Small Business: How To Plan Your Marketing Strategy

Step 1: Mail shots

Mail shots are a great way of targeting a large number of potential customers or clients, or just a selected few.

Mail shots are good if you are setting up a consultancy (perhaps as a trainer) or offering a service (a home hairdresser, for example), where you go to other people.

Step 2: Leaflets & flyers

Leaflets, or flyers, are a good way to market your business in your local community.

You could post them to a targeted number of potential customers as an enclosure with a mails shots, or an attachment to an email mailshot. You could send them as an insert in the local paper or a special interest magazine.

Remember to take your flyers with you to all networking meetings.

Step 3: Personal contact & networking

For a consultancy or maybe a small manufacturing business, this is one of the best ways of marketing in the early days of trading. It is the time to call in a favour or two from those who knew you in the business world before you decided to go solo. Your name and reputation will still mean something, although this will fade with time.

Join local business groups and network as much as you can

Step 4: Trade Shows & Exhibitions

These are particularly good for craft-based enterprises. Not the large national or international shows to begin with, but local shows or perhaps agricultural fairs. Visit them early on to see whether the shows are right for your product or service - and to see what the competition is like.

Step 5: Website

Almost all businesses need a website - it's just expected. Don't set it up too early, when you're not quite sure what you are offering and have no history of selling success.

If you're selling exclusively on-line, you'll need your website from the start.

Get your website professionally designed, unless you are very computer literate, or your own business is computers. Make sure it is maintained, and up-to-date.

Step 6: Advertisements

Don't even think about advertising in national newspapers or magazines, as they cost a fortune. Even a quarter page in your local paper could cost you around £400 - and ads need to be repeated, it is no good putting them in just once. You might get a better rate in the Mid-week freebies.

You could explore the small-ad columns in your local newspaper if your business is going to be localised - perhaps window or house cleaning, or secretarial services.

Use a postcard in a shop window as a very local ad - or the parish magazine or community newsletter. Local radio can be a good place to advertise too. Think about a local directory - Yellow Pages or Thomsons, when you are more firmly established.

Finally, whatever you do and wherever you go - never travel without your marketing material.