FAQs

Marketing

1. What is my target market?
   Your target market consists of all potential buyers of your product or service. For example, for a gas station, it is the traffic passing on the street and may only be the traffic on your side of the street. People coming home from work are more likely to stop than people going to work. A target market may be people in a certain income or age bracket.
   
   You should know how to reach your target market and differentiate your product or service from others.

2. Where can I get demographic information?
   Ask your trade association, chamber of commerce, library, or city hall. You also can find information at census.gov and other Web sites. 

3. What does marketing involve?
   There are 4 P's of marketing: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Marketing is your plan to apply these 4 P's to your product or service.

4. What is a marketing plan?
   A marketing plan outlines marketing strategies and tools. It discusses the target market and the avenues through which you will reach your goals. It can describe competitors and strategies on how to deal with them. A good marketing plan will illustrate the costs of various marketing campaigns and a method by which results will be tracked. It also can include a timetable for implementation of various marketing activities and potential adjustments based on various results.

5. Do I need to set aside a marketing budget?
   It is ideal to know what your marketing budget is and to develop the most effective marketing plan possible given your budget constraints. You should maintain marketing costs at a level in relation to the income and profit of the business.

6. What marketing tools should I use?
   There are many marketing tools available—direct mail, advertising, brochures, Web sites, business expos, and trade shows. You will need to determine which methods are most effective in reaching your target market. You may want to check out what others in your type of business are doing. Regardless of the marketing tools used, you will want it to stand out from your competitors.

7. What do I need to know about the competition in my industry in relation to marketing?
   The basics include: names of competitors, market share, pricing strategies, locations, and types of marketing tools they use, to name a few. You can use this information to determine the benefits you offer that your competitors don't, and sell those benefits when talking with potential customers.