I’ve been collecting together marketing ideas for small businesses in a file for several years. The intention was to write a series of posts on free/cheap marketing ideas. That list has now grown to 171 marketing ideas and I’ve included it below.

Some of the ideas are new, one or two are fresh and innovative, all of them are relatively low cost – ideal for a small business. However not all of the ideas will suit every businesses. A good marketing idea for a restaurant, hotel or bar might not suit a retail business or a law firm and the ideas that suit b2c companies aren’t always going to be as effective for a b2b business.

Researching, Planning And Monitoring

These marketing ideas relate to planning your marketing so that you know what you are marketing, who you are marketing it to and why – market research in other words. That feeds in to developing, monitoring and fine tuning your marketing strategy.

1. Define your market.

2. Research your market – establish who, why and what.

3. If it is big enough, segment your market and target each segment appropriately.

4. Define the benefits your product offers the market/each market segment.

5. Focus on your customer.

6. Create a marketing plan.

7. Allocate a sensible (big enough) budget to marketing – don’t make the mistake of having no marketing budget.

8. Tie your marketing budget to sales forecasts – don’t rely on the idea of an average marketing budget.

9. Monitor your results regularly – at least monthly. Adjust your plan based on the results.

10. Monitor and study your competitors.

11. Monitor and study successful businesses that target the same customers as you.

12. Learn from your mistakes and your successes.

13. Keep an ideas file and add all new marketing ideas to it.

14. Read about what others are doing on marketing/business blogs and in marketing books. Start by visiting the top 100 business blogs.

Your Product

The next set of ideas focus on your product and how to maximise it’s contribution to your overall marketing strategy. Marketing strategy should feed in to product development.

1. Create a Unique Selling Proposition (USP).

2. Make it remarkable.

3. Ensure the packaging sells – focus on benefits, not features.

4. Use the price to create a message – value versus premium.

5. Make it exclusive – limited editions.

6. Customer service matters.

7. Offer a guarantee.

8. Consider using the freemium business model.

9. Consider focusing on a niche market.

10. Offer what your competitors do not, but that customers want.

11. Create special offers by pairing related products.

12. Give away or discount slow moving products when sold with popular ones.

13. Refine your product based on feedback and sales figures.

Inbound Marketing

These inbound marketing ideas focus on how to position yourself and your business as the solution to a customer’s wants and needs. The emphasis is on building your brand recognition and positioning your business so that customers come to you. A lot of inbound marketing is Internet based, focusing on driving customers to your website or other online assets as the first point of contact.

1. Create a brand (look, attitude, values and actions) and use it throughout everything you do.

2. Get listed in the search engines / online directories.

3. Optimise your website for the search engines.

4. Create an authoritative and informative website about your product, industry and company.

5. Write a blog about your industry.

6. Contribute to blogs about your industry.

7. Contribute to forums about your industry.

8. Write articles for e-zines that reach your target market.

9. Create videos and post them on YouTube.

10. Create podcasts.

11. Use LinkedIn to network in your industry.

12. Create a Twitter account.

13. Create a Facebook account.

14. Use Social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Del.icio.us and Stumbleupon

15. Write for the local/national press.

16. Write a white paper about the problem your product solves.

17. Conduct and publish research related to your market.

18. Run a competition.

19. Write a book about your industry/the problems your product solves.

20. Publish an informative newsletter (either online, offline or both).

21. Get listed in industry directories.

22. Get to know the journalists that cover your industry and offer to be a source.

23. Campaign for something.

24. Offer useful information in your advertisements.

25. Get people to review your product in the press and online.

26. Conduct a webinar.

27. Offer a free trial.

28. Sign up for Help A Reporter Out and respond to the queries.

29. Create an affiliate scheme.

30. Submit articles to article directories.

31. Join and participate in relevant professional organisations.

32. Become a public speaker, speaking about your market/expertise.

33. Do some pro bono (volunteer) work.

34. Join a referral marketing organisation.

35. Publish case studies.

36. Run a workshop.

37. Organise a networking event.

38. Become an expert and speak with authority.

39. Disagree with someone, making a good well reasoned argument will reinforce your position as an expert.

40. Create an elevator pitch.

41. Tell everyone you meet about your business – using your elevator pitch.

42. Add social bookmarking links to your site.

43. Create a Squidoo lens.

44. Try buzz marketing.

45. Create some viral marketing.

Outbound Marketing

These outbound marketing ideas focus on reaching out to new customers. They directly target those you have no relationship with.

