Every small business has a set budget that they use to market and build their business.  Here are some cost-effective methods that will help you to get your new customers and grow your business.

1. Everyone has a strip shopping center or mall near them.  Wherever there is a grand opening, attend the opening and talk with the business owners and staff and hand out your business cards.  Remember to have your Unique Selling Proposition stated clearly on the card to tell them how they will benefit by doing business with you. Even if it’s an established shopping center, do the same thing. Use this method to introduce yourself and your services to them.  With the Banks I started, each time we opened a branch, I had our various staff members visit with all of the businesses within a 5-mile geographic area of the branch.

2. Create flyers with your business information on it and place them at the grocery store, coffee shops, library, or other places people meet. Always carry them with you so that you never miss an opportunity to place them when you come across an opportunity to do so.

3. There is a place called www.VistaPrint.com, where you can obtain free or low cost business cards. Make sure you add your USP, again to let everyone know how you can benefit them.  While you are out running errands, drop off a business card at every business you see, such as Restaurants, Medical Professional Offices, Gyms and Health Clubs, Drycleaners, and even gas stations.  You never know when someone will need what you have to offer.

4. Getting back to # 2, you can do the same flyers with Door Knob Hangers.  Go into neighborhoods and put the flyers on the doorknobs of the residents.  You can even hire a high school student to do this as a part time job.  I used this method also with the Banks I started. It is very cost effective.

5. Put together a presentation that is very informative about how your product can benefit others then contact organizations, such as your local Chamber of Commerce, Rotary Club, etc., and offer to speak at their monthly meeting.  They are always looking for speakers to educate and inform their members.

6. Develop a press release announcing something that is currently an important topic that you can attach your information to, and offer a free report that reveals the 5 items that will help them solve this problem. Then send it to your local newspaper and other free area publications.

7. Always ask for referrals.  Give your business cards to your family members, neighbors, wherever you shop, and ask them to pass out your cards to their patrons, or whomever they cross paths with.  Offer an hour of free service or a free product to anyone who refers a client to you.

OK.  That’s just a few ways to market your business frugally.  I’m sure if you put your mind to it, you can think of others.   Let me know in the comments section other ideas that you think of.

Technorati Tags: business cards, cheap ways to market, flyers, frugal ways to market, inexpensive ways to market, word of mouth advertising, word of mouth marketing

Online newsletters and ezines are one of the most cost-effective tools you can use to market your business. Customers and prospects who subscribe to your newsletter mailing list are giving you the opportunity to establish a relationship with them. That is very important.  It gives you the opportunity to develop a relationship with them. Once they opt-in to receive your newsletter by email, you can build that relationship, establish trust, and nail down sales by sending the newsletter regularly. The more subscribers you get the more sales you’ll land.

How can you get people to subscribe to your online mailing list? Better yet, how can you get a lot of people who don’t even know you yet to subscribe to your ezine, thereby asking you to send them information on a regular basis about your business? In my last blog article I gave you some ways to build that list. 

Here are several more ways that I thought of since, to accomplish that feat without spending bucket loads of money on marketing.

1.  Ask people to subscribe to your newsletter mailing list when they complete a purchase. This is done at the time of purchase.  You should train your sales people to ask for it.  Yesterday I had a hamburger for lunch at a restaurant called, “The Fox and The Hound.”  When I received the check, my waitress mentioned that they have a gift of $5.00 the next time I visit if I would complete a form and allow them to communicate with me via email. You can do the same thing. Just because someone bought a product from you once doesn’t mean they’ll remember to come back the next time they need something that you sell. To get that customer back again, be sure you capture the customer’s email address as part of the sale and include a checkbox on the form letting people indicate that they’d like to be included on your mailing list.

2. Ask current subscribers to forward your newsletter to their friends. Word of mouth is one of the best ways to grow your newsletter list. Remind your readers to spread the word about you by including a note in every newsletter asking them to please forward the newsletter to their friends who would be interested in reading it. Be, sure, too, that there’s a prominent link to your subscription page in every issue of your newsletter. I use a “Forward to a friend” link at the bottom of my Marketing Tip of The Week newsletter.  Sometimes I also ask you within the body of the newsletter, near the end of the article, to forward the newsletter to others.

3. Promote your newsletter at seminars and talks. If you give seminars or talks on your area of expertise, be sure to let your audiences know that you have a newsletter and what the benefits of subscribing to the newsletter are. And don’t forget to include your newsletter subscription link in your handouts. I do this whenever I speak at Chamber of Commerce’s in my state, and also whenever I speak at a seminar.

