marketing & advertising tips to help increase sales within 90 days.
Marketing With a Twist! Increase Sales By 20% Within 90 days! By A.R. Carroll

The Economy is TOUGH right now! Every business owner large & small knows this fact. To stay profitable you have to utilize new unique marketing strategies. Many of these traffic-generating, store-filling, sales generating techniques are free or virtually free!

Twist Number One: Most professionals and small businesses can increase their sales simply by meeting with the public. Getting their products or services "showcased out there in front people" where they can offer samples, brochures, flyers, demonstrations, and of course make sales!

Street Fairs, Flea-Markets, Religious Fund-raisers, Rummage Sales, County Fairs, 4-H Club Fairs, Trade-shows, are all good places to meet with new potential customers, clients, patients, distributors, etc.

Here are several examples of businesses that can benefit from attending and sponsoring such events. A Chimney Sweep business owner can show-up dressed in their complete outfit (young children will flock to their booth dragging their parents with them). A cutout chimney mockup can be used to demonstrate how a chimney sweeping/cleaning is done. Brochures, pamphlets, discounts coupons can be handed out. Other services offered such as chimney repairs, capping, etc. can be discussed with the emphasis on safety. Yearly chimney cleanings can prevent building fires, repaired faulty bricks could prevent personal injuries and potential lawsuits. And properly capping can prevent heat loss and thus save money on heating/cooling bills, not to mention capping keeps out unwanted pests such as skunks, squirrels, bats and raccoons.

A Chiropractor can offer free spinal screenings, local dentist, periodontist, and orthodontists, can offer free toothbrush/tooth paste samples, free exam coupons, discount coupons etc. Professionals that are too busy to attend themselves can have the event hosted by a worker or family member. Remember support your community and your community will support you!

These events can also turn out to be great moneymaking opportunities for Cell Phone businesses, craft, toy, and general merchandise jobbers. Network marketing and multi-level marketing distributors can find customers as well as potential distributors to add to their downline!

Remember the key to remember is have plenty of samples, brochures, business cards and products on hand.

Twist Number Two: Offer FREE helpful advice to your local community, county or even large city where you reside. You can do this by submitting brief informative articles to your local newspapers for publication. Examples: A local podiatrist can offer a short article about heel pain, a periodontist can offer an article on gum disease, a local mortgage company can offer an article on the differences between a fixed-rate mortgage and an adjustable rate one. A local landscaper can explain the best times to weed & feed your lawns, a local CPA can offer tax-saving tips, etc. Every professional or small business owner has something to offer to the community, and will reap the benefits of the articles by having their businesses publicized for free!

Twist Number Three: Storeowners can add new specialized items, or just highlight current items with a new sales generating sign. Examples: A pizzeria can offer new Taco Pizza that is a taco shell filled with pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese and ground beef. They can attract health-conscious, weight-conscious customers by also offering it with low-fat cheese and choice of ground chicken or ground turkey. A Chinese restaurant can possibly improve lack-luster sales by adding sushi to its menu, and then they can add a sign to their window stating "Healthy Sushi Dishes Now Served". A Thai restaurant can boost their sales by adding several French Entrees, Japanese Entrees, or Malaysian entrees to their menu. And then they can add a window sign stating Authentic Thai/French Cuisine, or Authentic Thai/Japanese Cuisine, etc.! Many different kinds of restaurants such as Indian, Mexican, Chinese, and Italian can increase their sales by stating that they now have Vegetarian Cuisine. This alone can possibly cause an influx of vegetarian customers to visit their restaurants. Pizzeria's can purchase a small soft-ice cream machine or soft frozen yogurt machine. In the summer their profits should rise do to the number of little league teams that usually frequent after their games. And ice cream or frozen yogurt is a nice desert following a good Italian meal for eat-in customers.

Ice Cream

Deli's, convenience stores, gas stations, etc. can increase foot traffic and in-store sales by installing a State Lottery Machine and Mini-ATM's for their customers' use.

Candy stores can sell homemade gourmet ice cream, frozen yogurt and profit-producing sugar-free delights, sugar-free candies, perfect for diabetics, weight-conscious and cavity-conscious consumers!

Twist Number Four: Expand your demographics and expand your sales dramatically! Art & Crafts stores can offer free art classes, ceramic classes etc. They can offer art classes for children. This way the whole family can learn & enjoy, and the store can ring up a lot of new sales! Kids love to draw, paint, color, and create!

Until the early 90's Mail Order businesses were predominantly started and run by men, but now nearly 70% of all new Mail Order/Internet home-based businesses are run by women! Stay-at-home moms are rushing into home-based businesses and are reaping the profits for their efforts!

Martial arts schools can offer cardio kick-boxing classes, Tai Chi classes, and mediation classes to individuals who seek to improve upon their health yet don't wish to learn to fight.

Small businesses, home-based businesses, small manufacturers & small distributors should not forget our friends up North! Canadians love to purchase American products and services, advertise that you accept Canadian orders and you could see your sales could jump 10 - 20% in no time!

Twist Number Five: Make your website informative, attractive and "sticky". Make people want to visit, stay for a long time, order a lot and come back time and time again! First let me save a lot of people a lot of money! I keep seeing articles about how to get your website listed quickly on Yahoo for $199. Yahoo no doubt is one of the premier search engines/portals in the world. But even if you do get your website listed within 3 - 5 days after paying the $199, that doesn't guarantee you'll get ANY "hit" or visits to your website via the Yahoo search engine. The truth of the matter is that the top 20 returned search results receive 90% of the hits. If your website isn't in the top 20 then you aren't going to get any hits. A newly started website listed on Yahoo is lucky to be in the top 200,000! One way to receive quality "hits" is to use a "pay-for-clicks" type of service, which will enable your website to be listed in Yahoo's top Four Sponsored Matches. Here are the pros/cons to using a pay-for-hits service: Example 1: An entrepreneur decides to sell portable home air cleaners via their website. He builds a beautiful website with color photos, secure-server shopping cart, etc. The problem is it costs $2.70 or more per click for the keyword "air cleaner" if he wishes for his website to be found on Yahoo or one of the many top 10 search engines! By the way keyword "air cleaner" has 532,000 matches on Yahoo! Let's say this gentleman receives 1000 click-throughs per month to his website via a "pay-per-click" arrangement. He has to pay $2700/month for clicks/visitors, if he only sells 50 air cleaners at $300 each that equals $1500 (5% sales), you see he has to sell a lot of air cleaners to break even! Example 2: A young gentleman decides to sell snowboards on the Internet. The keyword "snowboard" get 233,000 Matches on Yahoo, and if he wishes for his website to land in the top four Sponsored Match positions it will cost him 36 cents or more per click! Example 3: A young woman wants to sell chocolates via her website but keyword chocolate gets 284,000 matches on Yahoo, and the cost per click would be 52 cents or more each if she wanted to have her website show up in the top four Sponsored Match listings! Example 4: Flowers keyword would display 11,900,000 matches and a cost of $3.82 or more per click-through for the top four Sponsored Match listings! The bottom line is pay-per-clicks, banner ads, and pop-ads don't work for most small business owners! Small display advertising, classified ads, in conjunction with direct mail, postcards, catalogs, flyers and properly written sales letters are still the bread & butter for the home-based Internet/Mail Order dealer! Increase your exposure & increase your sales! Good Luck & Good Selling!

About the Author

A. R. Carroll, Writer/Successful Business Owner Please visit his Websites: www.NationalBookSales.com and www.ZeoliteDepot.com