A business card is similar to a handshake when you first greet someone. Make a good impression by offering folks your card.
Starting a new business of any kind can be rather time consuming, especially when it comes to marketing and promotion. No matter if your focus is to sell locally or worldwide, running a home business requires the owner to improvise and branch out by using every resource possible. A few marketing strategies include handing out business cards, hanging fliers and getting an ad in the paper locally as well as running a blog or personal website while taking part in the various online social networks.
Instructions
1. Start with a narrow focus. Some businesses when starting out may try to go too big, using whatever reserves they have too soon. You'll want to stretch your advertising dollar as much as possible and keep to a monthly advertising budget.
2. Get business cards made. These are rather handy as you can hand them out whenever you're out and about. You can easily have a few hundred made either online at places such as Vista print, or locally at Kinkos and Staples. You'll want to compare prices for the business that best fits your budget. To save money and if you're in a pinch, you can also design the business cards on your home computer and print them out on card stock. You'll want to use card stock as it's a heavier paper when compared to regular copy paper.
3. Hang fliers in store windows. Many businesses, such as small independent shops and grocery stores have a place available as customers walk in where new emerging businesses can hang their information. You can take it a step further by having 'tear off' tabs on your flier with important information such as the business phone number and website address if you have one.
4. Contact your local newspaper and see if it can run a small ad about your business. Sometimes newspapers need to fill in a blank space and are able to cut a deal. You can also have it publish a formal press release explaining what your business does and when it opens if it hasn't opened already.
5. Set up a blog or personal website. Even if you aren't planning to sell online, it's always a good idea to have an online presence for your business. This allows you to keep local or global customers in the loop on what's going on. If the blog or website is just for an Internet presence and not online sales, there are free website builders and sites such as Wordpress.com and Blogger.com available. Should you be interested in Internet sales, you'll want to look into a possible web hosting plan, what it offers and how much it costs per year.
6. Take part in social networking. Join sites such as Twitter.com and Facebook.com. Create profiles for your business and promote on those networks whenever you have a new product to share or have a sale going on. It's important that you don't use any social networking profile you already have established as a personal account. Keep personal and business separate on social networking sites. However, the biggest thing you'll want to keep in mind is not to spam your audience. If you have something to share, you can update Twitter three times a day: once in the morning, in the afternoon for those enjoying their lunch break and then one in the evening for those just getting home. As for Facebook, one update per event should be more than enough since those won't get buried as quickly as the ones you post on Twitter.
