5 Reasons Why Your Startup is Not Earning Money

5 Reasons Why Your Startup is Not Earning Money. Sometimes, even with all the planning, careful execution and ultimate effort, your startup won’t seem to make as much money as you have thought it would.

Needless to say, even the greatest assessment can sometimes be off but when this problem doesn’t seem to go away even with all the effort you’re currently investing, it is possible that something else is at play.

There are some mistakes that will cause systemic problems within your organization and cause you to under-earn in the long-run and if you let this problem to run rampant for a prolonged period of time, you might land yourself into a whole world of trouble.

1.      Marketing to the wrong audience

One of the first mistakes you can make in marketing is not knowing who your primary demographic is. Just because your product is aimed at a certain demographic, doesn’t mean that they’re the ones who are going to use it the most. With that in mind, do your market research beforehand and ensure that you know with 100 percent certainty who your ideal customer is. The importance of this is particularly visible on social networks where each group has its own preferred platform. Namely, Snapchat, Pinterest and LinkedIn all have different audiences, so knowing where to send the message is as important as the content of the message itself.

2.      Reluctance to spend

In order to grow, every business needs to burn some money. As your workload increases, you have to hire new people, upgrade your equipment, train your employees better or even relocate to a different headquarters (better location and more office space). In order to do so, you need to spend money. Now, a lot of people are afraid of overspending or investing too much in a workflow increase that might just be a fluke, which sometimes makes them cling to their profits. Don’t get us wrong, frugality is fine, just make sure that you don’t push it too far.

3.      Ignoring digital marketing

It is absolutely true that not every industry benefits from an online presence in the same way or to the same degree. In fact, about 41 percent of all small business owners believe that, in their industry, a website is redundant. Even in a situation where these entrepreneurs actually do make a website, this is where their online activity ends. However, in order for this presence to mean anything, you need to invest in proper digital marketing. On its own, your website can’t do much. In fact, according to expert New York SEO company, digital marketing is the key to turning leads into sales. This brings us to the next point…

4.      Focusing on the wrong metrics

Another mistake that inexperienced business owners commonly make is focusing on all the wrong metrics. Think about a post of your product on a random social network. The number of likes, shares and comments do have their purpose but do they reveal how many new customers you are about to gain? Do they reveal how much your profits will increase? There’s really no reliable way of knowing any of these things.

Even sales can be less revealing than you might have thought. As a business, it’s your goal to generate as many return customers as possible. However, a lot of small businesses treat all of their sales the same, barely distinguishing regulars from first-time customers. In order to diagnose your money-making problem, you first need to set your metrics in a priority order. Only in this way will you be able to understand where the problem is.

5.      Ignoring customer feedback

The final and the greatest sin that startup and SMB owners make is ignoring customer feedback. In fact, some people are so preoccupied with various analytics and their own detective work around this problem, that they ignore people who are outright telling them where their problem lies. Sure, some comments are outright malicious and completely irrelevant to your problem, but sometimes you can find people who are genuinely concerned about a feature or pointing at a real problem of your product/company. In other words, the only way to turn this to your advantage is to actually start listening to your community.

Conclusion

If you have some other infrastructural errors in your organization or have a particularly inefficient staff, the above-listed five might not give you the results you hope for. Still, actively working on improving your business in those five areas is bound to bring some visible results. In other words, even if it doesn’t directly solve all of your problems, all of these methods are definitely worth trying out.

 

About Author

Peter Minkoff is a marketing writer at OffTheMRKT and HighStreetGent magazine. Beside writing he’s also a freelance marketing coach around UK and AU. Follow Peter on Twitter for more tips.