The First Steps in Marketing

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The First Steps. In Marketing

Creating a marketing campaign can be daunting.  Most of your focus is on your advertising andwhat your website will look like. These are important facets—you want to createa brand.  But how do you know how todesign your promotions if you are unclear on your target audience?

The first step before looking at price, product, place andpromotion is to do some marketing research. You need to collect information to see how and what you should offer,along with knowing how much to charge and where to have your business.

There are some great online tools that can be used.  Most social media products, like Facebookhave surveying tools.  When you canconnect personally to people to survey this is primary research. 

However, sometimes you are not going to get enoughinformation.  For example, you may wantto know about the income level in the area where you want to place yourbusiness.  You may also want to know howmany businesses similar to yours are in an area.  This is important in regards to saturation ofa market.  Where are you going to getthis information?

First, I recommend utilizing the information atcensus.gov.  It is free and will tell youhow many people live in the area, plus their median income.  This will let you know if people can affordyour services in the area.   Secondly,use google.com to research other similar businesses.  Google will even place them on a map so youcan see where your competition is and if you should move to that area.

With this first step completed you can now make businessdecisions with a knowledge base and familiarity with your market.