Research Summary
Marketing a Startup Business
Have you ever had an idea that you thought would make a lot of money, or found a way to meet the needs of a large population of people? What about following through with that idea, bringing it into a tangible business, even if it meant risking your financial security? If you answered “yes” to these questions, then you are an entrepreneur. The definition of an entrepreneur is “a person who organizes and operates a business or businesses, taking on greater than normal financial risks in order to do so” (“Entrepreneur”). During my research, I have learned many strategies how to successfully market a business to reach one’s desired target audience, discovered that I can apply my knowledge of graphic design to create enticing products, and found that I display many of the characteristics of an entrepreneur, including willingness to take risks.
In this day and age, almost 543,000 new businesses get created each month (Nazar). Then why has unemployment been such a major issue in the U.S. for many years? Well, that statistic above actually was not telling the whole truth. Hundreds of thousands of new businesses may be created per month, but more employer companies go out of business than start up each month. It is the lack of employer jobs that lead to the overwhelming amount of entrepreneurial start ups that come into being every day. Though most of these companies have only a minute chance of blowing up into a successful business, the founder still took the risk to put his financial well-being and existing employment on the line.
Now, let’s head back a mere 30 years ago. The economy was prospering, the Berlin Wall finally fell, and the internet boom was about to come to fruition. In 1989, roughly 10.6% of households headed by adults younger than 30 owned stakes in private companies. Skip forward to now-a-days, in which this percentage has drastically fallen to just 3.6%, a 24-year-low. These statistics contradict the stereotype that people in their 20’s are entrepreneurial risk-takers. In a 2015 survey overseen by Donna Kelley, “more than 41% of 25-to-34-year-old Americans who saw an opportunity to start a business said fear of failure would keep them from doing so, up from 23.9% in 2001” (Simon and Barr). Since the number of born, risk-taking entrepreneurs is decreasing, the traits necessary to entrepreneurship need to be taught. Some successful entrepreneurs say that these traits, such as the “never-say-die spirit,” ambition, and tenacity, can only be inherited. But with education, according to Arthur Blank, “If somebody has that potential, that kernel within...it can be nurtured.” If one cannot learn these traits, what can be taught about entrepreneurship? First, a basic set of skills is an entrepreneurial necessity. This includes writing a business plan, knowing how to get intellectual property protection, deciding whether to incorporate, and financing from the most common source--friends and family--and the most difficult to obtain, venture capital. Next, one needs to learn frequency, meaning that starting a business is actually not very rare. A company is rarely successful its first go-round, so one should not be afraid to give it multiple attempts, finding and changing the issues from the previous startup. This being said, one needs to learn from the last teachable point: opportunity. A successful entrepreneur knows when he has a great idea, but also when he does not (Hopkins). For example, opening a new ski and mountain bike store in Bozeman is a crummy idea. Combining what I learned from the list above, which was primarily common sense to me, and background knowledge, I was able to delve more deeply into research pertaining to things I truly needed to learn to run and grow BearTrap Design.
When one starts a business, there is a wide variety of tasks to complete before said business obtains a population of potential customers that are willing and able to purchase the goods or services being offered. The process of promoting and selling these products or services to the desired target audience, is called marketing. There are many factors that go into successfully marketing a startup. First things first, the startups founder, or founders, must come up with a name and have an idea of the goods or services they will be offering. Once this crucial step is out of the way, the founder can start the search for the desired group of people, to whom the products are aimed towards. This group is called a “target audience.” Deciding on what group of people and their attributes can be surprisingly difficult. For help with this, I turned to my father, Doug Fletcher, who is an adjunct professor of marketing and business startups at the Jake Jabs College of Business at Montana State University. He introduced me to the system of Market Segmentation. This system is used for assisting the founder in finding a target audience. In market segmentation, the founder breaks down the market into 4 different categories: demographic, geographic, behavioristic, psychographic. Demographics deal with the age, gender, occupation, and socio-economic group. Basically, demographics is the type of people the company wants to have buy their products. Bear Trap Design Co. would like to reach a variety of age groups, from young teens all the way to people who have graduated college, and include clothing for both genders. Next comes the geographic quartile. This covers customer's’ location, whether they live in a rural or urban region, and a rank in a segmentation tool, called ACORN. Since Max and I live both live in Bozeman, we would like to start locally, targeting Bozeman residents and students at both BHS and MSU. After geographic comes psychographic, which covers the personality, lifestyle, attitudes, and class of customers. An example of this would be customers who prefer organic food to processed foods. For Bear Trap Design Co., we would like customers who enjoy the nature, will use our products in the outdoors, and have a laid back, yet modern style. The last segment of this system is behavioristic, also referred to as behavioral. This category looks at the rate of product usage, the benefits sought from the product, the loyalty to the company, and the readiness to purchase the product. This can be a more vague segment, as it can be hard to predict the purchasing behaviors of the customers that meet the criteria of the other three categories (Fletcher). BTD Co. wants customers who will come back to purchase new merchandise when it is released and who will be able to put our products to good use in the outdoors around Montana.
