While you are setting up a new business, chances are you have a great business idea, products or services that you know that it will make money. However, having a good product does not mean that you will be able to sell it like crazy without doing any thing. Peter Durker once said: Business enterprise has two, and only two functions: Innovation and marketing. Innovation and marketing produce result, other things are cost. In other words, having a good product is just a half of the game. To win the whole game, you need another half: marketing.
Things to consider before doing any marketing
There are various ways to market your business. However, even if you have the world most advance, useful and effective marketing strategy, if you do not have a good product or service that people want to buy, those strategy are useless. Here the key is: good product that people want to buy. It means that your product and services should be in demand by somebody. If no one is willing to pay for your product, even the best product in the world does not make you any money.
So what is the product that people want to buy? Answer: ask! If you have already had a business, you can send them a simply survey and ask why they buy from you. What the unique things that make customer want to buy from you? If you do not have a business but want to create one, you should create a product or service that solves other people’s problem.
We all know that people embrace love and happiness and stay away from pain and suffering. If you need a product or service, address those pain and create a product that solve those problem. If you find the pain that a lot of people are trying to solve, you are pretty sure that you have a good number of buyers.
How to market a small business?
When you have a good product in place, now you need to let other people know about it, which is an area of marketing. Unlike the old days when technology is not everywhere, today you can market your business through Internet to get start. To test if your business idea can make money or not, first try PPC (Pay-Per-Click), facebook ads and banner ads to drive traffic to your sales page and see if there is any conversion. If you prefer the old way, you can always buy mailing list from listing company and do direct mail or buy yellow page ads to test your offer.
The main objective here is to “soft launch”/”test” your offer and see how the market response. And in this stage you also need to collect visitors information like name and email address to do follow up. Not all visitors will buy from you from the first time they visit your website. So you need to give your visitor something in exchange of their name and email to do follow up with them.
The next step is simply asked what they really want by sending them a survey to collect their opinion. Those are real valuable information for you to fine-tune your offer in order to match the needs of your prospects. Then you simply give them what they want!
I hope this guide can give you some ideas on how to market a small business.