1. Send out press releases.

2. Do at least one marketing activity EVERY day.

3. Make at least one sales call EVERY day.

4. Create and host an award.

5. Create a press kit, send it out with press releases and make it available on your website.

6. Open unusual hours, especially if your competitors don’t.

7. Advertise on the side of your car / vehicles.

8. Advertise in your shop window or on your building.

9. Advertise in other local shop windows.

10. Advertise with businesses who offer products that yours complements.

11. Sponsor relevant events.

12. Sponsor relevant people.

13. Do something (an activity) for charity – and publicise it.

14. Advertise on local radio.

15. Advertise in the local press.

16. Advertise in industry magazines.

17. Offer businesses that have a similar customer base as yours a discount/gift voucher to give their customers.

18. Stage a flashmob event.

19. Get testimonials.

20. Get a celebrity to endorse the product.

21. Get an expert to endorse the product.

22. Sex sells – use it.

23. Create an emotional attachment to your product.

24. Seek out feedback on your products.

25. Give people a reason to act on your marketing.

26. Make it easy for customers to talk to you.

27. Answer your emails.

28. Provide live online chat.

29. Use search engine marketing to target customers.

30. Use email marketing.

31. Advertise on your clothing and on the staff’s clothing.

32. Give away promotional items to your target market.

33. Visit trade shows.

34. Advertise in your email signatures.

35. Advertise on TV.

36. Make your business card sell.

37. Get accredited.

38. Support a cause.

39. Tell a story.

40. Hold a sale.

41. Use classified advertisements.

42. Advertise in the Yellow Pages.

43. Partner with other related businesses.

44. Create a strategic alliance with a related business and undertake joint marketing.

45. Telemarketing.

46. Brochures.

47. Use special offers.

48. Host a challenge.

49. Picket yourself – hire someone to picket your business complaining about something funny or different.

50. Donate to charity and shout about it.

51. Carry out a publicity stunt.

52. Go on Dragon’s Den or similar.

53. Be different – dress differently.

54. Put on an industry event.

55. Host a discussion panel about your industry.

56. Advertise on a billboard.

57. Hold an event in, or outside your shop.

58. Invite a local group to collect in or outside your shop.

59. Use Craigslist, Gumtree and the like.

60. Register on lead generation websites.

61. Do a give-away, where entry requires customers providing contact details.

62. Identify your worst trading times and have a happy hour then.

63. Do a press release about a customer.

64. Direct mail.

65. Give out flyers.

66. Leaflet drops.

67. Use Guerrilla marketing tactics.

68. Pay for someone else – buy the person queuing in front of you at the coffee shop their coffee and given them a flyer.

69. Get an 0800 number.

Relationship Building

It is easier and cheaper to sell to someone that you already have a relationship with so these marketing ideas focus on building on the relationship you already have with your leads, prospects and customers. Relationship marketing is increasingly important and may well soon overtake the 4P’s (Product, Price, Place and Promotion) as the standard marketing mix model.

1. Create a database of prospects, leads and customers.

2. Use your invoices to build the relationship and sell.

3. Use your stationary to sell.

4. Keep in touch.

5. Send out customer newsletters.

6. Send special offers to customers.

7. Put on workshops for your customers, leads and prospects.

8. Create a referral programme.

9. Network with your customers – turn customers into fans.

10. Network with your suppliers.

11. Network with your competitors.

12. Network with businesses that sell to the same customers as you.

13. Send cards to your customers – thank them for their custom, wish them a happy birthday or send them holiday (Easter/Christmas) greetings.

14. Give customers discount cards.

15. Offer a discount for regular business.

16. Make your answer-phone message useful and sell with it.

17. Be consistent, but refine.

18. Be remarkable.

19. Treat customers as fans.

20. Be personal – people buy from people.

21. Text your customers.

22. Ask for referrals.

23. Give customers lottery tickets as a thank you – low cost to you, but massive potential benefit to them.

24. Show up in person – visit your customers.

25. Create a customer advisory panel with your best customers.

26. Ask your customers for feedback and advice.

27. Offer customers reminder for their next purchase.

28. Train your staff to delight customers and empower them to do so.

29. Train your staff to cross sell.

30. Make your marketing recent and frequent.

I have written about Niche Marketing before. It is a subject that business owners often question me on. Some fail to see that narrowing the focus of their business could be the clue to unlocking the next phase of their growth. The challenge they face is having the bravery to reduce the scope of their proposition and of their marketing communications in order to improve effectiveness – substantially.

