Have you heard of the $1000 Business Challenge? This is a popular movement whereby a person starts a business with $1000 or less in seed money. That investment is responsible to take care of all the expenses of the business until it can begin to support itself. This is quite a daunting task, but the $1000 Challenge has inspired all kinds of new entrepreneurs and a lot of innovative thinking to get these businesses off the ground.

So what would you do to launch a business with only $1000? Here are what ten people who have taken the challenge have done with their seed money.

• Wrote a book on an area of expertise, self-published it and then promoted themselves as experts in their career field and began a consulting business.
• Took a series of tests and paid state registration fees to become a registered investment advisor.
• Studied government regulatory laws as it pertained to the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) and started a business compliance consultancy firm.
• Used connections with business owners, lawyers, and accountants to start a corporate valuation and brokerage firm for the buying and selling of businesses.
• Worked with a furniture rental company and real estate agencies to become a home stager for people trying to sell their homes.
• Started an after-school tutoring business.
• Purchased a used trailer for an existing pickup truck and started a trash hauling and salvage business.
• Purchased a chain saw and yard tools and started a tree trimming service.
• Started a property management business for homes that are in foreclosure and are owned by a bank or rental properties that are unoccupied. Investment included buying a lawn mower and cleaning supplies.
• Started a business that decorates yards and the outside of homes for holidays and special events.

These are all great ideas. We can wax romantically about new startup businesses, can’t we? There is something very alluring about dreaming big dreams even when you are starting out small. However, many great ideas for businesses fail for lack of the common element all of them need to survive: sales. In each of these cases, with only $1000, the business has to learn to swim quickly regardless of how clever their ideas are. If not, they will be out of business before they barely get started. Without a large capital investment to fall back on, marketing is key to ramping up the business to profitability.

Just where would you start to market a new business with only $1000 to attract customers to yourself? Before you start making a list of marketing mediums (web site, direct mail, social media, outdoor signage, mass media advertising, etc.), let me suggest you take a step back and ask some key questions.

1. Who is likely to buy from me right now?

2. Who would take some time to convince, but I can sell to them eventually?

3. What marketing methods would these two groups most likely respond to in a positive way?

Let’s take these one at a time. The people who make up the answer to question #1 need to be your immediate focus. Marketing to them may not necessarily fall into a particular marketing medium, but in a marketing action (sometimes called a method). You don’t have time for them to contemplate buying from you for months on end, you need to get right to the sale. What action can you take where you can ask for their business in very short order? That might mean you are involved in a trade show, a networking event, a golf outing, or some other venue where these people are expecting to be asked for business. Get in front of them when they are in the mood to buy. But more than being at the right place, you need to have the right message. And that message needs to be that your business is the solution to their biggest, most painful need. If you can take their pain away, you will get their business. What do you need to carry that message? For one, a good brand that has a tagline (aka slogan) that speaks to their need. Now decide what marketing mediums you need to carry this message and convince them to do business with you. In this case, you might only need a business card, a persuasive sales brochure and a web site that are all branded with your message.

At the same time, you need to be warming up the person in question #2. These people will buy from you eventually, but the time is not right now. Approaching them in the same manner you did the person in question #1 will not get you to the sale, at least not yet. You need to keep them engaged with you until the time is right. How would you do that? Again, it starts with understanding their biggest needs that your business can solve for them. This is where awareness marketing comes in. I want to use marketing to inform them of my expertise. Social media and blogging are good for this, that is, as long as this particular target group is responding to these types of marketing mediums. That leads to question #3: what marketing methods and marketing mediums does your target market respond to positively and which of them turn them off? For instance, I was meeting with a client the other day who bemoaned all the "garbage” he was seeing on social media. "I refuse to look at it anymore,” he stated. How effective do you think I would be in getting him to follow a Facebook page? What would he respond to? He likes my blogs. He uses the pens I give out as promotional materials. He reads our e-blasts. All of these are brand awareness mediums.

The $1000 Dollar Challenge is a great idea. Just remember that sales sustain business – whether you have $1000 or $1 million in startup money – and that sales don’t happen without marketing. Spend your marketing dollars wisely.

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1000 Ways to Start a Business With $1,000 or Less, by Tom Corson-Knowles, ToughNickel.com, November 10, 2017