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Pennsylvania is a great place to start a business. It’s America’s heartland, and many excellent companies began there. Pittsburgh still produces ketchup at the Heinz facility, and you can find Aramark and Comcast there.
If you want to start a Pennsylvania business, you’ll need a few different things. We’ll talk about some of them right now. Know that you’ll need each of these if you’re thinking about setting up shop in the Keystone State.
Insurance
You will need the proper insurance if you want to operate in Pennsylvania. You will probably need general liability insurance, commercial property insurance, and business income insurance. You might also require vehicle insurance if you have any company cars or trucks.
You must legally have worker’s compensation insurance as well. Pennsylvania worker’s comp covers $7,000 in burial expenses, and you never know when someone might have an accident on the job.
If you’re not sure what insurance you’ll need for your Pennsylvania-based business, talk to a lawyer. They will fill you in on what you legally require and what additional policies you should at least consider.
Funding
You will need money to start your business. You can get that in many different ways. For instance, you might approach a bank or credit union and ask for a business loan.
You can also fund the company yourself if you have enough in savings. You can liquidate your assets if you feel strongly enough that you have a winning idea. You can cash in your CDs or fund the business with your retirement savings if you have any.
You can ask a relative to give or loan you the money. You might also look into crowdsourcing. You can approach an angel investor or a venture capital firm if you feel you have an idea they can get behind.
A Business Plan
To approach an entity like a venture capital firm, bank, credit union, etc., you need to develop a business plan. You can learn about what goes into business plans and set one up that will entice the right individual or entity into supporting and funding it.
Your business plan should talk about what you plan to do and how. It should talk about how much money you need to start your company operating, and it should also mention when you expect to turn a profit.
It might talk about your ad campaigns, products, and how you plan to compete with others in your niche. The more detail the plan shows, the better the chances you can get someone to back it. You need to write about your company in a way that gets people excited about it.
The Right Employees
You will always need the proper employees to get your company off the ground and solvent. That means knowing where to hire the right people. In Pennsylvania, you will find many great colleges. You might want to approach individuals right out of college if they’re looking for jobs in your industry.
You can be there for college career days when students who are about to graduate come and talk to prospective employers. You should offer competitive salaries and excellent benefits. You might want to provide a 401K program and paid vacation days. You can offer paid paternity and maternity leave.
You can look for the right candidates on LinkedIn or Upwork. You can scour social media platforms to see if anyone on there needs work and matches the qualifications you want.
IT Help
It’s very likely you’ll need IT help for your company. IT stands for information technology. It’s a blanket term that often includes servers, computers, or any other technology your company uses to maintain functionality.
Your IT workers can help you set up and maintain your company’s website. They might help you with social media marketing as well. They can talk to you about whether your company needs onsite servers or whether you want to operate with a cloud-based backup system.
They can look into security for your company’s computer network if you have one. They can set up company emails and implement online security features. It’s very rare that a business can get away with no IT help, so you’ll need to pay attention to this area.
Marketing Campaigns
You’ll want to have a marketing plan ready to go. Marketing means a great deal to companies, especially in the early going. You want to come up with ideas that will generate interest in your business and get people talking for all the right reasons.
You can hire a marketing team and tell them to figure out where to market your new company. They will likely want to use social media, but you’ll need them to figure out what platforms to utilize. You can’t use all of them, since you don’t have enough money for that. Besides, you only want to target platforms where individuals spend time who will likely buy from you.
You can also think about creating some radio spots, TV commercials, and maybe putting up some billboards. All of that comprises old-school advertising, but you may want to sink some money into those time-tested methods.
You can talk to your marketing team about other measures as well, like email marketing, pay-per-click advertising, and also SEO to help your new website rank. You need your site to show up at the top of the search engine ranking positions when people search for terms having to do with your niche.
Your marketing campaigns should help you boost your early sale numbers, but only if you run them the right way. Make sure you hire experienced individuals who have run successful campaigns before. They can instruct you on what to do and what to avoid.
If you can secure everything that we mentioned, your Pennsylvania-based company should do well. You can start getting your name out there, and soon, you should see the results you want. You can begin to dominate your niche and possibly expand into other territories.
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