Toolkit on how to Start and Improve your Business

Develop your Marketing Activities

On the basis of your market research (see chapter “Information seeking” and the graphic presentation) put the following marketing steps into practice:

Marketing strategy
Formulate a marketing strategy and make a proper implementation plan, balance and integrate product strategy of the business and decide on pricing, distribution, promotions and business management strategies.

Marketing is everything you do to find out who your customers are and what they need and want to purchase. Therefore, decide on how to satisfy them while making profit. At the implementation stage you should consider and decide upon how to: 

• Provide the products or services they need;

• Set prices that they are willing to pay;

• Get your products or services to them;

• Inform and attract them to buy your products or services.

Your marketing starts with your business idea. Using your business idea as a starting point, you must learn more about your customers and competitors through market research. Finally, you use the information you obtained from the market research and draw up your marketing plan.

In your marketing plan you should take practical decisions on the following marketing strategies.

Product: Test your product(s) and launch them. Before launching the products, you are required to give attention to the quality of your products, size, colour and packaging.

Price: Test the price of your product(s) that you set based on your market research during the information seeking stage. You are now required to know if the price of your product is competitive in the market. Be sure that you have kept your costs down as much as possible so that you will have room  to vary your selling prices within an acceptable range. Check that the price is attractive to customers and competitive with that of producers of the same product(s).  

Place: Determine where you should locate your business in a way you can best reach your customers. Location of the business is essential to reduce costs, or increase the chances of customers stopping at the business to look at your products or to at least make inquiries. The important factors to consider in selecting business location are:

• Proximity to essential raw materials;

• Proximity to markets and distribution channels;

• Availability of transport facilities;

• Availability of efficient and cheap skilled labour;

• Existence of related businesses (forward/backward linkages);

• Infrastructure facilities (e.g. road, power);

• Communication facilities (e.g. post office, telephone, fax, internet).

Promotion:  Promotion is defined as a means of informing your customers about your product(s) and how  to attract customers to buy from you. Make sure you have used one or more of the following promotional measures during the implementation stage:

• Discounted on selling price and sold in bulk;

• Distributed flyers, brochures, business cards and used signboards;

• Provided prompt, regular, courteous and efficient service to your customers;

• Made proper display of your products and good presentation of the sales room;

• Kept your business well organised, well lit, clean, fresh looking and attractive.

Note that when you begin to sell a new product or service, you want to attract people to try it. So, set a low introductory price that only gives you a small profit for the first few weeks. Check whether customers liked the product, and if so, slowly increase the price for a higher profit.

One way of promotion is advertising
Advertising is defined as giving information to your customers to make them more interested in buying your goods and services. At the implementation stage of your business, carry out promotions, sell more and thereby increase your profit.  Check that your advertising measures helped you to get the following benefits:

• Customers interested in the product/service because of its quality, good packaging, durability, and other product features (attraction);

• Customers purchased more product/service (come-again type of  reoccurring sales;

• Customers  benefited from promotions such as price reductions, and gifts (good public relations);

• Your selling skills improved (salesmanship).
   

 Be a successful salesperson!

• Greet your customers;

• Be polite and friendly so that customers feel welcome and enjoy visiting your business;

• Smile - friendliness costs nothing;

• Be patient. Give customers the chance to ask questions and decide if they want to buy. Do not disagree with customers if they decide they do not want to buy;

• Always be honest and trustworthy;

• Thank your customers for coming to your business.
   

Participation in tenders
In addition to all of the above-mentioned steps, there could be cases where you should consider tender participation in the implementation stage of your business. Therefore, make sure that you have obtained information on tender guides and procedures (see chapter on tenders, page 25). Thus, check that you have become familiar with the following:

• Bid documents;

• Instruction to bidders;

• Tender specifications;

• Bid proposals and price schedules;

• Terms and conditions of contracts.

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Business plan  I  Cost calculation  I  Financing  I  Administration  I  Marketing
Supply and Infrastructure  I  Product development  I  Business management

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