Entrepreneur - How to Start, manage and grow your business - How To Business

How entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses

There are a large number of important projects, which are usually initially small ideas, and it is strange that these small ideas became one of the most important and largest projects that achieved very great success later. If you have thought about one of the ideas that we will mention to you today, you are at the beginning of the road to success. Learn through this article on how to start, manage and grow your business step by step.

START AND RUN YOUR BUSINESS

A lot of people have time, effort, and money to build their own business, but they don't know where to start or where to find a profitable business idea, maybe they get a little excited, read an article from here and an article from there, but the idea of the project has not yet come, he doesn't know which ideas will succeed Without the other.

What do you do to find a successful project idea?

Let me tell you the answer to this question ... with a few simple points that I hope you pay attention to. If I was going to find a good idea for a profitable project then the first thing I would do is:

1- Find your skills

First of all, you have to be very familiar with all the skills you possess. Skill is usually your cornerstone for building your successful project. If you have a certain skill, you should seriously consider using that skill in the idea of a successful and profitable project.

2- You have to follow all events

You must be a good follower of all events and developments that happen around you, in order to be ready to take advantage of the earliest opportunity available to you. By following the news and continuous reading, you can think of an idea that you can turn into a successful project idea, so you must follow all the events and changes that occur, especially in the labor market and the requirements of the market and the consumer.

3- Search in a new market

It is possible for you to come up with some ideas that are not appropriate for the current markets, but those ideas can be very successful in other markets, it is possible that you develop your products and work to export them to other markets so that you benefit greatly from that idea, as it is from You can do some exploratory tours in the markets to get to know the things that are not available in the market and work to meet that need without a competitor.

4- Improving the service or product

Ideas and services cannot be developed very effectively, but it is possible that in the process of searching for some similar ideas, there are a large number of ways that you can follow in order to achieve the success you want, and it is also possible that you make some adjustments Your own on that product and sell it at slightly lower prices than competitors, but in that way, you have to find a way to produce at a lower cost.

5- Innovate a service or product

The only secret in the product is the idea of innovation or providing modern services to it, because it is what makes you look at the markets in the future and what are the needs that you want, so you have to look around and ask about what are the things that the markets need at the moment.

6- Adding value to the product

You have to be innovative and effective in the process of converting those materials that are in front of you into an innovative product that can be used with ease. It is the same idea if you look at the wood before it becomes a piece of wonderful furniture that can be used. To provide after-sales service when the product is damaged or even home delivery.

7- Purchase the franchise

Franchising is the effective way in which you can start your new business to be a successful project idea, which is known as the process of buying ideas instead of creating them, so it is possible that you do a very simple search in the business market for small ideas, and when choosing an idea that suits you, You can buy the franchise, and then you can apply it easily in the business market, but you have to choose the right market and develop that idea so that you can find a successful project idea and continue with it.

As you can see, ideas everywhere, free and neglected, are waiting for someone to test them, bringing them to the ground, so the brief answer to the question "What do you do to find a successful project idea?" Is to pick up and implement any promising idea, didn't it work? Try another, or edit it. The success of any start-up depends on the use of time to implement the idea, not to remain stuck in the selection of ideas and which is more successful than the other.

After we discussed 7 ways to help you find a successful and profitable business idea, now how you can write down your idea?

Writing a project idea is a comprehensive file about its goals, team, timing, and outcomes, and detailed planning to get an idea correctly. The outputs of the project planning process are a project management plan, which is defined as a document containing the scope and purpose of the project.

Steps to writing a project idea

In the following steps, each section includes some advice and examples to help you provide a clear, accurate, and focused idea that can be applied to several types of projects, bearing in mind that some details will change depending on the type of project, but the general structure is the same for any type of projects.

1. Project information

This section aims to provide a comprehensive picture of the project that can be seen at a glance, in addition to conveying important details of the project.

Name of the organization:

Project Title:

The summary of the project:

Project time frame:

prepared by:

Attached documents:

Project contacts:

List the individuals involved in the project who can be contacted, and make sure to include the name, address in the project, as well as phone numbers and email addresses.

2. Project summary

It is very important when writing a project idea that it is written briefly and clearly, as it is intended to show the reasons for carrying out this project and mention all its objectives, and there are some professionals in writing projects that you can ask for their advice before you start writing, you need to be able to answer the next questions:

Why did you start this project?
What will you do?
How will that be?
Who will accomplish this?
Where will it be?
How long will it take?
How much will it cost?

3. The importance of the project

Here you must explain the needs and problems you are trying to solve, and why these needs deserve to be solved, this section should not exceed a page, include references to supporting documents, such as research papers and articles, this information can be placed in the index.

