The business is recently founded and the imperative is to specify/make the product (concept), prepare a business plan, get market feedback and peer advice , find and access production capacity and fund this product concept validation stage from own resources, credit cards, potential customers and earnings from related/previous work capabilities

If you believe your company or business is at this stage you may find some very helpful articles and videos with all sorts of advice in the Start Up section of this site. You may also like to hear from some other entrepeneurs telling their stories from Newstalk Podcasts or why not have your own say on the lively smallbusinesscan.com Forum

Establishing the attractiveness or otherwise of a market, prior to entry is a vital step. Below are six facets of the market, with ‚negative‚ or unattractive characteristics ‚how does your market rate?

The best sales process is the willing customer buying process. The customers‚ buying process always has the following steps:

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is also known as on-line marketing. It is crucial to the success of any business to incorporate SEO into the design of their website and also to use it to promote their on line presence, their business, products and services.

Emma Smyth

BSc(Hons) MSc

Innovate NI

Managing Director & Marketer

www.innovateni.com

For many people, there is considerable confusion about what exactly marketing is about, what sales entails - and anyway are they really different? The answer is that they are. Here's how they both work and contribute differently to your firm's success with clients.

Publicity is one of the three most important marketing and sales tools an entrepreneur will use in the start-up and emerging stage of growth – personal selling and promotions (exhibitions in particular) being the other two.

The company name is the most important element of a brand personality and its visual distinction in the marketplace. The name provides a universal reference point through language and it is the one element of the brand personality that has to be got right and should never change thereafter.

It’s been said that ‘the briefer the brief, the greater the sigh of the readers relief’. This is apposite for all marketing communications

In sales processes, buyers first buy the seller as a person. Do I like this person? Do I trust them? Do they really understand me and my problems? Do I want to invest my time and get involved in this buying process with them? Or anybody else for that matter-at this time!

First and last in terms of importance is “Know your customer”. Who are the reporters/journalists that you want to develop an ongoing relationship with? This is about mutually meeting one another’s needs and not random issuing of ‘releases’ to every journal/magazine/ newspaper/etc available.

Being competent or expert, reliable and forward thinking are the foundation blocks to credibility. Advertising that in a paid-for advertisement on radio or in the press – is seen to be just that; paid-for!

In the early stages of an entrepreneurial venture, prospective buyers are not just buying the product or service – they are buying the entrepreneur and his/her business. A great product is not much use if its provider isn’t credible or isn’t around in two years time.

For a business to be viable, it has to do something as well as its competitors; to win in a competitive market, it has to do something better than its competitors and communicate this convincingly to the customer group that will value it the most .

Target the right benefit message to address the most important (to the customer) needs