Guest Post by Chelsea Lamb

Starting your own business is an exciting endeavor, but it comes with some common pitfalls. Many entrepreneurs neglect their due diligence in a rush to get their operations underway as quickly as possible. You can rest easy knowing all your bases are covered by taking the time to study and build a strong foundation for your company. Becoming familiar with some of the most common mistakes among new business owners is an effective first step.

1. Not Pricing Your Products Appropriately

Newcomers to any particular field of business can tend to underprice their products or services. This may be because they are unaware of their own worth. It could also be an effort to undercut the competition and draw in potential customers. With experience and market research, you can find a price range that is fair to your level of expertise while remaining competitive with your rivals in the field.

2. Not Hiring the Right Employees

Hiring additional help is crucial if you decide to expand your enterprise. Hiring the wrong employees, however, can be detrimental to your cause. The best employees are experienced, passionate, and possess skills that will scale up along with your growing business. In many cases, sourcing tasks to professional freelancers may be preferable to onboarding long-term employees.

3. Not Forming a Marketing Strategy

Marketing is your company’s key to reaching new audiences. Many entrepreneurs mistakenly believe that the quality of their product or service will attract interested customers by its merits alone. To actually make your business discoverable, you will have to invest effort into competent marketing endeavors. Search engine optimization, social media campaigns, and even traditional print marketing are all ways to appeal to the public.

4. Not Having a Plan for Launching a New Product

If you decide to add a new product to your offerings, you may be surprised by how complicated the process can be without a plan. Fortunately, you can utilize an existing go-to-market strategy template when launching a product or service. A thorough template will include a business plan and marketing strategy relating to your product’s launch, as well as any other relevant information. Creating your own strategy template can be difficult though, so you may opt to use a pre-made template instead of making one yourself.

5. Not Investing in Insurance

In the excitement of launching a company and making your first sale, it’s easy to overlook this one particularly important aspect of being an entrepreneur. Insurance is vital for protecting yourself, your assets, and any employees you may have hired. In the event that your business is held responsible for an injury or other incident, liability insurance will contribute to covering your business against claims filed against you. As an additional protective measure, investing in cyber insurance will allow for financial assistance if you become the victim of a data breach that leaks private customer information.

Learning from the experiences of entrepreneurs that came before you will help you get started on the right foot. When you know what mistakes to avoid, you foster the capability to build a more resilient company. Factor the missteps of other entrepreneurs into the drafting of your own business plan and you will be able to form your company into one that will flourish and grow for years to come.

If you want to avoid common mistakes as you continue to grow your business, connect with Solomon Bruce Consulting. To learn about the services we provide, use this contact form.

Image via Pexels