Starting a new business can be quite a daunting and challenging process. But, with the right tools and aids, you will be able to launch a new business with very little capital and overheads. In this day and age, with a plethora of digital platforms and tools, most of your overheads will go into the equipment that you need to run your business effectively.
With several established countries threatening times of recession, and the economic climate being somewhat unstable, starting a new business will need some careful planning and forethought.
So, just how do you get it off the ground? What do you, as a new business owner, need to put in place to ensure that your business starts making a profit relatively soon into operation? Let’s take a look.
Table of Contents
Protect Your Business from Risk
The first thing you want to do is to take out the right policies and ensure that you have the right permits and licenses. Depending on your locality, you will need to find local permits and approvals to not only make use of water but to have equipment on your property.
From an insurance perspective, look at comprehensive business insurance. It will absolutely be worth your while to find an insurer who knows how to properly insure a pressure washing business. When contacting them, find out more about what they can do especially for your particular business. Ensure that your equipment is covered and that all of your staff and customers are listed in the policy.
Comprehensive business insurance should cater for everything, including building, physical assets, worker’s compensation, and of course, liability insurance. Should someone’s property be damaged, or should they be injured at your business, you will want this cover to protect you against lawsuits and legal threats.
Have a Solid Business Plan in Place
The first thing that we have always recommended to clients to launch their business, is a solid pressure washing business plan. A business plan, which is thoroughly written and researched, will assist the company in two ways. Firstly, it will allow you to map out the strategic trajectory of the business. It will allow you to solidify the objectives as well as the goals of the business. Secondly, it will help you possibly land the funding you need from investors and stakeholders.
So, make sure you spend some time writing out your business plan. You will need to have various elements in it to be completely comprehensive and cover everything about your business. For example, you will need to have an in-depth insight into the market you are entering.
You will need to know who your customer is, what their price points are and what your USP is for them. You will also need to know everything about your competition and the products they are offering. How does it differ from yours and what sets yours aside? Short, mid and long-term goals will also need to be set out in the business plan, so you can use this as a guide as you grow.
Create a Functional Website
In this day and age, you absolutely need a website to market your business. Your website acts in certain ways. It is your calling card, your sales pitch, your product catalog and the way for your customer to engage with your business. So, it needs to be absolutely streamlined, and effective for it to work.
Concentrate on what the customer journey looks like going through the site. Enter your site from various places, like your social media, your emails and from organic search. What do you see if you land on the home page? What about your product and service pages? Is it streamlined and functional, and does it send you straight down the sales funnel if you have one?
How much information do you have on your site about your business? Do you provide simple, yet educational information about your site? Is your site optimized for SEO purposes? How much information are you giving your customer in readable, helpful chunks? What you need to keep in mind about your website is that it will need the right amount of keywords to help you rank when your customer searches for your services. So, if you can, find a content writer who is fluent in SEO to assist you to get it right.
Create a Digital Marketing Plan
Now that you have your site and your content up, it’s time to start looking into marketing. Because so much of this is online and digital, you don’t need to factor such a big budget into marketing. Now, don’t get us wrong! You absolutely do need a budget, but if you are a start-up, you can get away with a minimal budget, unlike previously, when you needed a huge budget for traditional marketing.
You will need:
- Social channels;
- An email platform and a database;
- Paid ads;
- Affiliate contacts and link-building contacts.
From there, it is all about creating and building content and getting as much content out as possible to all of your channels.
The Bottom Line
Know who your customer is. The more you know about them, the more you will be able to create a strategy and content that will speak directly to them. You will see profits start coming in and your company quickly making money.