Small businesses need to continually be networking in the community to increase their chances for success. It is not enough for a small businessperson to simply advertise in the newspaper, send out direct mail, have ads on the local cable TV station and the radio and expect that to be enough. Advertising and marketing is a large expense and small businesses need to watch their outflow. Networking in any type of small business will increase sales and help with the word-of-mouth advertising.
In these small business articles I have written I often talk about many secret strategies that I have used in the past 30 years to help grow my companies. It is amazing what a small business can do on a rather limited marketing budget if they will apply simple but sound networking strategies. Some folks are little scared about networking if they have never done it before, however once you get started and learn some of the secrets you might just find out that you very much enjoy it, as it is quite fun. Not only is it fun but it is also practical and profitable.
Small businesses need to promote themselves with proper publicity, public-relations and community networking. In these articles I discuss the use of Chambers of Commerce, community committees and nonprofit groups, as well as service clubs and how you can use each one of these to promote community goodwill while also networking. Consider it your contribution to the community to give a little back a little as you grow, while getting paid to do what you would normally do for your community anyway.
These articles are more about grassroots marketing then the typical MBA style marketing that you read in business textbooks. Of course I am not knocking those methods as they do also give good results. In fact a proper mixture of the two can really accelerate the success of your business. You should also discuss how you can design a grassroots marketing and community-networking plan that can help you achieve success in your small business.
I wish to thank you for reading my hundreds of small business articles. You see, I grew my small-business into a multi-state franchising company and I owe most of our early success to networking in our community and many of our franchisees found the same success in their communities as well. Perhaps these articles are of interest to propel thought in 2007?
"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/. Lance is a guest writer for Our Spokane Magazine in Spokane, Washington
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