Make sure to give attendees a special offer on your products or services at end of your presentation. Give offer a deadline to create urgency for them to take advantage of offer on spot.

4)Give Something Away

Find a way to give away samples of your products or services. Is there an association or group meeting or any other event that is looking for donations to be given away as door prizes?

Why not donate a package of your services or products? You will gain exposure (a free advertisement by group leader) among entire group when your package is either auctioned off, or announced and given away in front of everyone. You are also giving person who wins package chance to sample your products or services at no risk.

You could further leverage this marketing by offering “winner” an incentive to refer others to you. The “winner” might also be a great person to provide feedback to you, or a testimonial regarding how they felt about your product or service, that you can use in future marketing.

Yes, there may be a hard cost associated with product you are giving away, or a “time” cost associated with time you are donating, however when you weigh that cost against number of people who are being exposed to your products or services, usually it is well worth it. And it certainly is cheap (and usually more effective!) in comparison to buying an ad. My advice is to incorporate this sort of activity into your operational budget and simply consider it a cost of doing business.

There are all kinds of ways to generate exposure of your products and services without paying for advertising space. Yes, sometimes this does involve giving away product or service, but I don’t consider that a hard “marketing” cost. I have found that benefits always outweigh cost of my time or my products.

The trick is to target well, or in other words, locate where your prospects congregate or what media they read or view, and then find creative ways to get yourself, your products or your services, in front of them in those places.

(C) Copyright 2005 Debbie LaChusa, 10stepmarketing

If you are networking or speaking to a group and someone gives you their business card and agrees to receive your free report or e-newsletter, make sure you include a reference in your contact database of event where you met them.

As far as tracking your past marketing activities, consider asking your current customers how they found out about you.

You could do a survey that includes a number of customer satisfaction questions, but also includes a question to determine how they found out about you.

If you have a handful of clients that you work closely with and you really don’t know how they found you, pick up phone and ask them.

Either of these tactics should give you an idea of what marketing activities worked and which ones you may be able to do without in future.

If you're still not sure, continue with all marketing activities, BUT put tracking mechanisms into place so you won't end up in same boat next year.

(C) 2005 Debbie LaChusa, 10stepmarketing