In today’s society of instant and constant communication, how can your
business’ voice be heard above the rest?

A lot of the answer to this question can be found in the research of your
target market. Again, knowing your customers is the best way to save your
self time and money, but also increase your profits.

You may want to start off with determining the age group of your customer
population. Are they older or younger? While this may sound stereotypical,
you may find that younger customers are more interactive with the Internet
and television marketing, while older customers rely on newspapers and print
advertising. Knowing where your customers are looking for advertising is the
best way to pick something that is cost effective for you.

If they’re not listening, then they won’t find out about your business.
You will also want to use advertising that takes into account the area that
you are expecting business from. If your service or product can be sold
worldwide, then you can create a plan that involves long range advertising
(i.e. Internet), but if your intention lie closer to home, you may want to stick
with the local papers and television channels. If you’re looking for even
closer work, then flyers can do the trick.

Radio can be tricky as stations can broadcast farther and farther. While this
is good to do for advertising, if you’re located far from these listeners, they
won’t be in your area to use your business. You also need to promote your
product or service on a station that your customers will listen to (your
favorites might not be the same) or stations that indicate potential
customers.

Flyers and print advertising is a good way to start a low budget advertising
campaign. They are easy to create and most people are still aware of those
kinds of media outlets. Television is great too, but the pricing can be high
when you’re just starting off. Internet advertising is challenging. You have
so many more people that you can talk to and advertise to that it can be
overwhelming.

The Internet opens doors for you and your business, but this great ability is
also difficult to control. You may want to create a website to target a specific
audience and advertise there. By asking questions of your audience, you can
find out where they go and then advertise there. It’s a slow ripple effect that
slowly increases your advertising and the people that are looking for it, but
that’s a great way to start.

How you advertise is as important as what you say. Find out what your
audience is listening to or looking to for advice, then plan a marketing
campaign that gives them answers they will find.

THE QUESTION OF PRICE

You don’t have to be a marketing expert to increase your sales and your
profits. In fact, a lot of companies have thrived on the fact that they
followed their common sense to their success.

Prices are the gateway to your success. It makes sense that if they’re too
high, no one will buy, and if they’re too low, you won’t make any money. So
how do you determine them? Well, there really isn’t any set way. You could
start off with what the base price is. For a product, this is how much is cost
to produce it—but it only covers that amount. If you want to make money,
you’ll have to add to that.

And how much do you add? Well, how much profit do you want to make? If
you want to make 100% profit, then you’ll charge twice as much as the cost
is. If you want to make more, then you’ll charge more. The space between
these two prices is your margin and that’s what you need to be concerned
about.

The bigger the margin, the bigger the profits will be. That’s easy enough to
understand, right? While it’s your prices overall that you need to be aware
of, it’s the margins that will determine your financial success. The larger the
margin, the better you will do. You have to at least make your cost on a
product or a service, but you also want a little on the top as well.

Look at the price that you are charging and see if it seems reasonable given
the competition and your margins. Are you making money? Are your
customer counts rising or remaining stagnant? You need to be flexible and
adjust your prices to reflect your needs for customers.

This is not to say that charging less is always the right option, though. Many
times, a higher price can reflect a higher value for the product or service.
You will have to sit and ask yourself whether or not your customers will be
willing to pay the price that you have indicated. And then you have to watch
your profits to see if your plan worked. Sometimes growth takes time, so
you’ll have to watch the results over time.

If you notice that the trend is downward, you can either lower your prices or
create more value.

CREATING VALUE INSTEAD OF LOWERING PRICES

When you want to increase your profits, you may look to lowering your prices
in order to attract more customers. And while this works in the short run,
overall, you’re not making as much as you could be by just increasing the
perceived value of your product or service.

One of the ways to increase the perceived value is to add a little something
that the customer will enjoy having. You may even offer this item for free
and end up making more money for doing so. If you sell a product, then you
can offer free accessories to go with it. This of course will vary from product
to product that you sell. Try to find what else the customer is looking for
from your business. And then give them exactly what they want.

And if you think about it, how many products have you bought because it
came with a free sample of something? Or it included a larger size or some
other bonus with it? You’ll be surprised how much cheaper it is to offer these
freebies, rather than slash the price. Plus, you won’t be playing the game of
up and down prices.

Other ideas can include assembling a few of your products into a complete
package. This creates the image of value without having to buy each product
for its separate price. Include things that the customer will use and you’re
sure to increase your sales.

If you think about it, when you lower your prices, you are cutting off your
profits. You are just giving them away. But when you add a little something
to your product and don’t change the price, or even increase the price
slightly, your customers will respond.

Of course, if you don’t sell a product, you may be concerned what else you
can offer to a customer. Perhaps you can add an additional service to the
already offered service. Or you might include something that adds to what
they have already bought. In the case of writing or consulting, you may
want to include formatting of the piece or examples of ways to improve. Try
to go beyond the customer’s expectations. Not only will they be satisfied,
but they’ll also come back for more and more.

Your business begins with offering a product or service with value, but it is
maintained by continuing to show the customer why they should pick your
product over someone else’s.