Are you an entrepreneur who’s just started an exciting new business?
If you’re looking for tips to help you kickstart your entrepreneurial journey the right way, then this post is for you.
In this post, I’ll share a few tips that every new business owner needs to be aware of. Especially if you’re new to marketing and connecting with your audience.
Here are some important things you should know as a tech entrepreneur about digital marketing for your business.
A good product isn’t enough
Entrepreneurs with the next great idea want to believe that they only have to “Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to their door.”
But this quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson simply doesn’t hold true for most people or businesses.
Blair Williams, the founder of MemberPress, certainly found this to be the case when his membership plugin started taking off. Blair, whose business is one of WPBeginner’s accelerator companies, needed to shift his focus from developing his product to marketing it. And this was a whole new area for him to explore.
Here’s a critical lesson for any tech entrepreneur: it isn’t enough to make the next best product. You also need to leverage digital marketing and build your skills as a marketer to make your business grow.
Focus on marketing and big picture issues
You need to run a successful business not just build a great product. In fact, your best chance at giving your product the resources, feedback, and support it needs is to focus on marketing activities.
You need to make sure that you’re providing customers with what they need, you’re spreading the word about what you do, and that you’re constantly innovating.
As a startup entrepreneur, be ready to step away from the day-to-day building of your product. Instead, delegate the actual product development process. While you need to have a deep understanding of your product, you’ll do your best work while leading the marketing and troubleshooting problems that arise from different areas of your business.
It’s all about the customer
Many good entrepreneurs have amazing ideas that do have the potential to make people’s lives better.
However, the problem arises when they approach managing their business and creating products based on their own perspective.
Startup owners need to remember that their customers typically don’t have much technical expertise. As a result, when carrying out any marketing or product development activities, you need to simplify your product and features. Look at your product features from the perspective of customers who aren’t interested in technical processes.
Make your product easy to use so that it creates the most direct way for your audience to achieve their goals.
This often means setting aside what you think is the best or right way to do things. And it requires data collection, analysis, and the collection of customer feedback to figure out what customers want and how to give it to them.
You also need to have a mindset where you’re ready to listen to customers especially when they’re unhappy. Being able to handle criticism and convert it into positive information is an important skill for any business leader.
Keep learning
Marketing is not a one-and-done effort. Neither is learning how to grow your business.
There are many ways to keep learning to become a better marketer and leader. Here are a few suggestions you can follow:
- Learn from your customers’ feedback, reviews, and direct interviews. You’ll get insights that will take your business to the next level while winning the goodwill of your audience
- Read different kinds of books. If you want to multi-task, you can also listen to audiobooks while doing work that doesn’t need your focus. Reading from a variety of sources and genres will open your mind and create new sources of knowledge.
- Do online courses and read books on human psychology, business history, and marketing as much as possible. These are powerful topics that will help you understand how people think and what makes a business successful. Also read from other genres too since you’ll get sources from which you can come up with new and creative ideas.
- Join online marketing communities and be active on social media by commenting on interesting discussions. You’ll build a network and learn as you share
- Attend webinars and industry events. These are important events where you get the actual experience of learning in a live setting. There’s nothing like having human interactions, Q&A sessions, and panel discussions to learn something exciting and new
As a business leader, you need to keep your skills sharp. And that’s an ongoing process. You’ll become better at marketing and sales when you learn about people and what makes them tick.
Subjects like behavioral psychology, influence, human motivation, and similar topics can help you understand how to appeal to people better. Also, pick up skills on UX/UI and design in general.
When you understand how people think and offer them a seamless experience with your product, you’ll create a standout business fast.
Conclusion
These are some things that tech entrepreneurs need to internalize when they’re growing a business. While technology and the product itself matters, they don’t grow a business all by themselves.
You can even have a product that isn’t as good as your competitors but you’ll still do well if you know how to communicate with customers.
You do need to monitor product development and the tech aspects of your business closely. But do this with your customers’ needs in mind. In this way, you’ll offer user-friendly tools for a world that wants convenience at its fingertips. You’ll win your audience’s approval and support when you do things that help them.
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Syed Balkhi is an award-winning entrepreneur and online marketing expert. He is the co-founder of OptinMonster, WPBeginner, MonsterInsights, and WPForms.