If you’re starting a new business or have just launched a new business in Dubai or UAE, there’s one thing that you can’t afford to not do—and that’s create a great business plan.

A smartly-created business plan helps Dubai-based entrepreneurs work more smartly, stay more watchful for roadblocks, speed test new business ideas, and align expectations with investors and stakeholders.
In short, a smartly-crafted business plan is your roadmap. Without it, you are likely to get lost, sooner rather than later.

Thankfully, creating a business plan becomes an easier task if you make sure it has these 8 essential elements:

• Executive Summary

This is a snapshot of the business plan you’ve created. While you’re going to write it after everything else, it’s likely to prove the most crucial part of your business plan.
Why so?
Because most readers won’t read even a line further if they don’t like what’s written in this section.
As a Dubai-based startup company, you can create an impressive executive summary by focusing on not only your experiences and background but also those of your partners, if you have any. Doing so will help you show your business’ underpinnings to the readers.

• Company Description

In here comes the description about your company. List concisely but precisely what is exactly that your company’s into, as well as what separates it from competitors. Also list all your major customers, along with the markets you’re going to focus on in the near future. Don’t forget to mention any competitive advantage that your business enjoys. This could be its location or a new product that’s in the pipeline or something else.

• Market Analysis

Understanding your market is extremely important. You must know not only how much your customers spend but also when. This is particularly important in case your company is likely to generate more revenue at certain specific times of the year. Also research your competitors, as well as their profit margins and cash flows. You must also be aware of the latest technological developments that might prove to be a game-changer.

• Organization, Management

A detailed business plan must spell out details regarding ownership. This includes investors as well as the organizational chart. Tell the reader if your company is a corporation, partnership or sole proprietorship. In case it is the former, specify which type (Free Zone, LLC…etc.)

• Service/Product Line

Of course no business plan can be complete if it doesn’t include the all-important information regarding the product or service that the company is selling. So ensure you include this information in your business plan. Specify what is it that you sell and other useful information like how your product/service will help the customer and how soon he or she will be required to replace it. Answers to such questions can prove crucial from the point of view of business sustainability. Finally, include any copyrights or patents that you own.

• Sales and Marketing

You might have the brightest idea ever but nothing much will come out of it until you find a way to effectively communicate it to your prospective customers. Are you planning to advertise or offer promotional discounts? Or are you simply going to depend on word-of-mouth marketing? It is important that your marketing strategy and tools are tailor-made to your business market.

• Funding Request

The last two sections, this one and the next, are extremely important. Even if you’ve filled all the previous sections clearly and craftily, your business plan will fail to help you woo investors unless you clearly define your funding request and financial projections.
Mention the amount of money you need to launch your business, as well as information about how you’re going to generate returns (in case of investors) or repay the borrowed amount (in case of debt financing).
Whether you choose investors or debt financing, both would be interested in knowing how you plan to spend their money, as well as when you’ll be able to pay them back. 

• Financial Projections

Unless you’re launching a new business with your parent’s money, investors would like to see your financial projections. To convince investors that your financial projections are indeed realistic, show them your financial statements of the past few months.

For more info about how to create accurate, powerful business plans for Dubai and UAE startups, get in touch with us and we will be more than happy to help you out!

Have you ever wondered which marketing tool can help you grow your business fast and on budget?
You’re not alone. This is one question which many Dubai and UAE startups ask—and not without good reasons.
Startups in Dubai and UAE often have a limited marketing budget. This means they must do more with less. They must find an affordable and wide-reaching marketing tool which allows them to connect with more people, has an impressive conversion rate, and delivers great ROI.

But does such a marketing tool even exist?

The answer is yes—and its name is Email Marketing, the oldest and most powerful digital marketing tool.
Many other digital marketing tools have come and gone, but email marketing still remains the favorite channel of smart modern marketers.

Here are top 5 reasons why you can’t afford to not have email marketing in your digital marketing strategy.

• Email has a wider reach: It is estimated that there are about 2.19 million people on Facebook and 300 million on Twitter. These are impressive numbers and showcase the potential of social media from marketing point of view. However, impressive as these figures are, they look pale before data regarding email users. At present, there are about 3.8 million people with an email account. In other words, the number of people who use email is 1.5 times more than the number of people who use Twitter and Facebook combined. As you can see, it makes much sense to invest in email marketing because it has a wider reach.
  
• Email gets the message through: As a startup in Dubai if you ever have to choose between winning a new Facebook fan or an email subscriber, you should choose to add a new email subscriber every time. Research shows that 90 percent of email reaches the inbox of the intended recipient. In other words, when you send a promotional email to your subscribers, you can rest assured that the email will reach the inbox of at least 90 percent of the recipients. On the other hand, when you post an update on your Facebook account, only 2 percent of all your fans will see the post in their News Feed, owing to the limitations imposed by Facebook. This, in turn, has a huge impact on the kind of visibility your message will enjoy. Let’s say you have 20,000 Facebook fans and as many email subscribers. You want to share some promotional content with your existing and prospective consumers. If you’re going to put the promotional content as a Facebook post, the message will appear in the News feed of only 400 of your 20,000 Facebook fans. But if you send a promotional email, at least 18,000 subscribers will receive it. That is, your message enjoys a 45 times greater visibility when you use email instead of Facebook. 
  
