5 TOP TIPS FOR START-UPS

Starting a business can be nerve-wracking and exciting at the same time. You’ve finally found your niche - something that excites you and makes you want to jump out of bed every morning. Where do you go from here..?

The first few months of starting Sk Hair Fix the learning curve was so steep! I was reading blogs to find ideas and tips, reading start up books & taking online courses to study the 'dos and donts' of entrepreneurship. Having been on the entrepreneur journey for almost a year, I think this blog post is long overdue.. so I’ve put together 5 top tips I think would be useful to know during the first few months of your exciting new entrepreneurial journey. Read, share, leave comments and feel free to drop me a message if you have any questions too!

Tip One: Marketing tips

The common process of starting a business venture is when you find a problem then find a solution to that problem. Ideally 'your solution' is your USP (unique selling point), if you haven’t got one yet - find one. This will be your first task. If you offer a service that's quite common, find something different that you can offer as a unique addition to your service and work on communicating this to your target audience. The best way to understand your position in the market place is to spend some time researching your competitors. See what they do, and what they don't do - what they don't do is something you can offer as a USP.

Next up is your target audience. You need to know who you’re targeting with each post and advertising material you produce. At this point you need to create your ideal customer avatar! What does your ideal customer look like? Draw a stick person and start annotating:

• Gender

• Religious background?

• Age

• Wages

• Family? Relationships?

• Job?

• Lifestyle?

• Financial situation?

At this point you might feel that you don’t want to make your marketing gender-specific, which is fine. The importance lies in taking yourself through this thought process and making it clear as to who you’re targeting - this does not mean that this is the only customer you'll ever do business with!

Tip Two: Branding - ‘Know your audience’

When starting to design your logo, you would have thought about colour palettes and the artistic design. While you're doing this it's also important to spend some time thinking about fonts. Font consistency is crucial throughout your website and social media pages. Remember you are creating a brand that should be recognised throughout every social media post.

Since Sk Hair Fix was a natural oils company we decided to go for a green colour palette and then spent some time mixing and matching different fonts; one for each:

• Heading

• Text

• Handwriting/Italic

Tip Three: Content Planning

The world of social media is a whole new ball game. Content designing can be a nightmare until you have your templates ready. If you haven’t already done so sign up to www.canva.com. It’s a great website you can use to design templates and edit images for social media content.

Once you’ve got your content ready. Don’t feel like you have to sit there one hour every day between 4-6pm posting on social media. Find yourself a scheduling app - I use Planoly, but there are several others out there with great reviews so do your research.

This find was a life-saver for me. I always wondered how influencers managed to get a post up everyday while working a full time job - here’s the secret.. Spend one day/evening on the weekend taking photos, finding quotes and other content then schedule them all for the upcoming week. Once you get into the swing of things you can plan content for the month and watch it all unravel itself.

While content planning, create your hashtag lists - then narrow it down to 5 hashtags that you repeat for every post. Just think - if you were searching for your product/service, what would you type into google or social media & go from there (Google is your best-friend!) One of your hashtags should always be your company name. Remember not to overdo it with hashtags - make it content specific to make sure your post doesn’t get hidden away with the hashtag overload.

Tip Four: Consistency

Consistency is key! Whether it comes to the font you use or the number of times you post. Consistency is key!. Your business is your everyday, but not everyone else's. They need to see your posts regularly and they need to see.that you have enough knowledge/experience to be able to provide that service/product.

Give out freebies & tips! Keep your viewers engaged, make them want to share your page. Stay up to date with the trends and plan ahead for special occasions. Tik toks & Reels are the latest trend at this point, which gets you followers and likes. Ultimately though, remember it’s not about the likes, it’s about the sales you make and customer satisfaction!

Tip Five: Hiring Help

There comes a point where you won’t be able to do everything yourself. It’s ok to get help from a professional. Here’s how it goes.. you either spend time doing research and making mistakes while learning and implementing a new skill or technique, or you give it to the pros, show them your expectations and let them work their magic. Of course this costs a bit of money, and it should come out of your initial budget.

I hired help for the label designing, website designing and then eventually marketing and content planning. There are several websites out there which give you access to freelancers all over the world - fiverr, upwork etc. Google: freelancer for ‘skill’ and find out what comes up. Check out their past work and reviews. Ideally you’ll have referrals but if you’re looking for something different, spend some time doing shopping for the right fit.

Remember, starting a business means growth. While you’re growing your business you are growing yourself as an individual. It’s so important to have the right mindset and resilience to keep working on the business, even on the day when things aren’t going to plan. These are just a few beginner tips, but I’ll have more posts to come as I continue my entrepreneurial journey. If you have your idea and still haven't started your venture, I'd say drop the if's and but's - just do it! Work hard & it will all fall into place - speaking from experience don't waste another day wondering..

Comment below if you have any other tips to share or any feedback on the post. Subscribe to see more blog posts on ‘self-growth’ tips and achieving business goals!

"Work hard, be patient and be a sponge while learning your business!"

Simon Cowell.

Founder of American Idol