Nothing happens in business until a sale is made. Marketing is simply about getting new customers and keeping them. If you’re not doing something everyday to market and promote your business, your competitors are. Here are ten easy-to-implement tips to effectively market and grow your business:

1. Partner with large email database list owners and offer to cross promote each other. The list owner will advertise your event, product, or service to their email database and you’ll offer to do the same to your list.

2. Create your own blog which is an online journal with frequently updated posts to entertain and excite existing and potential customers. It’s more personal and immediate then a website and keeps people engaged and hopefully coming back for more.

3. If you want to increase word-of-mouth fast, do something beyond normal industry expectations. For example, Mr. Lube offers fast and affordable tune-up service to customers right on the spot, without having to leave the car, while offering coffee, cappuccino, and a fresh newspaper.

4. Always ask happy clients for endorsements or testimonials and put them on your website and other marketing collateral. They’re worth their weight in gold. Try to get some recognizable names in your community for additional cachet.

5. Put a special offer or product advertorial on every invoice and statement you send out. Likewise, you can also negotiate a deal with another company to advertise your product or service on all their invoices for a percentage of revenues from placed orders.

6. Make your business cards stand out and be natural keepers. Offer important information on the back such as emergency phone numbers, a map, or special dates to remember. Have a slogan that offers a powerful benefit statement to your prospective customer.

7. Offer special bonus packages with your product or service offering. Get corporate sponsors to give away products as part of the bonus package in exchange for free exposure.

8. Align your business with a cause or charity. Give back to your community. Customers appreciate doing business with companies that are bettering their communities and the environment and being good corporate citizens.

9. Find an angle that makes your work controversial. The banning of Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, reviewed as “trashy and vicious,” was a blessing in disguise. Twain made a poster advertising the ban, which significantly increased sales.

10. Post frequently in online message boards/forums relevant to your business or expertise. Include your signature and offer tips and valuable advice. Eventually you will begin gaining word-of-mouth exposure as a leader in your field. Posting messages with your company information also helps to increase your search engine rankings and drive traffic to your site.

Feel free to comment and add other tips.

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If you believe that the internet is still in its infancy, then you have to be aware that the infancy is almost over.  Everyone who wants to take advantage of the internet must treat it as if it is a mature entity. You have to be serious about using the internet as your business vehicle.

If you still think that you can easily make a fortune out of the internet, then you may miss the big picture. You need to step back and  answer a number of key questions before you build your internet business.

You also should understand that building an internet business is different from making money from the internet. You can make more money from the internet without building a business.

While building an internet business may ‘cost’ you a large time investment, making money from the internet may cost you much less. But here’s the interesting part. Making money from the internet requires that you stick to the internet all the time. Simply put, the money stops coming in when you stop your internet activity. On the other hand, if you do it correctly, the internet business you’re building will make money for you even while you’re sleeping or away in vacation.

So, to do it correctly, you should ask yourself these questions before building any internet business:

1. Do you have a vision?

What is your business vision? You should have it clear in your mind what you want your business to be in the next  1 year, 5 years, 10 years, or 20 years.

2. Do you recognize your business strength?

What is your business strength? This will affect the whole concept and strategies of your business. If you think that you don’t have that strength, then you need to explore and ask others’ input to find that strength!

3. Do you set  business goals?

What missions do you want to be accomplished to achieve your business vision? These missions will be your business goals. Make a list of clear and measurable goals with detailed activities to reach them.

4. Do you have a business strategy?

What will you do to win in your business? Use a Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle to test your business strategy.

5. Do you have the technology?

What technology is needed for your business? What will it involve? You need to decide what technology is appropriate to your business.

6. Do you have good quality products to offer?

What products do you want to offer to your customer? You have to make sure that the product you want to offer meets a real consumer need.

7. Do you have a good quality customer?

What kind of customers will you have? One part of your business activity should be about finding good quality customers. Good quality customers are the ones who are willing to observe, evaluate and buy your products again, again, and again.

8. Do you have good quality information to offer?

Your customer needs information. Unless you can provide it, you won’t win the business game.

9. Do you have a business coach?

Who will mentor and watch your business growth from the outside? Sometimes you need more than just advice and consultation to grow your business. You may decide to get a business coach to help you grow your business.

