It’s Grand Opening Day + 1 … Now What?

You’ve weathered the hectic rush to start-up.  You worked double time through the hundreds of mundane and time-consuming tasks bringing your new company to life – naming the business, getting the look and feel that you want your customers to see, built your website, opened your Twitter account, created Facebook and Pinterest pages and started the branding process.  You’ve registered the business with your state agencies, and produced enough inventory to satisfy initial sales.  Importantly, you landed an SBA-guaranteed loan to purchase the equipment and raw material necessary to create that product.  Importantly, you weathered the inevitable hiccups that delayed your start-up day and battered your budget.  And now you’ve finally made it through your start-up’s Grand Opening Day.  What’s next?

The big trick is, keep the revenue rising after Grand Opening Day.  Yesterday’s buzz is starting to wear off.  Sales were good, but who knows if those initial customers will return on a regular basis.  Will new customers find you . . . and in numbers that lead to profits?  Are you on track to meet the revenue projections in your Cash Flow/Budget?  Can you keep expenses within budget?

The worry is, bills are coming due, not only this month but every month in the future.  The SBA-guaranteed start-up loan – a crucial factor in getting your business off the ground – has principal and interest payments due every month.  And the only way to pay those financial obligations is if revenue continues to flow in, in amounts that are at least equal to your Cash Flow/Budget forecast.  Worse, an unexpected bill has just arrived and it wasn’t factored into your budget, creating worries that you don’t have the necessary cash cushion to sleep at night – or even to survive as a new business owner.

Actually, long before this point savvy entrepreneurs realize early on that every day is a knuckle-down-and-build-more-sales day.  Businesses that are profitable from Day 1 are rare, and few succeed without major ongoing effort.  Even more rare is the business that just runs itself and lets you sit on the beach soaking up the sun’s rays.  Odds are, you’ll succeed only if you scramble every single day, thinking up a half dozen new ideas before you step out of the shower in the morning, vetting those ideas throughout the day, tossing any that are pie-in-the-sky, and making a serious effort to implement at least one of the good ideas by the end of the day.

And these ideas shouldn’t be about the latest and greatest new products you want to create – those take far too much energy, too many resources, and too long to pay off.  No, you need to focus on how to get customers to buy the products you currently have – sales that will pare down existing inventory, offsetting Cost of Goods expenses that have already gone out the door.

Once that’s established and it’s certain you have enough money in the bank, then maybe it’s time to think about the new products.  Right now, though, you need to generate maximum profits from the product(s) you already have, building your revenue stream from the costs you’ve already sunk.

Let’s consider that another way.  Now is the time for maximum follow-through on everything you’ve created so far, doing everything possible to make it succeed – by guts, perseverance, lateral thinking, honing your sales and marketing skills, and every other effort you can possibly make.  You need to concentrate on ways to increase new sales, enlarge existing sales, and improve expenses to increase profitability on those sales.

These ideas shouldn’t be ones that break the bank – and in fact, if your budget indicates that you need to discard them, stick only with those that fit well within your budget.  A good way to increase lateral thinking is to stress the importance of creativity with everyone in your organization, soliciting ideas in brainstorming sessions.  An idea that makes you hold your nose at first mention could be a real winner if looked at in novel ways, or when it’s kicked around the table a few times to encourage novel ways to look at things.  Once you’ve settled on one or more ideas, create a plan to implement, and then make sure you do it; otherwise, mañana sets in, and your crew figures you’re all talk.  Worse, it can stifle creativity.

A first-start basis for your lateral thinking ideas is to differentiate yourself from your competition, in ways that will begin to create your marketing brand.  When you copycat your competition, you risk helping your competitor’s brand image at the expense of building your own.  By building a unique brand image, you’re more likely to stand out in a crowd, and when people think of your image they’re more likely to buy what you have to sell.  (There’s a very good blog post about this, titled Say No to Copycat Marketing, at websavvy Marketing – https://www.web-savvy-marketing.com/2014/02/copycat-marketing/.)

