One of the questions that new entrepreneurs frequently ask, is how to market a local business. The website has been built, products are ready, but there just isn’t anybody buying. If you’re selling goods and services locally, you may not need a website. If you do, then it can be helpful to do a little homework first, before you build the website.

Make a profile of who your customer will be. If you’re targeting other local businesses, try and discover what services or products they already buy that are similar to yours. Is there a niche of this group that would be more profitable than the main target? If you can’t decide if there is one, identifying the sub-niche may be discovered by a little trial and error.

Let’s use a website that helps local dealers sell cars. Looking through the local newspaper and other advertising media sources, you can see if they are advertising in auto-trader magazines. Where else do you see their advertisements? Are they advertising on the radio? What about flyers? What about paper placemats at local restaurants? What about the yellow-pages?

Dealerships that are not spending much money on advertising are probably not going to be your target market. Cross any of these off your list. This doesn’t mean you abandon them completely but what you’re looking for is a segment of the target market that more closely resembles the profile you have created that meets the criteria to be part of a test group. You can always try the ones who aren’t advertising, later.

It’s helpful to discover what you can about the business owners too. Things like their age, marriage status, where they live — just whatever you can find out.

Now that you’ve done your due diligence, and picked a segment of the group (let’s say twelve dealerships) it’s time to go see if there is any interest. The low hanging fruit, of course, is major dealerships, because they are easy to find, and you see their ads every place. After you visit three to four of them, you might find out that they aren’t interested at all. Using a Ford dealership as an example, you find out that their dealership is part of a franchise, and they pay a set fee to the parent company to look after all of the advertising, and company website. You discover that new dealerships can be crossed off your list.

Well, it was a good plan — nice and easy! But the fact remains that new dealerships are not your target market. In order for this list to benefit you, the twelve on the list need to be interviews with your target market. At this point, you realize that it’s a good thing you haven’t built a website, and chosen a domain name.

After you have revised your list you can go and visit these people. Some of them may not want to talk to you at all, and others may ask straight out what you are selling. You’re not there to sell anything. You’re doing market research for a new business you’re thinking of building, that will help dealerships sell more cars every month. You just want their input. Once they realize you just want to talk, most of them will be happy to tell you about their business, their life… and probably other stuff you really aren’t interested to hear. But, let them talk! The more they talk; the more they will like you.

It may be good to have a pen and paper with you. They will offer some ideas, and some of them might be pretty good. You’ll get a feel for how they would like to see the site built and how they would like to see the cars sold. Suggest that you were thinking of a set rate for a specific amount of cars, and a little extra for each one after this number. Ask them what they think a service like this would be worth to them on a monthly basis. Make sure you write everything down. When you have collected all of the information you need, your last question might be to ask them, that if you continue to receive positive responses and go ahead and start the business, would they be interested in being a customer.

Likely you would be told, that if your business can actually help them sell more cars, they will consider signing on with you — if you can indeed prove, you can help them sell cars. Still, there is a chance that some might tell you they intend on staying with their current way of advertising. Others might say to come back sometime later after it’s up and running.

When you have completed your interviews with this market segment, if you have over half of the people interested, it’s time to register an appropriate domain name and start building the business. You can easily find out what their current advertisements are costing them. You’ve been told how much they would be willing to pay for your service. You put your price in the middle so as not to be the most expensive, nor the least expensive, and that puts you in the ballpark. You will have a business with paying customers.