Category: Startups

Startups often times do not have huge investments from angel investors like many movies might suggest. The funds can come from a few investors or from a personal fund that the founder has saved over the years. Promotion of the business can begin to get quite expensive if budget is not kept in mind. The last thing a company wants to do is to overspend on promotion and fail to get the exposure that they had hoped for. For this reason it is important to start out with budget friendly options so the startup can get data on the ROI for each tactic. The following are tips to promote a startup on a budget.

Don’t Count Out Social Media

Social media has a few great platforms where it is free for a company to promote things they are doing. This is also the opportunity that the company has to engage with followers and others in their specific industry. Garnering a following of those in the startup’s target demographic will take work but it will make it easy to promote content or spark conversation. Building a sense of community among the followers is important as people could come to the social media accounts to debate in the comments. Social media can help with promotion as well as can help establish a company’s name in a niche.

Conferences Have a High Density Of Relevant Prospects

Going to a conference can be a great move for your startup as their will be a high concentration of potential clients. For this reason it is important to represent your startup in the most professional way possible. Finding the right printing services is imperative as poorly done posters or brochures for the company can reflect negatively on the startup as a whole. Collect business cards and write down specific details of the conversation that can allow the person to remember your face when you follow up with them via email the next week.

Find A Freelancer To Create Engaging Content

A startup hiring a freelancer to create engaging content both on and off of the website is important. This type of content can be used as a resource and educate potential customers as to why they would benefit from the product/service the startup provides. Hiring a person in-house to do this often times will be more expensive without guaranteeing results. You can hire multiple freelancers to see which produces content that drives traffic and shares. Pick the one that is the most successful and aligns with your brand’s voice. Podcasting can be a great way to share content without having to shell out cash for it.

Partner With Local Businesses

Taking the time to partner with local businesses can allow a startup to make a name for itself in the local community. Find businesses that it would be advantageous to partner with or those that are quite popular in the area. A great example of a partnership could be a restaurant that gives patrons a discount if they are staying at a particular hotel or rental property. Even something as simple as being able to keep brochures or promotional materials at a local business and you doing the same for them can be a difference maker.

As you can see your startup does not need to have huge amounts of money for marketing and advertising to thrive. This will just take a bit of creativity in order to compete with those companies that might have more cash flow available. A small budget with a great strategy can beat a large budget with a below average strategy and this is something to keep in mind!

When it comes to getting involved with the financial markets as an investor, it can seem a little confusing for beginners. To start with, there is a difference between longer-term investing and shorter time-scaled trading. Once you have understood the ways that these differ, there are then the myriad different individual markets to know about.

As a newcomer to trading, you may find it all a little overwhelming! Luckily, with a little education and work, this will soon go away and you will feel more confident when trading.

What is trading?

For total beginners, it is worth clarifying what is generally classed as trading compared to long-term investing. Trading is the regular buying and selling of instruments on the various financial markets to profit from the price movements on them. Trading generally sees what you invest in held for shorter periods and does not see you actually own any of the financial instruments that you speculate on. In effect, you are merely placing an informed wager on where the price may head next to profit.

Forex market – the king of trading for beginners

When it comes to trading for beginners, many now head straight to the forex (FX) market. This huge market is thought to see trillions in trades executed each day and is open 24 hours a day, apart from at weekends. When trading here, you are speculating on the price movement of the various currency pairs, such as EUR/USD, AUD/USD and GBP/EUR. You would look at the market and make an informed prediction on where the price may head next. You would put a buy trade on if you think it will rise or a sell if you feel it will fall. If you get it right, then you make some money!

Why is this market so popular? The answer to this lies in a few factors. The first is the ease of use and accessibility. There are many superb FX platforms on the net now that are simple to use and open to all. Many offer Demo Accounts to practice with before risking any real money, and you can start off for real when ready with much lower capital amounts than stocks and shares. The other great thing about the FX market is that it is very liquid, which means that you can make some nice profits every day of the week.

What other options are there for beginners?

