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Cashway.com Free Advertising, Web Site Promotion and Internet
Marketing Resources
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1. Set Realistic Goals. Think about what it is that you actually want to accomplish and how long you think it will take to accomplish. Put together your one year plan to identify all of the objectives you will need to accomplish in order to meet your goal. Some things to include are what type of business structure, operating procedures, timeframes to work from, hours you have available per day to work, advertising and promotion techniques, etc. 2. Define Your Business Agenda. In the developmental stage you should decide if your business is going to be a full-time or part-time venture. Will it be home-based or require a different physical location? If you need a separate location will it be required to be in a high traffic area or do traffic patterns matter in the business you're looking at? 3. Budgeting. Some of the best businesses fail because they failed to properly prepare a budget that would guide them through the firast 6-12 months of business. You should sit down and determine how much money you will need to start your business, how much you need for day-to-day supplies, rent, insurance advertising and promotion. A homebased business is by far the easiest to start and run from a financial budgeting standpoint because you already know what your approximate costs are and need only to add business expenses into the mix. Where will the money come from? Loans, savings or investors? 4. Advertising, Marketing & Promotion. The effort you put into your advertising, marketing and promotion is basically in direct proportion to how well your business will do. You should be prepared to put in long hours and effort in determining how, when and by what means you are going to advertise, market and promote your business. If you watch any TV you have certainly seen the influx of commercials by companies directing you to their internet websites. It's a fact of life if you want to do business on the Internet you have to advertise. Most of us don't have the money to do main stream TV advertising but there are plenty of Free and inexpensive ways to promote your website both on and off the Internet. The main thing is to be persistent and stay on top of what is working for other advertisers. 5. Who are Your Customers. The old philosophy of advertise enough to any medium and your customers will come, has been pretty much replaced with "niche marketing" methods whereby you try to identify the type of person who would buy your product and then to advertise and market to that segment of the population through the media that they are attuned to. For instance, if you're selling boating products, then you would want to advertise in a publication like Conde Nast or similar magazines. When you know who your customers are you will be better prepared to meet their needs and to make sales to them.
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