Toolkit on how to Start and Improve your Business

Extend your Marketing Activities

Refer to the chapters in the Information seeking stage ("Market analysis") and the Business implementation ("Marketing").
 

At the beginning of your business venture you designed a marketing strategy where you determined what product to produce, what price to charge, how to promote the product, where and how to sell it. Now, it is time to examine the effectiveness of your marketing strategy and look for improvements. For this purpose, you need to evaluate your previous marketing activities, adopt them and find new strategies.

The following questions should get answers before you re-design your marketing strategy:

• Was the price I set too high/too low/optimum? What was the feeling of the customers?

• How was the demand for the product? Was it equal/higher/lower to your initial projection?

• Was the business location found good or bad?

• Did your product promotion attract a sufficient number of customers? Was the cost of promotion too high for you? (this is the same like the demand)

• After evaluating the above situations, you can determine whether to:

  • Increase/decrease price (if the existing one found very low/high);

  • Increase/decrease production volume;

  • Change business location or not;

  • Reconsider market segmentation or not (note: market segmentation is the process of focussing on specific customer groups and separating business activities according to well defined target group);

  • Re-engineer the product to enhance quality and meet other customers' needs;

  • Alter channel of distribution.

Sub-contracting arrangements with medium and big companies can also help you get a market for your business. Sub-contracting is an arrangement between you and another company that needs your product/facility to produce the output it needs. For example, if you are engaged in a woodworking activity, you can supply a wide range of household furniture to a company, say, engaged in real estate development. Sub-contracting creates good market opportunities for you, especially when you have excess production capacity (idle machinery and labour).
 

Advertising

Advertising is one form of promotion that is aimed at mass markets through media and impersonal commercial messages. After evaluating your market situation, you can determine whether to advertise your product (if not advertised so far) or reduce advertisement (if it was done aggressively and no need for further advertisement because of more than sufficient number of customers or limitation in supply of products). 

In the follow-up stage of your business, evaluate the past advertising measures and re-adopt them if necessary. 
 

Promotion and fairs participation

Promotion is a broad term applied to marketing tactics that serves to attract customers or inform them of products or services. The question, therefore, is:

• During the last business cycle, did you promote your product sufficiently?

• Did you use the proper tools of promotion based on the nature of your target group?

• How was the frequency of promoting your product? Was it sufficient?

• Did the promotion help you increase your sales outreach?

If your answer to the above questions is "No", take corrective actions during the next business cycle.

Promotion can be done through different means. Participation on trade fairs and exhibitions/bazaars is just one of them. You can use government programs and that of business associations to participate on trade fairs. However, it would be up to you to solicit information on trade fair calendars.

You can refer to the Website www.bds-ethiopia.net/tradefairscalendar.html .

See also the booklet on Trade Fairs and Export under "Documents"

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