10 No-nonsense Tactics in Promoting Your Home-based business

By Gregorio Montenegro
Posted Thursday, September 9, 2004

Can you imagine without the community, you would have no business. No man is an island. This is especially true in business.

Always remember that the community members are usually the customers for life of the home-based business-unless they move out of the area. The business relies on them for its lifeblood; on the other hand too, the customers rely on the business for their needs-product-and service-wise. There is an inevitable interdependence between the two.

Therefore it is beneficial to the entrepreneur to pay heed and contribute to the community's well-being. This means not only money, but time and effort too, may be donated by the businessman to further the physical and mental health and stability of the community, who are the company's customers.

Here, are the various ways to promote your business in your community:

1. Making up the clientele of your business are the members of the community, and many of theme are affiliated with community service organizations, like Rotarians, Lions, YMCA/YWCA, Christian Charities and others. They belong to these, civic, religious, and charitable organizations, and are active in the service of the community.

2. Pay attention to both the individual members and the collective club, because they can propel your business to greater heights. The service clubs can patronize your business as they undertake their avowed community task, which may generate more revenue for your business than individual customers.

3. Be on the lookout for chances to be of service to these community service clubs. In the long run, this may pay off more than what you actually put in. And you would have done the community some good at the same time. Maybe you cannot only donate a little of whatever you are selling-goods or services. Or you can contribute banners, announcement fliers, of certificate awards.

4. You might be requested to become a candidate to serve on the board of one of these organizations. It will be worth your while, financially and spiritually to put in a little time and effort to help in the community projects.

5. There is little thing, yet a big help that you can do for organizations in the community. One of these is simply allowing them to post their flyer on your window or door, or putting up a bulletin board where they can post their meetings or fund-raising notices. You can also offer your place or a part of it, if you have enough space, for their meetings or gatherings

6. Participate in media promotions, such as offering your product or service as a prize.

7. Join or spearhead a community project, be it as simple as a clean-up campaign or as involved as auctions, flea markets, medical missions, etc.

8. Accept trainees, volunteers in your business. They help you and you help them.

9. A low cost way to promote your home business is to try to gather email address of every resident within a given city. Email is essentially free. It is important to try to compile a list of email addresses and constantly update that list. Using personal emails rather than spaming would help your target audience be more trustful to your intentions and therefore would result to a greater chance of your potential customers purchasing your product or service.

10. A good way to do some advertising and make some money at the same time is to offer to teach a class at your local collage. When you teach a class at your community collage, you get to network and build your list of potential clients.

In closing, I would like to share with you a useful tip. Some customers may or may not look at your calling card--your name, position and company might not ring a bell. But they would want to hear directly from you, who you are and how noble your intention is.

About the Author
Greg Montenegro is a 15-year veteran in international marketing. His firm has been exporting computer parts to Asia since 1992. He is also the Webmaster of (http://www.12homebasedbusiness.com), a website that shows you how to go from zero to making real money online in about a month.