Marketing Psychology

The problem is people’s heads. The human brain actively works against us when we are trying to build links from one business specialism to another. Human brains have a self-organising function. This self-organising function automatically sorts new data without people having to think about it. As a huge filing system the brain is wonderful. Information is sorted, digested and stored in a logical and easily retrievable way.

We classify and interpret new information by looking for similarities with what is already on file. This means that when we see something new our brain automatically starts looking for “Where have I seen this or something like it before?” When the brain finds something, it opens the existing file and uses the stored memories as a point of reference to generate thoughts and to make decisions. Our brains automatically place us in a narrow channel of thinking – much like the constraints of river banks on a river.

It is up to us to ensure that any specialism in our services or target customer works in our favour – not against us.

Why is This Relevant

When we are expecting prospects and suspects to remember our business and to call us in to solve a problem, we are relying on their ability to retrieve information from the human filing system. When we leave it entirely to the audience to decide where to classify our business, then the probability that we get remembered or considered for a project is substantially reduced.

Our prospects and suspects are subject to torrents of information – every day. They will not remember everything they read or see. Some of the things they read will be marked as useful and stored for future use. If your business is:

• Seen as expert in a specialist area
• And then filed correctly in the human filing systems you are targeting

Then you stand a much better chance of being remembered when there is an opportunity for you. You also stand a much better chance of being taken seriously when you approach a prospect on a speculative basis.

In Practice – Niche Marketing Means

• Ensuring your offer is a great fit for your target market
• You promote your business to the people who are most likely to buy

It does NOT mean – turning away profitable work from people outside your niche!

This was a guest post by Paul Fileman of Results-Zone. Results-Zone bring extensive knowledge and experience gained in Blue Chip organisations to businesses like yours. They ensure that your business is fully exploiting a well thought through operating plan. They work alongside you and your team – as business results managers. They ensure that your team and your business are elevated to the results-zone. They bring you “hands-on” experience – similar to employing high quality management skills without the risk or costs in recruiting full time employees.

Entrepreneurs, in fact everyone, loves their own business ideas. Just watch a few episodes of Dragons’ Den you’ll see exactly what I mean as the would be entrepreneurs parade their business ideas in front of the Dragons. There’s always a few hopefuls looking for investment in their great business idea even though it’s nothing more than an idea. Worse still there’s often someone who has dedicated years of their life and tens, if not hundreds of thousands of pounds to developing their idea without having tested it.

I think that’s a mistake. As I explained in how to start a new business I believe you should always test a business idea, especially your own business idea, before you invest a substantial amount of either your time or money in it. Failing to do so is a very bad idea.

So how do you go about testing your own business ideas?

Well there’s several approaches, ranging from asking friends, family and anyone down the pub for their opinions (not recommended) to actually going out there and doing it – if it succeeds it’s a good idea, if it doesn’t it’s not (again not recommended as it’s a very expensive way to test a business idea). Instead I favour testing any ideas for your own business in several ways. Firstly desk research and when it comes to that in a recent post ‘The 2-Minute Opportunity Checklist for Entrepreneurs’ on the Harvard Business Blog, Prof. Daniel Isenberg (of the The Isenberg Entrepreneur Test) described a pretty good test:

1. Does your business idea soothe someone’s pain, discomfort, frustration, or dissatisfaction?
2. Are there lots of those people out there?
3. Do these people (or companies, or governments) have money to pay for it?
4. Will they be able to decide quickly to buy your product or service?
5. Does your idea exploit something about you that is outstanding or unique?
6. Are there important assets you have that no one else has? (money, access to customers, technology, leadership skills, execution, location, salesmanship, etc.)
7. Can you think of at least two people who might join you?
8. Do their skills complement yours?
9. Do they have the same values as you do?
10. Do the majority of people whose opinion you highly respect think your idea is a good one?
11. Does at least one person (and not more than three people), whose opinion you highly respect, think your idea is a bad one?
12. Is there something about the idea or its implementation, that compels you to really devote yourself to it?
13. Can you sneak by the big competitors without them noticing you for awhile?
14. Can you find a potential customer who will take your calls, give you feedback, try a pilot out?
15. Can you start up without huge gobs of money?
16. Can you keep your fixed costs low during launch?
17. Does your idea lend itself to small incremental steps that can inexpensively generate valuable information as well as at least a little cash?

