A Marketing Plan For Your Home Business
A good marketing plan starts by looking at your overall strategy
, and the business environment you operate in. It builds on your own strengths and weaknesses to work out what your marketing strategy should be. For example, why should a customer buy from your online home business rather than another? Your marketing plan sets out clear objectives and explains how you will achieve them. Perhaps most importantly it looks at how you can ensure that your plan becomes reality.To create a marketing plan for your home business you need to determine several key parameters:
A mission statement
The mission statement clearly and succinctly describes the nature of your business, services offered, in other words, what your home business actually does.
Target markets
Who are your potential customers? Can these customers be broken down into segments? For example, by gender, age, where they live etc?
Products and services
Have you conducted any market research to understand the market and to identify the products or services your potential customers require? What products or services do you currently offer and what new services will you provide?
Marketing and promotional strategies
Various strategies work better for different target markets and, therefore, several may be required for your online home business to triumph.
The key for successful marketing is understanding what makes someone want to use or buy services and what type of marketing strategy they respond to. This requires you to learn needs, problems and industry trends. What works best for the markets you serve? This is a trial-and-error process that requires testing and interaction with clients or prospective clients.
Identify and understand the competition
As part of the market planning process, you must learn about your competitors and how to position yourself in relation to them. What are your strengths and what do you want to emphasise? Once you identify both direct and indirect competition, you can determine how and why your online home business is special and benefits users in a particular way. Your unique position in the marketplace must be emphasised in your marketing programs.
Establish marketing goals that are quantifiable
Marketing goals can include setting the number of new clients you would like to acquire, the number of people you would like to reach, or the amount of income you would like to generate. Be realistic and practical in establishing your goals. Take a good look at the available esources that you can commit to implement and integrate your goals into your marketing plan effectively. Study the budget requirements for the strategies you select and plan accordingly.
Monitor results
By monitoring results, you determine which of your marketing strategies are working and which are not. This involves tracking and evaluating customers responses to each marketing strategy. Survey regular users for comments about why they find a service important. Client comments are invaluable for creating or enhancing your marketing communications.
A good marketing plan sets clear, realistic and measurable targets (for example, increasing sales by 10 per cent), includes deadlines for meeting targets and provides a budget for each marketing activity. It should ideally include your market research, the customer group you have targeted, your competition, positioning, the product or service you are selling, pricing, advertising, and promotion.
Your marketing plan for your work from home business should remain an ongoing process throughout the life of your business. Remember, if youre failing to plan, your planning to fail.
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