For many small home-based businesses, marketing as practiced by the big companies is impossible to achieve. For many small businesses, marketing is almost none existent and more often than not, in difficult times, is the first cut made to reduce overheads, yet marketing should be the very heart and soul of every business as this is what keeps it alive.

Everyone has an opinion on marketing, how much should be spent, how often it should be done, the best way to do it and so on. How well and how often you decide to market your business will largely depend on your budget... how much you are prepared to allocated to the strategy of marketing your product or service successfully. It is essential that every business operator regardless of size of business develop a marketing plan and a marketing budget, at least once a year. This should be evaluated on a continuous basis to ensure time and money is not poured into marketing that is not recoverable directly through new sales.

So, what is marketing?

Let me make one thing very clear, marketing is not selling... marketing is about being noticed above all others. Here are a list of the basic marketing techniques frequently used by home-based businesses and their effectiveness.

Business cards

The essence of a good marketing strategy is not merely giving out business cards to be filed with hundreds of other similar business cards. The mistake many people make is to focus on a business card with a fancy design and a catchy name and little else where the question you should be asking yourself is ? Why should my card be kept above all others??

Does your business card convey a message about you and your business, or is it an expensive ego trip to impress? Will it be like so many others and filed directly in the waste paper bin? In the course of a year thousands of cards are handed out, the key is to remember what the business was that the business card represents, does yours?

Fliers

With the computer packages now available to produce fliers at a reasonable cost, more and more are appearing in mailboxes. With this form of marketing generally known as 'junk mail', would your flier be considered any more favorably than all the other junk mail that arrives in a letterbox and does this reflect an accurate description of how you value your product or service?

When was the last time you used a service or bought a product from a leaflet left in your letterbox (other than sales items from reputable large retail outlets)? The reality of the success rate of leaflet drops and fliers is less than 1 per cent so unless your flier is costing your nothing to produce or deliver, your flier, to be cost effective, must be covered by a direct result in increased sales.

Direct mail /sales letters

This form of marketing can be very successful or a costly disaster. Direct mail and sales letters, merely by their wording or their offer (although most are genuine), are often questioned. In the past unscrupulous people have run scams using this legitimate form of marketing to separate people from their hard-earned savings and the credibility of direct mail and sales letters have suffered because of it. This method, as a marketing tool, should be used to entice curiosity, invite questions or provide opportunities for further consultation but seldom do they work on their own as a successful sales tool.

Newspaper ads

Considering that most newspapers only have a daily life span, any advertising you may undertake will also have the same life span. Your marketing dollars may be better spent if the advertisement was placed in a magazine that has a longer shelf life and is more focused on readers that you are targeting. What's the point of your ad appearing in the computer section of newspaper, if you about to launch your first DIY home decorator book. If newspaper advertising is the only way your business can progress then make the most of the advertising by placing the ad in the section that your particular target market would read.

The use of special offers or a competition will encourage readers to enter and allow you to develop a database. After your display ad has appeared subsequent, classified ads will keep your information handy in the weeks to follow.

Yellow Pages

Most home-based business operators are convinced that their business needs to appear in the Yellow Pages. Notice! Just because your business is listed it doesn't guarantee results. Unless you can afford a large bold advertisement in the Yellow Pages, your listing is likely to be stuck amongst your competitors and should their ad be more visible than yours then there is no need to guess which one potential customers will choose.

The White Pages are also a good listing if your marketing information leads potential customers to your details, better still, you will not be listed amongst numerous competitors. Always ask customers how they found you and you will be able to monitor the cost effectiveness of your Yellow Pages listing.

This is just a snapshot of marketing as an integral part of running a small business. Marketing is not an alternative to selling; it is an essential element of a well thought out business plan. Without a good marketing strategy, potential customers do not know you exist and without customers, your business will not exist.