As your business grows, it will take on a life and personality of it's own. Your "Business Personality" is a reflection of you, time and effort you put into it. For those of us with small and home businesses they are an actual essence or reflection of ourselves. We breathe life into something once lifeless. Our clients and customers see this reflection every day by store front we present and by actions we take.

Treat your business as you would a pupil. Lead it, advise it, guide it through rough spots. Don't let it wonder off. Keep it focused on end result. Your end result or business goal should be to service your (key or) target customer.

This is Marketing! Marketing is not necessarily promotion or advertising, although they are great tools to be used in a marketing strategy. Marketing however, is an overview of your business and how it relates to your customers, past. present and future.

Your business no matter what it is, should have one goal in mind, to benefit and relate to your customers. How do you do this? You must first understand how your business is portrayed by audience. Take a look at your business through their eyes!

People are instinctively sensitive to their surroundings. Whether it's restaurant they eat in, or business they deal with. Your business should be sensitive to needs of your customer, a pleasure to deal with and portray image they imagined you should be. Your business should form a friendly, almost family like alliance with your customer and targeted market.

New ideas can be very difficult to find. When you do find them and put them into action, they can provide a powerful marketing edge and become a license to print money.

Here are some ways to help generate new ideas:

Ask For Opinions You could hire consultants or you could simply seek opinions from someone who knows absolutely nothing about your business. We get so close to what we are doing, that often we can't see another way of doing things. There are times when we need to step outside our own environment because sometimes ideas used in one trade can be adapted to another.

Encourage Staff Creativity If you employ staff, then encourage them to think up new ideas and get them to suggest changes. You will need to be open-minded and encourage their input. You'll need to be tolerant when their ideas don't work. And you'll probably need to reward them in some way, although you'll probably find that satisfaction of "seeing their ideas in action" may be reward enough.