by Akua Hinds

Created on: October 24, 2010

Home based businesses are like plants; they need tender and consistent nurturing in order to blossom and thrive.  As a home businesses owner, you are the driving force behind your business.  Your business needs your consistent efforts and attention in order to grow and provide you with a desirable standard of living.  All businesses need customers and through reading these tips you will discover how to find and keep customers for your home based business.

Once you have legally established your business name at your local courthouse or city hall, you need to decide upon your target market.  Is your business geared towards men or women?  Would people in the suburbs have more of an interest in doing business with you, or is your business geared to city folks?  Once your target market is established, the next step is to create a marketing plan to attract people to your business.  Partnering with other businesses who offer services that will compliment your home business will attract more customers for you.  For instance, if your business is about selling cosmetics to women, partnering with a home business based hair stylist to cross market each other’s services will benefit your business and hers because you both work in the beauty industry.  Word of mouth is very influential in attracting customers. 

Customers want to know that a home based business owner is credible and having a website for your company will make your business look important and “bigger” than it actually is.  Most companies have a web presence and purchasing a web domain does not have to be expensive.  There are many website hosting companies that offer 24/7 technical support if you want to design your website yourself.  If you don’t have time to design and maintain a website, look into hiring a graphic designer to create and design a website for you. 

Communicating with your customers is important for growing your business.  When your website is up and running you can create an email contact list for customers who wish to be notified about your company’s news and promotions.  Many businesses offer gift certificates to their customers and yours should be no exception.  Creating gift certificates can easily be done on your home computer and you can assign your own certificate numbers.  Offering your customers a loyalty program will also help your business; if they buy ten products or refer ten customers who purchase from your business within a year, give them a free thank you gift.  Your customers will appreciate your loyalty and return it to you by continuing to use your services. 

Joining a networking group will give you and your home based business more exposure in your community.  Many entrepreneurs attend networking groups and they are eager to meet and exchange contact information with other entrepreneurs.  Most small business owners are willing to help each other increase their businesses and will send customers to you or become customers of your business themselves.  

Running a home based business is very rewarding and requires passion and commitment to building it into a success.  Although the business is being run from your home, you need to be strategic by turning yourself and your business into a brand that customers would prefer doing business with versus larger companies.  Setting goals for how and when you want your home business to grow will motivate you to take your business to a brand new level of prosperity. 

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