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Keep Costs Down and Keep the Marketing Strategy Simple
It May Be Best To Spend Less on Marketing When StartingYour Home Based BusinessOne of the biggest mistakes we could make as home businessowners is spending too much money on marketing our service orproduct without knowing how to market it correctly. I’ve seenplenty of money wasted on marketing that did not produce anysales and most home based business don’t have too much money towaste when ramping up. Failed efforts can make businesses runout of money too quick and eventually...
... close shop. The reason forthis is there is a learning curve with marketing your product. Product knowledge must increase to a point where you know whoyou must sell that product to and how to sell it. In my opinionyou have two choices when it comes to marketing: 1. Hire a marketing firm that can advertise your product for afee or…. 2. Take the time to learn about your product and trydifferent marketing methods without spending all of your money. If you are on a tight budget then Option 2 may be the choice tomake. One lesson I learned when trying to sell my product is actuallytelling the customer you have what they are looking for in anad. I realized this when I started marketing my product on theinternet. I never knew keywords meant so many different thingsto so many different people and I really had to put my moneymanagement skills to work for me so I can live to market anotherday and get closer to my target market.In my perfect world a prospect would become a buyer in thefollowing manner:1.Prospect sees your ad and visits your web site wanting moreinformation. 2.Prospect loves what you are saying and is readyto buy. 3.Prospect purchases your product becomes a customer.In order for a prospective buyer to visit your web site to startthe sales process, the shopper must react positively (meaninghave interest) to your advertisement. The bottom line is: Yourad must be good enough to attract many prospects because you arepaying hard earned money to have that ad presented to the world.So how do you know if your ad is good enough? In my opinion it’strial and error. You need to run different types of ads showingdifferent combinations of features and benefits of your productand choose the best producers. Then you must track that ad andsee if they are converting into sales. Taking the approach of creating a smaller advertising budget andtry 2 or 3 different advertising methods I found works well whenmarketing on a shoe string budget. You’ll have less pressure onyourself to determine which ad worked best for your business touse again. It takes time to create a meaningful ad to attractmany shoppers to visit your site. You will need to budgetaccordingly to sustain business until you have the rightcombination of ad’s convert to enough sales for you to use thesame method again. An approach like this could allow you tosustain your business. The approach works great when advertisingwith Pay-Per-Click (PPC) sites because you have the option toset your budget in some capacity and some PPC firms have thetechnology to help you track the ads. One thing I learned is that working hard and smart is requiredmake money on your own and profitability doesn’t happen overnight. Also, it takes a well funded business to sustain it.Marketing is the only way to get your name out there and sellyour product. If you are wearing many hats with your home basedbusiness it may be best to keep it simple and most of all don’tover spend. Failure with small amount of money can providesuccess if you keep learning and trying new marketing methods.
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