After determining the target audience, the founder can start focusing on branding the company. Branding is the marketing practice of creating a name, symbol or design that identifies and differentiates a product from other products. In simpler terms, branding is what you promise to your customer. It tells them what to expect from the company’s products and how said products differ from similar products (“Branding”). A company’s brand has a direct and strong correlation to its target audience. For example, if a company want to target an outdoorsy group, then it would not be a good idea to design products with urban images and cityscapes. A successful brand includes a high awareness in the market segment chosen, an accurate description of what said company stands for, and a logo. The logo is the infrastructure of your whole brand. A company’s logo should be on every medium of communication with the customer, including the website, packaging, and advertisements. The goal is to have a customer be able to identify your logo and have it portray what the company represents. When designing the logo for Bear Trap Design Co., I took into consideration that a large majority of Montana companies had a bear in their logo. So, thinking outside the box, I chose a beehive because for me it captured the meaning of “bear trap” and still gave it an outdoor theme.
A big part of branding is having a positive social media presence. Nowadays there are so many different types of social medias, from photo and video sharing sites, such as Instagram, to conversational communities, like Twitter (Davis). But some social media networks work extremely well for one business, while not meeting the needs of customers of another business. For example, Instagram works flawlessly for clothing companies to display their merchandise, but that does not mean that it will be at all successful at promoting a paper distribution startup. So finding a social media network that fits the needs of a business and it’s customers is a crucial necessity. Another tip while first starting up is to limit the number of social media networks that you promote your business on. “Post relevant content, post content that people who follow you will want to share. Respond to any messages and replies in a timely manner… Be active and involved. The biggest disservice you can do yourself is having your social media look like a ghost town” (“Ultimate”). Since Bear Trap Design Co. is a clothing and design oriented company, Max and I will start off by creating an Instagram account, along with a Twitter. I will be heading up the Instagram account, posting a picture everyday for a month that pertains to the Montana outdoors, our merchandise, and will also include giveaways and special promotions to help incentivize new and veteran customers to get involved with BTD Co..
Having a social media is a great way to reach a population that is regularly using a social network, but what about the people who still do not have a social media? How does a company reach those customers? Well, the answer is simple: advertising. An advertisement is a notice or announcement in a public medium promoting a product, service, or event or publicizing a job vacancy (“Advertisement”). Traditional forms of advertising include newspapers, magazines, signs and posters, billboards, and radio. Now, in the internet era, nearly everywhere you visit on the internet has some sort of advertisement. So, naturally, these forms of advertising can be some of the most effective ways to get a startup’s name out into the general public, if you use them correctly. Jenny Klimisch of VerticalResponse provides a list of the criteria that every advertisement needs to be successful. First, and most obvious, the advertisement should have your business name and logo. Along with this, if your business name or logo does not portray the goods or services offered, make sure to clarify that in the ad. Bear Trap Design Co. clearly tells what the company does. Next, the advertisement should include a call-to-action, which is an instruction to the audience to provoke an immediate response, usually using an imperative verb such as "call now", "find out more," or "visit a store today". Third, Klimisch recommends adding additional information about what the company does, including how it intends on meeting the needs of the potential customer. She warns to not over do it though, as the customer needs to be able to read it quickly and easily. Lastly, supporting visual elements, like images and graphics, add to the aesthetic of the advertisement and aids in catching a potential customer’s eye. This could be the company’s logo or just a graphic related to the business (Klimisch). Though these are necessary components of any successful advertisement, they are not a guide to guaranteeing the advertisement will get the attention desired. My goal for advertising Bear Trap Design Co. will be to contact the owners of prominent magazines around Bozeman, including Bomb Snow, Outdoor Bozeman, and Montana parent, along with the Bozeman Chronicle. I will professionally ask these owners if they would kindly donate an advertisement space of their choosing to Max and I in a way to support the education of young entrepreneurs. Depending on my success, we will have advertisements in the next issue of one or multiple of these editorials. After hopefully obtaining advertisement space, Max, Bear Trap Design Co., and I will be on our way to reaching our target audience and acquiring a customer base.
