Marketing

Your Home Based Business and Marketing Basics
by Lana Hampton

To succeed, you must attract and retain a growing base of satisfied customers. Marketing programs, though widely varied, are all aimed at convincing people to try out or keep using particular products or services. Home based business owners should carefully plan their marketing strategies and performance to keep their market presence strong.

What is Marketing?

Marketing is based on the importance of customers to a business and has two important principles:

1. All company policies and activities should be directed toward satisfying customer needs.
2. Profitable sales volume is more important than maximum sales volume.

To best use these principles, a small business should:

. Determine the needs of their customers through market research
. Analyze their competitive advantages to develop a market strategy
. Select specific markets to serve by target marketing
. Determine how to satisfy customer needs by identifying a market mix

Market Research

Successful marketing requires timely and relevant market information. An inexpensive research program, based on questionnaires given to current or prospective customers, can often uncover dissatisfaction or possible new products or services.

Market research will also identify trends that affect sales and profitability. Population shifts, legal developments, and the local economic situation should be monitored to quickly identify problems and opportunities. It is also important to keep up with competitors' market strategies.

Marketing Strategy

A marketing strategy identifies customer groups which a particular home based business can better serve than its target competitors, and tailors product offerings, prices, distribution, promotional efforts, and services toward those market segments. Ideally, the strategy should address unmet customer needs that offer adequate potential profitability. A good strategy helps a home business focus on the target markets it can serve best.

Target Marketing

Owners of home based businesses usually have limited resources to spend on marketing. Concentrating their efforts on one or a few key market segments - target marketing - gets the most return from small investments. There are two methods used to segment a market:

1. Geographical segmentation - Specializing in serving the needs of customers in a particular geographical area. For example, a neighborhood convenience store may send advertisements only to people living within one-half mile of the store.
2. Customer segmentation - Identifying those people most likely to buy the product or service and targeting those groups.

Managing the Market Mix

Every marketing program contains four key components:

. Products and Services
. Promotion
. Distribution
. Pricing

These are combined into an overall marketing program.

Products and Services - Product strategies may include concentrating on a narrow product line, developing a highly specialized product or service, or providing a product-service package containing unusually high-quality service.

Promotion - Promotion strategies include advertising and direct customer interaction. Good salesmanship is essential for home based businesses because of their limited ability to spend on advertising. Good telephone book advertising is also important. Internet marketing is an effective, low-cost medium available to home based businesses.

Price - The right price is crucial for maximizing total revenue. Generally, higher prices mean lower volume and vice-versa; however, home businesses can often command higher prices because of their personalized service.

Distribution - This is the area that internet home businesses can shine. Most folks new to the Internet distribute digital products or they find products that can be shipped from the manufacturer or wholesaler and sent directly to the consumer. There's no need to stock inventory (usually one of the most expensive start up costs).

Marketing Performance

After implementing a marketing program, home based business owners must evaluate its performance. Every program should have performance standards to compare with actual results. Researching industry norms and past performance will help to develop appropriate standards.

Entrepreneurs should audit their business's performance at least quarterly. The key questions are:

1. Are you doing all you can to be customer-oriented?
2. Do you ensure your customers are satisfied and leave your website wanting to come back?
3. Is it easy for your customer to find what he or she wants at a competitive price?

In a nutshell, marketing basics can be the difference between a successful and unsuccessful home based business. Remember, to expand your home business you need to learn how to operate a business effectively. A strong marketing plan is the first step to ensuring a successful home based business.

=======================================================
Lana Hampton is the CEO of Internet-Marketing-Wealth.com and publisher
of Insider Secrets of Internet Marketing Wealth newsletter. Her
internet marketing website is designed to help other people
achieve their goal of having their own internet home based business.
http://www.internet-marketing-wealth.com
=======================================================
 

10 Amazing Ways to Jump Start Your Home Business Sales by Lana Hampton 1. Find a strategic business partner. Look for ones that have the same objective. You can trade leads, share marketing info, sell package deals, etc. 2. Brand your name and business. You can easily do this by just writing articles and submitting them to e-zines or web sites for republishing. 3. Start an auction on your web site. The type of auction could be related to the theme of your site. You'll draw traffic from auctioneers and bidders. 4. Remember to take a little time out of your day or week to brainstorm. New ideas are usually the difference between success and failure. 5. Model other successful business or people. I'm not saying out right copy them, but practice some of the same habits that have made them succeed. 6. Take risks to improve your business. Sometimes businesses don't want to advertise unless it's free, sometimes you have to spend money to get results. 7. Include emotional words in your advertisements. Use ones like love, security, relief, freedom, happy, satisfaction, fun, etc. 8. Ask people online to review your web site. You can use the comments you get to improve your web site or you may turn the reviewer into a customer. 9. Out source part of your workload. You'll save on most employee costs. You could out source your secretarial work, accounting, marketing, etc. 10. Combine a product and service together in a package deal. It could increase your sales. If you're selling a book, offer an hour of consulting with it. ====================================================== Lana Hampton is the CEO of Internet-Marketing-Wealth.com and publisher of Insider Secrets of Internet Marketing Wealth newsletter. Her internet marketing website is designed to help other people achieve their goal of having their own internet home based business. http://www.internet-marketing-wealth.com

1. Give people a free subscription to your e-zine. Almost everyone is publishing an e-zine nowadays, so it's important to give something extra with the free subscription. You could offer a free gift or advertising when people subscribe.

2. Provide your visitors with free content. Your content will be more attractive to your visitors if it's up-to-date or original. You could also offer people the option to reprint the content in their e-zine or web site.

3. Offer a free online directory. The directory could be full of interesting ebooks, e-zines, web sites, etc. If people find your directory to be a valuable resource they will visit it over and over.

4. Give your visitors a free ebook. You could also include your own ad in the ebook and allow other people to give it away. If you don't want to take the time to write one, you could ask other writers for permission to use their articles.

5. Hold free online classes or seminars. They could be held in your web site's chat room. The idea of "live" information will definitely entice people to visit your web site. You will become known as an expert on the topic.

6. Give visitors a free entry into your contest or sweepstakes. The prizes should be something of interest or value to your visitors. Most people who enter will continually revisit your web site to get the results.

7. Let visitors download free software. It could be freeware, shareware, demos, etc. You could even turn part of your site into a free software directory. If you created the software, include your ad inside and let other people give it away.

8. Offer free online services or utilities from your web site. They could be search engine submitting, copy writing, proofreading etc. The service or utility should be helpful to your target audience.

9. Give free consulting to people who visit your web site. You could offer your knowledge via e-mail or by telephone. People will consider this a huge value because consulting fees can be very expensive.

10. Give your visitors a free membership to your online club. People want to belong to something, why not your online club. You could also give away a free e-zine for club members only. 

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