Marketing Method For Your Home-Based Business

Part of running a successful business is its growth. Home-based businesses are no exception. In fact, it can be even more important if you are just starting out or lack a potential client base. The key to growing a business is marketing.
Marketing is how you connect with individuals who may become customers or clients and includes methods such as affiliate programs, newsletters, trade shows, web sites, brochures, advertising, and more. The potential marketing methods available are almost limitless in scope and deciding on an approach may seem daunting, but a little preliminary effort can help you narrow down the field of options and help you make the best choices for your business.

–Determine Targeted Audience
–Set a Budget
–Evaluate Marketing Methods

Marketing Your Home-Based Business on the Internet

The Internet has opened up a whole new world of advertising and marketing for home-based businesses. Instead of having to spend tens of thousands of dollars on expensive print campaigns or mailings, you can now reach a global audience on a shoestring budget. Here are some of the popular and cost-effective ways that you can advertise your home-based business on the Internet.
Internet advertising can be broken down into three main categories:

1. Cost-per-click, where you only pay for actual clicks or leads for your advertising.

2. Cost-per-impression, often referred to as cost-per-thousand impressions or CPM, where you purchase a set amount of views for your ad.

3. Set-price advertising, where you can purchase a specific amount of advertising for a given length of time.

Cost-per-click advertising offers small business owners great value for their advertising dollar. There are several sites that offer the ability to pay only when customers click on your ads.
Google AdWords is one of the most popular advertising venues for small businesses. With the AdWords program, you bid on keywords related to your business, and your text ad is displayed when Google users search for that term. You pay only when a user clicks on your ad, and the cost per click varies according to the popularity of the keywords you select. Google AdWords does not require a minimum purchase, and you can easily spend less than $25 for a successful advertising campaign by using AdWords properly.

5 Marketing Tools for Home-Based Businesses

Because a home-based business doesn’t have a storefront for passers-by to notice and no opportunity to generate walk-in business, home-based businesses need marketing other types of businesses, not less.
Not marketing your home-based business will almost certainly doom it to failure.


1. Direct mail. still a cost-effective way to advertise in many industries.

2. Voice mail. Even the outgoing message on your answering machine or voice mail system can help promote your business when utilized correctly.

3. Press releases. The only thing better than cheap publicity is free publicity, and well-timed, professional press releases can result in just that.

4. Referrals. Referrals are probably the single best way to find new customers. If you do something well, chances are people are going to talk about it.

5. Radio interviews. If you can speak knowledgeably about your product or service and tie it in well with current events, radio interviews are a great way to reach a wide audience and improve your customer base.

Direct Selling ­ An Option for Mini-Preneurs

According to the Direct Selling Association (www.dsa.org), more than 13.6 million people participated in direct selling in 2004 with an overwhelming 73 percent of them being women. Buying and selling in the comfort of a home still seems to be the heart of the direct selling industry, with 62 percent of all direct sales being made that way in 2003. About 16 percent of total sales that year were made by phone, followed by about 10 percent via the Internet. While the Internet doesn’t allow for face-to-face selling, it does give direct sellers a worldwide customer base.

Top Five Tax Breaks For At-Home Entrepreneurs

Forbes.com:

By the Census Bureau's last count in 2002, half of all businesses in the U.S. are home-based. The U.S. government encourages this kind of entrepreneurship. Dig deep and at-home entrepreneurs will find a few precious tax deductions, say Mark Birge and Steve Mentzer, accountants with Aldrich, Kilbride and Tatone, an Oregon-based accountancy firm.

Alterations to the tax code in 1999 made it easier to qualify for home-office tax deductions. For instance, engineering and construction types who spend lots of time in the field, but do most of their administrative work at home, can still qualify for certain deductions.

1. Infrastructure (utilities, phone service, housekeeping services, landscaping) Run-of-the-mill homeowners and renters can’t deduct these expenses, but at-home entrepreneurs can.

2. Home mortgage interest and property taxes. U.S. taxpayers can deduct these anyway, but as a small business owner, you can save even more by applying a percentage of mortgage interest and property taxes to the home-office section of your tax form.

3. Travel expenses. You can’t deduct fuel expenses if you commute to work each day, but if you work from home, you can deduct the costs of traveling away from your home for any business-related activity.

4. One-time office equipment purchases. Section 179 of the tax code says you can take a one-time deduction–up to $105,000–for the purchase of office equipment, as long as you don’t purchase more than $400,000 of equipment in a calendar year.

5. Family affair. Sole proprietors with children under 18 who work for them can deduct their children’s “wages.”

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