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Six-Week Start-Up: A Step-

The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything

Small Business Start-up Guide: A Surefire Blueprint to Successfully Launch Your Own Business

The Small Business Start-up Kit (Law for All Series)

Legal Forms for Starting and Running a Small Business

Previous:
How to Get Your Business Off the Ground

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How to Manage Your Business’s Money

How to Market Your Business

Everything you do to alert potential customers to your company and its products and services is called marketing.

Create a Marketing Plan

A marketing plan is like a business plan, but it deals only with how you’ll market your business to customers. It contains your marketing goals for the next 12 months, a marketing budget, and a plan for allocating the budget. You’ll want to include your:

Objective: In one or two sentences, explain the goal of your marketing plan. Do you want to hit $1 million in sales during your first year in business? Do you want everyone in town to know about your company?
Situation analysis: Give a brief overview of existing marketing campaigns in your business sector.
Market segmentation: Offer an explanation of the types of customers you expect to have, such as teens or pet owners.
Strategy: Give an explanation of the general approach you intend to take toward marketing your business. Do you intend to position yourself as the expert in your field? Do you want to be seen as the “cheap chic” place to shop?
Methods: List the specific methods you can use to achieve your marketing objectives, such as publicity and advertising.
Budget: Give a breakdown of how much you intend to spend on each of your marketing methods.

Marketing Methods

The following table explains the most common methods new businesses use to market products and services.

Method	Description	Relative Cost
Publicity	Providing information to print, broadcast, and online media outlets, often via a press release	One of the most effective, lowest-cost marketing methods
Advertising	Paying to place an ad somewhere, such as a billboard, newspaper, or bus	Most costly method but sometimes most economical, depending on the number of customers it reaches
Sales promos	Generating special offers and deals designed to boost sales	Relatively low-cost, especially when the right offer is made and sales jump
Tele- marketing	Calling customers to encourage them to buy from you	Moderately expensive, since professionals can often generate better results; more effective with existing customers than new ones
Online	Making contact with customers via the internet	Moderately expensive, especially to design and create a website, but virtually required today
Networking	Making a concerted effort to meet potential customers and others who can refer you to them	Low-cost, but time-consuming
Direct mail	Mailing promotional material to your target audience	Somewhat expensive but can generate sales effectively, especially to a niche or well-targeted audience