The Constant Entrepreneur:
Advice for Running a Productive Business

First of all – congratulations to Carolyn and her associates at Geniocity.com on releasing their web site. It is going to be exciting for all of us to see the site develop and grow over the next few months.

As a business advisor I will be writing a series of blogs which, I hope, will speak to any of you who has a small business or is thinking about starting a business. I’m going to give you ideas to spur your imagination and help you innovate in your business.

Whether you are an artist, cut grass, bake cakes, design web-sites, manufacture widgets, or sell shoes, your ability to maximize your income is directly proportional to your effective marketing efforts. Simply put, marketing is the combination of the steps necessary to make your potential buyers aware of your product, and help to increase their desire to buy what you have to sell. The process of marketing your business need not be intimidating, or expensive, or difficult. Here are some ideas.

Start with listing who is currently buying from you or has bought from you in the past. (If your business is new, list potential customers you think would benefit from buying your product or service). What do these customers have in common? Are they in the same vicinity? Do they have similar income levels? Do they have similar interests? If possible, talk with current customers and ask why they bought what you have to sell (they could have spent their money somewhere else!).

Now that you understand who is buying from you today, ask yourself, “where and how can I find new potential customers who are like the ones that I already have?”. Brainstorm and make a list of all potential customers that you would like to sell to – this can be by name, or by neighborhood, or by type of business, or by interest.

By knowing who you (by name or group) you want to sell to, you are ready establishing a marketing strategy.

However, before you start trying to attract new customers, do you have anything else that you can sell to existing ones? After all, they already bought from you, and if you did your job right, these customers know you and like, so they might be very happy to buy from you again.

In future blogs I will talk about marketing strategy, and how to develop a simple yet efficient marketing plan.