As many successful business people can attest, profitable companies often emerge from small startup efforts. Some launch from garages, others grow online before they ever have any sort of office setup. Unfortunately, for all the amazing success stories there are about startups, there’s also the looming statistic that 90 percent of all startups fail.
To ensure your startup is a success, it’s important to take hold of seven keys that will ensure web security and web marketing go hand in hand to help your startup grow.
1. Don’t Get Caught Up In One Strategy
Whether it’s in web marketing or in web security, it’s essential that your startup doesn’t get caught up in the trap of focusing on just one strategy. The dangers of narrowing down to one strategy are numerous. Everything from the risk of one strategy failing to a single strategy leaving your startup vulnerable and stuck while trends change can derail your new company’s progress.
Choose parallel strategies like web marketing via social media as well as email or using two-step authentication along with offshore web hosting to ensure web security relies on more than one strategy. This will protect your startup from failing when one strategy falls through.
2. Avoid Social Media Marketing Mistakes
Web marketing and social media marketing are almost synonymous. With more than 70 percent of people in the United States having at least one social media profile, it’s clear that social media is where consumers are. As a result, social media marketing is essential and startups must avoid social media mistakes to ensure success in their web marketing.
For example, common social media mistakes include failing to regularly be active on a particular social media channel or trying to do it all yourself. Unless you have plenty of free time and expertise in social media marketing, hiring a consultant or social media manager will help your startup market more professionally online. Be aware of other common mistakes and adapt your web marketing appropriately.
3. Use Smart Analytics for Web Marketing
To optimize the way your business, especially your marketing, performs, it’s helpful to have feedback. However, when launching a startup, you have many tasks on your plate that take up your time. Creating charts and crunching numbers to determine how well different aspects of your web marketing strategy are doing is not feasible. Fortunately, it’s also not necessary,
New tools like Izenda embedded bi serve to provide your startup with business intelligence analytics. You can improve efficiency and determine what your best options for return on investment (ROI) are using an analytics tool like Izenda. When smart analytics are used effectively, they can increase revenue and drastically enhance a startups’ chance of success.
4. Keep up With Web Security Trends
Along with excellent web marketing, superior web security is one of the main influencers affecting startup success. These days business carried out largely on the web. Everything from records to product information to contact information for marketing to finances is handled online. As a startup, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the many risks involved in carrying out practices on the web, but the web is the modern place for commerce.
Keep up with web security trends to ensure your startup is operating in a modern manner while also remaining protected. The Federal Communications Commission recommends that small businesses and startups focus web security efforts on having the latest software, firewall protection, and backup options, for example.
5. Don’t Overlook the Importance of People
With all the talk of web security and web marketing being crucial to startup success, don’t forget that people are behind these essential processes. Ultimately, your startup and every other business revolve around people: people on staff and the people your business serves.
People are so important to the success of businesses, including startups, that researchers have even found that startups with two founders have a better chance at success. Having two founders can, for example, result in raising up to 30 percent more money, having almost 3 times the user growth, and reducing scaling prematurely by 19 percent.
Besides having a business partner, your startup will also benefit from recognizing the importance of connecting with individuals who have expertise in areas essential to startup success like web marketing or web security. That’s why you need to hire social media help and at least consult with professional web security specialists. Your startup may do alright for a while with a “do-it-yourself” approach, but to grow and succeed you’ll need input from those who are already succeeding in their particular field.
6. Be Cautious With Technical Choices
Besides employing web security strategies that are obvious, like installing a firewall for your internet connection, make smart choices on the back end of all technical process related to your startup. For example, consider using offshore web hosting. Not only can this save you money as many offshore hosting options are cheaper, but it also gives you more control over web services. This is especially the case for startups that want to operate internationally.
In another example, it can be wise to use long-distance web security providers, like those who offer server backups. When you contract with a web security company that operates at a distance and on a large scale, your startup gains the benefits of the expertise of a company that specializes in web security. Unless you have a web security specialist on staff with the money and resources to protect your company online independently, this is a smart technical choice.
7. Only Start When You’re Ready
Startup experts Houlihan and Harvey share this insight: many start-ups fail because “they start their business before they fully understand” all that a business requires. The pair speaks about startups going under because owners don’t know the distribution process or don’t know enough about the costs to perform proper long-term calculations. If you want your startup to succeed, learn about web security and web marketing, but also consult with experts to be sure you are ready to launch.
