From the end of World War II until the late 1970′s most Americans spent the majority of their money on basic goods and services with little left for luxury type items. Giant factories turned out millions of products whose style, color and size were often determined by what made the machines work most efficiently. There wasn’t much concern about what the customer really wanted.

 Japanese auto producers forced reverberating changes in the way consumers went about considering their purchases. Suddenly in the mid-1970′s a flood of cars hit America with features never before available at popular prices. Toyota and Honda revolutionized the concept of “user friendly’ products – incorporating a high standard of quality with easy to use features, all at affordable prices.

 Suddenly, consumers realized that someone did take their interests into consideration when designing products. In fact, a critical element in Japanese auto production since the late 1960′s has been extensive consumer research and surveying, particularly in the area of durability and reliability needs.

 The customer of the 1990′s has learned from buying user friendly products such as Sony televisions, Panasonic stereos, Apple computers and Honda autos that they can be demanding and that manufacturers will respond. This has produced a new brand of customer that is educated, very aware of prices and very demanding.

 She wants quality, variety, durability, excellent service and a very good price all at the same time. She has a mind of her own and will talk about her interests and needs if you ask.

 The process of asking customers what they want before you design your product or service is called being “market driven” because you are guided in your product development decisions by the customer’s wishes.

 Today the most successful new businesses are those that ask enough questions and listen carefully to the answers.

 Basic People Needs

 It is sometimes frustrating trying to get honest information out of people, because they can’t always express why they buy the way they do. You can bet safely, however, that their need is one of several basic motivations of all people, such as:

•  Convenience
• Comfort
• Friendship
• Security
• Status
• Health and Well-Being
• Savings
• Love
• Style
• Profit

 When you are trying to figure out your desired customer, put yourself in their shoes and think about what needs would motivate you to buy your product or service. There are usually two or three primary needs your product or service can satisfy and several lesser needs. When starting your product/service design, it is critical that you use your market research to focus on the primary needs and wants of your prospective customers.

 But it is not enough to just learn about customer needs, you must also use your research to discover how potential customers break down into clusters or “segments.” Most new businesses do not have the resources to pursue more than two segments at one time. It is essential to your survival that you learn how to narrow down your marketing direction.

 Finding Your Niche

 The most successful businesses today are highly specialized in the group of customers they serve; for example bookkeeping for public libraries or manufacturers of fashion clothing for dogs. These tightly focused groups of customers are called “niches” – small but profitable pockets of customers who have similar needs and wants.

 Specialization can be scary because you may feel that by narrowing down your market you have too few customers to keep you alive. To avoid this bind, keep several requirements in mind:

•  Make sure your niche has more than enough potential customers to allow you to meet your sales goals.

  You can estimate this by setting your desired dollar sales level for the first year and dividing it by your best guess at how many dollars a typical sale will produce. For example, if your first year revenue goal is $50,000 and you estimate an average sale will be $100, then you must make 500 sales during the year. Assuming that you stick with a good marketing strategy, you will get repeat business from many of your customers, so that 500 sales might only require 250 customers.

• Make sure your niche doesn’t have too much competition.

  How much is “too much” depends on the geographical area of your business, how long your competition has been around, whether they are local “mom and pops” or national marketers, etc.

• Make sure that you can reach most of the customers in your niche.

  If the only practical way to reach your desired customers is by advertising in a big city newspaper, you will probably find it too expensive for your startup budget.

Ways to Carve Up a Niche

 There a number of ways to divide up your marketplace. For example:

•  By geography
• By industry
• By special interest
• By type of problem
• By leisure activity

 Utilizing your market research into your desired customers motivation, you can find patterns of behavior that can help to define your niche.

 The Product Description Worksheet

 As we discussed earlier, the successful new business owner first surveys potential customers to identify their wants, needs and dissatisfactions. Questions about bow often they buy, how far they would travel to buy, how much they might spend for your type of product or service are also asked.

 You then separate the facts gained into groups, such as: pricing, packaging, location, assortment, etc. to organize the information in preparation for beginning a custom design of your product or service. You will make assumptions about the potential customers behavior and come to some conclusions about how you can present yourself as someone who will respond to their needs and wants.

 To help you put together your product design strategy, you can use the fill-in worksheet that follows this section. Use the following steps to complete the worksheet:

 1. Learn in detail 5-6 wants/needs of your target customer.

 2. Add information from library research, trade associations, etc. about customer demographics, location, buying behavior, etc..

 3. Take the profile you are creating and decide whether it describes one type of customer or several groups (known as “segments).

