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The biggest brands in the world become what they are with the help of one elusive ingredient: customer loyalty. In a world over-saturated with scattershot marketing messages, successful companies take the time to truly get to know their customers — their motivations, fears, ideas, and priorities — and tackle customer service with relentless dedication.

If you’re an entrepreneur, this is good news and bad news.

The bad news? You’re likely competing against established brands that have worked for years — or even decades — to build loyalty among customers.

The good news? You can make customer-service commitment part of your company’s mission early on and be hyper-focused on giving a smaller number of customers the best experiences possible.

If...

Whether you’re running a startup or leading an established company, getting your brand noticed in today’s increasingly “noisy” digital environment can be a challenge. Old marketing paradigms – which focus on traditional media buys and banner ads – simply don’t get the traction they used to, emphasizing the need for new promotional strategies.

The numbers don’t lie

Currently, all signs point towards content marketing taking the lead as 2013’s hottest advertising trend. According to research conducted by the Content Marketing Institute:

• 86% of B2C marketers surveyed employ content marketing tactics, with 55% of these professionals planning to increase their content marketing spends throughout 2013.
• 91% of all B2B marketers polled use content...

“Without a clear vision to evolve, you will never break free of the ‘start-up’ mentality.”

–Hayley Winter, How to Evolve a Startup Into a Successful Business

How do you go from being a startup to a viable business to a very successful business? Where do we draw the lines between these classifications for companies? Founders from around the world set out to answer these sticky questions in Startups Live.

Haley Winter tried to lay the groundwork for erecting a successful venture. Some of the materials incorporated into her architectural scheme included a business plan, the startup mentality, making yourself visible and profitable, devoting resources properly.

Her article also covered the extremely difficult terrain of trying to decide when a...

As a company of nearly 200 employees — almost all of which are allowed to work from home — we know this struggle well.

Over the past few years we've developed a significant work from home policy at Startups.com and have learned a ton from our experience.

Won't everyone just goof off at home?

Unreliable employees will totally goof off — they will absolutely abuse the luxury.

In our first few months converting to work-from (only one day a week) we quickly learned that some employees totally took advantage of the freedom, in some cases just considering it a day off.

Sadly that meant we had to part company with some folks, but in retrospect, it only advanced a decision that would have taken us much longer to make had we not needed to evalua...

What is a product roadmap?

A product roadmap is an illustration of how you get from your company’s big-picture, high-level goals to the actual actions you need to take to achieve those goals. It not only shows what you’re building, but why you’re building it.

A project roadmap has two main audiences: External and internal stakeholders. (Like investors and employees, respectively.) You might even want to create two different roadmaps — or, at least, two different versions of your roadmap — for each audience.

For external stakeholders, the goal is to make sure everyone is informed about what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it. It may also be useful when you’re trying to procure more investment.

For internal stakeholders, a pro...

If you’ve decided to contract out to build a new website for your company, it may be a good idea to look at some of the most commonly made mistakes before you get started.

In the 15 years my web-design firm Intechnic has been in business, we’ve experienced every possible crazy, stressful situation, and have worked hard to find the best solution or compromise in each case. In the spirit of problem solving—and helping others avoid similar issues—I’ve provided a look at some common obstacles we’ve faced, along with suggestions on how to avoid them.

Not Having SMART Objectives

Setting objectives is not enough. Setting SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely) objectives is a great place to start, but you must also have a sol...

You would think that after 20 years of founding companies, I would have the whole work/life balance thing down to a science. When I sit down and talk to young entrepreneurs, often the first thing I’m asked is, “How do you maintain the other facets of your life while building a company?”

The reality is that though I can’t claim to be living a perfectly balanced life, it is a goal I strive for everyday. Even after all of these years, it’s still a daily struggle. Here are a few things I’ve learned along the way.

1. Understand That Your Lifestyle Will Not Be Normal

One of the luxuries of entrepreneurship is that you can structure your time any way you like. If you’d like to spend more time outside of work, you can choose to do that. But first,...

At age 17, Noor Siddiqui co-founded Remedy, which provides instant consults for clinicians. She also forewent the traditional route to college and was chosen as a Thiel Fellow, where she was one of 20 entrepreneurs under 20 years old who received a $100,000 grant to bring an idea to life. If anyone can help you execute an idea, it’s Noor.

The below video and write-up are the first in a series of 10 where Noor helps explain how to bring your own startup business idea to life – and how to make it stick.

1. You Must Validate your startup business idea

According to Noor, the first thing you need to do when you have a startup business idea is validate it. Not everyone will see what you see when looking at it. To her, the most important thing yo...

Nancy Duarte is a pro when it comes to presentations. Not just giving presentations, but starting them, finishing them, and every step in between. Author and co-founder of Duarte Designs, Nancy is a seasoned veteran when it comes to incorporating storytelling into speaking and creating connections with an audience.

The below video is the first part in a series of 10 in which Nancy shares the key components to making a successful pitch using creativity and critical thinking. Find out what she has to say:

Before you make a few modifications to your same, old, boring presentation and click “Save As” thinking you’re ready to go…think again. Take a step back and take an empathetic approach to your delivery of information. When creating a prese...

We all know what it means to give equity away. But what does it take to get it back?

There are a few different methods we can use to begin clawing back some of our hard-lost equity, but all of them require quite a bit of effort — and aren't nearly as easy as giving it away!

Will investors incentivize us with additional stock?

When we look at future funding rounds, if things are going well, we may be able to negotiate some additional stock awards based on the next financing.

This is only an option if the company is doing well and we can point to a significant track record that we've demonstrated to get it there. It doesn't happen a lot, but it does happen.

Oh, and if we don't negotiate hard for it, no one is ever going to suggest it for u...