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If your business is just starting up you’ve got some decisions to make that the established businesses have already made. These existing businesses have an image to build on, but you’ve got a blank sheet. So this is the ideal opportunity to get your story right.
Before sending out your marketing messages, have answers to the following questions.
- Who do you think your customer will be?
- How does your product or service compete with other options open to your potential customers?
- What kind of image will your business project in order to catch attention, generate interest, and trust?
Get your business started in the right direction.
To get your start-up business off to a good start define your customer’s profile, you can then design your communications to talk directly to them. Your messages need to attract their attention and create that “This sounds like something for me” feeling.
- Size up the competition your start-up business faces.
- Establish your market position and branding.
- Package your product or service.
- Work out your pricing strategy.
- Create your marketing messages.
Who are my competitors? What are they doing?
Know who your competition are, find out as much as you can about them, visit websites, pick up brochures and other promotional items, subscribe to their mailing lists etc. What are their strengths and weaknesses? Can you exploit a gap in the market that they’re failing to meet? Where are they in the market?
Where does my business want to be?
Work out where you want to be in your market. Are you going to compete on price, quality or service? Sales aren’t usually won on price alone, what wins sales is value. The customer needs to feel that the price reflects the value of the product or service offered. Pricing needs to match the image your business projects. If Rolls Royce suddenly decided to launch an affordable family estate what would this do to their brand? Would you still think of them as a luxury brand? Everything says luxury, the branding, the product, the service, and of course is priced accordingly.
A new start-up business looking to service corporate clients wouldn’t introduce itself by placing flyers in the local post office window. It needs to present an exclusive, professional image, perhaps a glossy brochure with an accompanying letter of introduction on high quality stationery. And at the other end of the spectrum, a start-up business looking to gain cost-conscious customers would hardly introduce itself with full page advertisements in glossy magazines. The customers would associate the advertisements with expense – and feel you’re outside their budgets.
So work out where you want your business to be, create your business image and branding, then price your products or services accordingly.