How to market your new business

A marketing plan is a strategy to increase sales within a fixed period of time

 

Marketing Plan

Questions raised by your plan should cover

• What geographical area will your business cover?
• Why will there be a demand for your business?
• Who are you going to sell to?
• How will you advertise your business?
• Who are your competitors?
• How are your competitors selling?
• Why is your product/Service better than your competitors?

 

Your new product or service in the majority of cases in the world is not unique. There are probably a lot of competitors offering a similar service or product but yours should be unique in some aspect, location, quality or price. This is what’s called your ‘Unique selling point’, why your product or service is better than someone else’s.

Having competitors is not always a bad thing it can provide you the opportunity to have a look their websites for content and style, what their charges are and what additional services they offer.

Market Research

The best market research tool is your home computer. Google for a similar service or product to yours and see what is available. Notice while you type ‘Google predictive search’ offers you alternative words. i.e. If you start to type Plumber, it might suggest plumber Dublin. These ‘Key word’ suggestions you will need when creating your own website. At the bottom of the page Google offers suggestions of similar search alternatives. These are all very important as a search engine like Google is probably the first point that your customers will use to find out about your business. The more ‘key words’ you have to describe your business, the easier it will be for your customers to find you.

When your building your website ‘Google keyword planner’ will help you build a list of what people have searched for and ‘Google trends’ will show what is popular and where its popular.

Facebook for business is an incredible source for information on the local or world markets. Like it or hate it Facebook has 2.25 million users in Ireland that is 48.7% of the population, so what’s popular on Facebook is likely to represent what’s popular in general.

Customer profile

Draw up a profile of the type of customer you are pitching your business to. This makes it easier to phrase, whether it’s to the older generation or younger generation we naturally talk to them in a different manner. Your pitch in no way excludes the other groups. You need to Capture the imagination of your customer. Once you decide on your customer type, you need to research what are their current trends so you can deliver your pitch in a way that sounds appropriate to them. You need to delve into their world by visiting the websites, blogs and forums that are popular for your market group. Then you will get a feel for the way you can pitch.

The elevator pitch

Given the opportunity to sell your product or service to an investor in the time it takes an elevator to reach its floor (30 seconds to 2 minutes), How will you pitch your business? Remember all your customer hears is “What’s in it for me?” So load your description with benefits, benefits and more benefits.

Trial trading  ‘Dip a toe in the water’

Sometimes trying to sell your product or service is the easiest way to see if there will be a demand for it. Get a stall at the local market and see if you get any sales. Ask people what do they think of your product and what would the product need for them to purchase it. If the product is food based there are many farmers markets at the weekends to try. If your product sells well why not try eBay and sell it to the world?

Customer feedback

Feedback is vitally important for each marketing campaign that you start, this serves as a measure of how successful it was. This can come in the form of questionnaires with offers of discounts. You need to phase the questions in manner that capture the information you want.