For more holiday marketing ideas, see my book, Quirky Marketing ~ 365 Ways to Grow Your Business Using Zany and Non-traditional Holidays at www.QuirkyOffer.com.  Free updates for 2010 when you purchase the current edition

Tired of spending all your money on advertising and marketing that just doesn’t work?  Here are 10 cheap ideas to grow your business without breaking the bank!

1) Market to Former Customers and Clients. It costs less than marketing to new customers. Make them an offer they can’t refuse, such AS $5 off their next purchase.

2) Join Associations, professional organizations, and civic and charitable clubs. Get involved and become a leader. You’ll make great contacts that can lead to future business. Also, thank new members who join your organization by offering them a coupon or sending them a postcard for a discount or something free.

3) Reward Repeat Customers. Offer a frequent-purchase card to track their spending.

4) Use Coupons to enhance your sales. Give them a reason to TRY your business.

5) Follow the Rule of Three:
*Forget cold calls. Make three warm calls a day to prospects whom others have referred to you.
*Collect at least three business cards a day.
*Send at least three notes each day to people thanking them for their business or something they did to help your business grow.

6) Encourage Word of Mouth from Your Family, Friends and Associates.  Your best advocates will be those who already know you and like you.  Encourage them to tell others about your products and services. Sometimes they just need the nudge to get started. And then reward them for doing so.

7) Send press releases prior to having an event or a contest or write articles for publications in your industry.

8) Create and send a newsletter or e-zine (newsletter sent via e-mail) to your customers to keep your business at the top of their minds. Include tips on flower care, positive news events, specials, discounts and coupons.

9) Give Stellar Service with a 100-percent, no-questions-asked, money-back guarantee. It will give your customers a sense of ease in doing business with you and build their trust.

10) Partner with Other Companies to promote your business. Find companies with similar customer demographics that are not in competition with your business and create ways to joint venture with them either on a one-time, long-term or event-by-event basis.

For more tips like these check out Rose Marketing on a Daisy Budget: How to Grow Your Business Without Spending a Fortune by Heidi Richards Mooney

Set your sales on fire without extravagant spending by following these red-hot marketing tips

“In all things, success depends upon previous preparation. And without such preparation, there is sure to be failure.” – Confucius

Confucius could have had a flourishing  business by following his own advice. Not only can preparation lead to success, but it also can help you do so without spending a lot of money. After all, with careful planning, you can achieve sizzling sales without the need for expensive advertising or marketing promotions.

Be smarter than the competition
In today’s ever-changing business climate, just keeping up with the competition isn’t enough. You have to outthink, outsmart and outdo them. How? By getting to know what they do and how they do it.

Find out your competition’s strengths and weaknesses and what products and services they offer. If the shop down the road sells gift baskets, offer more choices than they do—or better products. If the competition opens at 9 a.m. and closes at 5 p.m., consider opening earlier or closing later.

Look for ways to make it easier for customers to do business with you. The slightest increase in customer convenience will yield larger and even more frequent purchases. Plus, providing the products and services they want will keep them coming back.

Reward repeat customers
Design a customer-appreciation program to recognize customers who repeatedly purchase from you or who refer others to your business. Send them thank-you notes or small bouquets. Thank them in your company newsletter. Pick up the phone to thank them, then offer a special discount for their loyalty during your conversation.

One day a long-time customer came into my shop, Eden Florist & Gift Baskets, to purchase flowers. When I thanked him for doing business with us, he said, “I buy so many flowers here, I should get frequent-flower miles.” He was right! In fact, soon after his visit, we began creating a computer-generated Frequent flower petals card for that very purpose. The card rewarded customers with a free bouquet after they purchased 12 $25-minimum-price floral arrangements.

To more easily track customer purchases, our computer records each transaction. Thus, if a customer orders by phone, we still can track the number of purchases. When that person reaches 12, the employee taking the order asks the customer to whom they’d like to send their “free” bouquet. It’s not unusual for customers to send the arrangement to themselves.

