If you are going into business for yourself, you should know the basics of marketing. Marketing isn’t something you can make up as you go along. Many people make the mistake of assuming that marketing is easy, that it is just a matter of putting advertisements in local newspapers and letting the customers roll in. Not so! There are three important principles that will help you get your business off to a great start.
- First of all, you should know about the cluster principle. This is the idea that people of similar types tend to group together in the same physical locations. It is true of businesses as well. So if you are after a certain type of client, find out where they live, work, and play.
- The long-term ad principle is another important one. It is important to spend your advertising dollars on ads that stay in customers’ lives as long as possible. A newspaper is obsolete the next day, but an advertisement in the yellow pages lasts all year long.
- Finally, the loyalty principle is essential to understand. Customers don’t like to shop around all the time. They like to find a brand they trust and stick with it. If you build customer loyalty, your brand alone will be all the advertisement you need.
Many students, when they first enter the field of biology, are thinking of going into medicine or another scientific field. Seldom is biology the major of choice for anyone interested in a business career, however today’s graduates, if they have progressed to the point of receiving a Ph.D., are finding that, in some regions, many more biology-related jobs are available in business fields than in the typical laboratory settings. This is because more and more business is becoming directly related to science, especially when it comes to the biotech industry.