Home
Based Business Marketing: Seduce Your Market
Home based business marketing is often
perceived as a difficult subject. Here is a different approach: Seduce Your Market.You
can seduce the market by being like a lover, full of care and
interested in every move your loved one makes. You feel the little mood
swings, know how to dance the dance of seduction, when to come close
and when to move back.
It is not about pressuring anyone into anything! On the
contrary, it is helping people to make the best decision for them.
Here are the most important concepts, elements and
tools to enhance your home based business marketing
communication. There is the numbers
side to marketing as well.
Clarify Your Ideal Market
The first step is to identify a suitable target
market that fits your uniqueness. Concentrate on getting to
know the market intimately by developing personal relationships with
people in that market. They might or might not become your clients.
Your market will always share some common problems that you
have a solution for. The more targeted your solution, the better.
Build a Relationship
In the beginning, your market might be shy or weary of your
advances. Give it time (practice patience) and continue to show who you
are and what you have to offer (practice persistence).
Do not expect to make a sale at the first rendez-vous. Just
concentrate on interesting someone in the next step. And as in real
life, the more interest you show in them, the more interested they are
in you.
So home based business marketing is a lot about listening to
what your market has to say and to learn from it. If
no one buys, keep your vision and work on your service and
communication to get it right.
Excite, Educate, Encourage
The most successful home based business marketing strategies
use what excites human most: some sensual element. Depending on your
market, this could be quite sophisticated or very direct.
The other elements are to educate and to encourage (without
being pushy or appearing needy).
Invest in the Relationship
Home based business marketing is an investment. It is going to
be higher in the
beginning because you are still learning about your market. The more
you invest, the quicker you will have learned enough to know how to get
your ideal level of clients with fewer resources.
Measuring is essential, so always ask how a new client found
you and test two variations where you can to keep improving.
How much should you invest? In the first year, you probably
need 10-15% of your desired turnover (that is the money you receive) to
get things going.
Make a plan of how you are going to spend that money over the
course of the year. Decide on the tools to use and how they integrate.
Home Based Business Marketing Tools
All the marketing elements can be used in most of these tools.
Choose the tools that suit your market and fit your budget. Some tools
can also be mixed and matched.
- Repeat business: It is six times more expensive to
get a new client than have an old one return.
- Phone
Contact: Use for past clients to keep in touch and see how they are
going, choose the right time-frame
- Word of Mouth: the
cheapest and most powerful marketing tool, support your clients to
refer to you
- Business Cards: make them active,
include your photo
- Website: getting more and more
essential
- Vouchers: better to give $ value, than discounting
- Allied Marketing: Find partners that market
different products to the same market and market together
- Media
Releases: You have little control, but an editorial has great
credibility
- Flyers & Brochures: Expensive
to produce, so better to wait until you understand your market
- Newsletter
or Direct Mail (email or post): be informative and careful of SPAM Act
- Advertising
(newspaper, radio, TV): go for size
- Yellow Pages:
when you are a main stream service
- Promotions:
useful when your target market comes together in one location
- Presentations
& Demonstrations: Target well
- Letterbox
Drop: 1-2% return rate normal
Home Based Business Marketing Elements
Mix and match these elements for optimal communication.
Headline
The headline (or title) is said to account for 70-80% of the
success of a marketing tool.
Treat it like that and spend sufficient time on it to get it
right. Write multiple headlines over a few days and test the best ones
with friends or even some of your clients to find what is most
successful. The better it resonates with your market's problem, the
better it works.
Benefits
Rather than listing features, show the benefits. That is often
not easy when you are very close to your own service, so get some
friends to check it for you.
Problem and Solution
Describe the problem and your solution, so readers realize
that you understand them. This works really well when describing how
people feel before and after.
Stories
We all love stories. Tell your own story, your clients'
stories or other stories that relate to your service. It is great to be
personal in that, especially in health and wellbeing.
Testimonials
Testimonials are stories which add credibility by others
telling them for you.
It is best to interview your clients (or just take note of
what they say), write it into a suitable form and ask them for
permission to use it. This will get you results much quicker than
asking them to write something.
The more personal information you can include, the better
(i.e. name, suburb, job title, possibly phone number).
Guarantee
Give great guarantees to reduce the risk for your clients.
Services cannot be tested before buying. A guarantee substitutes that.
And if you ever get someone taking you up on it, use that as a
learning opportunity to improve your service. There are very few
free-loaders who just do something to get the money back.
Offers
Offers have to be in line with the value of your service.
Think carefully (and test) what your market really values without it
costing you a lot. It is the perceived value that draws people, not the
monetary value. So use this to show your appreciation. And think of
ideas, other than discounting.
Call to Action
Always finish all of your marketing materials with a clear
call to action. This does not have to be the purchase. Instead it could
be the next step in building trust.
But never leave your clients excited without knowing what to
do (or what is going to happen) next.
Include your contact details!
Conclusion
Have you ever been seduced? Was it someone that just kept
saying: Buy me, buy me, buy me? Or did you feel excited, intrigued and
understood by that person.
Home Based Business Marketing has a lot to do with exciting
your market. That works best the better you understand your clients. So
focus on getting to know and learning about your market. The tools and
elements are possibilities to test what works best for your unique
market. Continue to Marketing
by Numbers.
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