Starting a New Project: What's the "Right Order" of Things?
When you're starting a new business or a new side project, there's always an optimal order to set things up. Of course, there’s no one-size-fits all - but thinking and planning ahead can save you having to retrace your footsteps or getting stuck.
This article will help you avoid mistakes by planning your project’s initial setup efficiently.
Caveat: you can start a new project or a new business from different points.
You can either start with a product. Maybe you already have a product, and you now want to start selling it?
Or you can start by knowing who you're going to help, even if you don’t know (for sure) how you’re going to monetise this.
In many cases, though, that same order will apply. After reading the below, if you're not sure if this applies to you, please do get in touch and we'll schedule a call to talk about your strategy
Here are the 7 steps to setting up your project:
Step 1: Defining Your Avatar
I cannot stress enough how crucial it is to know who your ideal client, customer, follower or reader will be. Knowing this makes it so much easier to create a platform, to create marketing assets, to create content and to create a product that they will love.
Read more about how to find and connect with your ideal client avatar in this article.
Most online businesses that fail, fail because they skipped a step. And the step that gets skipped most is the one where you have to work on defining exactly who your ideal client is, so you can actually reach them.
Step 2: Initial market Research
When you know exactly who your avatar is, you’ll be able to do some market research and conduct avatar interviews. This way, you’ll know exactly what your people want, what they need, and what language you could use to sell it to them.
Avatar interviews are where you get in touch with people who potentially would be the ideal client for your business. They’re the ideal customer, they would be potential buyers, they would be first adapters for your product or the people that would most be helped by your course, etc.
Check out my guide to plan, conduct and process your avatar interviews if that’s where you’re at!
Market research is not a one-off thing though - you’ll want to keep interviewing people throughout your business’ lifespan, and you might find yourself adjusting things - tweaking your target audience, your product ideas and more.
Step 3: Decide on Branding
This is where you're going to decide on which voice and tone you will use.
Is swearing ok on your platform? American or British English? Will you refer to yourself as “I” or “we”? What exact words will you use to help your audience understand you, trust you and love you?
What’s your business name going to be? Or maybe this specific project or product will have a different name - one that resonates more with people, or tells people what the product does?
There’s a visual aspect to branding as well: what colours will you use, what fonts, do you need a logo? If you're on a budget, or if you're not quite sure about things yet, don't spend a lot of time or money on it - just picking a colour palette and a font could be a good start - your “logo” could be the name of your brand in your brand font & colour.
Or if you want to do it properly (but still want to do it yourself), check out this branding guide by my good friend, Mellissa Wheeler.
Step 4: Sign Up For Your Domain
This is where you pick a domain name, even if you’ve got no plans to set up a website for now.
Maybe your domain name is just yourownname.com, or it’s productname.com or businessname.com - or maybe the .com is not available, so you’re going with a different one (.biz, .eu, I signed up for .nl as my business was located in the Netherlands).
In any case, you want a domain name that you can associate with your email.
I use one.com for domain names and hosting (I have been for over 10 years now); it comes with an unlimited amount of email aliases (so you can create hello@yourname.com + mail@yourname.com and yourassistant@yourname.com etc) and you can add 1-click WordPress installation (now I’m not a WP fan myself, but I’m just saying, it’s pretty good value for your money).
Step 5: Setup an Email Address
Even if you purchased a domain name that does not include unlimited aliases (like one.com does), you’ll still want to set up an email address at this point. Hello@yourdomain.com will do! This way, you don’t need to use your current (private) email address and get business and personal all muddled up - and you don’t need to sign up for a Yahoo or Hotmail address like in the olden days - instead you’ll have an email address that’s connected to your project’s domain name.
You’ll use your business email address to sign up for everything you need to sign up for: this starts with your email service provider and social media accounts, but it could also include software, an extra Paypal or Stripe account, etc. Those are for the next level though - right now, we’re just setting up the basics!
Step 6: Setup Your Email Service Provider
Step number six is setting up an email service provider, so you can start growing your mailing list from day one.
My go-to email service providers are MailerLite or MailChimp, because both of them are free, as long as you don't have a lot of subscribers.
However, there are plenty of really good email service providers If you are willing to pay for them as well; take a look at ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign, as they offer all that you’ll (probably ever) need for not too much money.
Why set up your email service provider now, even before you have anything else?
Maybe the idea that people might want to sign up for your mailing list NOW sounds really ridiculous... However, from now on, every time you're talking with someone about your new project about your business, you might want to give them the opportunity to sign up to get updates to get not notified when there's something to read, test, or when you’re launching your product.
By choosing an email service provider (and creating a form so people can sign up) from the start, you make sure you’re not missing out on those early fans and followers.
Step 7: Create Social Media Accounts
When it comes to social media, my recommendation is always to start with just one platform - grow your audience there, and don’t start putting your time into a second platform until the first is running on automatic (more or less).
However, as you’re starting a new venture, it could be smart to create an account now on all major social media platforms.
It ensures you can use the same username or vanity URL on all platforms
If you get tagged by someone else on a platform you don’t actually use, people will be able to find the way to your website and/or other social media platforms
In some cases, you could use a scheduler to get content out to several platforms at once - extra exposure without the extra work; or you could auto-post updates on the accounts you’re not really using, just to keep them active.
I recommend creating an account with the same username on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
For every account, upload (the same) profile picture and cover picture (banner); copy-paste in a blurb about you, your business or your project - and don’t forget a link to your website.
For the next step, we’re going to get to work - enough with setting up accounts, time to
Work on our marketing plan
Work on our offering
Work on our content
Grow an audience that loves the content and can’t wait to buy what you’re selling.
Bear with me as I’ll be publishing more articles in this series soon!
In the meantime, if you want my two cents or just an extra mind to brainstorm with, don’t hesitate to schedule a call. It doesn’t cost a thing, I love meeting new people and brainstorming new strategies - and you might just end up with a couple of insights you can implement right away!
