Starting, owning and growing a small business calls for many skills sets to be used by the owner, financial planning, people management, having a vision and development of a strategy, operational skills, technical, sales and marketing skills. They are all equally important – so lets have a look at marketing.
What is marketing? A fundamental marketing concept is Customer Value Proposition (CVP) – to succeed with your small business your must:
- Offer the right product or service
- To your targeted clients and customers
- At the right price
- Creating the perception of value
- In a profitable manner
Consider these points when developing your marketing plan – a CVP should be part of your strategic plan and be inline with your efficiency efforts for your small business.
If you have more than one customer/client segments your small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal business, is active in than you need to have more than one CVP, but most of the time small business will focus on one customer group and develop into a niche:
the newspaper shop – to provide newspapers and a small selection of consumer goods in a local (convenient) community with convenient opening hours and a good customer service (friendly) which can demand a slightly higher price
or
the online business – to provide a complete range of products within a market segment, which is available to purchase 24 hrs a day, every day at the lowest possible price with fast delivery using user-friendly online shopping technology
Create your own CVP – Customer Value Proposition for your own small business – again it will help you to focus on what is important (core) and what can be outsourced (non-core). Maybe you can share your CVP with us here?