10. Do you have the guts, the passion, the patience and the endurance to build your  business?

Perseverence is key. Remember: quitters don’t win, and winners don’t quit!!

If you can’t answer these 10 questions, then you need  to go back to the drawing board and search for answers prior to pursing your internet business plans.

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This is a blog posting in our strategic market intelligence series on Market Research Tips in the Great Recession.

I remember delivering a strategy presentation in the late 1990’s at my Fortune 10 technology company about the changing nature of the marketplace with the explosive advent of electronic commerce. I had returned from a business trip to the Pacific Rim where we did a visioning session with a major client and the team from futurist Alvin Toffler’s company (author of the prophetic best seller Future Shock): we conducted a visioning and market study about ebusiness in that important region. It was part of a greater global effort to assess the impact of ebusiness on marketing and corporations: we called it Watershed. The technology bubble bust and recession was just around the corner, but of course we didn’t know that yet. We all thought the exponential growth we were enjoying in information technologies would last forever!

Mass customization is an oxymoron. How can something be both mass produced and customized? Originally it was a manufacturing concept with ideas such as made-to-order cars or personalized packaged products such as perfumes. At the root of mass customization is marketing as the ultimate driver: understanding the market environment and product perceptions is at the heart of the strategy of mass customization. Building a new marketing message or campaign targeted as very specific segments of a market can revive or ignite your product or service sales. This is especially true in a recession or highly competitive market arena where differentiation has been difficult to achieve.

If you look around you will see examples of mass customization that may trigger marketing ideas for you. Private label wine from KDM Global Partners is an example of a marketing-driven mass customization business. Starbucks has leveraged mass customization principles empowering the consumer to create their own beverages. Tammy Worth reported in the Los Angeles Times in March 2009 that consumers have the choice of over 87,000 drink combinations at Starbucks! Wow! (If you’re interested in more on this topic, read her article about the many choices consumers have click here.)

The Chicken Soup for the Soul series, by marketing geniuses Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield, is another good example of mass customization applied to information and creative marketing: these clever information gurus took their inspirational stories and a great title that evokes an emotional trigger and mass customized it across a plethora of niche target markets. Chicken Soup for the Mother’s Soul, The 2nd , 3rd and 4th Course of Chicken Soup for the Soul, Chicken Soup for the Adopted Soul, Christian Soup for the Christian Soul, Chicken Soup for the Fisherman’s Soul, Chicken Soup for the Unsinkable Soul, Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, and dozens more: their smash hit formula combined with their prolific ability to find and target niche market segments is a never ending development process of mass customization with unlimited boundaries. Here’s a list of all their unique Chicken Soup for the Soul titles which you can use to help identify niche target market segments you may not have thought of before. (View a photo of myself and my husband Dan, with Mark and Jack.)

Four 2009 graduates of Miami University in Ohio embraced a mass customization strategy to create their start-up Libre, clothing for dialysis and infusion patients. If you, or someone you know, is a dialysis or infusion patient read their blog, take their survey, and see how this young team of entrepreneurs totally gets it.

Mass customization is an effective marketing strategy and market research technique during a recession. Today essential business practices are mass customization on steroids. The concepts and principles of mass customization have matured and are integrated and imbedded seamlessly in products, product marketing, and especially internet marketing.

If your sales are sluggish explore the possibilities with mass customization. Begin with market research:

• Conduct a survey on Market Turbulence or consumer intelligence.
• Conduct a focus group on product perceptions.
• Conduct secondary research on potential target segments to expand your marketing to new niche markets. 
• Conduct a product development opportunity assessment through strategic market intelligence.

Think about how you take your existing product and modify its positioning, packaging, price, etc to mass customize it to new market segments. Before investing in mass customization, be sure you’ve done your homework and a thorough job of market research: this is a critical success factor before investing in marketing in a recession.

by Meagan Chase Skaff

Wikipedia defines Mass customization

If you’re interested in this topic, the classic book on mass customization is “>“Mass Customization: The New Frontier in Business Competition.” Mass Customization: The New Frontier in Business Competition written by B. Joseph Pine, II, published in 1993 by Harvard Business School PressOther books about Mass Customization by Joe Pine and more.