As a small business or local business, you’ve embarked on your journey of building or turning your business pursuit into a successful business. However, there are pieces of the puzzle that many small businesses fail to understand before diving into this landscape.
There is this saying that mistakes are paramount. Yet, these pieces of the puzzle ends up becoming crucial mistakes that small business owners make when starting out and trying to get a leg up in their business industry.
In a competitive space of business, making mistakes in your business journey can happen to literally any business owner. This can be either in a form of lack of experience or lack of proper entrepreneurship training or business skills.
In this article, I’ll help you understand the basic mistakes small business and local businesses should avoid when trying to get a leg-up in their business space. These mistakes will put into place the reasons why small businesses should also avoid them and how to watch out for them in their business pursuit.
Let’s get started.
Primary Mistakes Every Local Businesses Should Avoid
1. Zero Business Planning
We all want a good and successful business- but how would that be possible without a strategic plan and approach? Think of it. The first and one of the biggest mistakes local businesses make is making zero or bad business planning before starting out.
A Business plan is essential as this is a structural layout of your goals and objectives over the long run. There is no reason to even start a business without a business plan or approach.
Every small or local business should avoid the mistake of starting out a business without planning or making a structural approach. Your business plan should include your monthly or annual goals, your plan to be franchise if you’re not, your inventory peak and so on.
2. Ignoring Market Research
Market research is essential when starting a small or local business. However, many business owners neglect the importance attached to making market research.
Making market research will help business owners understand the following:
i. Market Demand & Supply
Making market research will help business owners understand the product that consumers are lacking and the product that are in high demand in a certain geographical location.
The purpose of understanding the demand is to avoid mistakes of having the wrong inventory or products that would result in massive loss or poor sales.
ii. Target Audience
The reason why every local businesses must do market research is to understand your type of audience. This is very crucial for every small business to understand and take note of.
Imagine selling kid wears in a geographical location where 95% are adult without kids. Isn’t that a big loss to start with? Therefore, it is very important to undertake market research to understand your type of audience or your type of customers before venturing into any local business.
3. Rules & Regulatory Violations
Another mistake that should be avoided by small and local business owners is violating legal and regulatory standards that applies to your business.
It is clear that almost every business has a regulatory body or set of regulations that must be followed. Yet, many new business owner tend to ignore these rules and put their business in jeopardy.
Take for instance, a local cosmetic business should be aware of getting their product tested and approved by a legal body before selling such products to consumers. Also, a beverage company should be aware of every legal rules and body to get licensed for selling such beverages.
It is necessary to go ahead and get your business registered, acquire all license that applies to your business and more. Ignoring these legal regulations will only lead to a short lasting business and maybe a legal issue with the law.
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4. Bad Business Team
Two heads are definitely better than one, and it is no coincidence that a good team raises the percentage of success in a small business. However, one of the key mistakes that local businesses makes is having a bad business team.
Recruiting a great team of expertise is crucial from the head down to manufacturers or down to the distributors and so on. Investing in a good team will ensure the proper growth of a small or local business.
5. Poor Customer Services
There is nothing more satisfying than a customer having the opportunity to reach out to a business about a product. Imagine buying a product and you can’t even access a customer service option to lodge a complaint or give a review.
Poor customer service is a huge turn off for customers. Therefore, this huge mistake should be avoided by every local businesses. Small businesses should provide trust worthy information like a business email, a phone number, a professional website, social media pages and so on.
The following are the reasons why you should invest in good customer services for your business:
i. Customer’s Satisfaction
The first reason every local business should invest in customer service is to provide customer satisfaction in all areas. No matter how perfect your business may seem, customers need a means of reaching out to give reviews, feedback, complaints and more.
ii. Customer’s Trust
A good customer service will ensure your business is trustworthy. Customers feel more secure with a small business that has a good customer experience and services.
Ask yourself, would you trust a business with customer service or a business that isn’t ready to attend to customers complaint and reviews? You would definitely pick the business with a good customer service. This is the reason every small business should invest in good customer service.
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6. Poor Risk Management
Poor risk management is another huge mistake that small businesses overlook all the time. Regardless of the perfect business plan you already created, it is a good idea to always put risk management into consideration.
Risk management is simply staying aware of any threat or potential risk towards your business and the capital invested. Risks can come from any angle and this is an inevitable part of starting a business.
However, understanding the best way to manage risk will ensure your business keeps standing firm and this is one of the mistakes business owners fail to address.
7. Zero Marketing Strategy
Starting a business shouldn’t end at that bus stop. A proper marketing strategy should in place to ensure business growth. This is also one of the mistakes local businesses make when starting out.
Either by consulting a marketing company or agency. It is very crucial to adopt a marketing strategy to keep your business growing and not stalling.
These marketing strategies can be content marketing, social media advertising, digital marketing, local marketing or other forms of marketing that ensures growth of small businesses.
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FAQs On Mistakes Local Businesses Should Avoid
Why do majority of local or small businesses fail at their first attempt?
Thousands of local or small businesses fail at their first attempt due to several mistakes beyond the ones highlighted in this article. These mistakes can range from any angle or any factor. The bottom line remains that larger percentage of these local businesses fail because of several business mistakes.
Is there a specific mistake that supersedes other business mistakes?
I would suggest all small and local businesses look out for every mistake. The question about which mistake is more common or which mistake is more compound shouldn’t be the issue. Avoiding all necessary business mistakes should be the aim of both small and local businesses trying to get a leg up.
Bottom Line
It is baseless to point out business mistakes without saying these mistakes are necessary sometimes. Local businesses can move on and learn from mistakes they made and regroup to have a bigger success.
Avoiding mistakes as a small business is crucial but sometimes inevitable. Keep in mind that large percentage of businesses fail at their first attempt and they came back stronger.
The fact remains that even successful businesses face lot of challenges and mistakes that comes into play as the business grows. What should remain constant is overcoming them and encouraging business growth.