If they choose this option, don’t forget to enclose a card thanking them for their business. Customers who appreciate your gesture are likely to recommend your business to family, friends and business associates.

Practice ‘rainmaking’
Rainmakers are people who connect other people through referrals, whether it is friend-to-friend or business-to-business. Referrals are the easiest and least expensive way to make your business grow. Start by instilling a referral mindset into your friends and customers. People don’t necessarily know you want more business unless you tell them. And even though your friends may buy from you, they may not think to tell their friends and family.

Though one of my greatest sources of referrals today is my friends, that wasn’t always the case. In the past, I had one or two friends who constantly sent business my way. However, the majority of my close acquaintances did not. One day, I mentioned this to a friend. Her reply, “I didn’t know you wanted more business.” She is now one of my best references.

Some people are hesitant to ask friends for referrals. Why? If you believe in your product and have a passion for your business, it’s a simple request. After all, friends want friends to succeed. And, if they know they have contributed to your success, it makes them feel good about themselves.

If you feel uncomfortable about tooting your own horn, consider the idea from the perspective of finding a great restaurant. After having a wonderful meal, most people are eager to share the experience by telling their family and friends about it. Flowers and food are both emotional purchases—purchases generally made with the heart, not the brain. When you want to eat out, you go to one of your favorite spots, or you try a new place that offers your favorite dish. The same applies to flowers. People go where they know they can find the products they want or people who understand their needs.

Based on emotion alone, referring your business will be easy for your friends and family. And, when the referrals come in, don’t forget to thank the friends and family who made the suggestions. Send them notes and a product sample. Make sure your thank-yous reflect your appreciation for the extra business. An added bonus to this technique is that you’ll surprise people when you thank them, putting you at the top of their minds when the opportunity to make a referral happens again.

Follow-up and follow-through
One of the surest ways to keep customers is to follow up after a purchase. Follow-up accomplishes two important things: It helps you find out whether the customer was satisfied, and it gives you the opportunity to build a positive relationship with that person.

Happy customers may tell as many as three people about their positive experience at your business. This may not seem like it can have much of an impact. But when you compare it to the number of people who will hear about a customer’s unhappy experience—typically estimated as eight to 10—then the number of those passing on their positive experience becomes that much more important.

Besides, if you don’t follow up with a customer, you may never even know he or she had a negative experience. Those people will simply take their business elsewhere. Taking the time to inquire about a purchase after the fact shows your customers you care about their business. It also helps build a lasting relationship with your customers. Not only that, but when you resolve a complaint favorably, you’re likely to increase the chance that the customer will refer you to others.

If your shop is too busy to follow up with every customer after the sale—then at least do some random sampling of your customers. Although a random sample may be less accurate, it will nevertheless provide you with an idea of how a portion of your customers views your business.

To make the task easier, call two or three customers/recipients each day. You’ll impress the recipients, who will want to do business with you, and both the sender and the recipient will know you care. In fact, on more than one occasion when an employee at Eden Florist has called a sender or recipient, that person has ordered an arrangement during the thank-you phone call. So your efforts can certainly pay off.

And don’t forget to follow through on anything you promise you’ll do for a customer. Make it a habit to deliver. When you do, your customers will trust and respect you. And your sales will sizzle!

For more tips like these check out Rose Marketing on a Daisy Budget: How to Grow Your Business Without Spending a Fortune by Heidi Richards Mooney

July 13-17 is World Who’s Who Week – Want to gain local media attention, exposure for your business and to become the Go-to person in networking? Do what the late Pamela M. Hutchinson of Davie Florida,  the creator of Who’s Who in Black South Florida – a directory of black professionals.  On several occasion, the local newspapers featured her directory and when she died wrote a glowing tribute to her and the service to the community her directory provided.

It was the impetus for my team creating the Who’s Who Among Women in Ecommerce Directory to promote women who do business on the web. You can check it out here: http://www.wecai.org/whoswho.htm  What kind of  Who’s Who Directory could you create featuring of a specific group of people or organizations in your community?  (BTW, I created this holiday because I could not find one that focused on this topic).

