Tips For Starting A New Business During The Pandemic

“Last night, I had a difficult conversation with my husband. I broke down crying because starting a business, in the middle of a pandemic, with a toddler, is hard. …”

This is from a group post I saw on Facebook the other day. As a single mom of two toddlers and the founder of a digital marketing agency, not only can I totally relate to this post emotionally, it’s also similar to what I’ve heard from clients: “Starting a business now is so hard.”

Yes, it is extremely hard to start a business during an economic crisis, but many still want to do it. Perhaps starting your own business could be a way out of unemployment. However, many of our startup clients don’t know where to begin, and that makes it even more difficult.

“I need to do social media marketing. Can you give me a quote?”

“How much will it cost me to have my company shown on the first page of Google?”

“What’s the cost of email marketing?”

These are the questions I’m often asked by clients during our initial meeting. Good questions, but I typically respond with more questions, like: “Do you have a website yet? Do you know what you want to sell and how you want to sell it? Who are your competitors? What’s your target market?” Most of the time, the answers are “no” or “I don’t know.”

Many startup owners think of marketing first because it drives sales, which is the ultimate goal of growing a business. But there are actually many steps that need to be taken first before you can market your business.

For instance, if you are selling a product, you should plan out your sales channels first. Before bringing in traffic to the store, is your merchandising ready? Your payment funnels? Your inventory controls? Your fulfillment processes? Return, refund and cancellation processes and fraud control? How about customer services? Do you have your basic essentials for your online presence, such as a website and your local search engine optimization (SEO) setup? Can your potential client find you online?

Read more: forbes