Are you keen to start a business in 2024? Well done.

Determining whether a specific year is an excellent time to start a business depends on various factors, so there is no right or wrong time to get your startup operational.

If you are risk averse, conduct thorough research, seek advice from experts in your industry, and carefully evaluate the specific circumstances before deciding if 2024 is a good year for starting your business.

In this article, we share our seven tips and more to assist you in creating a competitive business in 2024.

Let’s start with your business needs before you take the next step and create a business plan.

Table of Contents

1. Create a Solution

Rather than considering what you’ll sell and how much you’ll earn, focus on what you can solve for your target market. This will make it easier for you to gain a better customer base. Putting yourself in your customers’ shoes will tell you precisely what to offer, how to provide it, and who to aim toward.

Your business should be a solution, not just a broad offer to whoever comes across it.
When people buy things, they usually do this because they need them. Call it an itch that needs scratching – most of your customers will have a problem your company offers to solve. They are on the hunt for the solution; if you provide it, they will instantly pick your brand.

Here are the three things you should think about before you get started:

• What problems does your buyer persona need to be resolved?
• What kinds of problems can you solve and how?
• What benefits do people have from choosing your new business?

Learning about this itch for your target audience is your best strategy today. You can base all of your methods and advertising on providing a solution to a problem. In 2024, ensure your startup business is focused on solving something competitors are failing.

2. Find the Right Market to Target

Know your USPs and KPIs so your startup has a competitive advantage and can stand out in a big crowd. How? You will need to know your product or service very well, including its selling points, which may include:

• Service quality and innovation
• Right price point
• Excellent customer service

Naturally, your target audience will expect certain things from you to pick you from the crowd. You can only reach out to the right people if you research the market likely to buy your products or services. Seek to learn what your customers need and how your offerings can meet their needs. To do this task well, try the following task:

• Create Customer Personas Develop detailed profiles of your ideal customers. Consider demographics, psychographics, behaviors, and preferences.
• Competitor Analysis: Analyze competitors to identify their target audience. Understand what markets they are serving and any gaps in their approach.
• Social Media Listening Monitor social media platforms for discussions related to your industry. Identify trends, concerns, and preferences of potential customers.

You can take many more actions to conduct effective market research. In reality, businesses always conduct market research to learn more about their customer base to meet their needs.

Regularly revisit and refine your market research strategy based on new information and changes in the market landscape.

3. Take Care of Your Financing

Most new businesses are financed by the founders’ savings or bank loans. Creating a business these days is expensive, especially if you haven’t planned your expenses. If you go in this blindly, many unexpected expenses will show and stop you before you even get a chance to shine on the market.

Financing is significant when you start a business. There will be more outlay than revenue in the startup phase of your business.

Plan to have ample working capital and contingency funds to pay employees, freelancers, and suppliers.  Hiring marketing experts and SEO professionals and engaging a lawyer to ensure your business operates within local and regional laws and its IP is protected will compete with your need to pay for online marketing and advertising.

Therefore, make a detailed financial plan for your new company. Try to anticipate everything and leave room for some unaccounted expenses. Only when you are confident that you can cover your business costs until it starts making your money should you start this journey.

4. Get the Right People on Your Side

Great brands are built by teams, not individuals. Even if you are an owner and leader in a business, you need to understand that you’ll need people on your side. Whether they are employees, partners, managers, friends, or family – you need the right people to build a business from the ground up.

Before you start your company, learn what you need to establish in the industry.

• What experts do you need?
• Can you gather the information you need independently, or do you need research experts?
• Can you do your business plan alone, or do you need a professional?

Consider everything from skilled workers, motivational leaders, training opportunities, salespeople and managers, accounting firms, marketing experts, and legal assistance.

You can be a true expert in the industry, but still, there will be things you will need help with. For example, do you know the difference between unilateral and bilateral contracts? Businesses frequently draft these, but unless you’ve practiced law, you won’t see a thing about them. Do an online search, and the results will present information on bilateral and unilateral contracts.

As a business owner, you need to cover all legal grounds and have the necessary documentation to establish contractual obligations with different parties, including:

• suppliers (of materials, products, services)
• staff (employed and freelancers)
• customers
• lenders
• affiliates

5. Think SEO

SEO is still a priority for businesses. It’s evolving and becoming more and more critical every year. If you are starting your business in 2024, this should be at the top of your list. Engage SEO experts and use AI, automation, and other digital tools and platforms to optimize your online presence.

SEO, or Search Engine Organization, is Google’s way of determining whether or not your site deserves to rank higher for queries entered into search engines. If your business has a poor online presence and low SEO, it won’t reach the target audience you created it for.

The time to research SEO strategies is today before starting your new business. Even when you do, and things go well for you, you need to keep track of SEO’s latest trends. Algorithms and expectations change daily, so focus your strategy on ranking higher in results.

6. Leverage the Power of Social Media

Did you know that nearly three-quarters of Americans use social media these days? Many people find the services and products they need on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, making social media a critical part of any modern business strategy.

This makes it essential for new companies to use social media to reach out and target a wider audience. This is a way to establish your brand, find new customers, turn interested parties into leads, and communicate with your buyer persona.

Some of the latest strategies for using social media for businesses include:

• Set objectives and goals specifically for social media channels
• Use social media to research your competition
• Find inspiration on different platforms
• Create a social media calendar that you’ll follow
• Schedule your presence across various channels
• Discover the right platforms /posting time/social media groups for your brand

7. Offer Amazing Customer Service Care

Compared to past decades, when customer care was average at best and people were okay with it, it can make or break any business today.

Poor customer service can kill your brand before you start on the market. Over 80% of customers leave a brand and share bad testimonials because they’ve experienced poor support service twice or thrice, even if offered value products and services.

Use technology to provide a 24-hour support service. Online shoppers expect every eCommerce store to have a ChatBot and live chat.

Your customer service can provide your startup with:

• Customer satisfaction and retention
• Brand loyalty
• Competitive advantage
• Feedback and improvement

You can use your customer service to capture input on feedback and improvement. Customer inquiries, complaints, and suggestions can provide insights into areas where your product or service can be improved. Startups can use this information to iterate on their offerings and enhance the overall customer experience.

Additionally, with the feedback, startups can continuously improve their processes to lower costs and improve productivity.

Last Words

Starting a business from scratch today requires more than just the seven steps; what you need to do depends on the type of business. All startups must embrace Web 2.0 and prepare for Web 3.0, and cybersecurity must be prioritized.