All businesses face pressures and the risk of closing their doors if things don’t work out.  As a small home service business, you’re probably feeling some pressure to ensure that your business survives and you’re sometimes under some stress, whether it’s noticeable to you or not. While there is no recipe for guaranteed success, here are three basic mistakes you can avoid to increase your chances for long-term success.

1. Targeting Everyone

If you’re Apple or Walmart, then you can probably get away with trying to target the mass population to buy your products because breadth often comes with being a big company. But as a small business you need to be more careful and focused about where you exert your efforts. This is called market segmentation and creating a target market. Here you need to understand what’s driving your customer; their needs and reasons for buying. If you target too broad a market then you may quickly find yourself overstretched with insufficient resources to cope.

2. Not Sticking With Your Brand

It takes time, but customers recognize your brand – the logo, color, message, words.  Everything.  Changing this often and with no structure confuses your target market meaning that they will not identify you and then forget you. Pick a brand. Pick an identity and stick with it.  It is also worth it to spend a little money on developing your brand identity.  In the graphic design world you need to spend more to get better quality.  Doing this initially will save you money in the future.

3. Ineffective Pricing

This may seem obvious as your pricing strategy drives sales of your products and services. Set this too high and customers may switch to a cheaper competitor. But setting too low can have disastrous consequences because you may not cover your costs and raising the price afterwards doesn’t mean more revenues for you; increased price deters demand and will cause you to lose customers. The price therefore needs to find the balance between revenues, costs, and demand. Setting the price low doesn’t necessarily mean you’re undercutting the competition; you may actually be driving yourself out of business.

Evaluate your business.  Are you using these three tips to ensure that your business is on the path to success?  If not, trying focusing on these as they are a good place to start.  It may save you in the future.  Best of luck!