You know, I wouldn't be writing this little piece if it was not for the number of emails I receive from the many people who have started small businesses selling our products. They all start with the same question, "How do I get more customers?" Well it's a lot more simple today then it was back in the nineteen forties when I started selling. Unless you were some big time company with a ton of money to spend all you had was your own big mouth, business cards, printed flyer's, the radio, and the newspaper if you could afford any them, and any free shoppers guides and bulletin boards in markets and coffee shops, and advertising on your vehicle. I'm sure I missed something, but it was a long time ago. I'm sure many of you can fill in the blanks.
Well it's a little easier today because you still have all of the above, but now you have the great equalizer, the playing field leveler, the almighty Internet. Now. whose better than you? The Internet has so many places to advertise for free that you couldn't possibly use them all. For us, Internet video has always been the all time killer app. We started using video on the Internet way before there was any YouTube. I believe our first ad was for a battery backup power pack for cell phones. A lot of people were still on twisted pair phone lines in those days and video was very slow, but all that soon changed. Just one of our video ads has brought us nearly a half million customers. So my point is that video and photo slide shows are an excellent way to market products if you put then on You Tube and embed them in your web site. Video is my number one choice for marketing. So Get a cheap digital video/still camera and start shooing. Don't worry about making a fool out of yourself, I do it all the time, but the sales are coming in and we laugh all the way to the bank. If you make video always use a tripod. No-one likes shaky video and make sure your sound is decent. You can edit with the free software from windows that comes with any computer. It's great for commercials and you can dub the sound in with your mike. You don't need the camera sound and can erase it on the editor. You can load the video to your blogs and web pages too. See my video blogs.
I also like to use the free advertising web sites. My favorite free print advertising web site is www.craigslist.org . I wish I owned it, lol! There are thousands of free want ad web pages. Be sure to pick the ones with the highest traffic counts.
The bottom line is to mention and expose your company and product lines everywhere you possibly can and spend as little money as possible in the process. You should use all of the methods I have mentioned in the above text.
Use your start up money wisely because, "Overhead is the monster that eats business's"
PLEASE VIEW THE VIDEO BELOW - They work.
Walt
