Marketing Your Business

Before you get started on the Internet you should develop an overall marketing plan that includes:

Positioning
– Determine your Main Marketing Message by answering these questions:

Target Market – Who are you trying to sell your product, service, or information to?

Solution – What problem are you trying to solve?
What does your customer want and how can you solve their problem?

Benefits – What are the benefits your product, service, or information provides?

Unique Competitive Advantage (Unique Selling Principle)
– Every good marketing book out there will tell you to define what makes your business better than the rest. What can you do/deliver that makes a difference to your customers or clients?

Guarantee
– Many prospects want to be reassured that they are not throwing away their money by doing business with you. What can you deliver to reduce
the perceived risk of your customer? Offer a guarantee that makes buying your from you a no lose proposition without giving away the store.

Your goal of marketing is to get the customer to listen to you. The way to do this is to clearly express the problem your customer is trying to solve and then demonstrate that you can provide a solution to that problem.

Communicating
– Be able to communicate your main marketing message to your client both verbally and in writing.

Develop an Audio Logo or an Elevator Speech so that you are able to tell everyone you meet what you do in a way that they remember you well enough to use your product or service in the future, and refer someone else to your business.

In addition to developing traditional marketing materials like brochures you must have an online marketing presence with a web site. Writing a
brochure and creating content for your web site require different approaches. Our web site will provide you plenty of free information on using the Internet for marketing your business with a website.

Networking for Success
– One good way to increase your business, especially if it is a service business, is to belong to an industry or trade organization. Here is an article about how independent computer professionals have joined groups for many reasons, not the lest of which is to help their business grow.

Promoting
– There are countless ways to promote your business, and a web site is just one of them. You will learn about web site promotion, e-mail promotion, search engine promotion, affiliate marketing, selecting keywords, promotional products and more.

Marketing Plan– Before you get started check out our free special report:
Top 10 Tips for Marketing Your Business or read the article by Joe DiNunno on marketing yourself.
These are especially helpful if you are planning to market your expertise by providing a service or selling an information product. If you don’t have a Marketing plan, we recommend you get started with a Free Marketing Plan Workbook from our partners at Action Plan Marketing. In addition, you may want to consider the Info Guru Marketing Manual.

It’s a “How To” online book that contains many useful marketing and promotions tips that we’ve used in our own business, including creating
an Audio Logo. For additional information on writing your Elevator Speech,
consider picking up Craig Harrison’s step by step booklet that will guide you through the process.

Now that you know who your customers are, what problem you can help them solve, and the message you want to deliver, its time build a website to market your business on the Internet so you can make money online.