Four Keys of Business Success According to Our Experts

Everybody knows how to raise children, but only if they are someone else’s. It sort of works the same way with recommendations on how to build a strong business, launch a commercially successful product on the market, and make the buyer an offer of a product or service that cannot be turned down. There are plenty of guides, instructions, tips, life hacks, and step-by-step algorithms about that on the Web. But even most promising projects still fail sometimes.

The problem, perhaps, is that people who have been able to start a successful business are not ready to spend time on providing advice and recommendations. The most talented entrepreneurs have actually brought a product or service that enjoys high demand to the market. Geniuses went the other way – they reinvented the market for themselves, actually creating the demand that subsequently gave rise to supply. A typical example of this approach is the one used by Steve Jobs. According to many experts, it was he who launched the market for home personal computers (you can read more about launching a successful startup business here).

But what about those entrepreneurs who are just starting a business in a highly competitive market sector, in which it is almost impossible to offer something new and original? How should they promote a product or service that is similar to the one already existing in the market? How to find the right words and arguments that would resonate with the buyers’ hearts? Is it possible to launch a truly successful business in the realities of 2023?

We believe that there is no universal recipe that allows you to guarantee a win in the market. But if you can follow four simple rules in your work, then your success may happen much quicker. Our recommendations are suitable both for startups and for existing businesses seeking to reach new levels and horizons. 

Ways to Achieve Success

The formula will actually be very simple. The whole problem is to find the right solution to the equation, considering that the resources you have are far from limitless, and there are companies in the market that work in the same niche. However, all that doesn’t mean you have to give up. You have to start somewhere, and it’s best to start right!

In International Wealth experts’ opinion, succeeding in business and building a thriving company depends on the following four must-haves:

1. Product
2. Market
3. Money
4. People

If at least one of these initial factors is absent or it is not good enough, business success cannot be expected, even if all the other formal prerequisites are seemingly in place. Serious investors who can provide financing for your company understand this very well. Therefore, they will provide the funding only in those cases when deviation from the best setting fits certain boundaries. (You can read more on the topic here: Five keys of successful business ).

Following are some typical examples of situations, in which it is impossible to build a successful business, even if the company has a breakthrough offer:

• The product does not match the requirements of any target audience. Typical examples are luxury goods in a poor country, or phone apps in a region where there is simply no stable internet connection. Your company will be able to sell single items, but this will not bring you success in the market. You will invest a lot of money, time and effort in promotion and marketing, but unfortunately, they will just be wasted.
• The market is not ready or not advanced enough to accept a product or service. This happens quite often. An offer that is not related to the desires of buyers will not be popular. There are exceptions to this rule (we have already mentioned Steve Jobs, for one), but they are extremely rare.
• Money. Successful businesses start small. It starts with an idea backed up by the talent of a business person who wants to secure their place in the sun. It also depends on the owner’s ability to make connections. It is supported by advertising a product or service. It requires willingness to support the project at its early stages with all the necessary resources. All this needs money. It doesn’t really matter whether it comes from the owner’s capital or an investor’s, but if it isn’t there, then the business is doomed.
• People. The most difficult thing is not simply to invent a product, but to make it ready for commercial use. This requires the efforts of many people, who will work for a common idea. It is impossible to achieve success on your own – the days of the lone rangers are long gone. Any successful business is the result of the work of a whole team of professionals.

Successful Business Condition #1 – Product

In the perfect world, in order to start a successful business, you would need a product or service that matches the preferences of your target audience priced lower than those of your competitors. One additional condition would be for your offer to be in some way better than the analogues already available on the market. This would allow the buyer to notice and recognize your brand, which will greatly simplify the promotion of goods and services in the future. (For more information on the topic, you can read the following article: Best Country for Startups in 2022).

Our advice and recommendations:

• Communicate with potential buyers in their language;
• Get people to love you;
• Find a problem your potential customers are having and explain to them how your product or service will help solve it. The more complex the problem, the better;
• Find a market niche for your product or service;
• Work for a specific target audience;
• Never lower the bar of quality set when you started promoting your product or service;
• Remember that starting up in the mass market segment offers no prospects (there is too much competition, and the possibilities for price maneuvering are smaller);
• Don’t spread your strength too thin. Start working on another product or service only after your previous development has become popular;
• Set prices correctly. Remember that the premium market segment is rather narrow, and the budget segment, as we have already said, is too competitive.

