You’re full of self-motivation and ambition to succeed in business – establishing your own business, that is. Full of creativity and amping to launch something great, you’re keen to explore every potential opportunity that comes your way. Carving out the perfect niche in which your bountiful business idea can germinate, grow and prosper is so important to you in fact, you’ll readily invest mammoth amounts of time and energy into manifesting your vision.
But what’s the point of all that emotional (and monetary) investment, if your new venture isn’t going to make an impact within your chosen industry? Of course, you want your startup to rapidly develop a reputation as an industry leader. Ideally, you’d like not only to offer consumers something they need or want, but something they never even knew they needed or wanted, simply because nothing quite like your cool new concept has ever existed before. The good news is, it’s not as hard as you may think to come up with something truly unique.
For instance, here at online naming website Squadhelp.com, we took our industry knowledge (of the professional, high-level naming process used by countless branding agencies) and combined it with the tried and tested UX methods and gamification employed by many interactive websites. Significantly, we incorporated the then-emerging trend of crowdsourcing to finish up with a truly unique naming platform that takes the hassle out of naming for our target audience of entrepreneurs and small business owners. They’re simply unable to get the same sort of service anywhere else. But more about us later. Firstly, let us demonstrate how important it is to be aware of emerging trends in business and how to creatively harness their power to help your new venture be as awesome as possible.
– Know what’s up and coming
Successful entrepreneurship within today’s fast-evolving business landscape requires a willingness to pounce on emerging trends as they happen – the right ones that you can see lasting the distance, that is. Do your research. Read voraciously on different aspects of business that spark your interest. Keep up to date on the state of play of the latest, most innovative ideas gaining in traction and popularity, even if these ideas don’t yet apply directly to your industry. You should ideally be prepared to take a calculated risk by becoming an early adapter to a still-emerging idea. After all, a mere whisper today may well be a thunderous roar tomorrow. We got on to the crowdsourcing bandwagon early. It worked wonders.
– Don’t box yourself in
Allow the natural creativity you possess as an entrepreneur to flow at all times. Don’t ever limit yourself or box yourself in. Remember, your original vision is allowed to morph and grow into something even bigger, and better. When pondering the idea you’re passionate about, consider how new business trends could potentially be incorporated. Try to foresee the future implications of these emerging trends. What are the latest social media practices, for instance? What other web-based processes are companies using to draw in clientele? You may be able to identify ways these trends could be useful to your business idea. Perhaps you can see something that doesn’t yet exist – but potentially should? Can you make it happen? Trust yourself to recognize potential opportunities. When you see one, pounce on it, and do it early. Don’t wait around for others to catch up.
– What does this look like in real life?
When we launched Squadhelp six years ago, we knew there were tons of potential customers out there. People who required help coming up with business names, taglines and other branding tasks, but who couldn’t afford the massive fees charged by branding agencies. We thought they deserved a better deal, and with a bulging contact book of talented freelance naming professionals at our disposal, we knew we could offer them excellent value for money, whilst solving their naming nightmares for good. That’s where crowdsourcing – then an emerging idea in its infancy – came into play and really defined our concept as unique. We had seen that other sites across different industries were beginning to catch on to the power of “the crowd” and we plunged right in and have never looked back. To date, more than 8000 people have launched naming contests with us, each getting hundreds of entries and all finding the perfect name they’d always dreamed of. Our users are not only able to harness the crowd’s power and save a whole heap of money. They also get a custom developed UX experience, with easy, one-click solutions. Meanwhile, our top freelancers are rewarded and incentivised to keep submitting great names. And us? Well, we’ve managed to triple our business over the past 12 months. It’s what we call a successful “mashup” of ideas (both tried and tested and emerging) to finish up with a truly unique concept that really works.
Here’s hoping this article has inspired you to start thinking about how you could incorporate emerging business trends into your business model. For more handy branding, marketing and naming resources like this one, check out the Squadhelp blog.
Grant Polachek is the Director of Marketing at Squadhelp–transforming the way names, logos, and taglines are developed by combining an affordable agency-level brainstorming process with the unmatched creativity of “the crowd.” His book How to Develop the Perfect Name for Just About Anything is available to TGDaily readers for free.