July 13th  is Embrace Your Geekness Day – “The future of advertising,” says Charlie Jones, chief marketing officer of RedPeg, an Alexandria, Virginia–based agency, “will be about creating unexpected connections to memorable, real-world experiences in ways that bring brands to life.” So how about electrical outlets in airport terminals? Bradley and Montgomery’s new campaign for Chase Commercial Banking includes ads just above 90 outlets around Indianapolis International Airport. When you plug in your laptop, you see the ad.

Source Quirky Marketing ~ 365 Ways to Grow Your Business Using Zany & Non-traditional Holidays!

May 15^th is International Virtual Assistants Day - Host a virtual event inviting your circle to meet your virtual assistant.  Interview him or her about what types of projects they work on, how they can help small business and more. Post the interview to your blog and promote your VA in your newsletter, on your website and in emails.  If you are a virtual assistant, host a virtual conference for VA’s inviting them to share their stories with guests.

VA can help promote the event to their local media and garner some publicity for them and you.  In 2008 the Online International Virtual Assistants Conference took place and VA’s from around the globe participated.  It was a great way to raise awareness of this emerging profession.

Loral Langemeier, The Millionaire Maker  says if you want to build wealth you have to first create a Cash Machine and second become someone else’s cash machine. A Virtual Assistant can take the load off so you can focus on the parts of the business that will make you the most money.

Time for another “world’s largest jar of jelly beans?

BTW, I am giving a presentation to the American Business Women’s Association called Leveraging Social Networking to Grow Your Business. During the event I am having a “Guess the Jelly Beans” contest and will announce the winner at the end of the program. Someone will go home with a free copy of my Social Networking Formula for Success CD (value $47). And everyone will get a handful of Jelly Beans too!

Read the History of Jelly Beans at Xomba.com

Take this Jelly Bean Quiz

For more great ideas like these, check out Quirky Marketing ~ 365 Ways to Promote Your Business Using Zany and non-traditional Holidays.

“I had cornflakes for breakfast.”

“I just saw a bird fly by.”

“The garbage collector is driving down my street.”

So what do these three sentences have in common?
They are some of the comments you will find on Twitter.

Ho hum… it really wants to make you get involved with Twitter, doesn’t it?

But there’s more, much more, to Twitter than this. Read on…

Twitter is a social networking site, true, but it’s also an excellent vehicle for building your business. It’s not the only way mind you, but one of the ways for you to market yourself.

Build you brand.
Find clients.
Get outsourcing help.
Have joint venture opportunities fall into your lap.
Create joint ventures with others.
Build your list.
Bring in customers to your offline business.
Tiptoe past the gatekeepers.
Gather info for your next info product.
Sell your products.
Get asked to be a guest blogger, an interviewee, an interviewer, a speaker at a seminar, a participant in an ebook, and more.

I’m not making this stuff up… it happens on Twitter all the time!

Just ask these successful marketers – Willie Crawford, Jack Bastide, Bev Clement, Thom Scott, and Felicia Slattery. They, along with a few others (17 marketers in all) tell their stories in the Twitter Success Stories ebook.  In fact, my story is in there! Whoohoo….

They tell you about their personal Twitter successes and what they’ve learned in using Twitter to grow their businesses. These marketers also give you TIPS to get you on the right track.

So if you’re interested in growing your business and using Twitter as another marketing avenue, pick up a copy of Twitter Success Stories. I’m guessing you will come away with some great ideas you can apply to your business.

Heidi Richards Mooney

P.S. I pulled out a quote from the book for you that I liked:

“If you own a business of any size and you’re still not Twittering, you’re missing out on what amounts to a global virtual chamber of commerce networking event you can access anytime, day or night.” Heidi Richards Mooney

Here’s Some Spring Trivia:

The ancient Greeks celebrated Mother’s Day in spring. The ancient Greeks celebrated Rhea, “Mother of the Gods,” with honey-cakes, beverages, and flowers at dawn–the earliest known Mother’s Day celebration.

