What?s Next? A Guide to Marketing Your New Business
Coming up with an idea, seizing the opportunity, and setting up a business was the relatively easy part. Now you are ready for the challenge of finding your customers, or at least make it easy for your customers to find you. Here are some tips for marketing your new and growing business. Know & Understand your Customers Find out or decide who your customers will be. Then find out as much as possible about them. Consider the needs of customers, and make sure your business or product fulfils those needs. Look at factors such as where they live, their age, their gender, how much they earn, their interests and pastimes. Detailed knowledge of your customers will help you to be more precise in your marketing. Reach your Customers There are many different types of media out there. Choose and use a media that you know will reach your target audience, and is preferred by them. Consider approaching newspapers and magazines if you feel you have a good story, ideally involving a reference to your business, a planned event, or a special offer. Convey a message that will be of value to the reader and editor ? this will promote interest in you and your business/product at the same time. Avoid blatant advertising. If you are limited to, or looking to target local audiences in a specific geographical area, consider producing flyers and placing adverts in shop windows. Television and radio advertising are the more expensive methods, and are designed to reach audiences on a mass scale. However, the returns are normally very small in comparison to the expense. Highlight your Benefits Most customers will focus on the value and convenience of choosing your product or service, before they will consider the actual features of that product or service. Therefore, it is important for your marketing campaign to concentrate on selling the benefits, before the features. Features are best marketed when linked directly to a great benefit. For example, a small business selling their own brand of home computers would make a greater first impact by focusing less on features such as 2.3Ghz processors, 1GB RAM, 100GB Hard Disk, and 128MB Graphics cards, and focus more on the benefits of 'faster performance', 'ideal for multitasking', 'plenty of storage' and 'great for games and photo editing'. Use the Internet Of all the available mediums, the Internet puts businesses on the most equal footing. Your image and appearance on the Internet represents your business ? this can be understated and straight-to-the-point, or it can be flashy and highly interactive. It is best that it matches your style of business, but you are not restricted if you wish to invest in making a big splash. The Internet should be used to support your other forms of marketing, unless your business is specifically suited to the online market. If you are able to create a website for your business, do so as soon as possible. If you cannot do this yourself, pay for someone to create one for you, as it will be a worthy investment if used correctly. Use other methods, such as joining newsgroups or forums related to your business or product, sign up to business networking communities, give free advice and answer questions. It will attract others to your offering (as everyone wants something for free), while building trust in you and confidence in your product and expertise. Avoid using these for blatant advertising, unless the forum specifies that this is acceptable. Otherwise, you may be asked to leave and your reputation could be damaged in that field. Be Consistent Unless you have a product or service that everyone needs and no one else offers, your marketing efforts will need to be ongoing. Your audience needs to hear about you and your offering over and over again before they are ready to acknowledge and accept you. Therefore, be consistent with your marketing methods. Avoid deviating dramatically between mediums, as this can confuse customers, or cause you to lose others who only focus on one of your selected mediums. Make sure you know how much, and how often you can spend, when working out your marketing budget. Don't plough money into campaigns that you cannot afford to maintain. For example, an expensive, one-page spread in a glossy magazine will look nice and catch the eye, but unless you can afford to do this every week or month, the readers will quickly forget you. Choose a method that you can afford to repeat as often as is necessary to get yourself noticed (i.e.: flyers, local adverts, attending networking events). Otherwise, you may find that your marketing budget is used up before you've made an impact. Measure & Review your Campaigns Make sure you are able to measure the outcomes of your efforts. Items for measurement could be sales, number of enquiries, number of new clients, level of customer spend per occasion, for example. If you choose to run a campaign in a publication, consider adding a reference number to the piece, requiring the customer to quote this reference when contacting you. If using contact forms on a website, request the customer advise you on how they heard about you. For each marketing campaign you undertake, use your chosen measurement tools to assess the effectiveness of that campaign. This will help you to refine your future efforts to get the best results. Even when you think you have perfected your campaigns, continue to review on a regular basis to accommodate any changes in the market and its buying behaviour. Marketing is important to every business, and when used appropriately for your chosen customers, the returns can be very rewarding. Consider these tips when putting together the basis of your marketing plan. Michelle Payne-Gale, owner of Essence Business & Admin Support Services, specialises in virtual administration, marketing, research & creative support for start-ups and growing businesses. Additional articles are available at: http//http://www.essence-services.co.uk
Related News
|
 |
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Top 10 Marketing Pitfalls
Ten Marketing Pitfalls
By Stuart Reid
The Seven Keys to Marketing Genius: The Complete Guide to Increasing Your Marketing IQ
How smart is your marketing? Do you follow the crowd or set your own standards? People are attracted to innovative leaders, not copycats. Besides, most companies throw thousands of dollars down the drain on ineffective advertising- can your budget afford such waste? Start your education today- follow these seven keys to increase your marketing IQ and outwit your competition.
