting funding for your business & we have a community you can also join on Facebook for exclusive discounts.
855-736-7654
Comments