Pennsylvania Business Startup Guides
Starting a Business in Erie, Pennsylvania
Thinking about starting a business in Erie, Pennsylvania? This step-by-step guide walks you through the major decisions you should consider before opening a new business in Erie.
What Business to Start
Choosing a business that is right for you is very important. You might get some good ideas about what kind of business to start by reading Evaluating Your Idea.
For step-by-step instructions on starting a variety of business types, visit the Good Businesses to Start section of our site. For example, you might be interested in our How to Start an Oil Field Specialties Business guide or our Opening a Typesetting & Composition Equipment & Supplies Business guide.
Don't forget that your new startup will be located in Erie. Some businesses will do better in Erie than others. Study Erie demographics and do a competitive analysis as part of your startup planning process.
Erie, Pennsylvania Demographic Information
Erie has an active business community that includes small businesses, mid-sized businesses and large businesses.
To give you a better feel for Erie demographics for small businesses, we have tabulated the small business sizes, based on number of employees, for business in Erie.
Businesses
As a new Erie entrepreneur, you may also be interested in the table below. It shows how many businesses there are in Erie for each business category. By looking at this chart, you can get a general sense for how much competition there is in the business niche that you are pursuing.
Businesses
What About Buying an Existing Erie Business?
An excellent way to get started in business is to Buy a Business in Pennsylvania. Follow that link and you may find several good businesses for sale in Erie.
If you are serious about buying a business, you may want to read this article: Hold Harmless Agreements When Buying Businesses.
Naming the Company
A good company name can give a big boost to a new startup. It might seem like an easy thing to do, but there are many things to consider when naming a business.
Pick a company name that isn't too generic. If you do a search engine search for your proposed name and a billion results come up, you may want to reconsider the name. It's much easier to come up in the search engines when your name is fairly unique.
To get up to speed on what makes for a good company name, we encourage you to read this useful article: Naming a Business.
As a final piece of advice, remember that because you are starting a business in Erie, it's imperative that you check now that no other Pennsylvania company is using the business name you want to use.
Getting the Word Out About Your New Business
To grow your Erie business, having an excellent marketing plan is fundamental to your succeeding.
You can learn quite a bit about marketing on our site. Telemarketing Service Costs discusses marketing strategy and tactical marketing in a way that should get you thinking about how to creatively promote your business. That's just one of the many useful articles we have on Marketing a Small Business.
How to Sell
Mastering the art of selling is priority one if you want your new Erie business to do well.
Clever sales techniques can transform any business from good to great. The good news is we can help you to make selling a big competitve advantage for your new firm.
How to Build and Motivate a Sales Team offers some helpful tips on how to sell. It's one of several good articles on our site regarding Entrepreneurial Selling.
Now It's Up To You
Most new Erie businesses underestimate the number of challenges they will face.
If you choose the right business and love what you do, you will greatly increase your odds of success.
This site is all about helping entrepreneurs in Erie and elsewhere to achieve real success. We have a wealth of experience in business start-ups, financing, marketing, sales and more...and we've made all of our knowledge available to you.
More Entrepreneurial Resources for Starting a Business in Erie, Pennsylvania
Here are more links that we believe will help you be successful in starting a business in Erie.
- Resources for Erie, Pennsylvania Entrepreneurs - Browse a variety of resources we've collected to assist Erie entrepreneurs.
- Pennsylvania Entrepreneurial Resources - We've gathered state-level entrepreneurial resources to help new entrepreneurs who are based in Pennsylvania.
- Pennsylvania Small Business Development Center - Pennsylvania SBDCs help aspiring entrepreneurs turn ideas into businesses, help small firms expand, and provide the information every business person needs to make critical decisions. There is no charge for their assistance and their free help can make the difference between business success and failure.
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