4. Promote your newsletter in your 30-second commercial. Many organizations, such as your Chamber of Commerce and Rotary Clubs, give members a few seconds at the beginning or end of meetings to introduce themselves and their businesses. End your "commercial" with an appeal to visit your website and sign up for your newsletter. Remember to tell them how valuable it is to them and how they will benefit from it.

5. Offer a free gift – If it’s on your website, make it downloadable of course, so you have no delivery charges — to those who sign up for your newsletter. To simplify the delivery process put a link to your freebie in the thank-you note you send to new subscribers. And, just in case any of those new subscribers pass on the link to their friends who haven’t subscribed, put a subscription box on your free offer page, too. Lead it off with a note that says "Not a subscriber yet? If a friend sent you a link to this page, sign up for your own copy of (your newsletter name.)" If your business is offline, you can also offer a coupon as an incentive for them to visit your establishment.

6. Get a friend in your industry to promote your newsletter to their mailing list — then promote the friend’s list in yours. This is called a JV, Joint Venture.  It works for both of you.

7. Send a postcard mailing to targeted mailing lists you’ve built from collecting business cards or from the newspaper. I have found post cards to be the lowest-cost way to build my list.  Use the mailing to solicit newsletter signups. To get the recipients to take action, offer a free gift (a downloadable product) to people who subscribe by a specific date, or offer a coupon for when they visit your establishment.

8. Never stop soliciting subscribers.  This is the most critical step of all.  I’ve found over the years that individuals quit too soon.  Keep at it and you will succeed. Also, email addresses change, and people’s email addresses become undeliverable. People’s information needs or product needs change, and they unsubscribe. Keep your list fresh and growing by continually promoting your mailings.

I hope these additional suggestions help you grow your list and make it very profitable.

Technorati Tags: build email list, customer list, grow email list, Growing your business, postcard marketing

Here are some questions I received: 1. How to find “suspects” to talk to (i.e. senior Managers/execs? 2. How to discover/confirm their pain formulate/refine our “mafia offer” addressing that pain? 3. How to repeatedly find lots of suspects to put the Mafia Offer in front of?

In reference to question 2, for those of you who don’t know what a Mafia Offer is, “It is an offer that your customer can’t refuse and that your competition can’t or won’t offer.”   The offer is created based on the internal capabilities and constraints of a company, often making it hard for other companies to follow.  I’ll discuss that in another blog post as it is a whole topic in itself.

Let’s start with # 1&3.  You should make a list of the companies you want to have as your customers.  If you have a list of customers presently, you should then ask your present customers if they know of any of the executives at those companies. I used this concept in the financial planning arena, where I purchased a list of dentists in a set geographical area, then asked my present dentist customers if they knew those other dentists, and naturally they knew all of them. 

I then created a letter thanking them for answering my question, and included an autographed copy of my book, “How to Get Customers to Call, Buy and Beg for More” as a gift for them. Then I asked them to call the dentists they knew and mention that they asked me to call them. 

The door was opened immediately when I called and an appointment was set to see me.  Massage this concept for yourself.

Also, on May 28, I wrote a letter for all of you to use to get to see the decision maker of any company.  Try that letter on a dozen or more suspects on your list. See my blog post titled “How to Get a 95% Closing Ratio” for this letter.

You should already know what their pain is and how you are going to solve it.  If not, I suggest that you start asking suspects.  You should have a list of questions you want to ask, and approach them as if you are doing a survey.  This is marketing to it maximum.

Another way of creating potential customers is by writing an e-book, a short book that can be printed from your web site in PDF format, and by submitting articles to the magazines that they read. 

At the end of your articles, offer them your free e-book and send them to your website to get it.
On your web site you must have what is called a “Squeeze Page”, where they enter their name and email address, or any other information you need, in order to contact them later. After they enter this information, they’ll be able to download the book.

There are some additional steps to follow to make sure that you have permission to email them after downloading the book and to make sure that your email is not blocked by the Spam filters.  If you need more information on this, I can get into it in another blog post.

This gives you some steps for finding “suspects” and putting your Mafia Offer in front of them.

Depending on how high a ticket item it is that you are offering, you should spend some time creating a relationship by gifting information items, as I’ve mentioned in earlier blog posts.  You can get some of those free items from my website by visiting www.kenvarga.com/report.php .  Contact reggie@kenvarga.com if you need more information on using the free e-book as described on that page.

Technorati Tags: Finding Prospects, Finding Suspects, mafia offer, manager prospects, senior executive prospects