In tough time’s loads of businesses are really struggling to generate new clients and leads. So many businesses are cutting marketing budgets in a way of trying to save themselves yet this is probably the worst thing they could do! What I am going to show you is 10 ways you can market your business for less than $100 each, most being free!

1. Share information

This is a fantastic way to market! Sharing information with your clients and potential clients builds a relationship with them; they will in turn trust you and be 100x more likely to buy from you in the future. Just send it to them with a simple line like "I thought this may interest you."

2. Get on Twitter

Twitter is a massive place for networking, it is 100% free and will open your business up to so many new audiences that could be interested in what you have to offer. But don’t use it like everyone else, tweet after tweet of "buy this," and "buy that." Again share information, build up those relationships.

3. Get the camera rolling

Yes, make some videos and post them to numerous sites, this is free and opens your business up to a massive audience. There are many ways you can do a video so don’t get nervous about being in front of the camera, look into it and see what suits you.

4. USP

you need to differentiate yourself from your competitors, you need a unique selling point. Why would they buy from you instead of your competitor?

5. Facebook

create a business profile on Facebook, look for target markets, and maybe even make use of the advertising space. Facebook being the biggest social networking site with millions of registered accounts, and again free to join.

6. Capitalize on your past success

 Yes really, if you had a testimonial, article written about you, anything that shows your business to be better than the rest then use it. Share it with your customers, make a place on your site for them to look if they wish, getting other peoples views of your business helps others decide whether to buy from you or not.

7. Build a list

Email marketing is a great way to market yourself, building that list of email addresses and using them effectively will increase your sales without a doubt. A lot of services are available online to manage these lists for you, and under $30 a month

8. Google Maps and directories

List yourself on Google maps and other online directories. Most online directories are free to list your business, make sure you include full details of your business. Listing with Google maps will also increase your chances of being found on the search engines.

9. Direct Mail

Not junk mail, were talking personalize thanks you card or something of its sort. Make a customers experience with you much more personal and they will trust you, even recommend you to a friend which equals more sales!

10. Purchase Leads

This is an effective way of getting buyers. Purchasing people that may be interested in your product then all you have to do is persuade them why they should buy what you have to offer, easy!

I hope those 10 ways will help you to market your business, especially seeing as they are free or very low cost.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Scott_Taylor_McCormick

The internet is full of money making opportunities. The problem is it can be very hard to find them and get started. Here is a list of 10 ways to make money on the internet that you can start right away if you like.

1. Start a web store on the internet

Sell wholesalers products online and have your own web shop. You can make good profits with this one, especially if you find a good and reliable wholesaler who doesn’t overcharge.

2. Start a blog for money

You can start a blog on a subject that interests you and others and get paid for each click you get on the ads on it.

3. Paid to participate sites

Get paid to write for a web site like associated content. They pay you for each article that you submit.

4. Flip web sites

 People will pay really good money for a decent web site. You can set it up and create content for it. You do not have to worry about getting traffic to your site as it is the content of the site that is important.

5. Sell domain names

This is a good one and similar to flipping web sites. The difference is that you are only selling the domain name itself though. Short and memorable domains are the most sought after.

6. Become a freelancer

You can use your skills and get a virtual job online by becoming a freelancer. You get paid for doing all sorts of one off jobs for people.

7. Be a virtual assistant to an individual or business

Sometimes a business will need the advice of someone or jobs done on a more permanent basis than a freelancer.

8. Write for money

There are plenty of websites that are looking for writers to create their content for them. They will offer a revenue sharing system or pay for each post or article.

9. Buy and sell on eBay

This is perhaps the best way to make money on the internet. You can buy new products from a wholesaler or buy products that aren’t very well listed on eBay and then list them properly for a profit.

10. Create your own product and sell it over the internet

It could be a digital product like an e-book and you won’t have any running or start up costs.

Pay close attention to this next part. Find out what the best way to make money from the internet is now. If you have never made any money online and are looking to find out how to do it then you should download your free report that shows you step by step how you can earn a full time living online now. The methods you are shown are so easy to do that anyone can do them! Find out how you can quit your job and start working for yourself online now! Thousands of people are already using this method to make money online. Isn’t it time that you did too? Download your free report and get started now.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Roxanne_Black

It’s a given that most of you reading this article believe design is the right tool for translating market needs into tangible product specifications. The people who hire us to design their products or who attend our Cooper U courses think the same thing. Unfortunately, the best designs and the best intentions won’t always lead you to success, because the problem goes beyond your product and beyond your design or development process. Building better, more innovative, and more profitable products requires organizational change on a deep and difficult level. When design pilot projects fail, it endangers everyone’s willingness to adopt design methods. Over the course of doing hundreds of design projects and teaching our methods to more than a thousand people, we’ve seen that several reasons for failure keep showing up. A discussion of these reasons follows, along with some solutions to consider. Let’s start with the easiest ones and work our way up.

1. Poor choice of pilot project

When you first bring design into an organization, you generally have to convince others of its efficacy. The best way to do this is usually to pick a pilot project and demonstrate how design helped it succeed. However, if you pick the wrong project and can’t demonstrate success, you will certainly lose credibility and may also lose any further chance of persuading people.