Here is another article you may be interested in: Mistakes that most small business owners make

Successful Business Condition # 2 – Market

A successful product or service is worth nothing without good marketing. The market knows many examples of when excellent developments went down in history without reaching the end customer due to numerous promotional errors. It has also happened that competent marketing was not backed up by efforts to promote the brand. This approach has an extremely negative effect on the demand for a product or service.

A successful tactic means that you get the message about your product or service across to the target audience, turning potential customers into active, paying ones. Marketing experts recommend playing on the customers’ insecurities: they do not want to be left behind while their friends and family are taking advantage of your offer. Relatively speaking, this means that you must convey to the customers in doubt the image of long winding lines of people eager to buy your product or service.

Please note: the market does not tolerate passive or formal approaches. Marketing policy must be constantly adjusted and changed whenever necessary. Remember that advertising techniques and methods that are effective at one stage of promoting a product or service often turn out to be useless or even harmful at another time. Keep your finger on the pulse and don’t be afraid to admit your mistakes and take a different turn.

Questions to which you must have guaranteed the most current answers:

• How competitive are your prices?
• How competent is your brand positioning (not the product or service, but the brand itself)?
• Are your clients and customers really happy, or is there something missing?
• Are your customers willing to buy your other products or services?

These are some of the most important questions for self-examination. You will learn about the other issues when you start to market a particular product or service. Please, don’t look down on such tests, they really work and help you to run your business. (More information on the topic here: Businesses that have high risk of failing in 2023).

Support from Your Clients

Nowadays, effective marketing is an expensive affair. If we talk about promoting a product or service on the international market, then the costs are simply enormous. Can your expenses be reduced without sacrificing efficiency? We want to tell you a secret: yes, they can! What you need to do is put part of the advertising budget on your buyers’ shoulders! Read on to learn how.

Of course, we are talking about brand loyalty. If your client is absolutely satisfied with the product or service, they can tell their friends about their positive impressions, write a review or share their experience on social networks. If you take care of your customers, they will be happy to promote your brand on the market. As practice shows, the cost of a client support service turns out much lower than advertising and marketing campaigns for a product, service or brand.

Successful Business Condition #3 – Money

Everybody knows that there’s never enough of it. However, it is impossible to enter the market without having the money needed for promotion. The idea about trying to look for money later is a big mistake. With this approach, no one can guarantee that your product or service will even reach the buyer, let alone successful sales.

Financial Forecasting

The main commandment of a successful business is to forget about hope or vision at the start. References to a visionary mission, even if we talk about Steve Jobs, mean nothing. The former head of Apple is an exception from the general rule and at the same time a confirmation of this same rule. He believed in success even when he was forced to leave Apple, and he was right. But it is not a good idea to rely on such examples (You can read more about starting an LLC in the US to work with Amazon here.

This is why it is important to prepare a good financial plan. You can find money for specific purposes. Nobody would give you money “just like that”. But if you show investors a clear vision of your company and brand, demonstrate your calculations of profitability, and identify specific financial needs, you will definitely get financing. Especially if the product or service is truly revolutionary.

Being Ready to Do Business Without Money

It is impossible to build a successful business and gain a foothold in the market without financial reserves. You need to be prepared for the fact that at first your company will have very little or no money at all. This situation is almost normal for startups, but it is quite possible to clearly calculate how long you are prepared to “keep the starvation rations”. 

When making these calculating, you should take into account all of the following expenses:

• tax deductions;
• salaries to employees;
• brand promotion;
• product or service development;
• target marketing.

Also, you must try to imagine how much money (at least approximately) the investors are willing to give you. And only when the final balance is determined, a decision should be made on further actions.

Looking for a Source of Income

If your product or service is not connected to a regional market, it is not necessary to register a company in the same jurisdiction, in which you live. In many midshores (Singapore, Hong Kong), finding additional funding sources for promising startups is quite simple.

But in any case, you should avoid a typical mistake made by startup founders. We are talking about cases when a company that has a promising product or service relies on a single source of funding. This policy is extremely dangerous, because it makes the company fully dependent on the single investor, which generates risks that cannot be accounted for and controlled. (read more about challenges faced by small businesses).

Successful Business Condition #4 – People

It takes people to implement any idea into practice. Your company’s promising product or service will remain just a promise if it cannot be brought to the end consumer. But binging it also isn’t enough. The consumer needs to be convinced to choose it among the many similar offers on the market. And this task – convincing the end user – is entirely up to your employees, who are responsible for marketing, selling and delivering your product to the consumers. A successful, established business is a team of like-minded professionals dedicated to a specific idea.

