Marketing Your Home Business
by Mark Bourgelas
In today's world we have a number of ways to advertise our home based business. Just to name a few there is newspapers, magazines, chamber of commerce's, mailings, trade shows and of course the seemingly most powerful of them all, the Internet.
Just getting started in your home based business you may not have a lot of capital to do massive advertising. I suggest doing some less expensive things like join your local chamber of commerce. This will get you in front of other business owners that if, that if you build the proper relationship with, can give you referrals and you in turn can give them referrals to help them. Always attempt to make every situation a win-win for all. They also put out newsletters every month that usually are looking for things to put in it. Submit some non-aggressive advertising and most will be glad to print it.
Advertise in some of the smaller less expensive type papers or other circulations. Most of the smaller newspapers are a great way to get your business advertised locally. It is proven that you will have to advertise several weeks in the same paper before you really get noticed. So if you are going to start it you need to remember to see it through for a six-eight week minimum.
Magazines are usually more expensive but you can actually narrow down your market because most magazines are geared towards a certain market, be it fitness, cars, healthy living, family, and a ton of others.
Mailings are another way to advertise. Most are reasonable and will even create you an add copy for no extra charge. But this is a hit or miss advertising campaign since you really don't know if the person receiving the advertisement is even looking for what you have to offer.
Trade shows are a great way to get the word of your home business out in the market place. Most tradeshows are geared toward a specific market, which is good, but the cost can be a bit expensive to get your initial booth together. You can go to The Trade Show News Network online and they have a list of tradeshows all over the nation for all types of markets.
You will want to make sure that you have enough help when doing a trade show so you won't miss any people walking by your booth. Have some type of drawing or giveaway and you will get people to stop and see what it is your offering. The whole idea is to get their attention and get them to leave their information. Tradeshows are especially good for generating leads for all types of products but you must remember to follow up on these leads or your time and money was wasted.