4. Project objectives

When writing a project idea, state what goals the project aims to achieve.

Goal 1
Goal 2
Goal 3

5. Project methodology

This section details the plan for how to achieve the project goals, usually, it starts with describing the comprehensive approach, the individuals that will be dealt with, and how the expected problems will be managed, then provides details about the methodology:

First: Project Approach Summary, write a few short paragraphs on the overall project approach, include how to organize the project team, what development and collaboration tools will be used? How will the plan be implemented throughout the implementation period?

Second: the distribution of work and task time estimates, in this section you should create a detailed schedule for the project, and then make a list of the tasks that will be implemented, and make sure that the list is detailed in terms of the distribution of tasks and be able to make estimates of the required work hours.

Third: Project Deliverables, you must provide a list of the necessary “deliveries” for the project which are (products, information, reports, etc.) that will be delivered to the customer at the end and throughout the project’s duration. Be sure to include a description of the delivery and the scheduled delivery date.

6. Project risk management

This section of project writing explains the main project risks and identifies plans to mitigate or control them. Ensure that the potential for each risk is addressed, as well as its impact on the project and the organization.

Risk Management Plan: It is a detailed work plan to reduce and contain any risk factors that may arise with the progress of the project.
Risk Log: Be sure to include this risk list and counter-effort.

7. Project costs

In this section, you will need to estimate the total cost of the project in terms of:

Project budget: The allocated budget should be divided into categories such as salaries, additional benefits, travel, supplies, and equipment. Be sure to include any general costs called “indirect costs” that will be linked to the project.

Budgeting: Budgeting is basically a list of comments and justifications needed to clarify and justify the numbers in your budget.

Additional financial statements: Some project proposals may require additional financial data, such as a profit and loss statement, last tax return, annual report, or list of funding sources.

8. Conclusions

In this section, you should try to link all of the above information in a short summary explaining the potential value of the project and confirming its feasibility.

9. The Supplement

In this section, you should include diagrams, graphs, reports, etc. that were mentioned in the plan, and which were not suitable for placement in the main text of the document.

GROW YOUR BUSINESS

Growth does not happen overnight, as developing your entrepreneurial project is difficult and requires a lot of time and efforts, and it is one of the most difficult challenges facing many entrepreneurs looking to achieve success, the growth of your business means understanding your product and customer, building relationships with it, developing your product/service, And using the data you obtain to engineer a strategic growth plan that not only ensures that you remain in the field with your competitors but also outperform them.

The idea of opening a new branch and expanding in other sites is one of the first ideas that comes to the mind of those who wish to develop their business, but this matter needs to be taken into account and studied well, including:

Ensure that an appropriate profit rate is maintained, by monitoring profit levels over the years and making sure if the profit is constant.

Examining the strength of the project by studying consumption and economic trends.

Ensure the effectiveness of the administrative systems and staff, and their readiness to start working in an additional location.

Prepare a business plan for the new site to be comprehensive and integrated.

Take care to choose a suitable site for the project, and not depending on the financial capabilities.

Determine how to obtain financing.

One of the most important steps that will help you in developing your entrepreneurial project is that you determine the reason why customers reach you to buy a product or service, you should bear in mind that the purpose of your value proposition is to identify and meet the unmet need that the target market has, to propose an effective value focused on What your target audience needs, you can check this by doing market research.

Ask yourself: “What does the target audience want my business to offer? What is important to them? ”
It is important when developing your value proposition to be clear and succinct, the value proposition has three components:

Target buyer
The problem that you solve
The reason why you are the best candidate to offer this benefit

For example, Walmart proposes to efficiently manage the supply chain and transfer products from suppliers to buyers in a timely manner, and Uber proposes a unique value consisting of the following three elements:

With one click, a car comes directly to you
Your driver knows exactly where to go
You can pay the way you see fit

Communication activities

Communication activities are useful in helping the project owner to build networks and create new relationships, whether as a result of attending these events or hosting them, during these activities the opportunity will be given to the project owner to communicate with his networks, and then create new relationships by providing them orally by previous relationships, as well as Hosting events can benefit in the same way as a result of inviting clients and encouraging them to bring their friends.

Growth hacking and marketing

Accelerating the growth of companies is not different from marketing in terms of each of them seeking the success of the project and its growth and expanding the customer base. Rather, the difference lies in the methods and techniques that each of them follows to reach these goals.

Accelerating the growth of companies or the Growth Hacking focuses on investing in the available resources in the best possible manner and at the lowest cost to achieve rapid jumps in the growth indicators of the project or commercial activity.

While marketing focuses on building brand awareness in the long term, by creating permanent and open channels of communication with the public and customers using regular marketing strategies.

