First Steps
to Picking the Perfect Marketing Method
By: Vishal P. Rao
Part of running a successful business is
making it grow. Home-based businesses are no
exception. In fact, it can be even more
important if you are just starting out or
lack a potential client base. The key to
growing a business is marketing.
Marketing is how you connect with
individuals who may become customers or
clients and includes methods such as
affiliate programs, newsletters, trade
shows, web sites, brochures, advertising,
and more. The potential marketing methods
available are almost limitless in scope and
deciding on an approach may seem daunting,
but a little preliminary effort can help you
narrow down the field of options and help
you make the best choices for your business.
Determine Targeted Audience
No matter what marketing method you choose,
you first need to decide to whom you plan to
market. Mass marketing to a general audience
simply is not cost-effective for most
businesses so you must decide early on which
segments of society are most likely to
purchase your products or services. Begin by
asking yourself some simply questions:
* What needs does my product/service
fulfill? * Will businesses or consumers be
more likely to need what I offer? * Who are
the clients I already have? * Who does my
competition market to?
With the answers to these questions, you can
begin to decide on your targeted audience.
However, you can refine it further by
contacting sample populations of that
audience and getting feedback from them on
whether or not they would be interested in
your product/service. You can use surveys,
chat rooms, email questionnaires, or
telephone polls to generate that feedback.
Set a Budget
Many inexperienced business owners make a
major mistake when they begin their
marketing efforts: they do not set a budget.
Without a budget, these business owners can
easily find all of their profits being
funneled into marketing efforts.
Before you make a decision about what types
of marketing methods to choose, you need to
first establish how much you can spend in
order to receive the desired results. Most
businesses use the 10% rule. According to
this rule, if you decided to implement a
marketing program that would generate $5000
in monthly sales, then you should spend only
$500 a month on marketing.
Applying the 10% rule prevents businesses
from spending more on the marketing efforts
than is generated by those efforts. You must
also remember to be realistic. If you
currently generate $200 a week in sales, do
not anticipate marketing results of $10,000
a month and use that number as the basis for
your marketing budget. Instead, start small
at first and build on successful marketing
attempts.
Evaluate Marketing Methods
There are a wide array of marketing methods
available, but not all of them are
appropriate for every business, audience, or
product/service. Before deciding on a
method, you need to carefully evaluate what
will work best for your situation.
For example, if you run an online business,
you may want to focus most of your marketing
efforts on the Internet medium instead of
mailing brochures to people who may not even
own computers.
Also take into account your audience. If you
are marketing to businesses, your methods
will be different than if you are marketing
to consumers. If you sell to parents, your
methods are different than if you sell to
college students. You may even need to
develop more than one method in order to
meet the needs of all of your potential
audiences.
Finally, remember your budget. A television
commercial may be more effective than an ad
in the yellow pages but it may also use your
entire marketing budget. To make the most of
your budget, you want to start small and
test your efforts before plunging into a
major investment. After all, if the
commercial flops, you won't have anything
left in your budget for alternative
marketing.
Once you complete these preliminary efforts,
you can begin to explore marketing methods
more effectively which will allow you to
pick the methods which should provide the
best results for your particular business.
Vishal P. Rao is the owner of
http://www.home-based-business-opportunities.com
- One of Internet's leading website
dedicated to starting, managing and marketing a
home based business
