What is the best way to advertise and market my small home business?
Sunday, August 8th, 2010 at
10:48 pm
I run a home-based business selling hand-painted self-stick murals for kid-friendly spaces. I have my own website and have placed an ad in my local newspaper. I plan on putting up some posters at some local community centres, libraries etc. Problem is… this is not that effective. I don’t have a lot of cash and am hoping that word of mouth will be my best form of advertising. Does anyone have any other ideas for getting the word out about my business? Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.
Tagged with: advertise • Best • Business • Home • market • Small
Filed under: Home Business Marketing
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Create an attractive half page flyer describing your products. Make sure to place your contact phone number in the flyer and that there is somebody who will answer the phone when inquiries come in.
Distribute the flyers in places where your potential clients go. Give 2 or 3 flyers to your regular customers and request them to give the flyers to their friends that would be interested in buying your product.
Have a nice day !
“Word of mouth” is very effective at generating new business. However, you have to *ask* for it.
Think of all the chain emails that kids send each other.
For your business, you can compose a well written email, and add some photos of your work and examples of customers (both specific company names, and general “aunties who buy nice gifts”). Send it to your friends and the purpose of the email (which you say, in the first or second sentence) is for them to either forward the email, or request names from them of businesses that you should contact.
Many times your friends know that you have a business and they don’t even imagine how they could help you. And, how many of your kids’ friends’ parents have never even asked you what you do for a living? You have a network that you are not even tapping.
Realtors are good examples of asking for the business. They might all be good at listing or selling homes, but those with the successful businesses are those who continually generate and follow through with their leads, through multiple channels.
You need to do three things:
1. Drive targeted traffic to your business
2. Capture those visitors personal info (name,e-mail and phone number), then
3. Market to them via newsletters, broadcasts and phone calls until they buy from you.
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Best of Luck. PS: What’s your website? Cheers – Phil
Adding to what the last person said, do all of what is suggested, you have choices of free advertising on Myspace, Facebook, youtube, and blogs. Learn one and master it then go on to the next and keep adding to that..you would not need to spend a penny on ads ever again.. I don’t want to repeat the info from the previous answer but you should do all of the suggestions here. They are all great ways of advertising. You’ll do great!
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I would post my business website in all free ads site i know. Great Days’ idea is really good.
Advertise your business on free classifieds, relevant forums and social networking websites. Monitor the response you get periodically to find out what works best. From http://ad5.info
themompack.com has about 6000 members. It is a group of work at home moms. Lots of great free advertising.
You really want to know?
Don’t know how much you sell your product for but… Get some cash and drop whatever marketing you are doing, newspapers, radio, and other crap and get into postcard direct marketing. Research about this type of marketing and quit wasting your time with other marketing methods. Concentrate on your town or city only (works extremely good in towns). Even if you don’t get any response, the word of mouth will spread faster than fire and put your biz on the map. You need to find the customers that most likely are interested in your products or services. You need to go targeted. You need customers like: “parents (or women) with kids (certain age), maybe married, who make over (amount here) per year, and like to spend money, etc.”. Targeted, targeted, targeted!
The customers are there begging for you to knock on their doors! Newspapers, radio, and other forms of advertising are too broad and a waste of money most of the time. It also depends on your product and message too but I just don’t like them at all.
Get into postcard direct mailing. Spend some time on the design of the postcard. It has to be pretty, very attractive that possible customers will think twice before throwing it away (so pretty they stick it to the fridge for a while). Don’t hurry. Be patient and do a good job. Buy 4×6, glossy front color with black & white back postcards and provide your own design. Don’t use the postcard sites’ designs; develop your own. Convey the benefits of your products, etc. on the back of your card. On the color front, play on emotions. Buy a picture of a cute kid or little girl crying and put a nice picture of your product next to him/her with a message that reads “She really wants it” or stuff like that. Something touchy to the heart. Women react to stuff like that. I don’t know exactly about your product but it appears you can target businesses too, like daycares, not sure. You need to buy business leads for this.
There are a lot of postcard companies and consumer lead providers out there. Find the best price for quality. Keep the cost of them postcards as cheap as you can. For leads, I recommend… you find it. Post will lose credibility if I post it. You need consumer leads. Ask them to include “Or current resident” in them addresses so they are delivered to whoever lives there. That’s what I do since I live in a small town (10,000) but you may not want to do that. Read the lead provider’s website well. Read and see if they are trustworthy. Read their Faqs.
Spend some time researching this subject and on your postcard design (fire up your Photoshop) and I bet you’ll see good results. I learned Photoshop doing my first postcard design. I didn’t trust anybody to do what I wanted. A little mistake and there went a lot of money. I wanted to do it my way and it paid off immensely.
Well, try it to see if it works for you. Again, even if you don’t get a single response, the word of mouth will spread faster than fire.
This is based on my own experience. Since I’m doing direct marketing, I have never looked back. My business would’ve been dead if it weren’t for direct marketing. I love when I get phone calls like “Hi. I just received this postcard in the mail and…”
Hope that helps.
Have you tried ebay? It is a great place to put the stuff you are selling and use your website as your address. It’s very affordable and has alot of traffic.
Amazon is also a great place to sell stuff like you have. You can set the price and include your website.
These are most likely the two most shopped places for childrens things. Just study the sites a little before you get started. There are several books about it at your local bookstores and libraries.
Good Luck!