5 Avoidable Situations Where Startup Entrepreneurs Usually Go Wrong

When starting a business, it is important to identify – and avoid – the most common problems.

Starting your own business is a big undertaking, and despite all of your planning, you are bound to make some mistakes along the way. A key component to your success is to identify these mistakes quickly, learn from them, and then prevent them from occurring again in the future. Many business owners fall into similar traps, so it is important to identify the most common, avoidable situations where startup entrepreneurs go wrong to try and prevent them in your business.

1. Being Stingy With Your Marketing Efforts

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If you feel that your product or service is so good that you don’t have to spend a lot of time and effort in marketing, you are making a huge mistake. You can’t always rely on social media and other free methods to attract customers and build business vitality, so relying solely on these efforts can keep your business from getting off the ground. In fact, marketing professionals recommend putting 10-20% of your targeted gross revenue aside for your marketing budget, and as you become more established, you can reduce this number.

You’ll need to do your research when it comes to the best business marketing strategies, especially when trying to build an online presence. Certain considerations like how your website is indexed in search engines and content management need to be on your scope of priorities. If you don’t have skills in these areas, it may be in your best interest to hire out Internet marketing services.

2. Failing to Listen to Your Customers

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While it is easy to get caught up with your business vision, everyday demands, and your future plans, losing touch with your customers is an avoidable and costly mistake that entrepreneurs often make. It is important to move beyond code and theory in order to connect with the real people who are buying what you have to sell. Their feedback and needs will help to set the stage for what steps you should pursue next when it comes to development and strategy.

There are a variety of ways that you can stay connected with your customers. When you are first starting out, consider answering customer support inquiries yourself, and try out wiki-style forums in order to make the process easier for both you and your customers. The end result is that you should be able to better identify customer feedback patterns, and this can help you to resolve future problems before they occur. This type of feedback can help to shape your company’s future direction.

3. Failure to Adapt to New Technologies

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If you are resistant to adapting your business with the newest technologies, it can be easy to get left behind by your competition. The business environment can change rapidly, and new technologies can quickly wipe out entire business models. Therefore, it is important to stay up-to-date on the newest business technologies to ensure that you are adapting quickly. Fortunately, this is an avoidable business problem.

VoIP phone systems are a good example of a technology that you’ll want to implement. These systems will transmit your calls over a digital connection, allowing you the convenience and speed of the Internet to make calls. While you’ll be able to use your standard phone in a traditional fashion, VoIP fees tend to be quite lower than rates offered by phone companies, saving your business money. In addition, the modern day VoIP business phone easily integrates with Microsoft Office 365 or Google Apps for Work to provide that extra edge on better collaboration of team and work.

4. Underestimating the Competition

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One way that good businesses often go wrong is by underestimating or ignoring the competition. Regardless of your niche or specialty, there is always going to be competition out there, and you need to know about it. If your competition is adapting to a new way of doing things, they may edge out your business. If you don’t know exactly why your business is better than your competition, or if you aren’t doing an adequate job conveying this message to your customers, you are trailing behind.

5. Trying to Do Everything at Once

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As a business entrepreneur, you are driven and ambitious, but at times, you may become so invested in all of the problems facing your business and your customers, you’ll attempt to solve too many of these issues all at the same time. Instead, if you are in the early stages of your business development, it is important to identify one essential problem and create a strategy to face and solve it. After that success, you can then strategically prioritize and take on other challenges rather than attempting to do everything all at the same time. This focus will prevent you from becoming overwhelmed and will be helpful in ensuring that the most important things get corrected right away.

You don’t have to become a statistic and to fall into the common business traps. By being proactive in your planning, you can avoid some of the most common startup business mistakes.