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		Customers are essential to any business's survival. To get those customers, you need to advertise your business - but this doesn't mean that you need to place ads. Business advertising includes not just ads - but referrals, articles, blogging, business cards, promotional pens and magnets, search engine and directory listings, webinars, autoresponders and lots more. Since each business is unique, different marketing strategies will work better for some businesses than others. You may also prefer to use certain promotional methods over others. Choose the marketing tools below that work best for you, your customers and your business and then put them to work to grow your profits. See also: Free Sample Marketing Plans Get $147 worth of SEO software tools in "Web Tools Now" Free Get a Website Save money by creating your own website with simple online design programs, or outsource the job to an affordable website designer. Whether you sell products online - or you use a website to display rates or business hours, it's important to take advantage of this low-cost marketing resource that can help you get more customers.    Submit Your Website to Search Engines SubmitExpress will submit your supply company website to the 20 top search engines free. This way, when prospects search for supplies using the search engines, they are more likely to find your business. All you do is enter your website address once, and their automated submission tool will do the rest. To use this free tool, you agree to receive their free newsletter by email. Submit now >>SubmitExpress If your business provides products or services to other businesses, get listed in the Business.comDirectory. They receive millions of viewers per month looking specifically for business-oriented solutions. Submit Your Website to Local Search Directories Some people don't use the yellow pages or local newspapers or publications to find products and services in their city - they look online, and you don't want to miss out on this growing group of customers. Local Search is an advertising space that is an easy, low cost way to reach your local target market. Generate Leads with Free Social Media Tools Social media is not just a new trend, it's quickly becoming a standard way of communicating - and marketing. And social media is a great way to build lists and generate leads for your business.With social media, however, you don't want to act like one giant sales pitch. Be yourself, be real, and communicate like you would with friends and family. You can talk about what you do for your business, but also share ideas and tips that would help your target market with what they're doing (ideas and tips that aren't about your business). By letting your personality show through and sharing your knowledge, you can gain trust and respect - and that's when people will want to do business with you. On your social media page, you can add links to your business website or blog, so that when people get to know you better, they can click through to your site and shop at their convenience and without pressure. Here are some popular social media sites that you can join for free and start gaining followers, networking and generating leads vary quickly. See what other members are writing or adding on their pages to get ideas of what works. Twitter.com Facebook Bebo Faves.com LiveJournal Ning Get Other Websites to Link to Your Site One of the most popular ways to begin website marketing campaigns is through link-building. You can gain traffic from other sites, search engines tend to rank highly-linked sites higher and links act as miniature ads all over the internet - working for you 24-7.Although free, link-building can be very time consuming, and not always effective. It can take hours to find sites with link programs AND with content that closely matches that of your own site. Many times, other sites don't want to exchange links with you once you've gone through the effort to contact them. Often, the time and effort spent never pays off. However, there is a solution. John Sprock has recently developed a new tool that makes link building easy (and it works). In fact, he'll give you 25 website back links for free Get Free Publicity You can save yourself money by writing a brief press release or "letter" to your local paper announcing the grand opening of your new business - or (if your business is not new) an event that you're holding.Hold a contest or drawing with a prize that your target market would want - for example, a free product or service that your business offers, or gift card to use at your business. Make it a unique or big enough prize that it gets people's attention, and that your local paper will want to write a story about it. Make the contest or drawing very easy to enter, so that you can generate lots of leads. Your press release can be short and simple, and you can find press release samples you can follow on this page: How to Get Free Press Article Marketing You don't have to be an expert writer to produce articles that can effectively promote your business. If you are willing to put in the time to compose articles, they can be well worth the effort. Articles you write can position you as an expert in your field, getting potential customers to trust and respect