Next, every business is different, so how you create unique marketing depends on how much creative effort you put into it.  Rather than looking at your competitors to see what they’re doing – which tends to send you down the copycat path – search out sites such as WordStream that offer lots of inexpensive marketing ideas you can build from to begin your brand definition, such as 22 Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses With Limited Budgets (http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/10/01/marketing-ideas-for-small-businesses), or another list of ideas from the same people at http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/10/01/marketing-ideas-for-small-businesses.  For less online-focused marketing ideas, check out the written blog post for 60+ Creative Marketing Ideas for Small Business, at  http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/10/01/marketing-ideas-for-small-businesses.

Most of these marketing efforts are easy to implement, without eating up all of your time, allowing you to try several of them.  Create a list of all ideas that fit your personal and company style and budget, and how you want your brand image presented to your potential new customer base.  Then build a plan for implementation – and work hard on that plan.  Every day.

Track which ideas are working, and focus more attention on them so they work even better.  Either tweak with variations the ones that aren’t working, or discard them to open up resources to try others.  Don’t be shy or afraid to ask customers how they were introduced to your company and products, by chatting them up in person, or creating a brief survey at the point of sale – and create your own database to store that information for future use.

The key to success with your marketing and brand image building is threefold:  consistency and frequency of being in front of potential new customers, and creating reasons for existing customers to return.

Some specifics might help:

• Drive-by traffic. If you have a brick and mortar retail business and rely on walk-by or drive-by traffic, focus on how to get more people to see you – and to take enough notice of you to stop in.  If they can’t, or don’t have a reason to notice you, there’s little incentive to give you a try.
  • Step outside and seriously look at your business through the eyes of a potential customer.
  • Research driving and walking patterns from all directions around your business, to give you better data on where your customers are coming from.
  • Determine if passers-by are heading for other destination businesses in your area. For example, if you have a nearby McDonald’s and everyone is focused on turning into it, you need to figure out how to grab people’s attention along the way, or while they’re there.
  • Hand out free samples to passers-by. Take a cue from the popularity of free samples given out at Costco or your local supermarket – they obviously aren’t doing it just to fill customer’s stomachs – their research has shown the value of it.
  • Do you stand out from the crowd of other nearby businesses? Are your potential customers distracted by anything in the surrounding area that otherwise catches their eye – compelling traffic signs, a nearby high-volume business that everyone is focused on.
  • Are you a bit off the beaten track? Are you hidden down a dark alley or around a corner?  Focus your attention on signage.  Does it stand out, and does your store’s exterior add visual excitement to the local scene?
  • Compile notes on potential customer demographics as they pass by. Is the visual appeal of your business optimized for this customer base?
  • If your business has windows that front onto the street, use this to your best advantage for enticing customers to come in – and use it for your most appealing offers, or that attract your desired customer base. (example – a high-end wine store doesn’t put a neon sign in the window for Two Buck Chuck.)
  • Take special action to stand out, in ways that attract as much attention to your business as you can – handing out flyers or samples to promote a special (and if you feel uncomfortable doing it, hire someone). A pavement board is an easy way to promote specials, and should be eye catching.
  • Host a seminar or workshop. When Starbucks wasn’t much more than a gleam in Howard Schultz’s eye in hometown Seattle, they hosted twice-a-week nightly how-to home barista seminars, allowing potential espresso machine and coffee bean customers try out eight or ten different espresso machines they also sold in-store.  It hooked a large number of longstanding customers on using Starbucks machines and coffee at home, not to mention creating a very loyal customer base for the future.  Almost any small business can do something similar – it just requires some outside-the-box thinking to figure out what will work best.  If you go this route, be sure to heavily publicize it – in-store, on your business web site, in advertising, and press releases.
  • With today’s app-hooked customers, use location-based mobile apps that new concepts such as push notifications and geotargeting to rattle the chain of nearby potential customers with just-in-time offers and to lure them into your store. Check out the latest at Groupon (), LivingSocial (https://www.livingsocial.com/), Tippr (http://www.tippr.com/).
• Online business. If your customers reach you via online access, the need for them to see and know about your business holds true.  If they don’t know you exist, they’ll never find you.

