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The more creative you are with your marketing for your small business, the further you can stretch your advertising budget. For a lot of small businesses, this can mean the difference between success and failure. If you are on a shoe-string start-up, you have to be even more creative.

Even though most of us feel uncomfortable doing it, the truth is that networking works. You should always work to develop your own personal business networks with your friends, associates, and clients. When you are starting, it may also help to join in an existing business network. Visit several business networking groups before choosing one that website that fits your needs. If you are friendly and enjoy helping other people, you may be surprised by how much a business networking group can help you.

What better than free? Giving something away for free is a marketing strategy that is almost guaranteed to generate a higher response rate. In order for this strategy to work, you should focus on customer retention and making money off of your clients in the long term. A successful burrito company found that printing a coupon for a free burrito attracted 10 times as many new customers as their previous coupon. Yes they were losing a little money every time someone redeem a coupon, but they retained and grew their business at a faster rate and that more than compensated for it. With a janitorial service business their are 100s of different ways to offer free services. Two of these include a free cleaning evaluation or $100 off the the first contract signed.

For increase your advertising sphere without increase the size of your advertising budget, online advertising is the way to go. The first thing you need to do is get listed on Google maps. This is a free free service and it takes 1/2 hour to set up. I have had people call and offer to charge me $300 set up plus 100 a month to manage but for a 1/2 of work, you only need to do once that sounds like a scam to me! Make sure you pick all the categories you are offering services in and that your main keyword is in your title. Getting a few legitimate reviews from customers will also go a long way to improving your Google map rankings.

You are much less likely to succeed in business if you do not understand the value of each lead. Do you know how much that last phone call cost you? Do you know on average what each new customer to your business is worth? Sometimes this can be difficult to track, but it is always worth it to try to find out. When a new customer calls ask them how they heard about you. Keep of who referred them or what advertisements they responded to. The truth is that business is always moving towards increased efficiency, where you choose to keep up or not is entirely up to you.

A satisfied customer is one who will refer you to their friends and neighbors. Treat your customers as well as you can and ask for referrals often. If you have loyal customers you can survive tough economic times that your competitors may not be able.