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Are You Satisfying Your Customers?
The latest report from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (Michigan School of Business) reports the following: Customer dissatisfaction with the quality goods and services offered in the marketplace is more than a nuisance. The US economy is...
Getting More From Your Customer
We are all customers of one product or another. How is it we always seem to buy or shop from the same place? What is it that these businesses do to keep us coming back and buying from them? A large portion of the selection process that a customer...
How to give your customers a choice between you and the competition and have them choose you.
Instead of giving your customers or potential customers a choice between you and your competition and having them choose the other guy, have them choose you.
Michelle Dunn’s new book” Become the Squeaky Wheel,” says creating a credit policy...
How To Realistically Set Your Fees - Part 4
Effect Of Bad Debts
So far, we have covered the major factors involved in setting your fee structure. We have set a realistic number of billable hours, calculated the effect of expenses and taken into account the cost of a benefit package.
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Improving Customer Service
Improving customer service starts at the top - with us owners and managers. We need to be living pictures of how we want our staff to treat customers. Having 10 plus years operating, owning and working in the food business and being a...
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First Steps to Picking the Perfect Marketing Method For Your Home-Based Business
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.
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