Student business advice
starting a business
This area is now going to deal with setting up
your business !
Business Plans
If you have an idea for a business whilst you
are studying or you have now completed your studies and wish to make
loads of money then the first piece of work you should undertake is to
construct yourself a business plan.
This should not take you long but you'll find
that by going through the process of developing a business plan will
ensure you answer all the questions about your proposed business and
have a solid cashflow projection for at least the first year.
You'll need to know where your customers are
coming from, why they will buy the product from you and outline your
action plans to get to your goal.
We recommend a visit to Teneric Business
Planning which is an expert business planning site but has loads of
free business information. You can find Teneric UK
business plan software or if your prefer to start from a ready-made business plan choose
a sample business plan or
have a look at another excellent site business plan express template website
Marketing
So you've written your business plan, have your product and are ready to market your product to your target customer group.
How do you go about marketing and what is marketing in any case ?
A classic definition of marketing is "identifying and satisfying customer needs"
This really means that people have needs all the time and your product will satisfy that need that folks believe they are after. You will have found this need and described the likely person that is going to required something to satisfy that need and .... developed your product or service that these people will buy.
When you come to communicate your product or service please remember that you should only communicated benefits. Only benefits sell - not features.
A benefit will satisfy that need. For example, a householder needs new central heating. The benefits of using xyz heating company are that they are fast, clean (leave no mess), have no call out charge, operate locally, and have been in business for 25 years so have an excellent history.
Try to market the same company by saying "we install aaa central heating systems" is not going to work.
You would have found out from your market research that the customers to target want no mess left behind so you can market on that need.
Here's a tip - keep saving your computer data by using a integral courier USB drive to help recover lost data. And to find out more about marketing contact this excellent marketing company.
Small business websites
Other uk small business starting up a business websites that can provide small business advice are:
startups