Since the beginning of time, individuals have been looking for ways to exploit a niche unique to them. The modern day example of this is the entrepreneur. In the past few decades, the number of young entrepreneurs has been steadily shrinking, getting to a point where leading business professionals say “if the trend continues, the U.S. economy could become less vibrant” (Simon and Barr). During my research, I discovered that I unknowingly have many of the traits of entrepreneurs that I discussed in this essay. Among the ones that I have is the ability to network, gaining beneficial contacts in the business world. I have experience with cold calls and obtaining the space for advertising. Another trait I have noticed is being able to know which ideas I have would make a viable business. For example, I knew that the first name we came up with, High Altitude Clothing, was too similar to other businesses already in existence in Bozeman. So, through brainstorming, Max and I created Bear Trap Design Co.. I would love to be able to put these traits to use, applying them to maybe creating a business of my own one day. If you had an idea that could change the world, make you rich, or just put food on the table for your family, would you act on it?
Work Cited
“Branding.” The Small Business Encyclopedia. Entrerepreneur.com. 2016. Web. 23 March 2016.
Davis, Linda M. “Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day.” Technical Communication 57.1, 2010: 110–110. Web. 3 Mar. 2016.
Fletcher, Doug. Interview by Duncan Fletcher. Personal interview. 3 March 2016.
Hopkins, Jim. "Entrepreneurs Are Born, but Can They Be Taught?" USA TODAY 6 Apr. 2004: n.p. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 9 Mar. 2016.
Klimisch, Jenny. “How to Create an Effective Small Business Advertisement.” VerticalResponse. N.p., 21 Aug. 2013. Web. 8 Mar. 2016.
Nazar, Jason. “16 Surprising Statistics About Small Businesses.” Forbes 23 March 2016. Print.
New Oxford American Dictionary. Oxford Dictionary Press, 2016. Web. 23 March 2016.
Simon, Ruth, and Barr, Caelainn. "Endangered Species: The Young Entrepreneur." Wall Street Journal 3 Jan. 2015, east. ed.: A1+. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 8 Mar. 2016.
“The Ultimate Guide to Marketing Your Startup Online Without a Big Budget”. KickoffLabs. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Mar. 2016.
Have you ever had an idea that you thought would make a lot of money, or found a way to meet the needs of a large population of people? What about following through with that idea, bringing it into a tangible business, even if it meant risking your financial security? If you answered “yes” to these questions, then you are an entrepreneur. The definition of an entrepreneur is “a person who organizes and operates a business or businesses, taking on greater than normal financial risks in order to do so” (“Entrepreneur”). During my research, I have learned many strategies how to successfully market a business to reach one’s desired target audience, discovered that I can apply my knowledge of graphic design to create enticing products, and found that I display many of the characteristics of an entrepreneur, including willingness to take risks.
In this day and age, almost 543,000 new businesses get created each month (Nazar). Then why has unemployment been such a major issue in the U.S. for many years? Well, that statistic above actually was not telling the whole truth. Hundreds of thousands of new businesses may be created per month, but more employer companies go out of business than start up each month. It is the lack of employer jobs that lead to the overwhelming amount of entrepreneurial start ups that come into being every day. Though most of these companies have only a minute chance of blowing up into a successful business, the founder still took the risk to put his financial well-being and existing employment on the line.
Now, let’s head back a mere 30 years ago. The economy was prospering, the Berlin Wall finally fell, and the internet boom was about to come to fruition. In 1989, roughly 10.6% of households headed by adults younger than 30 owned stakes in private companies. Skip forward to now-a-days, in which this percentage has drastically fallen to just 3.6%, a 24-year-low. These statistics contradict the stereotype that people in their 20’s are entrepreneurial risk-takers. In a 2015 survey overseen by Donna Kelley, “more than 41% of 25-to-34-year-old Americans who saw an opportunity to start a business said fear of failure would keep them from doing so, up from 23.9% in 2001” (Simon and Barr). Since the number of born, risk-taking entrepreneurs is decreasing, the traits necessary to entrepreneurship need to be taught. Some successful entrepreneurs say that these traits, such as the “never-say-die spirit,” ambition, and tenacity, can only be inherited. But with education, according to Arthur Blank, “If somebody has that potential, that kernel within...it can be nurtured.” If one cannot learn these traits, what can be taught about entrepreneurship? First, a basic set of skills is an entrepreneurial necessity. This includes writing a business plan, knowing how to get intellectual property protection, deciding whether to incorporate, and financing from the most common source--friends and family--and the most difficult to obtain, venture capital. Next, one needs to learn frequency, meaning that starting a business is actually not very rare. A company is rarely successful its first go-round, so one should not be afraid to give it multiple attempts, finding and changing the issues from the previous startup. This being said, one needs to learn from the last teachable point: opportunity. A successful entrepreneur knows when he has a great idea, but also when he does not (Hopkins). For example, opening a new ski and mountain bike store in Bozeman is a crummy idea. Combining what I learned from the list above, which was primarily common sense to me, and background knowledge, I was able to delve more deeply into research pertaining to things I truly needed to learn to run and grow BearTrap Design.
