1. Marketing Plan and Budget. Write or have a professional write a marketing plan for your business.  Writing a plan is 30% of the success of your marketing.  A plan can help you determine your target audience, review current business operations, determine outside forces currently impacting your business, outline goals, implement marketing tactics and track results.  A recommended marketing budget is 5% to 20% of total turnover per year.  Keeps your business growing by reinvesting back into your business.

2. Public Relations. There are numerous PR opportunities a business can achieve at little to no cost, although time is required. Get acquainted with local newspapers, publications and magazines.  Contact the editor to suggest possible story angles.  Write and distribute a press release at least 4 times per year. The local media, radio, newspapers and TV stations are always on the lookout for a great story, so write one for them.

3. Network. Join a local business network group. Becoming active in the community is a great way to generate leads and business.  Networking takes time and persistence to pay off, but the long term results are well worth the effort.

4. Telemarketing, considerably more effective than cold calling. Telemarketing works best when a prior advertising message has produced awareness with the prospect.  It can be simple as making 5-10 calls a day to prospects.  Build targeted prospect lists and then hit the phone selling. 

5. Consultative Selling Techniques, use them when selling. What is consultative selling? In a nutshell, consultative selling is asking your customer questions to uncover their problem or need to see if your product or service can help them.

6. Money Back Guarantee, create a powerful guarantee. The leading reason why people don’t buy is they are scared of making a mistake and being stuck with something they don’t want or that does not work. By providing your customers with a powerful money back guarantee, you remove their risk and you make them feel much more secure about buying from you. When you remove your customer’s risk in buying from you, you remove the biggest obstacle in making a purchasing decision.

7. Advertising Is Salesmanship, when you write an advertisement, brochure, radio or TV, that advertisement must sell just as a salesperson would sell. When creating your ad, go through the process of what you would say to a potential customer if they were sitting next to you. Tell a story of how your products or service has helped others. What are the benefits of your product or service? How will these benefits help your customer? What problem does your product or service solve? Use conversational language and simple words. Nobody has ever complained that an ad was too simple to understand. Avoid becoming to complex, keep it simple. 

8. Track Results, take the time to see what marketing tactics are working, getting you new customers, sales and generating a return on investment.  The tactics that are not working change, they cost you money but produce no results. Every time a potential customer contacts you, ask how they heard about you. Spend your money on the marketing tactics that are working and discontinue or fix marketing tactics that are not working. 

9. Repetition Is The GOLDEN RULE; Don’t spend your entire marketing budget at once. The more a consumer experiences your advertising, the greater the chance that consumer will buy your products or service. So, if you have a yearly marketing budget of $20,000 for display advertising in your local newspaper, instead of spending all of your money for one large display ad, spend your money on several small ads that are run 13x or more. The ongoing small ads will generate more sales than one large ad. 

10. Why You Are Different.  Why should a customer choose to do business with you instead of your competition? Why are you different and special? Is your product made better? Do you use superior building materials? Can you deliver faster? Do you have a better guarantee? Do you provide better customer service? Do you have better prices? Do you have more products in stock? Are you open longer hours? To separate yourself from your competition you MUST tell your customer why you are different and why that difference is a benefit. This must be done in every aspect of your marketing.

Bonus Tip!
Get motivated! The biggest key to success in business is your attitude. If you are not excited about your product or service, why should anyone else be excited.