By Vishal P. Rao
What is the difference between a small
business that makes it and one that does not?
Most likely, the one that was successful engaged
in some effective marketing. Wise marketing is
critical for owners of home-based businesses for
a number of reasons:
1. Marketing keeps you ahead of the
competition
2. Marketing brings you a steady
stream of revenue
3. Marketing provides leads
for future sales
4. Marketing helps increase
awareness about your business
Marketing is not something you just jump
into, however. It requires careful examination
and evaluation. Not every method, after all,
will lead to the benefits mentioned above.
When it comes to selecting the methods you
use with your business, remember to keep in mind
your target audience and your budget, then start
narrowing the list of possibilities. You may
also want to try a few of these marketing
methods which have been proven effective for
other home-based businesses:
Affiliate Programs
Almost all home-based businesses can work
with an affiliate program. With this type of
program, you recruit other people to sell your
products/services and reward them with a
percentage of the revenue (usually 3 to
10%).
The mechanics of these programs works like a
restaurant franchise. Because your recruits are
now associated with your company's name, you
want to be sure that they are maintaining your
standards of quality and professionalism, so
many affiliate programs include ready-made web
sites, sales materials, and more.
These recruits then attempt to make sales on
your behalf. The benefit is that all of their
marketing efforts (beyond what you provide) are
not part of your business's expenses, and they
have the potential to reach new segments of
potential clients and customers.
Giveaways
This type of marketing is one of the most
popular with all businesses and can be handled
in at least two ways: free gifts with a purchase
and/or contests.
You have probably come across ads or web
sites that sell e-books or other products and
offer a number of free gifts with the purchase
of the product. The lure of freebies helps
people make the decision to purchase. You can do
the same thing with your product or service.
Keep in mind that whatever you offer as a free
gift should be inexpensive to produce so that
you don't lose money on the deal.
Contests can also be quite effective if done
creatively. For example, if your business was
selling e-books, you could hold a contest with
the grand prize being a free copy of one of your
top-selling e-books.
But what about second place? Many people
don't realize that there's no rule or law
against giving a prize to every person who
enters your contest so why not reward all of the
other people who entered with a significant
discount on the price of that same e-book? Many
of those second place winners will take the
discount and make a purchase.
Search Engine Optimization
If you do any business online, an important
part of your marketing efforts should be search
engine optimization or SEO. SEO essentially
means that you tweak your site so that it
appears near the top of search engine results
for certain keywords.
Generally this involves repeating those
keywords frequently and placing keywords in
headlines, meta tags, and introductory
paragraphs. While it may sound easy, most
businesses turn their SEO efforts over to
professionals. If bringing an expert in fits
your marketing budget, you may want to enlist
their assistance.
Referral Reward Programs
Another type of program aimed at bringing
people to your site is a type of referral reward
program. During the Internet boom, many sites
had these type of programs which paid a few
cents for each person who visited a site from a
link listed at your site or through some other
means.
Now, however, they simply are not as popular,
but they can still be beneficial. Instead of
offering a cash reward, allow your customers to
earn your products/services by referring new
business to you.
For example, you may want to offer a free
e-book to customers who refer five new customers
to your site. These new customers may have to
make a purchase, join the referral reward
program, become a member, or sign up for the
newsletter. People will do a great deal if the
reward is right.
Whether you elect to use one of these
marketing methods or choose one of your own, the
key is to test its effectiveness. Try it out for
awhile and see if the results are satisfactory.
If not, return to the drawing board. If so, then
implement it on a larger scale. With careful
planning and testing, your business will
experience the benefits of marketing firsthand.
