Selling From Home
Marketing Your Home-Based Business

Selling from home is the basis of marketing the products and services of a home business.

The broader term marketing covers more than just selling, but selling is at the core of marketing.  So this section can help you market your products or services nearby and also across the world. 

  • Your selling efforts are supported by 4 components: 
  • The products and services you offer
  • The promotion methods you use, such as advertising, a good web site, and selling ability
  • The pricing of your products and services
  • The distribution methods used to move your products and services to your customers

Marketing is a comprehensive term that covers lots of methods for promoting a product. Marketing can include choosing a target market, developing a product for that market, pricing, advertising, selling, and distributing a product.

Marketing is an essential aspect of any home business. But marketing is usually a problem for small businesses, unless owners are already skilled in sales and marketing.

Home based business owners have enough to do just operating the business so marketing tends to get put on a back burner. But if a portion of your time isn’t spent on marketing, you may have a tough time getting your business off to a good start and also in growing your business.

Marketing is essential, especially when starting a business. You have to get the word out to potential customers that you are offering your products or services and encourage them to buy. Plan to spend enough time, and money, on marketing to get your business off to a good start and keep it growing.

Some Items to Consider in Setting Up Your Business and
Selling From Home

If you already have decided on a business to start, skip this selling from home topic and go to the checklist for marketing below.

Some of the details of deciding on a business to start are related to marketing, and particularly selling from home. 

Are you interested in wholesaling, which is selling many units of a product to distributors? This form of sales tends to be done by manufacturers.

Are you more interested in retailing, which is selling one or more units at a time directly to individuals or organizations? This form of sales tends to be done by re-sellers, not manufacturers. You can do both types, both wholesale and retail, but many businesses are one or the other.

As you consider what business to start, you will need to look at who you will sell to. Do you want to sell to other businesses or sell to the public?

Do you have knowledge of a particular market? You may be familiar with selling to technology companies, small retail businesses, manufacturers, agricultural markets, real estate or another kind of market. Any of these could have given you the experience of selling. 

Are there enough customers out there to support your potential business?

Answering these marketing questions is a good start for your selling from home.

You can modify the steps of marketing to suit your type of homebased business whether it is online, mostly offline, or mostly off site.

To find a business or idea that appeals to you visit our list of 101 Best Home Based Businesses.

Checklist for Marketing Products In Your
Selling From Home

Do not wait until you are ready to set up and start business operations to consider how you will market your product or service.  Go through the checklist below and know that you can answer all these questions and any others that arise. 

We have used the word “products” below to mean products or services. 

  • What needs do your products fill?  Describe.
  • Who will your customers be?  Describe.  Consider local, national, etc.
  • Who are your competitors?  Describe.  Consider local, national, etc.
  • What are the advantages of your products over competing products?
  • Why will a customer buy your products?  What is unique about them?
  • How will your products be priced and what sales terms will you offer? 
  • How will you sell your products? What methods will you use?
  • Can you make a sales forecast?  How many units can you expect to sell?
  • What sales aids will you use?  Business cards, brochures, videos, web site, other items?
  • How will your products be distributed?           

Find concrete marketing ideas and actions you can take now at Homebased Marketing.

Look at building your own business web site in Web Site Marketing Solution.

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