When one starts a business, there is a wide variety of tasks to complete before said business obtains a population of potential customers that are willing and able to purchase the goods or services being offered. The process of promoting and selling these products or services to the desired target audience, is called marketing. There are many factors that go into successfully marketing a startup. First things first, the startups founder, or founders, must come up with a name and have an idea of the goods or services they will be offering. Once this crucial step is out of the way, the founder can start the search for the desired group of people, to whom the products are aimed towards. This group is called a “target audience.” Deciding on what group of people and their attributes can be surprisingly difficult. For help with this, I turned to my father, Doug Fletcher, who is an adjunct professor of marketing and business startups at the Jake Jabs College of Business at Montana State University. He introduced me to the system of Market Segmentation. This system is used for assisting the founder in finding a target audience. In market segmentation, the founder breaks down the market into 4 different categories: demographic, geographic, behavioristic, psychographic. Demographics deal with the age, gender, occupation, and socio-economic group. Basically, demographics is the type of people the company wants to have buy their products. Bear Trap Design Co. would like to reach a variety of age groups, from young teens all the way to people who have graduated college, and include clothing for both genders. Next comes the geographic quartile. This covers customer's’ location, whether they live in a rural or urban region, and a rank in a segmentation tool, called ACORN. Since Max and I live both live in Bozeman, we would like to start locally, targeting Bozeman residents and students at both BHS and MSU. After geographic comes psychographic, which covers the personality, lifestyle, attitudes, and class of customers. An example of this would be customers who prefer organic food to processed foods. For Bear Trap Design Co., we would like customers who enjoy the nature, will use our products in the outdoors, and have a laid back, yet modern style. The last segment of this system is behavioristic, also referred to as behavioral. This category looks at the rate of product usage, the benefits sought from the product, the loyalty to the company, and the readiness to purchase the product. This can be a more vague segment, as it can be hard to predict the purchasing behaviors of the customers that meet the criteria of the other three categories (Fletcher). BTD Co. wants customers who will come back to purchase new merchandise when it is released and who will be able to put our products to good use in the outdoors around Montana.
After determining the target audience, the founder can start focusing on branding the company. Branding is the marketing practice of creating a name, symbol or design that identifies and differentiates a product from other products. In simpler terms, branding is what you promise to your customer. It tells them what to expect from the company’s products and how said products differ from similar products (“Branding”). A company’s brand has a direct and strong correlation to its target audience. For example, if a company want to target an outdoorsy group, then it would not be a good idea to design products with urban images and cityscapes. A successful brand includes a high awareness in the market segment chosen, an accurate description of what said company stands for, and a logo. The logo is the infrastructure of your whole brand. A company’s logo should be on every medium of communication with the customer, including the website, packaging, and advertisements. The goal is to have a customer be able to identify your logo and have it portray what the company represents. When designing the logo for Bear Trap Design Co., I took into consideration that a large majority of Montana companies had a bear in their logo. So, thinking outside the box, I chose a beehive because for me it captured the meaning of “bear trap” and still gave it an outdoor theme.
A big part of branding is having a positive social media presence. Nowadays there are so many different types of social medias, from photo and video sharing sites, such as Instagram, to conversational communities, like Twitter (Davis). But some social media networks work extremely well for one business, while not meeting the needs of customers of another business. For example, Instagram works flawlessly for clothing companies to display their merchandise, but that does not mean that it will be at all successful at promoting a paper distribution startup. So finding a social media network that fits the needs of a business and it’s customers is a crucial necessity. Another tip while first starting up is to limit the number of social media networks that you promote your business on. “Post relevant content, post content that people who follow you will want to share. Respond to any messages and replies in a timely manner… Be active and involved. The biggest disservice you can do yourself is having your social media look like a ghost town” (“Ultimate”). Since Bear Trap Design Co. is a clothing and design oriented company, Max and I will start off by creating an Instagram account, along with a Twitter. I will be heading up the Instagram account, posting a picture everyday for a month that pertains to the Montana outdoors, our merchandise, and will also include giveaways and special promotions to help incentivize new and veteran customers to get involved with BTD Co..
