3 Innovative Services All Startups Need to Invest In

Building a business from the bottom up is a long and difficult journey of trial and error. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 20% of startups fail within their first year, 50% fail by their fifth year, and 70% are done by year 10.

With so many pressing matters at the forefront of an entrepreneur’s mind, there are many reasons why a startup may fail. Often times, key areas of business such as marketing and development are not well-thought out, but should be part of the business plan from the beginning.

Three of the most important factors that a startup fails to acknowledge as it grows include the importance of consistent branding, recruiting suitable employees, and continuously defining their product-market value. Fortunately, there are services that can help growing small businesses in these areas.

Branding: Visualize Your Business with ZeBrand

It is crucial to have a clear mission and vision of your business. With investors and partners potentially funding the business and sharing their input, it can be easy to lose sight of your business’ purpose.

Clarifying your identity and vision for the business can be time consuming, but don’t forget that branding is essential for many reasons: your brand unifies every aspect of your company; potential customers define you by your brand; it generates sales and wins loyal customers.

ZeBrand understands the significance of consistent branding, especially for small businesses who may lack design and brand management resources. They offer a quick and easy service that helps early-stage businesses develop a brand presence through visual assets. Just answer a few questions and a personalized brand toolkit will be sent to you.

The brand toolkit is organized and designed to define core brand elements, including the brand’s vision, core values, logo, color, and typography. ZeBrand optimizes the brand elements to fit your industry so you have a clear vision of the potential of your brand.

With ZeBrand, even startups without a creative department can have a visually powerful and concrete brand.

Recruitment: Assemble Your Dream Team with Vested

As business starts to take off, hiring becomes a need. Your team is your most important and valuable asset. Bringing on new employees can be expensive and time consuming, but even more so when people that are not a good fit are hired.

The recruitment process can eat up valuable time that can be spent on other areas of business. Vested is a startup helping small businesses find new employees. Take some time to figure out the skills, experience, and energy your company needs then Vested will have your ideal candidates lined up for you within 48 hours.

Since Vested is small-business focused, early-stage businesses can take advantage of its sourcing tools to find high quality candidates.

User-Testing: Define Your Product-Market Fit with User Interviews

It’s important to understand your customers and the product-market value of your business. When you’re not solving a real issue, you’re wasting a huge amount of money on a product or a service that customers aren’t even going to use.

According to CBInsights, 42% of startups fail because they don’t create a product that solves a need. How can this problem be solved? The answer is in user-centered research.

User Interviews is a service that recruits participants for product tests and market research studies. The founders understood that businesses need to focus on their customers, but realized that collecting user feedback is difficult. Currently, it has a community of over 125,000 vetted participants and helps you find the perfect participants that fit your research criteria.

As a company that understands the importance of user-testing and a company’s product-market value, btrax uses User Interviews for market research used to confirm or determine clientProduct-Market fit, target market, or marketing strategy.

3 Key Takeaways

1. It’s important for a growing startup to brand consistently to strengthen the company and keep it grounded from the influence of outsiders.
2. Along with a powerful brand, startups need to hire the right people that will help the business thrive.
3. Since the market is constantly changing, products and services need to be frequently tested and modified to fit customer needs.

Although the challenges of a growing business are inevitable, there are many services available to help overcome them so your business can prosper.

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