More Home Business Marketing Terms
- Marketing campaign - one or more marketing activities undertaken in an effort to increase business. A campaign usually has a starting and ending date, an objective, and a means to measure how effective each activity was in accomplishing its objective. The overall effectiveness of the campaign is also tracked. Gathering and analyzing campaign results is important because it helps identify activities that should be repeated, and which activities were not worth the time or expense. Marketing campaigns may include Internet marketing and search engine marketing techniques.
- Lead generation - the process of accumulating contact information on prospective customers (prospects) for your business.
- Cold calling - the process of visiting prospective customers in person (such as in going door-to-door) or in telephoning prospects without their advance knowledge of your visit or call. The effectiveness of cold calling is largely dependent on the nature of the product or service you have to offer.
- Guerrilla marketing - a term created by Jay Conrad Levinson, author of the book Guerrilla Marketing. Levinson offers tips for getting maximum results with minimum costs. These tips may be very effective for home business marketing.
- Internet marketing – marketing your product or service via the Internet. Techniques include search engine marketing, banner ads, and a variety of Web publishing and search engine optimization techniques that will be discussed in future articles.
- Search engine marketing - The act of marketing a Web site via search engines, whether this is improving rank in organic listings (non-paid search results), purchasing paid listings or a combination of both.
Put Your Marketing Knowledge to Work
Now that you have a basic understanding of the terms used in home business marketing, its time to put them to use. Knowledge alone won't bring customers to your door. For one thing, you need to know your competitive advantage, keep it in focus, and then center your marketing efforts around it.Many home business owners claim they don't have the time for marketing. Without it, the business is not very likely to succeed. Setting aside a specific time of the day and/or day of the week is one way to stay on top of your marketing efforts.
Remember, the more effectively you can market, the bigger return you'll get for your time and money. Strong marketing efforts do not necessarily require a big budget. But they do require some time, careful thought, and results tracking.
