Choose a Place to Sell Your Products: Location, Location, Location

One of the most important steps of launching a successful product release is choosing a location where you can sell your products. “Place,” one of the 4 Ps of marketing, is key to converting sales. The ideal location for selling your products is a place where your target market frequents. Choose a place to sell your products in five basic steps.

Step 1. Identify your target market first and foremost. This is the group of people you believe will be most likely to need or strongly desire your product. If you’re unsure, you can determine the target market by performing market research on companies similar to your own.

Step 2. List places where members of your target market frequent. For instance, if your target market is teenage girls, possible places include the mall, movies or the beauty section of the local pharmacy. List as many potential locations as possible.

Step 3. Decide on the specific area that you want to target with your product. Narrow it down to a town or city based on information about your chosen target market. You can use a demographics reporting service like ZipSkinny to find areas densely populated with members of your target market.    

Step 4. List the cities or towns you want to target alongside the types of places where you could potentially sell to your targeted customer (such as local malls). Match the places to the cities and start developing a list of the specific businesses where you want to sell to your customers so that you can contact each place to ask about retail opportunities. For instance, if you decide to sell in local mall A in Anytown, Michigan you can list and contact the mall management office of local mall A in Anytown, Michigan to ask about the cost of renting a kiosk to sell your products to customers.

Step 5. Write down a short description of how you plan to reach customers in each of the specific places you identified in the previous two steps along with more details of the plan. Narrow down the list based on the options that best fit your budget and other requirements. Finalize distribution or rental agreements to service customers in the places you’ve chosen.

Create a Website for a Small Business

A professionally designed website is an asset to your company, the same as a brick-and-mortar website. The look and feel of your website could make your small business look like a Fortune 500 operation. For this type of result its best to leave the project in the hands of a professional, but if you want to take on the job of putting together your website on your own, make sure you have the required competencies to manage the project efficiently.

1. Understand the competencies that you need to create a website. For one, you should have some HTML knowledge. Since one of the main elements of publishing a website is content, you also need to have writing skills. To assure  an attractive format, a background in graphic design is helpful.

2. Choose a web hosting service that offers a wide variety of features, including domain registration, email accounts, CGI capability (allows you to create web forms), design templates that you can use as a starting point for your HTML web pages (optional), and plenty of storage space (at least one gigabyte for a business website). You'll also need shopping cart software and a merchant account from a third party provider if you plan to sell things on your website.

3. Choose and purchase a domain name that includes either your business name or the name of the types of products or services you sell.

4. Learn, from your web hosting service, how to access your file management or FTP (file transfer protocol) service. The service will provide you with an account user name and password that you'll need to access your files. You may have to download a third-party FTP application like WS FTP or Filezilla to access your website files on your web server.

5. Create HTML files to upload to your web server and save the files to a folder on your computer. These HTML files form the structure of your website and must appear in the "public_HTML" or similarly named folder on your web server. For a business website you'll need at least four pages, including your "home," "product," "about," and "contact" pages. Make sure that you name your homepage "index.htm," or "index.html"—this is the default name most web hosts use to represent the first page people see when they type in your website address. See "Resources" for a resource to learn more about HTML.

6. Write about 350 words on each page of your website to describe the purpose of that page. For instance, for your "about" page discuss the history of your company and how you help customers.

7. Create the design elements of your website including your background image (if applicable) and the page header. Prepare and save any images files to your computer folder as well. If you're not familiar with this step, hire someone.

8. Log into your web server using your FTP program and transfer all of the files you've created from your computer to your web server. When the transfer is complete, type in your website address (such as abccompany.com) to view your website.

9. One more thing: If your web host offers a page building tool use that to create your HTML pages if you're not comfortable with building it from scratch.

Tips: You can also create a website for free using a blogging service like Blogger or Wordpress.

Some people also like to add more complicated elements like Adobe Flash movies (requires special training) and coding in addition to basic HTML, like ASP or Javascript (requires computer programming experience). Due to the amount of training necessary for these competencies, it's best to leave it to a professional.

Small Business Car Rental: How to Rent a Car for Small Business Use

Renting a car for use by your small business isn't much different from renting a car for personal needs. The main difference is the benefits and the permissions you give to your employees (if applicable) to use the vehicles. As you build up your business and increase your rentals, the car rental agency may offer your small company better discounts.

Step 1: Contact the car rental agency of your choice and ask to speak with a representative of the company's small business car rental division. Most of the major agencies have a separate division for businesses -- for instance, Budget Rent a Car has a Budget Business Program® that offers special discounts and rebates to small business owners.

Step 2: Explain your company's situation with the small business car rental representative (or enter it into the online application form). Give information on your company's number of employees, income if requested, and estimated frequency of car rentals each month.

Step 3: Ask the representative for information about the special programs and rate plans offered for companies your size. Choose one that best fits your company's needs. For instance, some small business car rental companies offer vans and trucks at a special rate to businesses who need these vehicles for events and ongoing productions. Discuss business travel insurance options with the representative as well so that your employees are covered in case of an incident.

Step 4: Complete the small business car rental application as directed over the phone or online. You might have to supply a social security number or employer identification number as well as your company's address, phone number, years in business and amount of your expenditures. Retrieve the business rental code for your company, which you'll have to use whenever you book for business reasons.

Step 5: Distribute the business rental code to all of your employees and keep the number on hand to reference whenever you book travel. Provide the number whenever you're seeking a small business car rental quote for your company.

Start Up a Small Business Blog Welcome

Well, I've finally decided to take a break from my own small business to start posting on my Start Up a Small Business blog.

Just to give you a background, I started off by creating a step by step guide for how to start a small business on my Start Up a Small Business website. It's made especially for people who have absolutely no clue on how to start a business. I've been there.

After you learn the basics (like registering your business and setting up a location or website), you can then move onto more complicated issues down the line, like corporate and complex financial matters. At that point, it's probably time to hire a lawyer, accountant, or business consultant.

This blog will contain a variety of small business related articles to help you navigate this process.

I know how confusing and annoying it can be to start up a small business. This blog will help you get through it. Once you get your small business up and running, send me an email and I might add you to my list of successful small business startups.

Take care and good luck!