He suggests that if when you evaluate business idea against this criteria it scores 16 or more ‘yes’ answers then you should get on and start a business around your idea. He expands on a few points noting that great ideas are those that attract detractors, explaining:

…unless you have at least one major detractor, then you are probably not on to something big. In fact, if everyone thinks it is a wonderful thing to do, then probably a legion of competitors is on the launch pad.

Then provides a great description of a good business opportunity:

Opportunities consist of:

1. the alignment of a market need,
2. a personal competence,
3. values or motivation.

If your business idea passes that desk research stage, then it’s time to start failing fast, failing cheap! By which I mean find cheap ways to develop prototypes and test your ideas. Where cheap doesn’t necessarily mean low cost, but rather that they use a relatively low proportion of your start-up capital. The point being that you will make mistakes and get things wrong in the early days of any business and if the first mistakes uses all your capital it’s game over, in contrast if the first mistake costs you just 10% then you have nine more chances to get the idea right and start a successful business.

I’m pleased to announce that the Business Opportunities and Ideas blog has moved from www.businessopportunitiesandideas.co.uk to: www.businessopportunitiesandideas.com

If you have the site bookmarked or you link to it, please update your links.

Everything should work exactly as before, all usernames and passwords for the blog and forums remain the same and should still work. However as with any move of this size, there might be some small teething problems – if you come across any please let me know.

Just watch an episode of two of Dragon’s Den and you’ll realise that some people are oblivious to the fact that their are pushing a bad business idea. Given the huge number of businesses that fail within their first year of trading the entrepreneurs on Dragon’s Den clearly aren’t alone.

That said, far to many would be entrepreneurs put off starting a business for fear of pursuing a bad idea. They shouldn’t. If you want to be an entrepreneur, it’s far better to start any business, no matter how bad the idea might be, than to never have started one at all.

Bad business ideas are only a problem if you don’t follow the mantra of fail fast, fail cheap (see How To Start A New Business for more on that). In fact I’d go so far as to say that most bad business ideas are to do with the execution of a business idea rather than the business idea itself. For example, starting a business (or launching a new product) without all of the following:

• a proven demand for the product;
• a tested strategy for delivering the product profitably;
• a proven route to market;
• a realistic financial plan and sufficient finance to execute the plan;
• a plan and the right skills (either alone or as a team) to execute the plan.

Is clearly a bad idea. Then there’s the ultimate bad business idea: competing on price. There will always be someone cheaper and the race to the bottom will ensure there is little if any profit to be made. If price is your USP, then it’s time to call your idea a failure and start looking for a new business idea.

Daniel Isenberg, a Professor of Management Practice at Babson College recently described his entrepreneur test on the Harvard Business Review blog.

Here’s the 20 questions in his ‘Isenberg Entrepreneur Test’:

1. I don’t like being told what to do by people who are less capable than I am.
2. I like challenging myself.
3. I like to win.
4. I like being my own boss.
5. I always look for new and better ways to do things.
6. I like to question conventional wisdom.
7. I like to get people together in order to get things done.
8. People get excited by my ideas.
9. I am rarely satisfied or complacent.
10. I can’t sit still.
11. I can usually work my way out of a difficult situation.
12. I would rather fail at my own thing than succeed at someone else’s.
13. Whenever there is a problem, I am ready to jump right in.
14. I think old dogs can learn — even invent — new tricks.
15. Members of my family run their own businesses.
16. I have friends who run their own businesses.
17. I worked after school and during vacations when I was growing up.
18. I get an adrenaline rush from selling things.
19. I am exhilarated by achieving results.
20. I could have written a better test than Isenberg (and here is what I would change ….)

He believes that if you answer yes to 17 or more of the questions it’s time to start your own business. Seems a pretty good list to me, the only ones I would have answered no to when I became an entrepreneur were: 15, 16 and 20 – but I’d say yes to 20 now!

How about you?

