Start-Up Marketing Strategies

Having completed all the phases of your feasibility analysis, you are now ready to move into the next part of getting your business off of the ground. You have done all of the leg work to develop a sound plan and have asked yourself the hard questions about how much you are willing to give to this endeavor. The only thing that remains now is to open the door and start providing your goods and services. It's time to begin.

Though the mediums of marketing have been covered elsewhere, creating an effective marketing and/or advertising campaign requires that you understand the factors of marketing. With those factors in mind, creating a campaign becomes more than possible.

The first and probably most important factor is your start-up customers. You want to know who your customers are (also known as demographics) and what they want, in the most objective terms you can manage. What your customers want is especially important to know but also difficult to accurately gauge. Surveys and focus groups can help, but even these can be uncertain. Some things to discover about your customers include whether they're willing to pay more for higher quality or quantity, what products they'd like to see you carry, how much money they're willing to spend on your products, how often they want your products or services, and what motivates them do business with you over those of your competitors.

The second factor is your competitors. While becoming obsessed with the slightest details of your competitors only makes you neglect your own business, you do want to keep track of what your competitors are trying, especially in areas where your business overlaps with theirs. You want to focus first on your own business and customers, checking in on your competition only occasionally. When you do look in on competitors, you'll want to focus on what they do in comparison to you and know what makes them both better than your own business and what they do worse than you. Both can provide you with a useful competitive edge.

The third factor is pricing, which is more or less how much your products and/or services are going to cost consumers. With this factor, you can't do enough research on what the industry standard is. You'll want to understand pricing so you'll know what you should charge for your business. However, pricing isn't the most important factor in your products. The range of your product line and the value of your products (ie; what your customers get for the money they spend) are crucial. Playing the game of lowering your prices below your competitors will only lead to disaster, especially if you try to lower your prices through coupons and discounts. If you discount too much, eventually you'll make your customers adverse to paying full price.

Publicity is the fourth factor, and this refers to advertising. Whatever advertising you do pay for, try to make sure there's a way to track the number of people who see your promotions. Similarly, the fifth factor of place is where and how you sell your product. Here, research will also be important. Knowing where and how to sell you products effectively will require some trial-and-error style research, as well as gathering ordinary studying and background information.

No matter how small or simple, any advertising that you do will help you get your business off the ground. People need to know that you are there. Make sure that you put your name out in places where it will be seen by potential customers. As long as your advertising is relevant, it should prove to be worth every penny.