Know-How Exchange : Strategy

It all comes down to identifying the type of person you believe will be your ideal customer, then finding ways to communicate your product's unique benefits to them (a marketing strategy).

First, who are your ideal customers? Women? How old? Living where? Single or married? Social class? What products do they already use? Why do they like/dislike them?

Next, why should your ideal customers believe your products are better than your competitors? Why should they trust your claims?

If you don't have the budget to advertise to the customers yourself, then you really only have one choice: finding other people who already are in conversation with your ideal customer and teaching them why your product should be the customers #1 choice.

The first thing that you need to do is to have your distribution in place. Whaterver you do to promote your product, your target customers must have access to the product when product awareness is created. Non availability of product after the awareness/interest stage may bacfire and create negative perceptions about the company/brand.

I do not know the Indian market well enough to be able to provide a decent answer, but what I would advise would be to try to figure out what competitors are doing, and copy the parts they do that seem like they would work for you. Do they sell direct, through distributors, etc? Do they advertise heavily, or leave it for the distributor to promote.

Also, look at how the Indian consumer buys products similar to yours. Find out where they get the information on products (advertisements, through friends, from sample opportunities, etc.), and after that, how they go about buying product (online, distributors, etc.).

I hate to be the one to pour cold water on things, but if you're operating on a shoestring budget, the chances you'll succeed are not very good. Most new businesses fail in the first few years, and the most common reason is that they are under-funded.

You can be clever and cost-efficient in your marketing, but if you don't have the resources to do a good job of creating awareness among your core customers, you probably won't last long enough to be worth the time, effort and money you'll have to invest to get there.

Please don't take this as a negative comment. I intend for it to be a mirror on what you've said (and asked) so you will have realistic expectations. That's better, I think, than offering suggestions that could help a little short-term while the long-term is doomed. It's the old story about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.