 Product/Service Description Worksheet

Customer Want/Need
Product Feature
User Benefit

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Jeff Williams

Product DescriptionHow to Hold a Profitable Tag Sale is an easy to follow template that will help you organize, advertise, and strategize to maximize profits at your tag sale, rummage sale, garage sale, moving sale or yard sale.

Everyone has unused furniture, household goods, broken appliances or outgrown toys and clothes collecting in their garage, basement or attic. You can turn these old or unused items into cash by holding a tag sale. Whether you have a little bit of junk or you’re clearing out much of the house, holding a tag sale can be a huge undertaking requiring planning and preparation.

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I own 2 small businesses and we are interested in 2 goals. Promoting and helping a local charity organization, but also increasing people to our business location and increasing sales.

Maybe you can’t have both goals at once?

We were hoping to really give the charity a show… advertise for them and get attention to their cause, but also try and increase business at our store that day, or in general. Also get people to know we’re there…

Is this a bad combination? Not sure how to pull off something like this… any good ideas? Thanks!

I can say that I understand both ways why you are doing this type of marketing but it might benefit you more by focusing on the most important for a non-profit organization. Helping them first will let them know you are there for them and just have your business cards handy and if the non-profit doesn’t have a problem with you promoting your business name then go for it. If they do then just focus one goal at a time putting them first because they are the ones in need of funds and only people and local donations help 501c Non-profits generate income. Try it and hope it everything works out. Another tip is while promoting have a sign in sheet at your table or display table and make sure guests and visitors sign it and give them your brochure or business card that way the hard work is already done without asking for their contact information and then in few days follow up with the customers.

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Affiliate Marketing is the relationship between website owners and merchants whereby the merchant offers the website owner (affiliate) commission for linking to his/her merchant site. Affiliates send traffic to the merchant site through these affiliate links and the affiliate is rewarded each time a visitor converts to a sale (CPA) or lead (CPL). Affiliate marketing is about innovation. Affiliate marketing is one of them. An example of affiliate marketing is the Amazon product links that some people place on their website.

Affiliate marketing is a win win situation for both the seller and the affiliate. The affiliate earns money for selling an item and the merchant gets more sales for doing nothing. Now I know what you may be thinking. Affiliate Marketing is a method of selling products or services by marketing them within the content of publisher Web sites. Publishers (affiliates) earn a commission from their advertisers (merchants) for every sale or new subscriber delivered through their efforts. Affiliate Marketing is easy and it really works if done properly.

Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to the promote a website. At present several nontraditional methods of online marketing or promotion of a product are available in the market. Affiliate marketing is often called, “performance-based-marketing”, meaning you don’t pay the advertiser until they sell something. Affiliate marketing ensures that you only pay when your ad results in a sale. Affiliate marketing is supposed to be about long-term and mutual beneficial partnerships between advertisers and affiliates. CPA networks on the other hand eliminate the need for the advertiser to build and maintain relationships to affiliates, because that task is performed by the CPA network for the advertiser.

Online marketing is perhaps the fastest growing flow of cash ever seen especially in this time of total financial panic. The cool thing about this is that you DON’T need your own product to promote. Online casinos are a booming industry with billions of dollars in revenue generated each year. Casino Coins is bridging the gap between these properties and potential online advertising space, making it possible for webmasters to grab a piece of those massive revenues. Online shopping has changed the way consumers buy goods. No longer are people restricted to driving to their local shopping mall to experience a unique shopping extravaganza.

Businesses have always relied on special deals, revenue sharing and other barter arrangements to help bootstrap, whether it’s an employee-discount program with partners or special deals for vendors that come at the expense of some of the advertising costs. This is nothing new and can, in fact, lead to a solid and profitable business partnership when the stakes are spread equitably. Businesses make sales, affiliates earn income and their contacts and customers receive pre-screened offers from a source they trust (and sometimes get a discount, too!). If you’ve been looking to expand your customer base or diversify your income streams, affiliate marketing is a great place to start.

Web Monopoly’s approach to affiliate marketing is more aggressive affordable and resourceful than you will find anywhere. Webmasters go for affiliate programs for two reasons. One, is for making money and financing his website or even make a living out of it; two, a webmaster should always be interested in improving his website. WebSponsors for example, pay you when someone requests a free trial or sample of a product or service. You provide them with a lead and they pay you for it .

Additionally, you should seek out smaller ventures that will help you to generate a constant stream of income through the year. The type of products that you promote will largely depend on your financial needs and the budget of your home based business. Add an article to your website. Get a link to your site.

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