Of course, you may not fancy taking advantage of the FX market or be looking for additional trading options to take on. Here are some other great options for beginners:

• Stock market – alongside the FX market, the stock market is another great financial market for beginners. With this market, you would buy shares in listed companies on the stock exchange in the expectation that they would rise in value. Although stocks are usually held for longer periods, many people do trade them on a shorter timescale.
• Futures market – another type of market that is good for beginners to trade on is the futures market. This sees you investing in a certain commodity such as grain or oil and speculating on whether it will fall or rise in value in the future. Many beginning investors love to trade this market as it can offer amazing returns on your initial investment as well as being easy to understand.
• ETFs – one superb market for any beginner to trade is ETFs. This stands for Exchange Traded Funds, and they consist of different stocks or securities all bundled together in one basket. This basket is then tracked against well-known indices such as the S&P 500. By buying into an ETF that tracks a sectors index, you are diversifying your portfolio compared to merely buying individual shares in companies.

Education is key for beginners

With any kind of trading that you choose to try out, education is vital. Making sure that you fully understand how the market that you will trade in works, who the best brokers are to use, and what strategy you will adopt is crucial to success. As a beginner, you need to give yourself the best chance of winning.

The FX market is a classic example of this. It may seem simple and can be traded as such, but to win out in the long term, you need to dig deeper. The forex trading course by Forexfraud.com is an example of how getting educated can seriously help you make better trading decisions.

Everyone starts somewhere

We all know what it’s like to start off in a sector that we know nothing about. That beginner’s feeling has been there for all the famous traders, such as George Soros or Warren Buffett. This should give you heart that, with some careful research and education, you can soon be trading like a pro.

While many small businesses aim for growth over the first few years, few would turn down instant global success. Up until recently, the possibility of gaining global traction quickly looked remote. But of course, we don’t live in the past anymore. We live in the age of digital communication and digital platforms. And that has led to the rise of so-called “unicorn” startups. Startups that effectively came out of nowhere and burst onto the global scene in a matter of months.

Right now a unicorn is defined as a startup worth more than $1 billion. And there are, according to Forbes, 200 or so such companies. But today we’re only interested in the most valuable.

Didi Kuaidi

It’s shouldn’t come as any surprise that one of the world’s most valuable unicorn startups has emerged in China. The country has fallen in love with capitalism since Deng Xiaoping opened the country up in 1979. And the country has the largest internal market in the world.

Didi Kuaidi can be thought of as China’s response to Uber. It’s basically software that allows customers to hire taxis on their smartphones. Right now the company is valued at a cool $16 billion. But expect this to go much higher in the decade ahead.

Palantir Technologies

Palantir is another software company, this time specialising in Big Data. Why is Palantir so important? Well, the company could be a big name in the economy of the future. The more Big Data is used in manufacturing, logistics and other services, the more we’ll hear about them. Big Data is expected to be how we organise production lines and cities in the future. And so that’s why this US company is currently running a valuation of over $20 billion.

Airbnb

I’m sure you’re recognising the trend by now. Here we have yet another software startup with an impressive valuation. Thanks to some excellent business leadership, Airbnb has now reached a global audience. People can book accommodation anywhere in the world. And people can list their accommodation on Airbnb’s platform too.

This isn’t just a tool for traditional hoteliers. It’s for anybody who wants to rent out a house or a room, practically anywhere in the world. The global reach of Airbnb has resulted in a valuation of $25.5 billion.

Xiaomi

Few Westerners have heard of this company. But Xiaomi is a big shot over in China. And it’s estimated to be worth some $46 billion. Why? Well, the company designs and develops its own smartphones, primarily for the Chinese market. You would think that Apple would have cornered the market, but apparently not. Xiaomi is here to stay.

Uber

No doubt you saw this one coming. It’s no secret that Uber is the most valuable startup in the world, and one of the most controversial. The ride-sharing company now operates in dozens of countries around the world. And it allows practically anyone with a modern car to make a bit of money taxiing people around. Connecting passengers with drivers are only the start of Uber’s vision of the future. Right now the company is estimated to be worth around $62 billion.