 Exhibitions Exhibitions are excellent for people to view and experience your products or service. Being face-to-face with potential customers and suppliers is arguably the best way to promote your business as any questions or queries can be clarified with you in person: as a result, exhibitions can usually generate business leads. The added advantage of exhibitions is that they usually offer free publicity as journalists and photographers will nearly always be present. It is a good idea to make your display as interactive as possible allowing people to handle and experience your products. The use of video is common although you should limit the length of the feature to, say, three minutes (on a continuous loop) as people do have a limited attention span.
Each year, there are hundreds of exhibitions being held all over the country and cover practically every field of business. You should therefore have no problem of finding an exhibition that suits your product or service. Survey/Research
Market research is one of the most important areas of marketing. Without the research, you will find yourself making wrong decisions and unnecessary spending that will eventually lead to business failure. Researching the market will help you find answers to how much you will price your product, who to sell it to and where (to name a few). It will also give you an insight into the best methods of penetrating the market and becoming competitive.
There are two main sources that you can collect information: primary data and secondary data. Primary data involves information that is unique, say, a survey, questionnaire or interview. Secondary data includes information that is already available such as reports, economic trends, market sales figures for previous years, etc.
For a detailed article on the subject of market research, visit: Market Research
Internet Web Site
Using a web site to market your business is useful when your product or service is of interest to customers that live outside of your local area. At this point, it is important to identify whether the web site will be used for one of three ways:
Firstly, a glorified brochure that will act like an on-line interactive leaflet advertising your products or service. Secondly, an extension of the above: a leads provider that will allow you to give contact details for your business. Finally, for e-commerce where you will actually sell your product or service on-line. If you decide to adopt this option, then you will need to set up a Merchant Services Account so that customers can use credit card transactions on-line.
You have to appreciate that web sites are expensive to run and so it is important that you value the need for extending your business onto the Internet. Further, unless you are an expert at web design, you should consult a professional service to create the web site for you or your business image will be dragged down with the lack of quality. When you have a web site up and running, you can buy banner advertising (different sizes available), micro button links, or referrals on other websites to help promote your business. You may even decide to issue an on-line newsletter periodically so that you can inform visitors to the site of any news, say, a change in price or the introduction of a new product. For more information about marketing your business on-line, visit Guerrilla MarketingArticle Index
3. Exhibitions and Market Research |
