Entrepreneurism in the Greater Raleigh Area - What’s Your Business Category?

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Entrepreneurism in the Greater Raleigh Area - What’s Your Business Category? Which Category Describes Your Target Market?

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Alright entrepreneurs. Listen up. Here are a few questions that need to be answered, carefully, diligently, honestly, for you to reap the benefits of investing time, energy, and money, into your sales and marketing efforts.

When talking with future entrepreneurs I always ask detailed questions about what they know about their target market. Some examples are:

Do you know your target market well enough to describe it to potential customer?

What research or evidence in any form do you have that there is a demand for your product, service, or solution?

Are your creating and selling products and services targeting consumers or other businesses?

Who are your competitors, and most importantly, why are they successful?

How will your reach the target market? Describe your sales and marketing approach.

If you chew on these examples for a moment, please reflect on the answers by revisiting them often. Why? Because markets are in a constant state of movement, the require observant businesses to address the changes, and perhaps to change the tactics, to be successful, in their target market.

To each and every entrepreneur I recommend investing substantial time in understanding your market, your target market, and how to reach them. Research frequently, and keep an eye on trends impacting any market you intend to serve.

MANTA is an online provider of business directory and other supportive services. Their business directory for the greater Raleigh area includes 60,400 companies in the area. Check them out at [http://www.manta.com/mb_51_ALL_FCP/raleigh_nc ]. If your company is not listed, I recommend obtaining a listing, and use the tool as a means to monitor business activity in your area.

What you will find useful is the addition of several new functions to analyze the markets and businesses around you. For example, if you are in the consumer services market space, there are over 3,700 companies listed, and the category is growing by an average of 4.87 new companies per week according to the data base MANTA maintains. Of the entire greater Raleigh area 60,000 plus company base, roughly on average 94 new companies are added each week to the database. Some may have existed for a time prior to enrolling the MANTA listings, but nevertheless, the data tells you something about how the market is changing. You can navigate the data to very granular levels in order to zoom in on your target market or on potential competitors.

After you do some research, make sure your current assumptions of your market and its potential are in line with your business plans. If not, modify the plans and put them in to action. The more dynamic the market, the more dynamic your business will need to be to keep running place. Stay as far ahead of the curve as you can, but do not box yourself in to only one target area. Here today, gone tomorrow is a phrase that is loaded with truth.

MANTA Listed Directory of Categories

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, Raleigh Startup Business Examiner

Sandy is an experienced sales, marketing, channel, and business development professional solving company and customer problems in domestic and international markets. He is active in the Raleigh/RTP area assisting companies of all sizes to better understand their markets, clients and the portfolio...

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