If you have taken a remote interest in business over the last decade or so, you will have heard all of the statistics based on business failure. In short, we are taught from a young age that unless you pull something out of the bad sharpish, your new business is destined to fail.
As the title of today’s article might indicate, it doesn’t have to be like this though. There are ways to encourage startup success and through the course of today’s article, we are going to mull over some of the biggest reasons that failure occurs to help you along your way.
Reason #1 – There’s just no market demand
You might have all of your merchant service systems in place, along with all of the other so-called basics. However, if the market simply doesn’t have a demand for your product, you are well and truly on a hiding to nothing.
One of the big mistakes that startup entrepreneurs make is that they have solved their own problem, but not thought that to everyone else this problem didn’t really exist. Or, perhaps it does exist, but it might be so insignificant that people just aren’t willing to pay for it.
Reason #2 – You run out of money
This next reason won’t come as a surprise in the slightest. After all, cash flow is a tricky problem to deal with at the best of times for companies, let alone a small, upcoming one.
The most frustrating thing about this mistake is that you are almost a victim of your own success. In other words, a lot of startups grow to such an extent that they can’t fulfill all of the orders they have promised.
This is the reason it’s crucial to not only get a business plan in place so you can put at least some form of forecast together but why you should also look towards funding avenues at the earliest opportunity.
Reason #3 – A lack of good marketing
Again, there will be a few raised eyebrows at this next point. Even if you are confident that your startup has devised the best product of its kind if you don’t have a proper marketing strategy it’s all going to be for nothing.
Should you invest in a professional PR team? If you don’t have much funding, in reality, this isn’t going to be an option. However, there are still low-cost ways to market products, and you should be making sure you research these accordingly long before your product hits the shelves.
Reason #4 – Your product arrives at the wrong time
Unfortunately, little can be done about this final mistake we are going to talk about. There will be occasions where you are too late, or too early, to the party. For example, you may have developed a product that relies on technology that just hasn’t made it big yet – and this can hurt you. Alternatively, you might have joined a market that is on the decline (for example, anything related to CDs).