Marketing focuses on sales techniques and customer persuasion, while growth hacking is focused on designing and searching for the products consumers need, and those that show data an increasing need in the marketplace, thus using less expensive marketing techniques instead of paid advertising.

How are growth hacking plans built?

The growth acceleration strategy does not differ from the marketing strategy in terms of objectives, but in the growth acceleration plans, there is a greater focus on the techniques used to reach the goals. The main factors in the growth acceleration plan include:

1. The main goals

Any marketing strategy that needs goals for which the marketing plan is built. When it comes to accelerating growth, the goals must have a number of necessary factors, the most important of which, according to "Seine Alice", is that these goals are clear, understandable, and measurable, so that you can measure the performance of the plan you are working on and if things are going in the right direction towards the goals Selected.

2. The followed means

After defining the goals that you want to achieve from the project to accelerate the growth of your project, now you have to define the means that you will follow to reach those goals if your main goal of this strategy is to increase the number of registrants in the trial period of the service you provide to the number of X for example, then what are the means that you are supposed to use to reach To this number?

At this point, working with the marketing funnel theory is the preferred option for accelerators, the strategy most used by startups and those that follow their own acceleration strategies.

What makes the theory of repression the preferred option with this type of plans and strategies is that it works according to the principle of a gradual transition of the user step by step until reaching the final stage, which is the goal that you want, for example, according to the theory of repression, the stages that the user goes through include:

Acquisition: Here is the first moment that a user gets to know your project or service, and this may be through a post on Facebook or an announcement on Google or even a recommendation from a friend.

Activation: When the user starts interacting with you for the first time, for example, to register in your mailing list.

Retention: The stage where a user is kept and restored by being attracted to, for example, a second-time visit to the site.

Referral: When the user is transferred from any marketing channels to the landing page or the product or service page.

Revenue: The last stage in which an action is taken in the form of a purchase or service request.

At each stage of this phase, you must have a clear view of this stage, from where will you bring users and how will you motivate them to move to the next stage? What are the marketing tools and platforms that will help you do that?

For example, in the first stage, until the audience recognizes you, you may use social media ads, or at this stage, it may be limited to referrals that come to you from existing users, or you may use public relations, for example.

3. Staff

Who will implement this plan? What are the tasks required of each of them? What are the partial goals that each of them must achieve in order to finally reach the main goal?

The answer to these questions helps to implement the strategy that you will develop more efficiently because it enables everyone to know the tasks and responsibilities required of them in order to reach the main goal of the strategy to accelerate growth.

4. Marketing channels

What platforms will you use for your strategy, will it depend on social media? website? Your mailing list? Or paid advertising on search engines, for example? Or just your existing customers, just like the Dropbox Cloud Storage Platform did early.

The marketing channels you are supposed to use depend on your knowledge of the target audience and where they are after studying and analyzing the characteristics of your audience and potential customers and which platforms are most used by them.

5. Follow-up performance

Following up on performance, measurement and analysis is one of the main issues in any growth acceleration plan, which is the strategic nerve of the project, here you must follow things like conversion rates and referrals for users, sources of visits and if users complete the stages of marketing repression or face problems in one of the stages, for example, with this Condition: You must identify the problem and work to solve it as soon as it is discovered before it turns into an obstacle that prevents reaching the specified goals.

Also, tasks such as monitoring the performance of any advertising campaigns you have run and knowing the revenue from them, finding out which matters most influence the users ’decision to interact with your project, to work on developing them later, and then ignoring or stopping things that are less important or that do not achieve the return makes the plan that you work on More efficient and effective.

These are the most important things that you must take into account when developing a plan to accelerate the growth of the project you are working on, and as with marketing plans these factors are not fixed, but it depends on the nature of your project and the services you provide in it, and therefore the strategy is determined accordingly.

Usually, accelerating growth experts focus on specific strategies in which they put most of their attention in order to reach specific results and goals, rather than being distracted by more than one option and strategy. What are the most prominent and common strategies in the business world today?

5 of the most prominent strategies to accelerate the growth of companies

1.Grow using email

Email marketing is one of the effective marketing options that yield excellent returns compared to other options, according to the Smart Insight study, which showed that every dollar spent in mail marketing yields up to $ 40.

In addition to the inherently low costs of mail marketing, a platform like Mailchimp that specializes in managing mailing lists can be used for free as long as your list contains fewer than 2000 subscribers.

But building a subscriber list requires your time and effort to achieve results. Accelerating growth techniques can be used to boost subscriber list growth. Think about the things that could motivate your audience to give you their email addresses, perhaps offering a trial period for the service you provide, or an exclusive discount rate for subscribers to your list, or valuable information not publicly available but only for those who provide their email address, and then you will find your mailing list grow Acceleratedly.

