Marketing Your Work from Home Business

December 23, 2007 | No Comments

One important frontline aspect of running a successful work at home business is marketing. By just putting a website that caters to the needs of the people, don’t assume that they will come to your site in throngs. They first need to know that your site exists or your product is available and what need it caters to.

The function of marketing becomes even more important if you are just starting out since it is the first contact that you will make with your consumer. Till now you have probably been busy dealing with freelancers and trying to get your site up and running or product launched and placed in the market. But now with all the background work in place, it is time to contact your first potential customer.

The various ways in which you can pursue your marketing efforts range widely from affiliate programs to Internet campaigns to newsletters, exhibitions, television or radio campaigns and brochures. These are also only a few of the creative ways in which you can popularize your service or product for the potential consumer or client. The fact that there are so many media options available for you to choose from makes the task more intimidating and difficult but with a few fundamental questions answered, you should be able to decide the marketing plan for your home based business.

Remember that you need to review this marketing plane each year since a fledgling business requires a different media strategy as compared to an established entity.

The first task that you have as a marketer is to decide whom you are selling your product to. The answer to this is not as simple as anyone who would like to avail of your service or anyone who needs your product. Though you would be tempted to want your product to be bought by all and sundry, your marketing efforts need to be focused towards the most likely converts to begin with. Later with a higher penetration, you may decide to broaden your horizons but for a start-up home business, it is best to focus the limited marketing monies towards a single type of potential prospect so that maximum returns can be obtained.

To determine the target audience that you will speak to through your campaign, try and think of the kind of people who are most likely to buy your product or service. Trying to sell a hands free ear set to someone who does not own a mobile does not seem like a good idea, does it? The next thing to remember is that you should define your target audience in such a way that you are able to target them specifically. You can hardly go around trying to reach people who own a mobile phone through the Internet.

Evaluate your offerings from a point of view of the need that they fulfill and the individuals or businesses that are likely to need the services. Think of the clients that have already shown interest or are on board with you and also evaluate the marketing efforts of your competition to understand the market that they are catering to.

Once you have decided on the target audience, try and narrow it down further. Speak to people on the phone, do some informal surveys, email questionnaires and obtain feedback on what people think of your offering. You may end up refining or changing the target audience totally based on the feedback.

Given that there are so many marketing vehicles available for you to choose from, it can extremely difficult to keep within your budget. Which is exactly what makes it essential that you have one in the first place. Getting attracted by all the marketing possibilities shall only land you in trouble. The general rule of thumb is to spend about 10% of your expected profits on marketing efforts. And so if you are aiming to gain revenue of 5000USD in a month, spend around 500USD on marketing efforts.

The 10% rule does not apply blindly and don’t expect to gain a 50,000 in sales if you have spent 5000 in the first month. The expenditure should be realistic and should be worked backwards from the revenue expected which in turn should be based on a realistic estimate of penetration and conversion. The other aspect to remember is that spreading yourself too thin on a media option will lead you to a situation where none of the media options reach threshold levels of visibility. This will end in a waste of your entire media monies. Choose two or a maximum of three media options based on the media that your target audience consumes the most and divide the monies accordingly.

Not all media options cost the same. The costs are different and so is the reach and effectiveness of each of the mediums. While a television campaign can get you a quick build up of reach, a television commercial production will cost you a fortune leaving you with no monies to buy airtime. Make smart choices by choosing low cost options that can help you reach your audience in a more focused manner. If you are targeting college kids, pamphlets that are distributed in the campus are a great idea. All you need to do is recruit a college student who will be willing to do it for you for a minimal fee. The printing cost of an average leaflet is not too much either. If your business is an online business, then it makes sense to have an Internet campaign on the sites that are likely to be visited by your target.

To summarize it all, marketing efforts need to be focused to a well thought out target audience, they need to conform to a pre-decided budget and the media options need to be evaluated based on reach, effectiveness, spillover and budget before the final decisions are taken.

Written by Vishal P. Rao of Work at Home Forum.

Posted in Work from Home Business