What is your product/service? Decide what your idea is. What makes your idea different and sets you aside from your competitors? What is your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)? It is important to be able to answer this question as it can be crucial to the success of your business.

 

Do you know your Market? Before you launch your product or service, is there a market for what you are offering? Does your target market want your product or service? What demand is there? Can you find proof to back this? Conducting market research can be useful for the bank or investors if you need financial support to launch your business. Get to know your local enterprise board contact, they have information and support networks for SME’s. Also get to know your local bank contact, they too provide business updates on key sectors and can have information available.

 

Who is your customer? The key to the success of your business is knowing who your customer is. Are you B2B or B2C or perhaps both? If you are both how will you differentiate your communication to them? Break each of these customer groups down. Give each cohort an Identify, this will help you further when you are developing your marketing strategy.

 

What is your sales channel? Now that you have identified who your customers are how do you plan to sell to them? Will you need a physical presence, will you only be available online? Will you mainly sell through your own website or use third party channels?

 

Are you a product led business? If you are a product driven business, are you going to source your product or are you developing it yourself, perhaps it will be cheaper to outsource it? If you are ordering what’s the minimum order quantity? How will you store it? Could you do drop-shipping rather than having to store the products yourself? How will you deliver this product to your customer?

 

There are lots more questions to be answered, this is just the start to help you understand and get moving on this exciting opportunity. We haven’t even touched on the importance of understanding your financials or legal requirements. Being your own boss can be rewarding but can be quite daunting too. Having run our own online retail businesses, we get these challenges so if we can be of any help give us a call.