Manizesto

Part Two in a Three Part Series

In the first part of this series, I covered a few good ways to get the word out about your small business for companies with short-arm owners or tight budgets, so let’s jump right into the next five:

6. Give Tours. This is perfect for anyone in the manufacturing business, and it cost basically nothing. Look to your local trade school, university or high school and give as many tours as is reasonable. You can even try giving tours to your local media or submitting your company to Science Channel’s How it’s Made.

7. Be an in-kind donor at a local event. Look for local events, contests and charities that you can participate in by giving away in kind donations as part of a winning prize. At Logoworks, for instance, we gave away a free logo design for the winners of a local university business plan competition. The cost to us we minimal, but we got our logo plastered everywhere and even got some coverage in the local newspaper.

8. Put your logo on something different and give it away. It may sound weird, but why not try putting your logo on an everyday object with a clever tagline and give them away to potential customers? A great example is a printing company I know of that put their logo on walnuts and handed them out to potential customers. It was a great way to illustrate the printer’s capabilities, plus it stood out from competitors.

9. Make News. Your local news has all sorts of time to fill, and they are always looking for soft, feel good stories to cover. Between the early morning news, the mid-morning news, the noon news, the evening news, and the nightly news shows, you’re looking at several hours a day, every day that the local news stations need to fill.

If you can do something remarkable and different, you’ll be surprised how easy it is to get the attention of local media. Offer to get your head shaved or hair dyed an odd color if you reach a certain goal, or for the less adventurous, write up a press release on something amazing your company has achieved and offer to be interviewed on how you did it.

10. Do a drawing. Give away something cool that fits with your business, like a free service package, a membership, or even a cool gizmo. Set it up so all people have to do is fill out a form and put it in a little box, you hold a drawing and the winner gets something cool. The losers? They’re sales leads, of course.

There’s one more part to this series, and you can make sure to get it by subscribing to Manizesto.

Photo Courtesy of marlenekzio.