you. Articles can also be published multiple times in many different sources, which can sometimes give you much greater exposure than a one-time ad. eBook Pro Software Attract 1,000's of customers without spending any money on advertising. Order business cards Often overlooked, business cards can be a very efficient and low cost advertising method. See how you can design your own professional business cards online, plus get simple tips for increasing your sales >>Free Business Cards. See also: 30-50% off Postcards, Brochures and more Design your own marketing materials online using professional templates. Designs provided, printing done for you. Coupon Advertising Advertising with coupons is a "feel good" form of marketing, since you are giving a gift to your customers for visiting and purchasing from your business. Even if a coupon is not redeemed, you get the additional marketing benefit from prospects viewing your coupon in the newspaper, magazine, online or in a coupon mailer. If your coupon was memorable, this could mean readers think of your company the next time they need a product or service that you deliver. 100 Postcards from $1.99 | Postcard Marketing Do a postcard mailing to introduce your company to potential customers in your area. Using low-cost online services makes this an easy marketing task. First, decide on a special offer or hold a grand opening sale. Second, design your postcards online using professional postcard templates with VistaPrint (you can get 50% off here). And third, get targeted leads from a lead generation company like Resource Nation. Advertise your business simply by driving your vehicle Free Car Door Custom Magnet How to Write a Sales Letter Step-by-Step Learning to write a good sales letter is essential in any business. The same skills to write a letter can be used to develop website copy, postcard content and all sorts of ads. It is well worth your time to get educated in developing effective sales letters. Free mini-course on writing sales letters Email Marketing If you have a website or online store for your supply business, you can save even more money by marketing to your customers by email. No email list? No problem. Email marketing companies like ConstantContact will help you build a customer list with their customizable website sign-up form.Autoresponders are another option.They also give you email templates you can use to design professional emails. Their program delivers emails for you, and they include real-time reporting. You can try their service free for 60 days, no credit card is required. Start now: ConstantContact 60-day free trial. Have a list over 100,000?iContact.com has special pricing for larger accounts. Watch free video. How to Place Ads in Ezines & How to Start Your Own Ezine Instead of buying an email list, you can advertise to someone else's email list through their ezine. This can often be cheaper, yet you can still reach a targeted market. With ezine advertising, your ad goes out in the internet newsletter, rather than an exclusive mailing. However, with a quality ezine, you can a high readership rate, sometimes higher than an exclusive email. How to Write Ezine Ads Cheap Advertising with Ecards You can send ecards to clients on holidays, birthdays - or any time you want. Ecards services are easy and quick to use. They also are cheap. In fact, some ecard services are free to use, and you don't have the traditional expense of postage or materials. Delivery is instant. Search Engine Advertising If you don't have a top rank in the search engines, you can pay for one. Write a short ad that links through to your website, and you pay only if a visitor clicks on your ad and goes to your site. Spend as much or as little money as you want - you set the budget. Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines all offer this service. Get $100 in Free Clicks to advertise on Business.com. Advertise on Cell Phones With the development of Smartphones, more and more people are surfing the web via cell phones rather than desktop or even laptop computers. You can now advertise specifically on phones - some of the benefits being lower cost and less competition. Since this is such a new marketing medium, a few entrepreneurs, like Mack Michaels, have taken advantage of the (currently) low competition in this advertising space and even turned it into an income opportunity. Advertise on Facebook Facebook is growing fast in popularity, and they've made it really easy to advertise on the site. Similar to search engine advertising, you can pay-per-click. Alternatively, you have the option to pay-per-impression. Either way, you have the ability to target your ads to a very narrow market, using their ad filters. For example, you can filter by location, age, gender, education, interests and more. This way, you're not wasting your ad dollars advertising to the wrong market. Advertise on MySpace  Get a $50 advertising credit now when you use coupon code: MYCJ. Become a "Betterist" on Betterfly.com helping site visitors learn new skills via your knowledge and experience. It's great exposure for your business, plus you can promote special offers to gain new clients. If your business is in the teaching or education field, TeachStreet provides a marketplace for teachers to list their classes, events, workshops and get new