No matter the nature of your business, there are components of it that you cannot ignore. Sure, you may do well even with limited manpower for the first few months, but you will eventually need to hire people. The same is true with having an office and working on marketing.
For each of these areas, you don’t want to lag behind competitors:
Office Space
The beauty of startups is they can bypass the traditional requirements of a regular business — at least temporarily. As demand gets higher, you will have no choice but to stray from the lenient startup model and to get closer to what a regular corporate environment looks like. The first order of business is looking for an office.
However, an office is not mandatory to run your company, especially if you are working on a model that exists mostly online. You’ll benefit from having a virtual office space, which is the preferred solution of startups in NYC because office providers understand the basic needs of each company and make them available for everyone. From here you can meet investors and clients without exactly committing to a long-term office lease.
Online Marketing
It’s not enough that you have a website loaded with walls of text that no one even bothered proofreading. It’s not an improvement if you have basic links to internal pages and external social media accounts. These put your name on the online map, but they don’t exactly scream competitive. What you need is to build a reputation online as a responsive company.
Do not be a follower; be a trendsetter. Get cracking on customer interaction and never underestimate the power of word-of-mouth advertising. Money can get you places in terms of online marketing, but you cannot buy customer loyalty to the point that they become brand advocates. That will only happen if you show them you’re the best fit for them not just in terms of products but also in terms of ideals.
Employee Retention
A startup often has a young employee profile, each of whom is filled with bright ideas that benefit your company in the long run. That is if you can make them stay loyal. Unfortunately, millennials have a reputation of hopping from one company to another if they don’t feel like the company is fulfilling their personal goals, especially if the company doesn’t even try. You’ve got the vibrant, friendly office vibe going.
Now, focus on letting employees showcase what they have to offer without letting their age seem like a limiting factor. That’s the biggest mistake companies with an older population make. They equate qualification with age, which limits the growth of younger employees, making them jump ship. In a workforce that is composed majorly of millennials, you need to embrace progress. Continue with old-school notions and you’ll be left with a high turnover rate that reflects poorly on your company.
Running a business doesn’t just mean thinking about profits. You have to think about your brand image and reputation with employees too.