Four-leaf clovers are thought to bring good luck, but there’s no scientific evidence to support that claim.  Cut out some green four leaf clovers (or buy them at a specialty store such as Michaels crafts) and put “lucky sayings” on them. Include them in your business correspondence and statements.

The area along the California-Oregon border, is known as the “Easter Lily Capital of the World” because it produces 95 percent of all bulbs grown in the world for the potted Easter lily market. They produce more than 11 million bulbs annually.  Send your best customers an Easter Lily or other spring flowering plant.

Did you know “Spring Fever” is a real physical condition which commonly occurs when a sudden warm spell follows a long cold period. When the temperature rises, the body has to get rid of heat; thus there’s a dilation or expansion of the blood vessels so that blood can be carried to the body surface where heat can be lost quickly. Some people experience an energetic feeling when this change happens due to the body’s reaction to the great amount of internal work going on.
Big companies recognize the benefits of marketing SPRING to their target audience with spring sales, spring promotions, longer hours and more. What could your business do to acknowledge the first day of Spring?  How about a Spring Fever sale?  Or a Company picnic inviting your customers to attend.

Or maybe a spring cleaning tie in with a local charity or school? Sponsor a car wash and get out there and work side-by-side with a local youth group, sports team or other non-profit organization.

If you have not yet listed your business in Merchant Circle, Spring is the perfect time to do so. http://www.merchantcircle.com/corporate/sponsoredListing.html.

While you’re at it find out what’s happening in the world of Business when you check out Business Week online. http://www.businessweek.com/

For other ideas to market your company, check out Quirky Marketing, 365 Ways to Promote Your Business Using Zany and Non-traditional Holidays at www.QuirkyOffer.com

March 3^rd is Unique Names Day - Have customers call in about their names (their origin, why they were named that name, etc.) or have them post them online and have a contest for the most unusual name.  While my name is not that unusual anymore (Heidi), growing up it was a real pain some days. Especially whenever the movie was aired on TV.  I would get teased unmercifully the next day about it.  My mom chose that name because she loved the book by Johanna Spyre.  A few years ago I met a man named Twig and since I had never heard the name before asked him how his parents chose the name. He told me it was because when he was born he was the smallest baby in the nursery and the name “twig” just seemed to fit him.

March 4th is OLD ROCKS Day – Fossils have been called “Mother Nature’s diary” … they tell the history and secrets of life before us.  The word “fossil” comes from the Latin word fossilis (which means “dug up”). Although most “old rocks” are are dug up by paleontologists, if you are lucky you might just dig up a few in your own backyard.

So what can you do on Old Rock Day? In this day of WEB 2.0 and new media and social marketing, we often loose site of some of the classic, time-tested marketing techniques we used effectively in the past.  Take the business card as an example.  Business cards come in all shapes, sizes and materials these days. They can be a mini CD or a traditional size or even a fold-over business card.  How about using your “old” business card in a “new” way.  To make it a marketing vehicle and not just a means of others contacting you.  Say you have several products or services you offer. Why not create a business card specifically designed to highlight each one (or your most popular, or slowest selling, or whatever – you decide).  Find places to distribute your business cards. Such as your local chamber of commerce or if appropriate your local tourist information centers.  Post them on billboards in high-traffic areas where allowed. Give extra copies to your best clients and ask them to hand out to someone who they know needs your services.  Include them in the envelope when you mail a payment or invoice (if you still do that).  Where else can you distribute your business card? What other marketing ideas have you used in the past that need to be resurrected?  Old Rock Day is the perfect day to do just that!

Today is also: Fun Facts About Names Day, I Want You To Be Happy Day & National Anthem Day.

March 4th is also National Grammar Day & Courageous Followers Day.

For more ideas like this, check out my newest book Quirky Marketing ~ 365 Ways to Promote YOur Business Using Zany and Non-traditional Holidays at www.quirkyoffer.com.