He also points out that taking risks is not on the list and adds to the points I made in my post Risk And The Entrepreneur explaining that entrepreneurs:

…reframe the salary vs. entrepreneur choice as between two different sets of risk: the things they don’t like about having a steady job — such as the risk of boredom, working for a bad boss, lack of autonomy, lack of control over your fate, and getting laid off — and the things they fear about being an entrepreneur — possible failure, financial uncertainty, shame or embarrassment, and lost investment. In the end, people who are meant to be entrepreneurs believe that their own abilities (e.g. leadership, resourcefulness, pluck, hard work) or assets (e.g. money, intellectual property, information, access to customers) significantly mitigate the risks of entrepreneurship. Risk is ultimately a personal assessment: what is risky for me is not risky for you.

He also highlights that “I want to get rich” is not on the list either and as I explained in Getting Rich As An Entrepreneur he also explains that:

…on the average, people who set up their own businesses don’t make more money, although a few do succeed in grabbing the brass ring. But the “psychic benefits” — the challenge, autonomy, recognition, excitement, and creativity — make it all worthwhile.

Which I’d agree with.

When it comes to failed marketing campaigns the UK Government must lead the way. My wife pointed out that the ‘Health in Pregnancy Grant’ being a classic example of this.

For those that don’t know the Health in Pregnancy Grant is a £190 grant paid by HMRC to all pregnant women who have reached 25 weeks. They receive a Health in Pregnancy Grant form from the midwife at their first appointment after 25 weeks. Once you’ve received the grant form you fill it in and send it off, a few weeks later HMRC write to you to tell you they’d paid it to you. Which is nice. My wife was certainly pleased to receive her letter yesterday letting her know she’s £190 richer.

So why is this a marketing failure? Because we’re not really sure WHY she’s £190 richer. Sure the midwife muttered something about healthy food as she handed over the voucher which gave us a clue. Then of course the word ‘Health’ in the name gives us another clue. Sadly the claim form and the payment letter from HMRC just looked like the tax man’s normal white and green letters. Nowhere was their anything telling us what the grant was for or even why we were being given it.

So I’ve been Googling it. The first advert in for the Governments Health in Pregnancy Grant website as is the first natural search result – they got that bit right. Unfortunately the site it takes you to, which is titled Money4mum2be doesn’t actually tell you what the money is for other than the rather vague:

The payment is called ‘Health in Pregnancy Grant’ and is to help you prepare for the birth of your baby.

So I did a bit more digging and found this press release from 2007 which quotes Financial Secretary to the Treasury Jane Kennedy MP as saying:

We recognise that this is an expensive time for families. To support these extra costs in the run up to birth, the Health in Pregnancy Grant will enable all pregnant women to claim extra help from April 2009 once they’ve had the appropriate health advice from a health professional like their midwife.

It builds on a series of improvements in the provision of maternity services including an increase in statutory maternity pay from 26 to 39 weeks and the support for women on low incomes provided by the Sure Start Maternity Grant and Healthy Start Vouchers. The grant also gives an extra incentive for all women to take up the professional health advice available during pregnancy.

So there was obviously the intention at some point to offer health advice with it, but we’re still not sure what that advice would be.

The lesson here? If you’re going to carry out some marketing, be it for your business or as a public information exercise have a clear goal and build the entire campaign towards delivering that one clear goal. Otherwise your marketing will fail. My wife’s advice – put a leaflet in with the form and another in with the payment notice explaining what the grant is for. I think she’s right.

Got any more examples of marketing failure? Add them to the comments below.

Oh and please don’t take this a criticism of the midwives, they do a fantastic job. How they cope with the insane amount of rubbish the government/health service has them handle on top of actually looking after the health of pregnant mum’s is beyond me. It would drive me mad.

I recently suggested to someone looking for a business idea that they consider a service business. They promptly asked:

What’s a service business?

Which is actually quite a reasonable question, as there seem to be several accepted definitions. One such definition is provided by the Three-sector hypothesis which divides economies into three sectors of activity: extraction of raw materials (primary), manufacturing (secondary), and services (tertiary). On that basis just about every business idea on this blog is a service business idea. But that’s not what I meant. I was using service business to refer to a business that sells a service, where a service is defined as the intangible equivalent of a good. Generally after buying a service you don’t own the service – for example a taxi business is a service business, after using the service you own nothing more than you did before.

