The First Steps To Marketing Your Business

So you’re thinking of setting up a business?

Market Research: The Basics

First up, you need to do some market research to figure out where your product sits compared to what’s already available. Take a look at your competitors and see how they are currently marketing their businesses. Try to find the brands who are closest to your current idea.

What makes your idea different? How will you make your product or service stand out from the crowd? What’s your USP (unique selling point)?

A great method to help you with your market research is to do a SWOT analysis. This technique looks at the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats to your business.

Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• Strengths - What do I do well? What do outsiders see as my strengths?
• Weaknesses - What could I improve on? Where do I have fewer resources than my competitors?
• Opportunities - What opportunities are out there? What trends can I take advantage of?
• Threats - What threats are caused by my weaknesses? Where does my competition have the edge?

Try to be as honest and as detailed as possible when you’re answering these questions. The more realistic you can be about your business, the better you’ll be able to address the issues before you launch.

By doing a SWOT analysis, you can get a good idea of where your product sits in the marketplace. It helps you define your niche and how you will stand out from the crowd. It will also help to give you a good picture of whether or not your business is viable.

Finding your target audience



Once you’ve completed your SWOT analysis, it’s a good plan to start thinking about your target audience.

Your target audience is who your product is aimed at. This will help inform all of your branding and marketing going forward so don’t skip this step!

A great way to get to grips with your target audience is to create an ‘ideal customer’ profile.

First up, give them a name and then follow these steps

1. Write down your ideal customer’s age, gender, marital status, family status and location
2. Now think about their occupation, job title, average annual income and level of education
3. Make a list of where they like to get information from eg. books, magazines, blogs, conferences
4. Go a little deeper and brainstorm your ideal customer’s goals and values
5. Next think about the challenges and pain points in their life
6. Finish up by listing possible objections that your ideal customer might have to purchasing your product or service

Be as specific as possible when you’re making this profile. You can refer back to your SWOT analysis too. The more detail you can add, the better you can get to know your target audience.

Once it’s done, you can refer back to this customer profile whenever you need to. This will be the base for all of your marketing going forward. Everything you do should be with your ideal customer in mind.

What is your brand personality?

Now you’ve got a good idea of who your ideal customer is and the strengths and weaknesses of your business, you can start to build your brand.

Your brand is how you will distinguish yourself from your competitors! It includes your name, logo and tagline but it’s also so much more! Your brand will shape everything you do in your business, from the design of your website to the voice you use in social media posts to the design of your packaging.

When you’re working on your brand, you need to pay attention to your ideal customer. Who are you appealing to? How will you create something that they want to buy? Is your branding going to fit with the brands they’re already loyal to? What will make them choose you over any of your competitors?

With our clients, we love to use the Rule of Three. This is a method for helping to narrow down the most essential parts of your brand.

Try to distil your business down into three key strengths - the three things that make you different from anyone else and/or the three things that are really important about your brand. Your Rule of Three might be that your products are locally sourced, sustainable and beautifully packaged. Or your services might be reliable, secure and up-to-date. Think about your business and try to draw out your three defining features.

The Rule of Three is a great starting point for building your brand. Once you have your three key points, it’s time to celebrate them! Put them front and centre in everything you do! This is how you will sell your brand and convince people to come to you 

The first steps to starting a business

The first steps when you’re looking to start a business are to assess how your product or service is going to stand out from your competition. By doing a SWOT analysis and thorough research on your target audience, you can start to get an idea of whether or not your business is going to be viable.

Don’t forget that at this stage, it’s not too late to tweak your idea. If your niche is too competitive or there’s not enough of a market for your product then you might need to make some adjustments. It’s much better to do it now than have to make major changes further down the line.

When you’re confident that you have a niche, it’s time to start working on your branding and defining your brand personality. In future articles we’ll be going into a lot more detail on the next stage of marketing your business. We’ll cover how to grow your social media presence, how to build a website, PR basics and more.

At Start Up Marketeer, we put small businesses first. We’re passionate about providing jargon-free advice that anyone can understand and actionable tips that can make a real difference. Head to our website for more details on what we do and don’t forget to check back here for more blogs on small business marketing soon!

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