Bad business preparation and inflated expectations could harm your business

Bad business preparation and inflated expectations could harm your business

Everyone gets excited about a new niche, a new business idea, or a new product they're trying to launch but a majority of them are going to fail and it's usually because of bad business preparation and inflated expectations.  Don't be one of the failures because you didn't want to take the time to do the work before you started to make some profits.  Get down and dirty with all the data and comb through everything you possibly can in order to know if something is going to succeed.

A business with no profits can't last long even if you have a lot of investors.  Look at the stock prices falling for Uber and Lyft, two companies who aren't profitable, but they still have expectations of keeping their businesses going.  I honestly think they'll pull through and be profitable, but they'll have to gradually increase pricing in order to keep people on board without shocking them of a much higher surcharge for a single ride.

I've seen many businesses go under, and have had plenty of my own websites tank, simply because there wasn't enough research done prior to launching.  A lot of the failing businesses blame it on Walmart or Amazon because they can't compete with pricing or shipping times, but that's not always the case.  There are plenty of small businesses out there that have made a killing, and it's because they dove deep into the data and didn't launch until they were absolutely sure it was the right time and they had the right products or services.

No profits are shocking when you expected a positive ROI
I actually launched a website not too long ago in an industry that needed something I was offering and I was really shocked to see how little attention I was getting.  The site currently has 1,500+ items on it all listed by vendors and I can't seem to pull people off of facebook groups or get them to try us out instead of the top corporate competitors. 

I did all the research and thought, "This will be a slam dunk," so I focused on getting the website up and running as quickly as possible but I forgot one thing.  I didn't factor in the buyers' personalities or buying intentions when I was getting into this.  After I invested close to $5,000 on the design, scripts, and marketing I started to realize that the niche was pretty toxic and the people in it weren't a community you would consider "friendly".  I quickly realized this, after spending thousands of dollars, so I took all my hard work and targeted a different niche while factoring in buyers intentions and their personalities lol

(I've yet to launch this new site because I'm still sifting through the data lol)

Your keyword research and data may have been off
When you're doing keyword research, you will want to focus on the words and terms that people are searching for and have the intention to buy.  I run an SEO service and never target the keyword "SEO" because it brings in a variety of people that never really want to purchase something from me.  Instead, I target longer tailed keywords like "Best SEO service in (town name here)" so I know the person searching has more of a chance to buy from me than if I was to run a PPC campaign and target general keywords.

Never factor in general keywords to your end data because it will skew it dramatically.  You will think you have a slam dunk website on your hands because 500,000+ searches are happening, but 490,000 of those searches are general inquiries that won't result in a sale.  Only factor in your buyer keywords and start thinking if you have a hit on your hands or if you should focus on something else.

Your targeting might not be accurate
Let's say you have all the right keywords and you're ready to start making money, but you don't know who the right audience to target is.  You will lose everything in a short amount of time if you start blasting out ads right away because you won't have the gravitational pull you thought you would. 

Instead, think of who your target customer is and know where they hang out.  If you're targeting a 40-year-old mom who cooks a lot, you'll definitely want to be on Pinterest instead of snapchat!  Think about where your target demographic is going to be, what they will be searching when they're there, and get your content in front of them to increase your conversions.


Final thoughts,
Launching a website or business before you're absolutely sure it's ready and thinking "I'll fix things as time goes on" isn't what you want to do.  Take an extra week or month to fix everything and make sure you're targeting the right people so you don't become a part of the statistic where 70% of businesses fail within the first 5 years.  Be a part of the 1% of businesses in your industry that makes it on Forbes because you did all the right research, didn't have expectations of getting rich, and ultimately knew what you were doing


Thanks for reading!

- Tommy
https://www.seoclerks.com/user/TommyCarey