However skilled you are at the work you plan to do from home, your primary consideration in setting up your new business, must be to establish your market. Quite simply, that means finding your customers. In any business, whether you are a plumber, consultant or counsellor, you need customers to succeed. Tracking customers down — and holding on to them — is one of the most difficult challenges for any new business. If it is remotely possible, it is best not to leave your current job, if you have one, before you have at least one or two leads.
`I started off with several clients,’ says Joel Brizman, management and computer consultant. ‘I think it must be very hard to start up without that because if you have clients they tend to refer you to others.’ However, your customers need not necessarily be current ones. Perhaps you made cakes for a hobby and are now turning it into a business. If so, contact friends who had previously bought your cakes, and ask them if they’d like any more — or know anyone who would.
MARKETING
Finding new customers is all down to marketing. In its widest sense, this means persuading people to buy your goods or services. Advertising and public relations are also valuable tools for letting people know that your business is there and will be included in this section. Marketing can be done on a huge or tiny scale. Donating a few of your products to a local charity raffle is marketing — but so is sponsoring an entire football team. In this section we will concentrate on some of the more cost-effective methods.
How to market yourself
Many people imagine that marketing themselves is somehow immodest and what they should be marketing — if anything at all — is their product/service. However, when you are starting off you are the representative for the product or service. The most effective marketing tool at your disposal — and also the least expensive — is you. Which is why you need to devote considerable thought to the best way to let people know that you are out there, as it were. Rosemarie Ghazaros who runs a marketing consultancy is in the sort of business where her time is money, but she freely admits that she devotes considerable time to meeting contacts, attending professional seminars and generally ensuring that she is well known in her field. That’s because she recognizes that marketing yourself is invaluable.
Below I describe ten key methods of marketing yourself.
Perhaps the best marketing tool, particularly for services or specialist products, is networking — talking to the right people, at the right time, in the right places. This is the surest way to encourage the spread of that most precious asset : the word-of-mouth recommendation. ‘I’ve never advertised,’ says Susanna Cheal, a charity consultant. `All my clients have come from contacts or other clients.’ However, word-of-mouth recommendations don’t just happen. In order for people to recommend you they need to know what you are doing and that you are doing it well. It is important to network — both with other businesses and within your own trade or professional body to ensure that potential clients know you exist.
`When I set up, I went to see a lot of GPs and told them what I was doing,’ says one psychotherapist. ‘That paid dividends in that they could see the sort of work I was doing. I’d also trained as a social worker and so when I told former colleagues about my work, they also kept me in mind if someone needed psychotherapy.’
`It’s important to keep networking because you never know whether you’ll lose a client,’ says book-keeper Fiona Bradley. ‘I attend my local Chamber of Commerce, I lecture at the Business Link, so I’m always in touch with what’s going on in small businesses who are my core market.’
Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
Hit the Ground Running, Tracking customers down, Work from Home
- The mobile Internet Part 2
- Count Your Cost
- Affiliate Marketing Report: Why People buy Picture Frames they don’t need
- Another way to improve responses
- PRIVACY NIGHTMARE OR SERVICE DREAM?
- From profit to performance, Marketing Logistics
- The mobile Internet Part 1
- Work from Home Now, Starting your own business
- Business and Management Research: "Don’t Let the Creed Overshadow the Message
- From profit to performance, Marketing Logistics continue...
Posted by: arlene
Categories:
