What is a simple marketing strategy to implement on a small budget?

Something that might cost a little bit of money but is well within someone’s budget are open houses or customer appreciation days in your shop. You could invite customers along with active prospects and have them rub elbows with your satisfied customers.

Another idea is to invite a school to an open house – usually, that middle-school-age is perfect- on a field trip to your shop. When you bring in this class of kids, they could either make their own plaques or ribbons, or something with their name on it, and bring it home. You could have a local reporter cover the event and put it in the newspaper. Hopefully their parents, which are typically members of booster clubs and different organizations and groups in the kid’s school, think of you when they have the need for awards and gifts, and so on.

When demonstrating, you don’t want to show them the easiest things you do, but rather, walk them through something that you have a talent for doing and the equipment to do that. It gives them an appreciation for the type of work that you do.

Another idea is to host networking events. Business groups have networking events that move around to various locations. Hosting a networking event for a local business association is a good way to get some exposure and it’s relatively inexpensive. You may have to serve some heavy hors d’oeuvres and beverages, but that’s nothing compared to what it would cost to do a full-blown marketing campaign.

—Your Personal Business Trainer