Finding new customers is tough, especially if you’re trying to do it on a small budget. So how do you go about getting people to notice you if you don’t have a lot of advertising dollars to spend? Here are a few ideas to get you thinking and you don’t need to lay out a lot of cash to do what you need to do, and that’s get traffic in the door, offline or online.
1. Find Your Key Influencers
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Finding people that refer your business whenever possible can be a key to your success. Invite them into your offices or your store and go the extra mile. Find out what they like about your business and do more of that. Make sure to tell them how much you appreciate when they talk about your business.
2. Visit a Convention
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If there is a convention in your town that either has visitors that might need your products, go to it and pass out flyers or coupons to all of the booths or tables represented. Make sure you collect business cards from the booth and ask permission to send them email. Be careful not to waste their time since they’ve paid to be there to sell their own products. Then, follow up with an email marketing campaign reminding them of how you received their information, and ask them to join your mailing list.
3. Local Partnering
Drive reciprocal traffic to a neighboring business so that each of you can promote the other businesses as an add-on. It can be a nice cross promotion and it reminds customers of both businesses when they’re visiting your neighborhood. If you are not neighbors but may be online, try partnering with them. You can pay each other for each new customer the other drives, and you both win out in the long run.
4. Email Signature Files
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Make sure you include a signature file in all of your outgoing email–personal and business–with a special offer to get visitors to your location, or a link you’d like to promote on your web site. You can change these as frequently as you need to.
5. Merchandise With Your Logo
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Give your customers and employees great things to wear with your logo on it. Drop a gift in a shipment to your customers with your branding on it. If it’s useful they’ll either wear it or put it somewhere prominent. It’s a great branding tool.
6. Chamber of Commerce
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Become a member of your local Chamber of Commerce and attend the regular gatherings. If you can’t attend send a representative from your company with business cards and coupons. You’ll surely meet a potential customer or two.

