What To Expect In The First Year Of Business
Tips for Promoting Your Small Enterprise
Written by Samuel Muriithi for Gaebler Ventures
As an entrepreneur you should always be thinking of innovative strategies that will keep you a step ahead of your competitors. To be successful in your commercial endeavors you have to adopt some business values that will endear you to both your suppliers and customers.
The prudent entrepreneur will from the onset realize that he or she is up against many other competitors and that each of them is struggling to entice customers to buy from himself or herself and not the other provider.
One of the most effective tips for promoting your small enterprise therefore, especially where several or many other businesses are offering similar or related products/services, is to ensure a perpetual assurance of high quality. This is perhaps the surest way of attracting new customers and retaining return customers, and the greatest competitive advantage you can have over your competitors.
To promote your small enterprise you should invest quite substantially in the overall manner in which you package the two important components of the business i.e. your products and/or services, and yourself. These are the two main things that customers will assess when they consider doing business with you. In promoting your small enterprise you will want to give customers the assurance that they will get their money's worth. You should essentially dress the part and have your business premise and the products/services equally spruced up.
Another of the most crucial tips for promoting your small enterprise has to do with the pricing tactics that you employ. Effective pricing remains a tricky issue even for seasoned entrepreneurs simply because one has to incorporate several diverse factors into the decision keeping in mind that some of these are hard to ascertain. The best compromise that will help promote your small enterprise is to always offer a superior product/service at an affordable price. Remember that cheap prices aren't always preferable; they can be interpreted to mean low quality.
Along with effective pricing you will do a lot to promote your small enterprise if the product/service you offer presents the end user with the desired level of convenience. Convenience is certainly not tied to the nature of the product/service you offer alone; it can also include the manner in which you go out to meet the related needs that the customers have. You can get ahead of the competition by offering your customers free delivery services, opening during weekends, offering discounts for purchases above a pre-determined quantity, guaranteeing the quality of your product/service and committing to giving refunds or replacements in case products are defective etc.
All these tips for small enterprise promotion make for developing a good reputation on your part. A good reputation is patiently consolidated over time but is quick to ruin and difficult to restore.
Samuel Muriithi is a business owner in Nairobi, Kenya. He has extensive international business experience in the United States and India.
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