Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Doing Business In This Economy

I recently addressed this topic before the Women Business Owners Association after doing online research, checking with contractors and discussing the issue with members of a local entrepreneur group. Here are the business promotion tips:

· Look for niche-market print: Target weekly, biweekly and monthly “free-delivered” papers and subscription publications, such as regional business journals.

· Build an affordable web site: Keep it simple, easy to understand and navigate, and create a flexible schedule to add or remove content as needed for freshness.


· Track new business by location: Gather basic info such as hometowns, e-mail addresses, phone numbers and other demographics when purchases are made.

· Use hooks to get publicity: Sponsor or host something newsworthy, such as a charitable event, and promote via web, local cable TV, radio, newspapers.


· Go where customers are: Check out Facebook and other social networking sites when time permits because the contacts you make may be your future customers.


· Get and cultivate referrals: Encourage e-mails, letters and business card exchanges – anything that brings “word-of-mouth buzz” to what you do.


Some of these may be obvious, especially the more traditional print options. But other alternatives, especially social networking and web sites, offer fresh ways of branding and expanding businesses, products or services.


The nice parts are the low cost and wide reach offered by combining several methods. The tricky part is measuring the effectiveness of each one and shifting more effort into those areas that work the best.


I practice what I preach at writenowworks.com. Any other thoughts on business promotion in this economy? Please share them.

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