Are You a Marketing Octopus, or a Marketing Worm?
One of the greatest challenges to effectively marketing a business is determining which marketing method is best for your business.
Like Brushing Your Teeth
What do the following things have in common: brushing your teeth, regular exercise, eating a balanced diet, paying your bills on time, cleaning your gutters, spending quality time with your spouse and kids??
The Day I Learned to Start Saying No
It was the fall of 1998 when I had just started my first business as a marketing communications writer. Most of my clients hired me for newsletters, brochures, and sales materials, but I would get the occasional request for something different. At the time I was too naive to consider saying "no" to any project that didn't fit me perfectly.
Mortgage Marketing - What Your Client Wants
Your business depends on the success
of your marketing efforts. If your
marketing works, you'll get rich. If it
doesn't you'll go broke. It's simple.
Profitable Marketing Programs (Part 1)
Deciding whether a particular marketing program is profitable to your business is often more subjective than the accountants would have you believe. You should not only consider the direct revenue and costs associated with a marketing program, but you should also think about the long term impact on your business.
Strategic Internet Marketing
I met Sue at a recent networking event. She is an author and speaker, and promotes her products by speaking at events and selling her products after the talks. Sue has a web site, whose primary purpose is to sell her products and make more people aware of her expertise. She isn't happy with the web site, though. "I have a great product, but I only had 2 sales in the last twelve months from the site. On the other hand, I can't keep enough inventory on hand for event sales! Something isn't right." So the coach in me had to ask a few questions and offer suggestions. "Tell me," I said, "how do you market your web site?" "Market?" she said. "I don't do much marketing. I have a great product, I am an accomplished author and well-known expert. People should be able to find me and buy from my web site."
Importance of Endorsements And How To Use Them
Customer endorsements are an inexpensive and easy sales tool, particularly for someone just starting out.
How to Write a Fundraising Thank-you Letter for Example (Includes a Free Sample)
Thank-you letters are one of the most important letters that your non-profit mails to donors. They remind donors that they made the right decision in supporting your organization. They show that you are grateful for the donors gift. As a bonus, thank-you letters increase donor loyalty, strengthen relationships with your donors and increase your chances of receiving more gifts in the future. So here are some pointers for writing effective thank-you letters.
Five New 5 Ps!
NO! When I say "5 P's", I'm not talking about the big 5 P's of marketing everyone's familiar with.
Dramatically Improve Your Marketing Results With These 6 Simple Steps
What if there were things you could start doing now that could help you to market more successfully in the future? Even if you didn't have your marketing act together over the past year. Well, there are.
Optimizing Your Email Marketing
Email Campaigns
Non-Aggressive Marketing Ideas for Enterpreneurs
Do you cringe at the thought of trying to promote your business ? Does it feel like "selling yourself" or
egotism? Many individuals are not comfortable with marketing dimension of running a business.
How To Go From Under Dog to Top Dog by Unleashing The Power Of a Postcard
The Tale of Two Dentists...
Misrepresentation - Through Silence!
We're back to the subject of ethics, more specifically, business ethics.
Marketing Apathy Solutions: 10 Solutions for Overcoming Apathy Beginning Today
Are you suffering from feelings of indifference or a lack of concern when it comes to marketing your business? Do you lack the passion that's necessary to attract customers to your business?
Promotional Pen - A Pen by any other Name?
Have you ever been among a group of people exchanging contact details? Notice the scramble for that good old-fashioned instrument, the pen. See the woman upturn her purse searching for one and the impatient expressions on the faces of the people with her. Watch their eyes light up when she finally finds it. The relief is palpable; information can now be taken down for use at a later stage. The pen makes it possible. In a second the tenuous relationship between man and pen is revitalized.
Boost Your Direct Mail Response Rates with Mapping Technology
On Superbowl Sunday, Domino's Pizza delivered more than 900,000 pizzas-and mapping technology helped. How do 60,000 pizza outlets serving 3 billion pizzas per year compete in an industry where reputations and dollars are dependent on "fast, hot and delivered to the door?" Global Positioning System (GPS) technology!
Ten Easy Marketing Tasks You Can Do NOW
Who says scientists can't market? Here are 10 easy marketing ideas that a group of folks at the National Institute of Standards and Technology came up with today during our monthly Marketing Action Group:
|
