Marketing Basics for the Novice Entrepreneur

For the budding entrepreneur, marketing a finished product can be a nightmare. The manpower and capital required to successfully market a product can be impossible for a tiny startup. How can a novice entrepreneur gather the resources necessary to successfully market a product? Initial Steps The three initial goals of marketing should be clear to the entrepreneur. Establishing and increasing the customer base Increasing the product sales per customer Increasing the sales of more expensive, higher margin products per customer Develop a Marketing Plan Large companies usually tackle the first hurdle through expensive advertising campaign. But let’s assume you don’t have the millions necessary to launch large scale television, print and online media campaigns. We have to start small, with a basic marketing plan. A good marketing campaign should consist of the following: Target demographics Seasonal demand Advantages over competitors Product pricing and margins A simple message delivered via an effective advertising strategy If you have trouble drafting a coherent marketing plan, you can conduct public surveys to gauge the public reaction to your products or services. Make sure your survey is given to a diverse group – in ethnicity, gender, age, income and education level – to get the best sample. These are separated into two kinds – quantitative and qualitative. Do you want quality over quantity, or vice versa? Both have distinct advantages. Quantitative surveys are fixed questionnaires which can be conducted face-to-face, through e-mail, or over the phone. Try to collect a large number of surveys to gauge the customer response as a kind of vote. Quantitative surveys are good for graphs and estimates. Qualitative surveys focus on a smaller number of people, without fixed questions. They are usually conducted as face-to-face interviews, conversations or focus groups, where the participants engage in free-form discussion about a topic. Qualitative surveys can help you get a better, more detailed response regarding your product, but can also be extremely time-consuming. Most successful businesses use a combination of both for the best results. However, if you are pressed for time (and patience), a quantitative survey can be faster and offer similar results with far less manpower and time. Determine Advertising Mediums and Budget Now that you have drafted a marketing plan, calculate your advertising budget. If you’re a small business, that total is likely to be unimpressive. Here are some ways to clear that hurdle: Call local television and radio news stations to attempt to gain free publicity. This can be effective if you are offering a new, innovative product that hasn’t been produced before. Spread the word through social tools with Twitter, Facebook and Youtube ad campaigns. If you make an interesting video to advertise your product, uploading it online and allowing it to spread like wildfire can be extremely effective. Best of all, this method is mostly free. Contact vendors and associates to participate in co-op advertising, in which the advertising fee is shared. Advertise via Google AdSense or a similar ad program – these are cheaper than other forms of advertisements, and are selected intelligently based on the computer user’s search preferences – which will give you a highly targeted audience. Award customer referrals with cash, discounts or prizes, in order to publicize your products. These are just some ideas to help you, as a novice entrepreneur, get started in the complex world of marketing concepts. As your business expands, you can hire dedicated PR, sales and marketing teams like DSI-MEDIA

to help you create more complex plans.

Top 5 States for Entrepreneurship

It’s not enough just to have an idea. And no matter how strong your entrepreneurial spirit, there is one thing that has a major impact on the success of any venture: LOCATION. Recent studies have confirmed that where you start and run your business has a proven impact on the potential for your success. The findings have been reported in two exhaustive studies: the State Entrepreneurship Index published by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the 2010 State New Economy Index , produced by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. Not surprisingly, the current recession has been a major factor for entrepreneurs in some of the lower-performing states, with sectors in the mid-west struggling at all-time lows for new business formation and startup success. However, the traditional model of economic development seems to be going strong in states that have long been associated with the entrepreneurial spirit, like Lagos State. Lagos region have been able to maintain their startup potential because they’ve got the investors already in place and also possess a high concentration of experienced entrepreneurs, allowing them to create high-income entrepreneurship despite the negative impacts suffered in poor economic conditions. Both reports focus on a similar set of benchmark factors, including percentage growth in business establishments, per capita growth in business establishments, business formation rate, patents per thousand residents and the gross receipts of sole proprietors and partnerships per capita. However, there are some notable differences between the two. While researchers at the University of Nebraska factored raw business starts into their study, the State New Economy Index uses an additional 26 indicators to assess the basic capacity of a state to successfully navigate the ups and downs of economic change. In addition, it considers the extent to which state economies focus on knowledge, globalization, entrepreneurial spirit and IT-driven and innovation-based ventures. In doing so, they’ve been able to determine with relative accuracy to what degree a state’s economy and operations allow for the ideal structure in which a new venture will thrive. How they ranked Regionally, both studies found the strongest entrepreneurial rate of success in the Northeast, mid-Atlantic, Mountain West and Pacific regions. Within these regions, 13 of the top 20 entrepreneurial states are located. Just the opposite is true of the bottom-ranking states, with 18 of the 20 lowest-ranking currently situated in the Midwest, Great Plains and the South. With crossover seen between the two indexes on the west coast, data indicates that Seattle, Portland and other areas in the Pacific Northwest continue to support new business. Possibly due to the tech industry, these areas have weathered the recession better than most and also have a base of investors and related capital built up from decades of similar ventures. Depending on the study, the top five states for successful entrepreneurship are: New York Washington Massachusetts New Jersey Oregon Lagos State New Economy Index Massachusetts Washington Maryland Delaware New Jersey Port-Harcourt