• Email subscribers want to hear from you: This is another big advantage email marketing enjoys over social media marketing. People who add themselves to your email list want to receive promotional content from you. By subscribing themselves to your list, they give you the permission to send them information about new offers and other promotional messages. However, the same can’t be said about Facebook fans. Just check your News Feed on Facebook to understand this point. You are likely to see ads by many companies in whom you might not be interested. These ads are appearing on your News Feed probably because you did a search on Google or visited their site and not because you’ve asked these companies to send you promotional messages.
  
• Email has a more impressive conversion rate: Because your email subscribers are more interested in hearing from you than your fans on social media, they are more likely to do what you want them to do—become paying customers. The final goal of every marketing tool is to convert viewers into paying customers. No digital marketing tool does this better than email. Research shows an email campaign on average enjoys a click-through rate of approximately 3 percent while a tweet has an average click-through rate of about 0.5%. But this is not all. Data shows that 4.24 percent of email subscribers who click the link to your site purchase something. On the other hand, only 0.59 percent of visitors from social media become paying customers.
  
• Email delivers a more impressive ROI: On average, email delivers a staggering ROI of 3800%. That is, email marketing earns you $38 for every dollar spent. Other digital marketing tools don’t even come close to this.
  

As you can see from these facts and figures, email marketing is the most effective digital marketing tool, but you must use it smartly to get the desired results.

For more information about developing a result-oriented digital marketing plan for your Dubai and UAE based startup, get in touch with us now.

As an HR manager of a successful Dubai-based startup, do you often find it difficult to decide when should you hire whom—raw talent or an experienced professional? Well, you’re not alone.
The ‘raw talent or job experience’ conundrum troubles even the most experienced HR managers at Fortune 500 companies. But that doesn’t mean there’s no way out of this maze. You can solve this riddle once and for all—and we’ll show you how.

In this post, we show you when to hire raw talent and when to go with experience, along with common pitfalls you must avoid. So, let’s get started.

Why You Need the Right Person at Every Job

For a startup company in Dubai, it is important to hire the best talent because your loss will be your competitor’s gain. With business environment here being highly competitive, you must do whatever you can to gain an edge over competition.

Understanding when to hire which type of professional will give your business a competitive edge and help you outperform other startups like you and also quickly narrow down the gap between you and the leading players.
Hiring Tips for Dubai-based Startups
Follow these tips to give yourself the best chance to hire the right person for every job opening.
You should go for experience when:

• You’re looking for a manager – Although this seems to be common sense, many a time startups in Dubai hire a promising professional with an outstanding track record as a team-member for a manager’s position. And more often than not, they repent their decision later. An outstanding individual contributor doesn’t always make a great manager. This is because the skills required for both jobs are different. Someone who’s never led a team before might find it extremely challenging to create and lead a team in a working environment that’s alien to him.

 

• You’re looking for a specialist – If you’re interviewing for a job role that’s totally new for your business, you should pick an experienced professional. Likewise, if you want to fill a job role where you’ve struggled to excel before, you should bring in an experienced player. Professionals with experience not only possess the relevant job skills but also process knowledge. That’s why experience is always a better option for new or difficult job roles.
  

 
You should go for raw talent when:

• You’re hiring for any job other than the two mentioned above – Are you looking to add new members to a clearly-defined and smoothly-functioning setup? For instance, you might be looking for web developers to join your well-performing web development team with clearly marked out standard operating procedures and other guidelines. Well, in this case, and all other situations similar to this, you should bring on board the person with maximum promise, irrespective of his previous experience. Professionals with raw talent can offer much to you if you give them a chance. They might find new ways to overcome existing hurdles or create new products/services. On the other hand, experienced professionals might be less inclined to do things differently. The other advantage of hiring raw talent for startup Dubai companies is that they are usually more adaptable, loyal, and hardworking.

Watch out for these pitfallsYou must decide in advance who is better suited for the open position—an experienced professional or a professional with raw talent and little, if any, experience?
Before you start interviewing candidates, take a call on this. Otherwise, you might just end up wasting your and candidates’ time. Worse still, you might bring on board a person who’s not suited for the job.

Experience doesn’t always amount to talent.
A candidate’s experience is not a measure of his talent. As a matter of fact, there are many experienced professionals in Dubai who are just mediocre. Precisely for this reason, along with an inspiring track record, you must value traits which showcase the candidate’s ability to be proactive, work in a team, and stay self-motivated. HR experts believe such employees add a lot of value to their organizations over time.

A list of impressive past titles and employers is good—but it is not everything.
Don’t think that a candidate would add great value to your team just because he has done his masters from a premier college and worked with some impressive names. What you must focus most on is his achievements. That—and not other things—will give you a fair idea about what that employee will bring to the table.

For more information on how to hire the right candidates for your Dubai and UAE based startup, feel free to contact us. Our hiring experts will get in touch you and help you hire the best talent in the industry.