The reason I like services businesses and will usually suggest service business ideas to would be entrepreneurs is that they typically have very low start-up costs. For example consider the following service businesses:

• Cleaning – starting a cleaning business requires little more than the cost of some basic cleaning supplies.
• Web design – starting a web design business requires little more than a computer and Internet connection, which if you’re reading this you probably already have.
• Consulting – starting a consultancy business needs little more than some stationary.
• Recruitment – starting a recruitment consultancy requires nothing more than a mobile phone and Internet access.
• Delivery – starting a newspaper delivery business costs next to nothing and at least one billionaire has cut their teeth in business doing so.

Then there’s leaflet delivery or dog walking… I could go on for ages.

It’s not just the low start-up costs that make service business ideas attractive though, they also tend to have low overheads and high gross profit margins, plus many of the ideas (i.e. Vertical Search Engines and blogging businesses) are hugely scalable.

A reader asks:

Have you ever heard of Polaris Media Group? Well, if you have not, please Google them! They offer themselves as an entrepreneur business where their ‘distributors’ advertise products
sold by the business and make a profit. You also make money by bringing others into the business and earn a percentage of what they sell.

Is this legit and legal?

No, I’d never heard of Polaris Media Group until you asked, but I did Google them and found a few sites:

• Polaris Media Group – their website. Very tech heavy and as a result slow to load, making it very tedious to find anything on the site. I didn’t actually manage to get any of the product pages to load so can’t comment on those.
• A review of the Polaris Media Group ‘Home Business Opportunity’ which explains that (note the highlight in bold): “Polaris Media Group officially launches on September 9, 2009. The company is a re-branding or launch of the popular personal development company Liberty League International. They offer the same basic product line that was offered by LLI . In addition, they have a new line of "stand alone" products that are designed to aid in self help and personal development for the entrepreneur in today’s economy.”
• A blog post suggesting that the Australian government recently indicated that Liberty League International is a pyramid scheme citing the press release here.
• Then there’s all this coverage on another blog.

So looking at the criteria I described in Defining Business Opportunity Scams:

• The investment required:  Unknown – I struggled to get their website to give me any useful information.
• the level of skill required: Unknown.
• how likely I think the average person is to make their money back: Unknown.
• my opinion of the value for money of the business opportunity: Unknown.
• Would I invest my own money? NO!

I would steer well clear of this business opportunity because I’m unable to find any useful facts about it other than, that it has attracted the attention of at least one national government as a scam.

If there’s a business opportunity you’d like me to review as a potential scam please contact me and I’ll review it ASAP. Equally I’d like to hear about any business opportunity scams that you’ve come across and would like to warn others away from.

The image of the entrepreneur as a risk taker is pervasive.

It’s also a myth.

Sure by starting a business and becoming an entrepreneur you are taking on a risk, in particular you’re taking on the risk that you’ll have no pay cheque at the end of the month. Though if you’ve ever been made redundant, had your employer go bust or been fired you’ll know that the same risk applies to those with a “secure” job. As an entrepreneur you can minimise this risk by ensuring you aren’t dependent on one customer for your income. As an employee you have no way to minimise the risk other than to become a part-time entrepreneur!

In both cases there’s the risk that you can’t find another job should things go wrong. The experience of starting your own business rarely damages your job prospects. Thus both the employee and the entrepreneur face the same level of risk.

As for financial risks, entrepreneurs tend to start with the same level of assets as employees and they’re just as likely to have a mortgage etc. As a result they’re unlikely to be facing any greater financial risk than an employee.

So what is the difference, in terms of risk, between an employee and an entrepreneur? It’s that entrepreneurs are in control of their future, they have the ability to influence the outcome, whereas an employee is at the mercy of their employer. Furthermore, most of the risk of a new business venture is born by the investors, employees, suppliers, customer and creditors.

In short being an employee is riskier than many people believe. Being an entrepreneur is much less risky than those same people believe. There is a proviso however; there are entrepreneurs (I prefer to think of them as gamblers) that do take risks, often massive risks, and like most gamblers, they usually lose (fail). In contrast rather than being risk-takers, most successful entrepreneurs are risk-minimisers.

So if you’d like to be an entrepreneur, but the ‘risk’ puts you off here’s some advice:

• Start part-time. Don’t give up the day job until you have some steady income from the business.
• Test your business idea before you commit 100% to it. Read How To Start A New Business for more on that.
• Work hard to ensure that no single customer accounts for more than 30% of your revenue.

In other words minimise your risk!