students. Sponsor a Meetup Group Meetup is a website that hosts a wide variety of different interest groups in thousands of different locations. Each of these groups has members with similar interests who generally live in the same area. If you sell golf clubs or own a golf course, for example, you could sponsor a Meetup group of golfers either with financial support or other benefits in exchange for your logo displayed on their web pages. This is a good way for local businesses to reach potential customers, but businesses don't have to be local, and you can sponsor multiple Meetup groups. Online Classified Ads Although online classifieds don't generally bring in a fast or qualified response, they are a cheap advertising solution, and may work well for you. Some to try: UsFreeAds, Craigslist, The Free Advertising Site and AdLandPro. Print Classifieds - Nationwide This is an easy way to place classified ads in newspapers across the US. Their online database includes 850 newspapers - reach millions of people and pay less! Search newspapers by state, place multiple ads at one time, track your ads online. Check out their weekly specials Newspaper ad writing tips: Mention your offer in your headline Do something to differentiate yourself from other ads in newspaper (humor can be a great tool) Use large type in headline (easy to read and gets attention even if ad is small) Include testimonials Add urgency to offer (limited time or quantity) Use a unique ad border Include a picture of the product in action Local Search More and more people are looking for local businesses online (instead of the traditional yellow pages) - and you don't want to miss out on this market. Local Search sources that are affordable and receive substantial traffic include: Google Local, Local.com, CityGrid Media (Previously CitySearch),Yelp and Super Pages. Banner Advertising Although website surfers usually don't click on blatant, flashy banner ads, well-designed banners can get a lot of traffic and a worthwhile click-through rate without the high pricetag of other hight traffic ad sources. A well-designed banner ad will create curiosity and many times doesn't even look like an advertisement. Many successful ads use an "editorial style" ad format. Get Other People to Sell for You You can set up your own affliate program for virtually no cost. This automated program will also take you very little time to operate once you have it set up. Get people to promote and sell your products for you (as affiliates), and you don't have to pay them until they actually sell your products and you have received the profit. It's a win-win. (Another way you can get other people to "sell" for you for free is through referral marketing. You can read more about it here: How to Get Referrals) Hold a Webinar A webinar is an online "seminar" that can be a course you teach, an interview you hold, a question and answer session or something else of interest to your target market. With a webinar, you can conveniently hold the event from your home, office or on the road. Listeners can easily participate from a remote location without having to disrupt their regular schedule. This makes it easier for you to attract attendees. Design Your Own Promo Items National Pen has lots of cool items that you can customize with your logo - hand them out to prospective customers, and they'll think you're cool too! This is an easy way to invite a client to do business with you.Gimmicks like magnets, small calendars and pens are a inexpensive marketing tools - and useful to people who receive them. You can find many of these "ads" around someone's house or office months - even years after they've received them. Your business gets recognition again and again.Design Your Own Promo Items at National Pen. 50% OFF custom printed keychains. Available in a variety of designs, shapes and sizes Translate Your Website to Reach a Larger Market Even if you don't know multiple languages, there are low cost services online that you can use to translate your website. In this global economy, you could be missing out on a big opportunity that you don't even know you are missing. Website translation is a one-time task that can pay for itself many times over in the long run. In addition, a site available in multiple languages instantly has a competitive advantage over other similar businesses. Grow Your Income Using Proven Marketing Methods If you are serious about getting lots of customers, and you don't want to pay thousands of dollars to an ad agency, the Small Business Marketing Bibleshows you how to attract a steady stream of buyers - on the cheap. Get the 1-Day Marketing Plan outline and over 29 proven success systems that you can use over and over to increase profits and grow your business, including: Foolproof salesletter template, proven ad writing checklist and how to create an irresistible offer. How to turn incoming phone calls into clients and turn one-time buyers into lucrative lifetime customers. How to use other people's customers to get new business. The secret to getting free referrals when you ask - 90% of the time. Maximum profit pricing strategy and how to double your sales with simple packaging techniques. 4 techniques for doubing sales - with no additional customers. Get it Risk-Free >> Small Business Marketing Bible [Joined/Signup]