2. Accelerating growth through Word of Mouth Marketing

Word of Mouth Marketing is one of the marketing strategies in which projects focus on providing high-quality services to existing customers in order to encourage them to praise the service for their friends and acquaintances, thus attracting new customers through existing clients.

Many technologies can help you use this strategy to grow, encourage customers to write product reviews in your store, urge them to share product or service information on their social media pages in exchange for offers, as well as the need to pay attention to the quality of the product or service you provide to ensure Positive opinion.

3. Psychological factors in marketing to promote growth

Marketing experts know well how to employ the appropriate psychological factors to increase the efficiency of the marketing strategy they are working on, techniques such as scarcity (the product is available in limited quantity) and the urgency (insistence to complete the transaction) can make a significant difference in the results.

Where these technologies play on the psychological factors and mental stimuli of the consumer and create an urgent desire to purchase or service experience, therefore, accelerating growth experts employ such techniques in their strategies to reach results.

4. Free services

Providing some free services or offers from time to time, including trial use periods, would be one of the strategies to accelerate the growth of the best and most efficient companies in the long run. In exchange for providing these services, you will get more details about your audience and customers, you will know the opinions of these customers about your services and whether there are any problems that need to be addressed, as well as the possibility of these users becoming customers by moving them from trial periods to the actual subscription, and do not forget that you will get Their email address as soon as they use any of your free services, thus an opportunity to expand your mailing list.

5. Targeting interested groups

Targeting groups of people related to your business field, and those interested in the product or service you provide can be a great way to make a big leap in the growth of your business, just as Airbnb did in its beginning when they used Craigslist to reach new categories of potential customers and it was able to achieve excellent results as a result.

So look for categories that your product can offer a solution to a problem they face, or those who are interested in your project field, have people get to know your brand and what it offers, and the quality of your services will cover the rest.

Companies have adopted growth hacking strategies to achieve their goals

To get to know more about the concept of accelerating the growth of companies from a practical point of view, to get acquainted here with some of the most prominent companies that have applied this concept to enhance their growth and expand their customer base through the use of innovative technologies that enabled them to achieve their goal of expansion and growth.

DROPBOX

Dropbox was established in 2008 as a cloud storage platform, and one of the most striking examples of the role of Growth Hacking strategies in the success of startups, today it has more than 500 million active users.

She did not create massive advertising campaigns and did not spend any money on marketing agencies, it is true that she sent strong marketing messages at the beginning of her reign to carefully defined groups of the public, and she promoted her platform using some of the videos that achieved good results.

But the most important event in the project’s success, which made a big difference, was relying on their current users at the time to attract more users, by promising to give them additional storage space for free if they invited their friends to register on the platform and the friends responded to this invitation, and overnight the results of this strategy emerged that Platform users jumped from 5,000 to 75,000 users.

AIRBNB

It was established in 2008 to allow users to rent all or part of their homes at specific times and dates, in return, people can use the application to find places to stay overnight that the homeowners announced through the application.

The company used several growth hacking technologies to expand its business in the United States first, and later in the world, initially it promoted its service in places that witnessing events such as conferences and festivals, and where hotels face difficulty in receiving all guests due to a large number of expatriates to the region.

As for the most important event that led to significantly different results, the company was allowing users of the application to share their residential units offered for rent on the famous advertising site Craigslist, which mainly owns a large user base, so the company was able to spread its service widely and among different audiences, which This resulted in a significant growth leap before Craigslist prevented it from using its platform for this purpose.

HOTMAIL

One of the first e-mail services founded in 1996, and then acquired by Microsoft the following year after its inception, today is known as Outlook.

After service providers noticed the high costs of advertising and available marketing options, one investor suggested focusing on existing marketing users and attracting new categories of users.

The method that they used to do so was to add a note at the end of every email message sent via Hotmail with "PS I love you." Get your free E-mail at Hotmail ”

After adding this note to the messages sent through the service, the number of their users started to increase by about 3000 users on a daily basis, until they managed to reach one million users within six months, and after five weeks later they crossed the threshold of 2 million users, and Microsoft acquired the service later after It has more than 12 million active users.

This would be one of the oldest examples of strategies to accelerate the growth of companies, as it was even before the emergence of the term Growth Hacking.

Finally, accelerating the growth of companies is in one way or another not only a marketing process, the goal of which is growth and achieving great results in short periods, by focusing on innovative technologies that are effective, efficient and fast to reach the target groups and raise their interest towards the project's products and services, and this What we deduce from the stories of companies that used accelerating technologies in their marketing activities, where they focused on innovative methods at low cost instead of traditional marketing methods.

Thanks for reading.