Business Opportunities Weblog

August 10, 2007 by Dane Carlson | 5 Comments

Whether you have an internet business or a store-front, it is often challenging to breathe new life into your business, bring new customers through your door, and find excitement in your daily routine. It’s easy to get into the habit of throwing money toward advertising and worrying about what your competition is doing. We lose our focus and our hands-on expertise. What can we do to get back on track, get excited and gain some new exposure?

Try some of these new ideas and make a 90-day plan. It always takes time for a new plan to work, have patience with yourself and track your progress. Most of all, have fun!

1. Leave a paper trail. Print new business cards and leave them wherever you go. On your table at a restaurant, public restrooms, inserted into the bills you pay, in your grocery cart, tanning salon, barber shop… be creative!
2. Find more places to sell online. If you haven’t already done so, sell your product on eBay. Or place an ad on craigslist (free) selling an item that customers come to your store to pick up.
3. Build a larger internet presence. Check out websites like Freewebs or Wordpress.com that will help you build a blog site for free. Write something about yourself and/or business and have fun with it! Add pictures and music… a personal touch. You can advertise your blog on free classified ad sites like Linkreferral and Internetmosaic.
4. Stay in touch with your customers. Design an e-zine, and email it to your current customers. Or print them out and mail it, but this is more expensive. Place advertisements for other local businesses, do it for free for awhile, until the e-zine starts gaining popularity and then you can charge for the advertising spaces! Your e-zine can have short articles about your business, cute stories, jokes and contests!
5. Cross promotion. Make friends with business people who are in a similar, complimentary businesses to yours. (not competitors) Come up with bonus packages that you can co-op with these other businesses. For example if you run a tanning salon, you can offer a free haircut at Supercuts when a customer signs up for one year of tanning. Supercuts will offer something similar, after 4 haircuts the customer gets one free week of tanning. This even works on the internet. Find another non competing website and see if you can develop a similar relationship. This will take some creativity on your part, and you have to develop relationships with other business people.
6. Tell your story. Write an article about yourself and your business. Add a funny or intriguing story about how you got started in the business, or let the readers know why the business is so important to you. Be sure your article solves a problem. Write at least two paragraphs about a problem, and one or two paragraphs on how your business can solve the problem. If you are not a writer, you can have someone freelance the story for you. There are all kinds of freelancers looking for work on the internet. Submit your story to article hubs on the internet, this is completely free! Submit your article to your local newspaper and relevant websites. Sites are always looking for new content. (Even the Business Opportunities Weblog wants new content!)
7. Wear it. Design some T-shirts with your company name and get them printed with CafePress. Wear them everywhere you go. Again, try something really eye-catching, or bright prints on black background. Make people look.
8. Make a conversation piece.. Make a button or a hat that says, “I work at home, ask me what I do”, or, “Ask me how to lose 10 lbs”… you want people to approach you, so make it intriguing.
9. Be Yourself. Make a short video, telling jokes or doing a bad impersonation, then upload it to YouTube! Make people laugh and they will show it to their friends and watch it over and over!!! Make sure to plug your business in the video, this is a great way to advertise! Send the video to your local television channel along with it’s YouTube URL. The local news is always on the lookout for funny stuff, with a local angle — especially if it’s a slow news day!

By Lisa Di Clemente for the Business Opportunities Weblog. Photo by CyberGus.

In Branding, Favorites, Marketing | 5 Comments