Why Marketing and Advertising are Key to Home-Based Business Success
Marketing and advertising are key to home-based business success. Leverage your time, effort, and resources in these areas to enhance the marketing of your home-based business. At this point, you should be able to answer a few questions that will help guide you on the path of success.
1. When do you plan to market your business?
Marketing dollars are not always the best investment, especially if you are a new home business owner. If the market is saturated and there is little or no room for your products or services in the marketplace, then marketing should be used sparingly.
However, if you are wise to this fact, allocate money to advertising and marketing early on after establishing your home-based business. When you have established a serviceable product or product line and have a solid client base, then begin marketing aggressively.
2. How will you reach customers? (List three ways)
Purchasing advertising space in popular print outlets will bring customers to your doorstep. However, this is not the most cost-effective way of reaching customers. One low-cost marketing avenue is to purchase advertisement space in your local Telephone and Yellow Pages-type directories. This can be a highly effective form of advertising because it places your business and product information in front of your target audience on a daily basis.
You can also market your products or services by placing informative brochures in corporate offices, hotels, hospitals, schools, and community centers. You will be surprised how the public will come knocking on your door once they have been touched by one of these brochures when they least expect it. By placing brochures in these places, you will have a captive audience. People that read the brochures will probably need what you are selling.
3. What do your customers want?
Customers will buy based on perception; after all, no one buys products or services that they don't need. However, from the customer's point of view, they don't really need your product or service; they just perceive they do. So how do you create this perception of a need? They answer is marketing!
It is not enough to just develop a product or service and expect others to understand why what you do is valuable to them. You must be able to sell your product or service by marketing it. The way you do this is by creating a profile of your target customers in much the same way as you would enlarge a photo of a person's face.
Take several pictures of your product or service and make a composite of what might work for your customers. Then, give these photos to potential buyers and ask them what they think about the product or service, and how it might help them. This simple exercise will expose people to your business without selling them on the idea that they need something that they don't need. And when they buy it, their perception will begin to change!
4. How will you get the word out about your business to people within your target market?
A wide variety of strategies can be employed to publicize your business. One of the best ways to get the word out is to establish a mailing list. To do this, make a list of everyone in your community that you think might be interested in your product or service. Find out where they shop, where they work, and who their friends are. Then fill out a mailing form that gives them an opportunity to purchase something from you directly. Mailing lists can be purchased for as little as $50/year!
You can also embrace the Internet! Just search online for "free" advertising material (like banner ads). The basic idea is to produce a Web page that promotes your home-based business and links to the home page of your website.
Another way to publicize your business is through the publication of articles in newspapers, magazines, and other types of publications that cater to people in your industry. Be sure your article is well written and clearly communicates how you benefit from the product or service you sell. Keep it short! The main idea should be "What are the benefits?"
5. How will you advertise for free?
At this point, you have already done all of the above. Now, how can you publicize your product or service in a cost-effective way? The most common form of free advertising is to place classified ads in local newspapers. You can also make use of radio and television stations. However, the most effective way to advertise for free is through mail solicitations. Keep in mind that you do not have to spend money on ink or paper to print these letters. Mail each one directly from your computer with simple letters and pictures!
An article from: http://www.insideebiz.com/articles/1241/free_advertising . Copied from: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/20/business/20advertising.html
Marketing and Advertisement Services for Startups or Small Businesses
In today's economy, it is difficult for any business to be successful without a plan on how they will get customers or their product to them. People are looking for products that are well made, inexpensive to use and well priced. This has made companies in this area very successful. There have been many other areas of business that have failed because they didn't think outside the box. Communications is an important part of the success of these companies.
The first thing that these companies have to do is decide on what they want to accomplish by marketing and advertising. A good way to figure this out is to take a close look at the product or service that they provide. If you plan on advertising yourself, have people see the product or service when it is not in use, you will definitely increase your chances of success. Take note of what people think about a product when they don't see it being used.
When promoting your business, you must come up with an effective plan to get the message out there for people to understand why they should purchase your products or services. There are many ways of doing this, but all of them rely on one thing – marketing and advertisement.
Conclusion:
You must think outside the box to be successful. You have to be able to come up with a plan to reach the customers so that you will have a higher chance of them purchasing your product or service. Once you have this figured out, you can put it in motion and make it work for your business.
Some Tips For New Entrepreneurs:
The first thing that you must do is make sure that you are prepared for the challenges ahead of you. You want to design your own business in a way that will allow people to see and understand why they should purchase your product or service over someone else's.