1.  Market hard when times are tough.

Across the world, during these extremely difficult financial times, our clients are reluctant to spend money.  Don’t cut your marketing budget.  When your clientele slows its spending, market more to increase your client base.  I relate decreasing a marketing budget in times like this to cutting back on bait when the fish aren’t biting.  You need to maintain or even increase your marketing expenses.  Add in some creative tactics to present your sales pitch and catch more fish.

2.  7 is the number of completion.

Zig Zaggler along with all the sales gurus will tell you, it takes 7 impressions to make a sale.  In all of my marketing campaigns, I have to say it’s true.  If your sending out post card mailers, buying television commercial slots or simply cold calling, you need to calculate into your plan whoever is listening, you have to push it to them 6 more times.  OK, that’s easy enough if you know what your doing.  A lot of small businesses “shot gun” different information.  This does not work.  You need to present the same message, service, or product 7 times.  It’s hard to gain a customer but once you do, marketing other products becomes easier.  When one bites, the 7 tries is no longer needed.  They trust you and will buy from you consistently.

3.  Joint Venture Marketing partnerships (JVM partnerships).

As a small business, you probably know and do business with other small businesses.  You can form small JVM partnerships to offset your marketing costs.   Jot down what you are planning to market, where you plan to market it, the costs of the campaign, and the expected results.  Type it up on your company letterhead and present it to a handful of other small business owners within your network.  The goal is to partner up with at least one.  The more you are able to get on board, the cheaper it will be to market.   This applies to flier distribution, bulk mailing, buying web traffic, radio, and even TV commercials.

4.  Give something your customers need for free.

This is nothing new to the marketing world.  Every decent marketing book will express the need to attract customers by giving something away.  What’s lost in translation is placing something of greater value to your business in the freebie.  When you give something away, make sure it’s valuable to the potential customer.  The goal is to convert, over time, the potential customer into an actual paying customer.   I like to give away free information.   I give a free 7 day business credit building course.  What do I gain from this?  A name and an email address of which allows me to communicate to a list of possible customers “over time.”

5.  Over deliver to ensure customer retention and a long term loyalty.

Marketing doesn’t stop once a sale is made.  The best way to make a strong and trusting impact on a client is to over deliver.  Give and give a lot!  When your client receives what’s been paid for, ensure that there’s a lot more than what was expected.  Things to consider in simple terms would be a basic thank you letter.  An additional insert to reassure product quality is to express the guarantee.  Depending on the profit margin, a phone call could really help.  Go crazy and be creative with your delivery.  This will keep your customer “on your side.”  You have already established trust with this customer – they have already proved this by sending you money.  Now, make them trust you event more.  If you build a nice long term relationship, your client will buy from you with less hesitation.  Over delivering equals sale after sale after sale.

6. Use other peoples money (OPM).

The most important part of my marketing plans are to use all the above facts without spending a dime.  Use other peoples money!  Use OPM whenever and however you can.  Marketing evolves around the success of your business and it’s all about taking calculated risks.  Never put your personal finances, family, or name in jeopardy.  Keep yourself out of your business and utilize business credit!  I’ve lost it all once before.  An awesome but extremely difficult situation to get through.  I know first hand based on real life experiences.  So much in fact that I’ve designed and sell a system on how to achieve business credit.  Take the needed time to read about it here – Establish Business Credit

The problem is, they charge on upwards of $2,500 just to enter their programs.  And as they act on your behalf and gain more credit lines, you are charged a percentage of the total amount and your small business is responsible for paying off the piece of pie they take.

Can you imagine, the debt you’re creating before you get to utilize a single dollar?  $500,000 in business credit lines can cost your business up to $100,000 in debt before you even get access to the funds.

I’m a firm believer in using other people’s money (OPM) to take risks with, but getting it and then giving it away is mind boggling to me.   Earlier I mentioned three truths and I’ve only covered two.

Let’s put at serious end to that right now!

The third truth is that you can obtain the same results by yourself.  Achieving business credit is not a difficult task.  It’s an educated task.  You just need to know what they know.  It’s not impossible to obtain a $2,500 unsecured credit line in a little more than 30 days or a $50,000 credit line with bank of America in 90 days.  These results of course very and it’s not dependent on how long you’ve been in business, where your business is at or what your business does.

A new, home or small business is “where the credit is at.”  60+% of the U.S. economy has been driven by small businesses.  Our new administration and their initiative to kick start our economy are focusing on that fact.

Off topic, I strongly suggest you read the other articles here and take a few moments to watch the public announcements from President Obama and his action (currently underway) to put $13 billion dollars back into the 30,000+ small businesses by backing financial institutions in which our government is guaranteeing on our behalf.

In end let me say, you can achieve these credit lines without spending a single dollar with corporate companies capitalizing on your business credit efforts.  I go into much further detail about this in other articles I’ve written and I encourage you to take a look at the information I’ve put together to get you into gaining these credit lines with very little effort and without personally guaranteeing anything.

If you are ready to establish business credit no matter if you’ve just started, are thinking about starting or you are working out of your home.