Successfully Marketing your Small and Home Businesses
The success of a new small business entails promoting the need, desire, and availability of a product or service. This requires a very strong marketing strategy. Planned marketing is one of the most vital elements of any business. The extra time and effort you put into your marketing plan will make a significant improvement in the success of your business.
Understanding marketing
Marketing does not just refer to selling. Marketing involves everything related to your product, your service, your business and you, as a business owner. Marketing has more to do with preparing for sales than the selling itself. This includes naming products and services in an appealing and customer-luring manner; it means deciding on a target audience and geographical location; it deals with advertising, promotions, and even certain business practices. Marketing is all about representing your business in the most desirable light, making potential customers look up and take notice. Marketing requires planning, organization, and footwork to provide your business with an appealing image. Marketing can make or break the success of your business.
Marketing goals for the success of small home businesses involve:
Analyzing the market
Targeting the prospects
Determining the needs of the customers
Fulfilling customer needs with a unique competitive edge
Analyzing the market
You have a great idea for a product or service. Before committing yourself, do plenty of research to determine if there is a need, and more importantly, a profit in your service. Are there already too many businesses that provide your type of service? If so, perhaps they are lacking an important quality.
Question customers of similar services to see what they would change if they had the choice. Observe the latest buying trends, the current economy, and competitor activity. Is one of your potential competitors opening a new division for a specialized market? That market could be your business’s main focus.
Targeting the Prospects
Whom will you serve? Your instinctive answer might be “anyone.” But in order to be successful in your business, you will need to have a marketing target, those who make up the bulk of your customers and will produce the largest volume of profitable sales.
First, decide whether you will cater to large corporations, small businesses, or individual home business owners. Who would benefit most from your services?
Next, determine where these customers are located. Geographical location is important. You do not always have to set up your business right next to your customers. But you will want to target a location with customers who have the biggest need for your service. If your target is in another country, keep in mind that delivery may be slow, and government policies of that country might cause delays. If your customers are local, consider having a personal delivery service on hand.
When you determine where your customers are, your advertising strategies can integrate geographical needs as well as business needs. Your customers will know that you are there for them and are not just another impersonal business trying to suck out all of their money.
Location and business size are not the only features to consider when targeting a market. You also have to know what kind of businesses you will serve. Will you cater to publishing companies? Factories? Finance firms?
Knowing who your potential customers are will make your advertising campaign more focused and successful. You can develop policies and procedures specific to your customers’ profiles. You can research their businesses so you will have a better understanding of their needs.
Determining the needs of your customers
Now that you know who your customers are and have a general idea of where they are located, it is time to find out what they want. You already know that they want everything the competitor offers. But maybe they want a better version of it. They might want lower prices, a more convenient location, or a better selection.
Whatever it is that is missing from the current market should be added to your business promise, as long as it is something that you can deliver. Do not guarantee something that is dependent upon another business (i.e. lifetime replacements of name brand ink) or the changing economy. Choose a specialty that will not hurt your business in the long run. Understand that there may be a reason that your competitors do not offer certain services. Find out what that reason is before you take on something that will come back to hurt you later.
Fulfilling customer needs with a unique competitive edge
A unique competitive edge (UCE) is that extra quality or feature your business offers that cannot be found anywhere else. Your UCE may be as simple as the “lowest prices in town” or something more unique like “we come to you” auto repair.
Once you decide on a UCE, you must stick with it. It is your main objective, the one that brings customers in and keeps them coming back. It is what customers count on when they come to you. Therefore, it must not only be embedded into the customers’ minds, but your employees as well. Your sales staff and customer service team must fully understand and support your business’s UCE when interacting with customers. Otherwise, your UCE is nothing more than advertising hype.
Remember, nearly anyone can start a new business. But not everyone can succeed. The key to the success of your business is to have a well thought-out marketing plan and to follow that plan with a determination to reach every goal you set out to accomplish.
by Cheryl Frost