WEEK 25

MARKET YOUR HOME-BASED BUSINESS

Stella Borst and Pam Lusczakoski are two women from suburban Detroit who can teach us all about marketing. They ran a business called Artistic Accents by Pastel from the basement of Stella’s home. Their company sold stencils—a more sophisticated version of the old paint-by-number kits we had all used as kids. They sold these kits to homeowners, hobby shops, and interior decorators—anyone with an interest in brightening up a home or office.

Now, just because a business is home-based doesn’t mean you can neglect marketing. In fact, you probably need to do more of it than ever. A home-based business doesn’t have any storefront appeal; no one can window-shop because you don’t have any store window for them to walk by. So you’ve got to get the word out in other ways.

Now, Stella and Pam were as good at this as anybody. They were entirely self-taught, too. “I don’t have a degree in marketing,” Stella once said. “We sit down here and say, ‘Who can we pester now?’”

I’ll describe a few of their marketing efforts here. I urge you to adopt some or all of these if you operate your own home-based business.

BARGAIN FOR AN ADVANTAGE

Stella and Pam were walking through a shopping mall when they saw a long blank wall. They quickly decided it would make an ideal display for their stencils. So they struck a bargain with the mall manager. In exchange for decorating the wall with stencils of flowers and trees and birdhouses and picket fences, the mall gave them a small kiosk from which to promote their stencil kits and catalogs. Their decorating efforts at the mall attracted a lot of attention and even made the local newspaper.

In a similar example, the women bargained with a national paint company. They agreed to include the company’s brand of paint in the stencil kits in exchange for free promotion by the paint company.

I call these methods zero-based marketing. We use it all the time at my real estate firm. It’s a way of getting other people who benefit from your efforts to help pay your marketing costs. For example, mortgage lenders tend to get a lot of referrals from me, so I’ve asked them to help pay the cost of producing my home advertising flyers. This brings down the cost of producing and mailing these flyers.

NICHE MARKETING

A lot of home-based firms make the mistake of plugging all their marketing dollars into one big ad in a large general-interest publication. That’s a mistake. The ads usually don’t work and you’ve blown your marketing budget.

Stella and Pam would spend carefully on ads in a variety of small publications devoted to home decorating. One was the 1001 Country Decorating Ideas, a start-up publication that went to exactly the kinds of customers the women wanted to reach. And the two women weren’t afraid to ask for extras. In exchange for a $300 ad, the magazine agreed to include a mention of them in an article.

SEEK FEEDBACK CONSTANTLY

Every time a customer ordered a catalog or a kit, Stella and Pam asked where the customer heard of Artistic Accents. They invested more marketing resources in whatever they found drew more customers.

This is a technique that I’ve used for years. I’ve tried all kinds of marketing—direct mail, billboards, TV, newspaper ads, the Internet, and much, much more. You’ve got to give a new marketing technique a few months to work and then evaluate it. If it’s making you money or breaking even, continue it for another few months. If it’s losing money, drop it. When you find something that works, stick with it for as long as it helps you.

BE CONSISTENT

Deciding they’d sell more kits if customers thought their stencils were easy to use, Stella and Pam emphasized that even beginners could be stenciling in 20 minutes. Every single piece of marketing underscored this ease of use.

Consistency is key. Most experts say you shouldn’t begin a marketing campaign unless you’re confident that you’ll feel comfortable with the message 5 or even 10 years from now.

SET ASIDE TIME EVERY WEEK FOR MARKETING

Stella estimated that they would spend one day a week strictly on thinking up new marketing efforts and implementing them. Less savvy entrepreneurs market only during slack times. By making it a regular scheduled activity, Stella and Pam increased the odds they’d have fewer and briefer sales slumps.

These two women working in the basement of Stella’s home could teach most entrepreneurs a lot about marketing. If you run a home-based business, I strongly urge you to adopt and adapt some of their methods to your own company. Good luck!

 

 

Ralph’s Rule: Thinking of ways to attract new customers is a 24/7 activity for a home-business owner. You can never do enough marketing.