Marketing Your Business

1. The Ingredients

1.1 You must have a clear picture of your product or service, and the benefit your customer will gain from buying it.

• Your marketing and sales operations will be dependent upon customers understanding the benefit. This is what the customer buys, not the product. For example, a consumer doesn't want to buy a drill, they want the holes the drill creates.

1.2 The price you attach to your product or service will also be essential to your marketing programme.

1.3 You should already have a clear, detailed picture of your target market.

• You should know by now who your most important customers are going to be.
• Be careful to focus on the section of your customer base you are most likely to be able to sell to. If a number of sectors seem promising, consider them objectively and then prioritise them. Concentrate on the 20 per cent of customers who will make up 80 per cent of your business. Other peripheral customers will take up a lot of your time for little reward.

1.4 Once you have a firm grasp of your product, price and place, a thorough evaluation of your competition and the anticipated strengths and weaknesses of your business will lead to the construction of your promotion and marketing plan.