1 John Chow and 1234 pens show how to advertise
John Chow, otherwise known as the root of all evil, today posted a competition to win a Nintendo Wii. He’s running the competition with 1234pens.com, the promotional pens maker. In order to enter the competition you have to write a blog post featuring two specific links.
So, that’ll be this post, then.
What’s all this got to do with your home business? There’s some great marketing going on here. Both 1234pens and John are getting free links. 123pens will be getting exposure and potential business from all those blog readers.
They are getting other people to promote their business for very little outlay on their part - it’s only costing them the price of a Wii and the postage - how much time and money would all have those links cost using more traditional methods? Much more.
Some possibilities for getting other people to market your business for you:
- Recommend a friend - Offer people an incentive to recommened your busines to others. This could be a straight cash reward or money off another purchase from you.
- Flyer spot competition - Print some flyers or window stickers and give them out. To give people the incentive to display them run a competition in which weekly or monthly a flyer or sticker will be ’spotted’ and the owner of the spotted advert wins a prize. This could work well if your business targets a relatively small area. Local radio stations in the UK tend to run this kind of competion - they get listeners to put their stickers in their car windows and someone from the station will spot a winning car every month or so.
Cheeper isn’t always cheerful
At some point in your life as a Home Business Wannabe you are going to have to decide how you are going to tempt customers to buy your product or service.
It’s tempting to undercut your competition and assume the customers will look for the bargain. This may works sometimes, but it is not a guarantee. Will your customers be willing to pay that little bit more for a better product? Remember, it is a commonly held belief that you get what you pay for - will people see your product as inferior simply because it is cheaper? If you are trying to win business simply by undercutting your competition you are going to be in big trouble when the competition lower their prices. What are you going to do then? Make further reductions? Sooner or later you will be cornered out of the market because you can no longer compete on price.
Instead of focusing on lowering your prices, focus on giving your customers more value for their money. Give them something unique, give them something your competitors are not.
Think carefully when your are pricing your product or service. Think about how the price point will reflect on it - is it an expensive luxury or cheap and cheerful? Know your competitors, know their price-points and decide carefully where you are going to fit in. How much can your target customer afford to spend? Are you aiming for the top of their spending budget, in the middle, or the bargain basement. And remember: you get what you pay for!
Knowing your market
There are three fundamental steps to knowing your market: research, research and, yep, research.
You’ve got this really great idea for your home business venture - you really like it, you’d buy it, you think it’s great. That’s you. What is everyone else going to think? You can be offering the greatest product or service the world has ever seen, if no one is going to buy it it’s a waste of time!
If you intend to market a product or service you need to know two things up front: who are your customers and who are your competitors. This is where the research comes in and it is an absolutely critical part of developing your home business - skip on the research here and you are going to end up making some costly mistakes.
1. Know your competitors
Google is your friend here. Search for terms which will be relevant to your market - if you are starting a photography business in Oxford, search for variations of, “Photography Oxford”. Do not rush this, try different search terms and combinations of keywords that are relevant to your intended market - just because you search for “Photography Oxford” doesn’t mean everyone else will, your competitors may come up for “Cool snaps Oxford” or even “Home camera Oxford”.
Now, once you’ve found some of your competitors’ websites, find out everything you can about them and their service/product. How much are they selling for? What kind of after sales service do they have? One you’ve looked through their website, the next step is to call them up - pretend you are interested in buying from them and find out what you can. What was their phone manner like? Were they pushy? Did the product/service sound good? Where can you compete with them and what are they doing that you can improve on?
If your business is going to be very localised and your competitors are small you may find that they don’t have a website. This could be the perfect opportunity for you because many people are using the Internet to find local services and businesses every day - make sure they find yours!
Once you have identified the competition, you have a question to answer: can you compete? Is there room for you in this market? Why are people going to choose you over all the others?
2. Know your customers
Who are you going to be selling to? How are they going to find out about your product and what is going to make them choose you? Be specific about this - are your customers going to be people in your town? Old or young? Male of female? Office workers or the unemployed? You need to narrow down your potential customer base so that you can then make the decision as to whether you will have any actual customers for your service or product.
Internet forums can be a good way to find out people’s opinions on things. Join some forums that would be frequented by your intended customers, hang around for a bit and find out what people are saying. After a while, you can start asking questions and doing polls to gauge opinion.
There is also the option of going out onto the street and talking to people, or dropping a questionair or flyer through people’s letterboxes. Be careful with this as most people a wary of people stopping them in the street or cold-calling at their house - people will be highly suspicious of some kind of scam or hard-sell.
Don’t skip this bit!
Researching your competition and your customers is absolutely vital in the early days of your home business venture. The last thing you want to do is waste your time developing a great new product only to find out that no-one wants it.
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Showing up on time
Showing up on time with a smile on your face is almost always more important than what you actually say or do.
Words of wisdom from Seth Godin’s blog.
This rings true when I think about all the people I have worked in offices with over the years who have been punctual and upbeat and who have - despite not having great skills in their particular area - risen through the ranks and now hold mid or top level management jobs.
5 ways to maximise your time
Your biggest investments in your home business are going to be time and money. You might be able to startup with a small amount of money but there’s no way you are going to get something going without investing a serious chunk of time.
You need to make sure you get maximum benefits from the time you have.
1. Plan your work
Write down your objectives for the day, the week, or the month. Estimate how long each task is going to take and where you are going to fit it in. Once you complete tasks, write down how long it took. Comparing your estimates against the actual time it took is a good idea because it helps you make more effective plans with more realistic estimations in the future. If a task took much longer than your estimation, think about why: was your estimations way out or was the task harder than you expected and how can you be more efficient next time?
2. Get up earlier
I always find that I work better in the mornings. I’m fresher, more focused and less likely to get side-tracked. Many studies have shown that office workers do their best work in the morning. A cup of strong coffee is an absolute must first thing if you want to get off to a flier.
3. Have the right tools
No matter what you use for your home business - a PC, a sewing machine, a pen and paper, whatever - make sure they are ready to be used when you need them. You don’t want to be wasting your valuable time updating your PC, searching for your favourite pen or ordering new thread. Make sure your tools work for you.
4. Stick to a schedule
When working from home it is very tempting to get the odd five minutes of work in here and there. I think it is far more productive to keep to a defined schedule - your family knows when you are going to be working and when your time is theirs. Sticking to a schedule helps keep a separation between your work and your free time - which I think is very important - if you let the two mix, both will suffer.
5. Take a break
If your work is stressing you out too much: take a break. Running your own business from home is supposed to be a fun and rewarding experience that will make your life better. If it’s all getting too much, let it go for a few days - a break will see you returning to your work refreshed and full of enthusiasm.
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