BellaOnline Forums Career Small Office/Home Office How do you market your business?

What are some of your favorite marketing techniques, tips, tactics for your small or home-based business?

I find word of mouth is by far the best technique for me. I always have business cards on me and hand them out avidly

Good one, Lisa. Word of mouth is probably one of the oldest, best methods. My clients are always interested in how to get it or get more of it. I tell them to do what you do--talk about your business & give out cards.

Can you share with us where do you do this--grocery stores, groups, networking events, elevators (as in "elevator speech")? And what venues or avenues work the best--generate the most buiness or leads?

Some of be best and longest contacts came from a women's group I joined over seven years ago. Even though I'm no longer a member of the group I still receive contacts from them and if something comes my way that I think would be of interest for one of them I pass it along. Social groups are excellent stress relievers and ways to market and promote yourself both immediately and long term.

Lisa - you are so right! I just got my first weighty writing commission job last week. Guess how? Yup, word of mouth! A friend had a freelancer who was having some family challenges - 'yours truly' stepped in!

I think your idea of business cards is great, so simple. I will work on that next.

PS - for any of you who are also interested in writing businesses, my latest article reviews a UK magazine with lots of contacts - it the magazine features Non-Fiction writing markets (design) this month. I will come back with the link.

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A lot of my marketing is online.

For instance, I include a link to my website in every outgoing e-mail, and this drives traffic to my site. (E-mail signatures could be seen as online business cards, in fact.)

Especially for what we do. I find social networking groups like myspace etc also helpful.

Great tips, everyone.

Anyone do public speaking to promote your business?

Hi Deb!

Marketing is a topic near and dear to me. For my business, I have found word of mouth works best.

I also hand out business cards, usually 3 per person--one to kweep and 2 to share. And I have created a chocolate candy bar wrapper as a "sweet" treat bizcard. My contact information is on the wrapper front and I include my "real" business card underneath the wrapper, so that the potential customer can eat the candy and still have my contact information should they lose or throw away the wrapper. It's a fun technique to promote my business and an excellent conversation starter.

I have not done public speaking per se, but I do belong to a women's business network and at each meeting we have to give a 30-second 'elevator speech' on our business. But I like this idea and would be interested in learning how something like this could work.

Candy Wrapz

Candy, you can start with that group! Prepare a short talk on promotional items (similar to the article ideas), and approach the group leader or programs chair to see if they will add you to their speaking calendar. You can also create a small tips booklet with all sorts of content about your products.

You can play around with creating candy wrappers for your main points, too--

For instance, let's say your talk was on "Sweetening the Deal" focused on getting people to take your products on their sales calls--you could have one wrap say "YES" in big letters. And, the tip for the sales person is that they can get these wraps, take them on calls and tell the buyer "I am only trying to put one word in your mouth". Your point to them is that chocolate (or sweets) are a great way to break the ice, build rapport, etc. and close the deal.

Lifesavers--you can come up with all sorts of clever sayings or tips for that one. Wrap it like a barber pole & slogan it with "The right haircut is a lifesaver" and market to haircutting places. Ditto for other service businesses--accountants, for example. Chiropractor--"A pain-free back is a lifesaver" maybe with a skeleton print.

Of course, you want to provide some info other than just to sell your product, so do look up some stats on promotional items--stuff like what gets thrown away, what gets eaten, etc. You can find info online or in your library.

Finally, give them a bottle of wine with the organizations logo on it for a door prize. (You can do this anytime, actually).