IF YOU OWN A BUSINESS, DEFINE YOUR MARKET

Thu, 01 May 2008 16:41:13 GMT

IF YOU OWN A BUSINESS, DEFINE YOUR MARKET!

I recently closed my business Envision Publishing that I ran for 6 years. It was a dream of mine to own a business and I have to say I loved publishing Among Women Magazine and certainly, unequivocally enjoyed being the Publisher of a high quality women’s magazine.

In some ways I am sad to see it closed...but I will be happy to let go of the stress of selling advertising to support the product. If I could just publish the stories and provide a forum for women’s voices that would truly be a dream job for me.

I have heard so many people from outside this central Minnesota area comment that St. Cloud is a challenging, highly conservative, market area. The consensus is that it takes this area years to get “caught up” on other markets.

Women are the market and it seems that Among Women Magazine was actually before it’s time five years ago in this business arena. I have been working to educate local businesses they need to market to women and now I think many are starting to understand the concept because they are hearing it from other media as well.

I believe in today’s marketplace, businesses also need to be aware of their marketing strategy at all times and make required changes to it as they go along. As I talked with many people in business, most did not know who their customer was in terms of demographic audience nor had they decided who they wanted their customer to be.

It seemed to me that the most basic marketing strategy, defining your market, was not considered. Entrepreneurs are too busy running their business to find time to define the foundation of their life line.

When looking at any media option, ask basic questions and match the media to your defined demographic audience:

1.) Who does the media reach in terms of demographic audience: gender, age, interest, income level and where do they live?

2.) What is the distribution in terms of number printed or impressions it makes?

3.) How much is it going to cost per impression?

Why did I close Among Women when my readers LOVED the product? I closed for two reasons, I was unable to generate enough advertising support to pay for the intensive expenses of magazine production even though women make 85% of all buying decisions and secondly, the competition was brutal and used gorilla marketing tactics to move my clients to their media.

It was a good decision and one that I don’t regret. I only regret not being able to provide women with a quality, positive publication we deserve.

TAMERA's SPACE: Business

IF YOU OWN A BUSINESS, DEFINE YOUR MARKET