Advertise Your Small Business

Try some or all of these great tips for communications to jump-start your new business:

• Publish a newsletter for customers (it doesn't have to be fancy or expensive). tell them about a new store or how you cater to your customers' needs - or how you're better than the competition! 
   
• Include a postage-paid survey card with your brochures and other company literature. Include check-off boxes or other items that will involve the reader and provide valuable feedback to you.
   
• Remember, business cards aren't working for you if they're in the box. Pass them out! Give prospects two business cards and brochures - one to keep and one to pass along. Have neighborhood kids pass them out at soccer games or even door-to-door.
   
• Produce separate business cards/sales literature for each of your target market segments (e.g. government and commercial and/or business and consumer).
   
• Create a poster or calendar to give away to your customers and prospects.
   
• Print a slogan and/or one-sentence description of your business on letterhead, fax cover sheets, and invoices. Develop a site on the World Wide Web.
   
• Create a signature file to be used for all your e-mail messages. It should contain contact details, including your Web site address and key information about your company that will make the reader want to contact you.
   
• Include testimonials from customers in your literature.
   
• Test a new mailing list. If it produces results, add it to your current direct mail lists or consider replacing a list that's not performing up to expectations.
   
• Rather than sending direct mail in plain white envelopes, use colored or oversized envelopes to pique recipients' curiosity.
   
• Announce free or special offers in your direct response pieces. (Direct responses may be direct mail, broadcast faxes, or e-mail messages.) Include the offer in the beginning of the message as well as on the outside of the envelope for direct mail.

 Try these other Sales Ideas.