Marketing Your Product or Service

When you were figuring out how much it would cost you to start your new business, you should have set aside a sum for marketing and advertising. The sum that you set aside is your marketing and advertising budget.

How you will market and advertise your product will depend largely on your budget. Those with a large budget might want to consider hiring a marketing consultant to help them. (For more on marketing consultants and how to find them, see choosing a professional.)

Shoe-string budgets. Most new small businesses, however, will be operating on a small budget with little room for errors. If you have limited funds, you know that you must spend your dollars wisely and that you must be sure that what you spend reaches the customers you want to reach.

Here are a few suggestions for marketing and advertising on a shoe-string budget (pick the ones that look good to you because you probably can't afford to do all of them and some of them won't apply to your business):

• advertise in the local Yellow Pages
• mail or hand deliver flyers announcing your business
• ask for referrals
• advertise through coupon mailing services (create coupons for your products or services)
• rent customer lists, or better yet, develop customer lists from friends, family, and business associates, and send out direct mailings (or emailings)
• put a business sign on your car door
• become known in the community by doing volunteer work
• get your name out before the public as an expert in your field by writing articles or giving speeches to local business groups
• allow customers to sample your product or service by giving it away for free for a short time
• get professionally designed business cards
• put low-cost ads in free community flyers

These are just some of the steps you can take. For a more detailed discussion on how to market and advertise your business, see marketing your product.