Marketing and PR tips for your new business
Setting your business up is very exciting and, of course, very hard work but don't forget the attention to detail that you need to pay to marketing your business to potential customers so that it can grow and survive.We'll be adding lots of new resources to this area so don't forget to sign up to our newsletter so that you can keep up with any new content and ideas.
Learn how to do your own PR
Very few businesses have mega-bucks to spend on that all important marketing and PR activity. You could sign up to one of Paula Gardner's excellent PR classes at DoyourownPR, and you'll discover lots of imaginative, free and easy ways to promote your business on a shoestring. To find out more click here. You can also download experienced broadcaster and journalist Sarah Walker's excellent article on how to work successfully with the media in the directory below.
Your local Enterprise Agency may also put on free or very inexpensive courses on marketing and PR.
It's not rocket science: customers = (revenue - costs) = profit
- Many people forget the basics of marketing or try to make it more complex than it needs to be. Marketing for initial growth and longer term survival take slightly different paths so we'll be looking at them separately - although you need to be thinking about them, and doing them at the same time.
Marketing strategy made simple
- Your businesses may run on many smallish, regular transactions or just a few, more irregular higher value ones. Either way, you need to have a strategy for acquiring new customers, and a strategy for nurturing your existing customers.
- Relying on one or a very few customers is risky in more ways than one, so think about how many customers you could reasonably expect to acquire and develop over time in your sector and plan around that. If there are not enough customers or the target population is in any way unstable, how will you cast your net further or perhaps replace a group of target customers?
Mastering the 4 P's of marketing
The 4 P's of marketing, or the marketing mix for your business is key. They stand for:
- Product - i.e. what is it? How many variations of it are there? What features and benefits does it have? What is unique about it?
- Price - How much will it cost? How much can you sell it for? How many do you need to sell to make a profit?
- Promotion - How will you tell customers about it? What methods of advertising and promotion will you use?
- Place - Where will you sell it? Retail? Wholesale? On the internet? Using a direct salesforce? A mixture of several channels of distribition?
Having an effective marketing plan throughout the sales year, the life cycle of your product or your customer will enable you to become and remain successful in your field. Keeping abreast with developments in your sector and of your competitors activity will enable you to plan to survive.
| Subscribe now - keep up to date by email with the latest career news, events and new site content! |
"Energy and persistence conquer all things." Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790) |