All business owners are aware that in order to run a successful business, whether it is selling products, or offering a service for hire, you will need to do some marketing to bring in customers.

What business owners might now know is that dumping more money into a marketing plan is not always the answer. If the message you are sending is not appealing to consumers, I don`t care how much money you spend, your campaign will surely fail.

One item to not overlook are your current customers, especially the satisfied ones. Don`t forget to offer your current customers some kind of discount if they refer someone, such as 25% off their next order if they bring someone in to purchase or hire whatever it is you sell.

You want to keep your satisfied customers, well, satisfied. Not quite rocket science, but you get the point. People like to feel important and when you make happy customers feel even more important, chances are they will go to their friends and relatives and say, "you have to use John`s service, the guy is great, professional," and so on. There is nothing better then receiving new customers from current customes through word of mouth marketing.

If you own a delivery service or provide a service where you need to go to a residence or place of business then the next item about marketing I am going to tell you should be a no-brainer. I would love to take credit for this, however, stories I have read puts credit on the shoulders of a Pizza shop owner, who many years ago, used this type of marketing.

So what is it? Well it really doesn`t have a name, but the process works like this. When you are providing a service to a customer, do not forget to take along with you, fliers, business cards, or whatever type of literature you have on your company and service, and at the end of the day or job when you are finished, put a few on doors or hand them out in the nearby offices. You are already in the vicinity, so travel expenses are at the lowest it will be as is the labor, and the people that you are handing the information too, can view your work (whatever it is), right there.

That pizza man`s philosophy was very simple, when you deliver a pie to a home, place a flyer with coupons on it, on the house on each side of the home you just delivered to. The marketing program worked wonders.

With this type of marketing, if it is not just you that goes out and does the work, offer bonuses and incentives to your employees who have the highest return on these fliers. Of course you will need to come up with a way of tracking where they are coming from, but that is as simple as giving each employee a special code and putting that code on the coupons, fliers, or whatever it is you are handing out.

The example of marketing I just gave you may be a simple one, but you would be surprised as to how many people and business owners overlook the obvious as they are trying to come up with creative ways to get their business name out there.

By: Bruce A. Tucker