The Leader Creates the Team

It is impossible to argue with this statement. At the core of a really successful business there is one particular person, a visionary; the business is powered by his ability to convince and captivate. An outside employee cannot be hired for this role. You must become an inspiring leader, otherwise no one will know about your product or service. Therefore, before starting a business, you need to understand whether you are ready to take on the burden of responsibility for your company’s success or failure.

A typical example of the case when the confidence of one person became the foundation of success is the Beatles. The band’s manager, Brian Samuel Epstein, unsuccessfully hounded record labels throughout 1961 in an attempt to secure an audition. On January 1, 1962, he managed to introduce The Beatles to the Decca label. It is well-known that Decca executives rejected them, saying that “the Beatles have no future in show business” and adding that they felt that “guitar groups are on the way out”. Epstein did not give up and eventually signed a contract with Parlophone.

If you are ready to fight for the idea and believe in the company and its product or service unconditionally, this already wins you half the battle. The market often “misses” the initial choice, favoring dead-end technologies and ideas. But sooner or later the best paths of development are usually found. If you are patient and don’t give up on your idea, you will probably succeed. (more information about reasons for success and failure in the following article: Types of Business that Are Likely to Succeed and Fail this Year).

The People Create Success

Reject the idea of doing everything yourself. The time of lonely heroes in business has passed – behind the most successful of them are strong teams of professionals. By the way, the example of Apple is no exception, because the company was registered by three like-minded people. In addition to Jobs, there were Steve Wozniak (Stephen Gary Steve Wozniak) and Ronald Wayne (Ronald Gerald Wayne), who were also ignited by the idea of a personal computer.

Please note that success often depends not only on you and your team, but also on complete outsiders. The point is, sometimes a well-known and recognizable person commonly referred to as the “brand ambassador”, can do a better job promoting a product or service than the team of people working for the owner. This person is not an employee of the company, but represents its name and its products to the society. The cost of using the services of a brand ambassador is quite significant, but they often turn out smaller than the investments in the work of the company’s advertising and/or marketing departments.

Creating and Launching a Brand

This task is much more complicated than just selling a product or service. A brand is a kind of umbrella for many products, so its advertising is extremely important. A business built around a single product is often unprofitable or even totally futureless. Therefore, launching and maintaining a brand is an extremely important part of the strategy for achieving success. (more information about opening a business: Starting an Offshore Company: All You Need to Know).

Building a successful business model:

• Competently present a product or service, make an offer that the end buyer cannot turn down. If the clients support your idea, they will vote for it with their money, and recommend the brand to their friends and acquaintances.
• Go online. Sales in regular stores are constantly declining. These days the easiest way to reach the buyer is through the Internet. You may not want to be present in social networks, use email and instant messengers, in your personal life you might prefer sending paper letters by mail and talking to friends face to face. But the fact remains: the most active segment of customers is young people, and they will not live by your old rules, so in order to reach them you need to maintain your presence in cyberspace.
• Find a way to reach your consumer. Offering a product or service that the client does not immediately like is a waste of your resources that can well be avoided. It is true that it’s not easy to create a message that will be perceived as a guide to action. Trying to prove and explain the value of your offer to the consumer is useless if they do not immediately recognize it. Therefore, learn to speak the same language with your potential buyers and customers and address their real needs.
• Create a good marketing system. Extremes are never great. The constant change of tactics and marketing strategy is also bad, it’s a dead end, from which it may be impossible to reach out to the consumers and become successful. Advertising a product or service without building any channels of communication with the buyer is a shaky and unstable thing to do, a huge risk for the company and its business. Calculating the terms of an ideal marketing policy is extremely difficult, but you must do it anyway, trying your best to tune it in with the consumers’ needs and preferences. If it works out, your clients will love and trust your company. Only then the road to success may become straight and easy.

Read more about most efficient organizational structure for your business

Any success story in business is a story of continuous development and self-improvement. The people whose companies are on the Forbes list often started small – with an idea, a product concept, or an innovative service that was ahead of its time. Their businesses have gone through the same stages that all companies and startups go through in their development. Their only differences from thousands of losers were their willingness to admit mistakes and try another way, and their constant desire to achieve their goal.

It is impossible to analyze all the components of brand success in one article. The reason is simple – this sort of success is a combination of many unique factors that are not always possible to calculate. Therefore, the practical value of recommendations without specifics is not great. If you really strive for success, make sure you contact the experts of the International Wealth portal and ask how they can help you reach your goals!

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• Remote registration of an Ltd in the UK
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• A corporate multi-currency account in the UK payment system
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