Even if they see your business website, it’s imperative that you create a desire in the customer’s mind to stop and buy.  The best way is to create an active website and do everything possible to drive your search engine optimization (SOE) to the point where potential customers can link to your site from browser searches.

• Hype special promotions. The world is looking for bargains, or at least, the aura of a promotion.  This can be a double-edged sword, unless you really run the revenue/expense numbers through what-if scenarios in your Cash Flow/Budget spreadsheet.
• Develop a “destination” business. Regardless of your business type, friends and family just won’t add up to a large enough universe to sustain a business.

If you rely on your company’s website to drive customers to you, how can you entice potential customers to you – in large enough numbers to increase your sales revenue?  What can you do to raise your website to the top of search engine lists (think search engine optimization – known as SEO)?  Like word of mouth, efforts to increase your website traffic can take a lot of time to pay off, so start early (such as several months before you even open your business doors).

• Social media. It’s easy to think that social media will be your ticket to success – and ultimately it could be – but you can bet it will take far longer than you think to build consistent customer increases with it.  You definitely should take advantage of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, or LinkedIn, but unless you have a social media specialist on your staff it will take up far too much of your time if you focus your support across all (or even several) of them.  On whatever social media sites you select, focus on how good your products or services are – shouts that reach a wide audience, and ones that can tune in to you quickly.
• What sales tactics will turn tire-kicking potential customers into actual buying customers? What can you do to take customers away from your competitors?  What can you do to get more repeat customers?

In doing all this, it’s imperative that you keep a close eye on every business aspect of your operation.  Too many businesses fail because they’re losing money on every sale, but try to make up for it in volume – a downward spiral that you absolutely need to stay away from.  Know exactly what your profit margins are – not just gross profit, but also net profit.  Know exactly where your expenses are too high, and where your sales aren’t high enough.  This is where the Cash Flow/ Budget spreadsheet is vital – enabling you to look at the financial metrics of your business any way you want, plus you can play what-if scenarios to illustrate the effects of pricing changes, expense adjustments, or a better marketing campaign (advertisements, specials, new gimmicks).

Cash Flow/Budget.  If you’re not familiar with the Cash Flow/Budget spreadsheet, get a copy of Start-Up! An Entrepreneur’s Guide to a Successful Small Business, and the preface to Chapter 5 will guide you to a download copy of it.

In summary.  Rather than Opening Day +1 to realize all of this, you need to be thinking about it several months before Grand Opening Day.  During that buildup, carve out quality time and save some mental effort for creating an initial marketing plan – specifically tailored to these early days and through to the end of your first year of business.  You’re going to need it to get past that initial crucial time.

For this first go-around of your marketing plan, you won’t yet have a loyal customer following, and it’s critical to keep the momentum going.  Key to it is finding ways to create major buzz, not only for your initial customers, but with new potential customers, priming them not only for the Grand Opening Day, but to keep them coming back time and again to buy.  Every business is different, and it’s imperative to fine tune it specifically for your situation.  A lot of your marketing efforts will require advance planning and effort, so get as much of it done ahead of time as you can – and don’t wait until you see a drop in revenue to get going on it.  By then it’s too late.

Whether you’re shooting for online or drive-by buyers, it these can take months and months to build up a following.  Before that following can exist, the onus is on you to create the buzz that builds customer interest.  Only when they begin to flock to you in large numbers will it start to pay off.

So the trick is to get the word out as widely as you can, not just one or two people here and there, or five or ten, and in most cases, not even a few dozen.  If you’ve ever written a blog, or tried to increase your number of Twitter followers, you’ll realize just how hard this can be.  It isn’t enough to just hang out your shingle and then stand back and wait.

Word of mouth can take even longer.  The trick is to get as many potential buyers of your products and services aware of them as early as possible

Finally, you probably won’t have a really good handle on your Cost of Sales numbers at Grand Opening Day, and therefore, your real-life profitability.  After all, it’s only with the business up and running that you’ll really know all of your costs of doing business, and whether you’ve set your prices correctly.  Watch your expenses, and pay close attention to your Cash Flow/Budget.  Most of all, obsess about building your sales.