Marketing for Start Ups

Starting your new business will challenge you in ways that you can't even imagine. If you don't have experience in marketing, then you will need to be a quick study. Marketing is all about sales. If you opened the doors and people flood in wanting your product or service, then you wouldn't need to market at all. However, based on personal experience on failed businesses, I can pinpoint the exact problem. I didn't have customers, because I didn't know how to market.

But I learned a few tricks here and there about marketing that can make your job as an entrepreneur a little bit easier. The first trick is to link every effort to revenue. If you place an ad in the paper you need to track, how many people called you for your product. If it isn't working, there isn't any point in wasting more money on an ad that isn't getting you any new business. So you might as well take that money and find a better use for it.

The next step is to find a niche market. I like to see the results when companies try new things. I have a friend that works in the marketing department for Pepsi. I asked him about the new logos. He said that they did some research and found that the old logo didn't appeal to the new generation that is currently in High School. They designed a cooler logo just for them, that research showed that they like. He told me that since they changed their logo, those kids have been buying Pepsi like crazy. He said that Pepsi's revenue has jumped substaintially. I mention this because their research shows that people over 30 don't like the new logo. The younger population represents a much more lucrative market. So they went after them and only them. It is paying off big time. You need to identify, who is going to buy your product and then sell it to them. Find your niche.

Sometimes you don't need to use money to find customers anyway. I once launched a website that sold ad space, for revenue. I got paid per page view. So I grabbed all of my friends and told them how great my new website was, I didn't tell them that it was mine. In about two weeks they had told everyone that they knew about it, who told everyone else. I made enough to cover costs for a few years and then had to shut it down due to lack of interest. My point here is that I didn't spend any money out of my own pocket. My only advertising was word of mouth and I got results. Had I tried harder, maybe my website would still be around, and I'd have another story about marketing to tell you.

The fact is that everything in your business depends on sales. Sales, in turn, rely heavily on marketing. So if your marketing is weak, your company will be weak as well. In short if you want to make a business spend some time developing your marketing skills.