Recap Greetings fellow entrepreneurs. The previous article has either encouraged you to move onto success or peaked your curiosity. No matter the reason, I am very pleased to see that you are continuing. As I stated in Part 1, it is very important for you to select the correct business for you. After you have selected the business, you must learn about the business itself: 1.It's services or products 2.how to use, explain, sell them 3.You need to learn who you are selling to: businesses, consumers, or both 4.How the product or service is given to the customers All of these aspects can be learned from the business information you have chosen. You must study these materials throughly especially the products/services. The more you know about the products/services the easier it will be to sell them. Marketing on the other hand, must be learned from other sources. Purpose Marketing, or advertising, will be the most challenging and expensive part of running your business. As I have mentioned in Part 1, one of my attempts failed due to my neglect of learning about marketing. You have to learn how to perform marketing procedures in order to make your business successful. You must be willing to spend some money on marketing. Marketing is the way your business will be known to the world. Marketing 101 As stated earlier, marketing is the way your business will be known to the world. Before you can sell to the world you must define the world you are selling to. For example, if your business sells guns, you would not want to sell your products to children. Hence, your marketing world consists of adults above the age of 18. Once you have defined your marketing world, you must determine how you are going to reach, contact, your marketing world. This is done in so many different ways. This is were it starts to get ugly. There are some many ways of advertising. The big questions are: 1. Were does my marketing world (m-world) get its information?
2. What is the most cost effect way to get to my m-world?
3. How much do I want to spend on marketing? These questions are very important. I recommend these questions be answered in the order they appear. After these questions have been answered, you are ready to start your marketing campaign. The article is not written to explain how to perform marketing. However, was written to get you started in the right direction. Persistence and determination Remember you started your own business. Assuming you have not bought an established business, you will spend at least 70% of your time and/or money marketing. Also remember, your business name is not yet known. Marketing is the only way you can get your business name to your m-world. This could take some time before you see any results. The results will very for each person and business. Professionals Marketing professionals are extremely eager to help a new business get started. They would also perform a very competent job. But, marketing professionals can be expensive. Free Marketing Believe it or not, there are ways for you to market your business for free. The usefulness of free marketing is determined by your business. For example, if you are starting an accounting business, marketing your business in FFA's may be a waste of time. FFA's are Free for All classifieds. Conclusion Marketing is very important to the survival and profitability to your company. You must have determination and persistence to keep your business alive for the first few months. In fact, marketing will keep your business profitable for many years to come; as long as you continue to market your business. The next issue will discuss setting up your business. Sponsored by:
T. M. Johnson - www.tmjohnson.us
C2C Mall - www.c2cmall.com copyright 2005 |
