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& DESIGN Home Page Architecture Brand Equity Auto Design Game Room SMALLBIZ Smart Answers Success Stories Today's Tip INVESTING Investing: Europe Annual Reports BW 50 S&P Picks & Pans Stock Screeners Free S&P Stock Report SCOREBOARDS Hot Growth 100 Mutual Funds Info Tech 100 S&P 500 B-SCHOOLS Undergrad Programs MBA Blogs MBA Profiles MBA Rankings Who's Hiring Grads | | SEPTEMBER 5, 2000 WORK & FAMILY By Jill Hamburg Coplan Should You Craft Your Business on the Net? A "mompreneur" expanding her home-based business asks if she should market her product online or off
Q: I work at home, making a product I sell at craft shows. I'm preparing to take this further, but I just don't know where to start when it comes to marketing. I've researched relevant Web sites and talked to entrepreneurs, but I don't know, realistically, what our outlets should be -- catalogs, stores, TV? Should I be doing it solely online? -- V.N A: This question is so important to both established and emerging small businesses, and comes up so frequently in letters from at-home workers that I'm going to take it in two parts. This week: how to make the decision. Next week: smart advice for work-at-home parents who choose the Web as their venue. First things first: It's impossible to decide where to sell if you don't know "the exact market and target consumer you are trying to reach," says Tara L. Malatesta, founder and president of Prizm Communications in Boston. Are you after local craft lovers? Online buyers nationwide? Come up with a profile of your customer. Get to know your buyers by engaging them in conversation at craft shows. Do they shop online? How much do they spend? What magazines do they read? Why is your product special to them? You need to understand them to select the right marketing strategy. "The better you can describe those people -- their gender, income, where they live, their habits, the organizations they belong to, who influences them -- the better you'll know how to outreach to them," says Dick Otero. A former chairman of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Otero is the head of EZCertify in Crofton, Md., vendors of software that helps companies bid on federal contracts. LOCAL MARKETING. Let's say you want local buyers. Your strategy would include in-person promoting at fairs, school functions, and community fund-raisers. You might try public speaking and donating to auctions to build your product's visibility. You could get your name out in the community with a home party or a contest. You'd want to join the Chamber of Commerce and advertise in the phone directory. You might send an e-mail to friends, encouraging to them to forward it to their friends and offering a discount for referrals, says Malatesta. Perhaps local retailers would feature your product, says Kimberly McCall, owner of marketing consultancy McCall Media & Marketing in Portland, Me. You might also consider going to department stores and boutiques and a home-shopping network, though you run the risk of exhausting yourself if you don't prioritize. If you want to go national, your strategy might involve banner ads that would pop up on search engines whenever the keyword "craft" is used, or ads in hobby and craft magazines, says Tricia Molloy, owner of Molloy Communications in Marietta, Ga. (More on the Web-site option next week.) COSTS. Then it's time for some nitty-gritty research. The purchase itself needs to be quick, convenient, and easy so you'll probably need an 800 number, says McCall. You'll need to take credit cards. To set up electronic merchant banking, Otero suggests talking to a few local banks. You can take a look at any small-business Web site, such as BizLand.com. You could also check finance resources on this site. Once you know your buyer, you might benefit from research on who's using the Internet. That type of information is sold by vendors such as eMarketer, says Barbara Lewis, founder of Centurion Consulting Group and an instructor at Mount St. Mary's College in Los Angeles. None of this comes cheap, but there are Web sites that specialize in penny-pinching marketing tips. CCH Business Owner's Toolkit (www.toolkit.cch.com), owned by business-software seller CCH Inc., offers free small-business marketing advice. So does the voluble Shel Horowitz, author of Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World. Malatesta also likes to direct new entrepreneurs to Michael Gerber's The E-Myth Revisited. And if you haven't already, write it all up in a business plan.  Jill Hamburg Coplan has covered work, family, business, and finance for the past decade as a writer and editor for newspapers, magazines, and wire services. She left Working Woman magazine, where she was senior editor, when her first child was born and now works solo from a home office in Brooklyn, N.Y. You can e-mail her at Jill Hamburg Coplan  | | |
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