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In my last post, I talked about why I’m not worried about the economic recession. As promised, the second installment in my recession series on ‘Recession-Busting tips for Small Businesses’ is how to brand your business for a niche market.
I’m a firm believer that the business practises that fail during an economic downturn are the practises that weren’t so hot to begin with. In a booming economy, bad business practises go unnoticed, but when things get tough, shareholders get tough, and the crackdown begins.
The key to succeeding in a small business is targeted niche marketing. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read on for five steps to brand your business for a target market.
Step One: Know Your Target Market
Part of my job as a copywriter is to evaluate your customers. I need to know who your target customers are so I can write copy that speaks to them. If you don’t know who your target market is, we’re both in trouble.
Write a profile of a target customer? Are they female or male? A teenager, a 20-something or a retiree? Are they well-off or struggling? Do they work for themselves? What are they interested in? What are their hobbies? Do they have kids? Are they from a certian area? Do they own their own home? Do they need to relax more, organize their life or lose weight?
Knowing your target market is the KEY to success during the recession.
Step Two: Research your Market’s Needs
If you’ve completed step 1 above, you . With the economy slowing and more people losing jobs, your target market’s needs are changing. You need to meet those needs.
Is your target market trying to save money? Are they cutting back on non-essentials? Are they trying to stay healthy or help the environment? What effect does the economy have on your target customer?
Don’t just sit at home and ponder your market – get out amongst them. Go to the places they hang out and ASK them about their lives – what do they want and need? What are their hopes and dreams? The best market research is done by engaging directly with the market itself.
Have you brainstormed a few ideas? Good. Now we move on to step three.
Step Three: Assess Your Business Against your target market
Assessing your own business with a critical eye can be difficult, but you need to do it if you want to succeed. If a target customer showed up at your store or found your website online, what would they see? How would they feel? What items or services would they be drawn too? What items or services would they find useless?
For example, you run a gothic clothing store. Your target market is older goths with families/jobs/responsibilities. You’re selling a lot of business clothes with gothic twists – lace here, a little Victorian detail there. You also sell a line of clubbwear, but that doesn’t do very well, because it doesn’t really sit with your target market.
Step Four: Use downtime to refocus your business
Now is the perfect time to reassess your business practises. First, focus on your inventory. Are there any products (such as the clubbwear above) that don’t fit with your target market? Could you perhaps get rid of these products and replace them with more appropriate items? Use your target market research as a jumping-off point to brainstorm new product lines.
Next, look at your branding and image. Does your shop graphics and colours mesh with your products? Do you have a uniform branding? Are you targeting your niche market? Now you have the opportunity to rethink, rebrand, refurbish.
Step Five: Market Smarter, Not Harder
You’ve got your target audience sussed. Now how do your market your newly refurbished business? You need to focus your advertising where your target market hangs out? Are they on the internet? Are they reading blogs? Are they on facebook? Are they at the local market, or the grocery store, or the antique shop? Are they in school? Do they work at home? Where do they eat out? Where do they go to relax and unwind? The answers to these questions are where you should focus your marketing efforts.
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Yesterday my husband came home from a work meeting with a sad face.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“According to the powersuits upstairs, our section’s run up a massive debt over the last six months. They’re letting one, probably two people go.”
“Are you worried one of them will be you?”
He shakes his head. “I’m indispensible. It will be B— (a friend of ours), since he doesn’t do any work.”
My husband works in a lab with eight other people. This meeting put everyone at his office in a somber mood. Our flatmate has informed us he’s moving out to live with his parents for awhile. He can no longer afford the rent since his archaeological work has dried up completly.
Continue reading Why I’m NOT worried about the recession
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Y’all know me well enough by now to notice I dish out a fair wad of advice about blogging. Writing blogs is a passion of mine, one I’m fortunate enough to get paid for. When I’m passionate about something, I want to talk about it ALL THE TIME. This annoys my poor, long-suffering husband, who is currently enduring with zen-like patience my recent fanaticism with sustainable, self-sufficient living. (He does like my home-baked bread, though).
Hence why I talk about blogging, a LOT. I believe it’s important for my clients and other businesses to understand why blogging has become important in the online world. When new work arrives on my desk, I see the same mistakes again and again – no blog, not updating a blog, a stale, badly written blog, the list goes on – and I want to help.
I started blogging only two years ago – and since then my skills . Everything I know about writing and online media I have self-taught, by reading books, ebooks and other blogs, and by trial-and-error. I haven’t always got things right, but every is a piece of knowledge I can pass on to my clients. And today, I’m passing a few tips on to you.
So, please don’t laugh too much, but here are a few blogging mistakes I’ve made:
Continue reading Blogging Mistakes I’ve made
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Does your business have a website? Are you thinking it’s time you moved into the digital age? Are you pricing up graphic designers? Before you commit to a website design, consider the purpose of your business website and whether your chosen designer is best suited to realise that purpose.
So what IS your website doing for your business? Think about this very carefully. Is your website your primary means of interaction with your customers – ie, an online shop. Does your website bring in new business via search engine traffic? Or does it serve as an information source for customer who’ve already brought with you – offering product advice, software updates or networking resources?
Continue reading What IS Your Website Doing for Your Business?