Having a social media is a great way to reach a population that is regularly using a social network, but what about the people who still do not have a social media? How does a company reach those customers? Well, the answer is simple: advertising. An advertisement is a notice or announcement in a public medium promoting a product, service, or event or publicizing a job vacancy (“Advertisement”). Traditional forms of advertising include newspapers, magazines, signs and posters, billboards, and radio. Now, in the internet era, nearly everywhere you visit on the internet has some sort of advertisement. So, naturally, these forms of advertising can be some of the most effective ways to get a startup’s name out into the general public, if you use them correctly. Jenny Klimisch of VerticalResponse provides a list of the criteria that every advertisement needs to be successful. First, and most obvious, the advertisement should have your business name and logo. Along with this, if your business name or logo does not portray the goods or services offered, make sure to clarify that in the ad. Bear Trap Design Co. clearly tells what the company does. Next, the advertisement should include a call-to-action, which is an instruction to the audience to provoke an immediate response, usually using an imperative verb such as "call now", "find out more," or "visit a store today". Third, Klimisch recommends adding additional information about what the company does, including how it intends on meeting the needs of the potential customer. She warns to not over do it though, as the customer needs to be able to read it quickly and easily. Lastly, supporting visual elements, like images and graphics, add to the aesthetic of the advertisement and aids in catching a potential customer’s eye. This could be the company’s logo or just a graphic related to the business (Klimisch). Though these are necessary components of any successful advertisement, they are not a guide to guaranteeing the advertisement will get the attention desired. My goal for advertising Bear Trap Design Co. will be to contact the owners of prominent magazines around Bozeman, including Bomb Snow, Outdoor Bozeman, and Montana parent, along with the Bozeman Chronicle. I will professionally ask these owners if they would kindly donate an advertisement space of their choosing to Max and I in a way to support the education of young entrepreneurs. Depending on my success, we will have advertisements in the next issue of one or multiple of these editorials. After hopefully obtaining advertisement space, Max, Bear Trap Design Co., and I will be on our way to reaching our target audience and acquiring a customer base.
Since the beginning of time, individuals have been looking for ways to exploit a niche unique to them. The modern day example of this is the entrepreneur. In the past few decades, the number of young entrepreneurs has been steadily shrinking, getting to a point where leading business professionals say “if the trend continues, the U.S. economy could become less vibrant” (Simon and Barr). During my research, I discovered that I unknowingly have many of the traits of entrepreneurs that I discussed in this essay. Among the ones that I have is the ability to network, gaining beneficial contacts in the business world. I have experience with cold calls and obtaining the space for advertising. Another trait I have noticed is being able to know which ideas I have would make a viable business. For example, I knew that the first name we came up with, High Altitude Clothing, was too similar to other businesses already in existence in Bozeman. So, through brainstorming, Max and I created Bear Trap Design Co.. I would love to be able to put these traits to use, applying them to maybe creating a business of my own one day. If you had an idea that could change the world, make you rich, or just put food on the table for your family, would you act on it?
Work Cited
“Branding.” The Small Business Encyclopedia. Entrerepreneur.com. 2016. Web. 23 March 2016.
Davis, Linda M. “Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day.” Technical Communication 57.1, 2010: 110–110. Web. 3 Mar. 2016.
Fletcher, Doug. Interview by Duncan Fletcher. Personal interview. 3 March 2016.
Hopkins, Jim. "Entrepreneurs Are Born, but Can They Be Taught?" USA TODAY 6 Apr. 2004: n.p. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 9 Mar. 2016.
Klimisch, Jenny. “How to Create an Effective Small Business Advertisement.” VerticalResponse. N.p., 21 Aug. 2013. Web. 8 Mar. 2016.
Nazar, Jason. “16 Surprising Statistics About Small Businesses.” Forbes 23 March 2016. Print.
New Oxford American Dictionary. Oxford Dictionary Press, 2016. Web. 23 March 2016.
Simon, Ruth, and Barr, Caelainn. "Endangered Species: The Young Entrepreneur." Wall Street Journal 3 Jan. 2015, east. ed.: A1+. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 8 Mar. 2016.
“The Ultimate Guide to Marketing Your Startup Online Without a Big Budget”. KickoffLabs. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Mar. 2016.