Choose a relatively small project with a clearly measurable outcome. For example, if a particular part of your application causes 30% of your tech support calls, fix that part and track the decrease in calls. It’s also a good idea to choose a type and size of project your company has done several times before, so you can show the savings in development time and cost. Also, avoid ill-conceived projects—if it’s a product or function no one will ever use, there’s only so much design can do to help.

2. Not having one consistent project owner

Every design project needs a business decision-maker associated with it—someone who can make trade-off choices between desirable design directions and difficult implementation issues, and will shepherd the product from concept to completion. In many cases, this is a product manager. Companies that try to do this by committee, with no single person responsible for the project’s outcome, seldom succeed. Everyone thinks everyone else is responsible, so the process proceeds very slowly, if at all. Changing project ownership partway through the process is also an enormous risk, particularly if the new project owner has not been involved until now; you will need to revisit every project decision, and may end up throwing out quite a few and starting over. This will lead to a perceived project failure, and will devalue the design process in everyone’s eyes.

So, senior managers, choose a single project owner and be sure that person is someone you’re not planning to reassign in a couple of months.

3. Incomplete design or insufficient design communication

The best design in the world won’t get built if it’s incomplete or undocumented. When clients ask us to design to the framework level (major navigation and interactions) but not provide the detail, they are much less likely to succeed than our clients who ask for bitmaps and widgets. This is generally because the people who have to fill in the rest are not interaction designers, and don’t have the appropriate skills and context to fill things in. Likewise, your documentation must be very complete, because if anything is open to interpretation, trust me, it will be interpreted. It might seem obvious to a designer that my bank’s ATM shouldn’t offer me the ability to withdraw from a money market account if I don’t have one, but it apparently wasn’t obvious to the people who built the ATM software.

This kind of problem is relatively easy to fix; be sure to assign designers for the duration of the project, and make sure there’s someone on the team responsible for providing detailed documentation.

4. Not getting buy-in from top executives

Every time we interview stakeholders on a project, we ask whether there are any executives higher up the chain of command who need to approve the project’s direction. One of our worst nightmares is being told that no one else will influence the project, then having an executive we’ve never met suddenly object to our direction. On one of our projects a few years ago, we were told that a senior executive didn’t need to be part of the process. Sure enough, two days before the end of a multi-month project, he didn’t like the design because he hadn’t gone down the path with us. Several months of formal usability testing finally convinced him, but the opportunity cost to our client was tremendous.

Interviewing top executives at the start and involving them at each decision point will help you avoid this.

5. The wrong people doing design

If you wanted to persuade people that martial arts were an effective means of self-defense, would you hire me, or Jackie Chan? (Believe me, you’d want Jackie Chan.) Design won’t take root in your company unless people see it done by experts. The vast majority of companies I’ve seen try to bring design in-house by telling some programmers that they’re now designers, or by having the product manager do some design in his spare time.

Although the need for designers varies during the project life cycle, design is a full-time job as well as a profession that requires many years of practice. Good interaction designers are hard to find, but they do exist—hire them!

6. Not committing resources to design

Even with the right pilot project and the right people doing the design work, if the management team doesn’t provide support in other ways, it’s much harder to succeed. We often see companies that won’t give designers access to users, or that won’t allow enough time to understand the problem, solve it to the level of detail required, and document it in a reasonable way. Unfortunately, until they’ve seen its value demonstrated, many people view design as a cost, rather than a savings (and more importantly, a strategic advantage).

Think about mini-projects you can use to demonstrate value, even with little or no budget. Use those small successes to ask for resources on a modest pilot project with an obvious opportunity for gain.

7. Failure to separate innovation from renovation

If you have one product manager and one development team, it makes sense for them to be responsible for the visionary new release 3.0 as well as the 2.x maintenance releases, right? Wrong. When that version 2.x deadline looms, no one has time or attention to spare for what the next major release should be, so the future product always gets shortchanged.

Instead, carve off a small team to focus solely on designing 3.0 in parallel with the implementation of maintenance releases. This might mean you throw away a little more of that 2.x code when you build 3.0, but it will save calendar time and increase what you can accomplish for the big upgrade.

8. The inmates are running the asylum

You knew this had to be in the list somewhere, right? It’s here toward the end of the list because it’s a big problem that takes a long time to solve. When we say the inmates are running the asylum, it means the programmers are making business decisions that should be made by executives. In most cases it’s not intentional, and the majority of people are unaware of the extent to which it happens. However, every time a programmer says "That’s not technically feasible," he’s just made a business decision that’s invisible to most people, since "not technically feasible" really means "not in the tiny amount of time or with the constraints I know you’re going to give me."

It’s a designer’s job to mediate this conversation. Changing the process on paper is relatively easy, but changing the attitudes and behaviors behind the process takes more time and effort. One way to help things along is to make sure that design doesn’t report in to engineering, but instead reports to a cross-silo manager who can balance marketing and engineering perspectives. Ultimately, responsibility for fixing this problem lies with senior managers, who have to ask, "What would it take to make it technically feasible?"

9. Unrealistic expectations

I can’t even count how many times someone has called me up to say "We need to design or drastically redesign the product that generates 100% of our revenue, and we want to ship it in two months." For some reason, Fast Company or some other part of the Web boom hype created this perception that you can design, build, and launch a successful product faster than you can get a new driver’s license. While this may have been true for a couple of people who got lucky, it’s simply not true in most cases.

We seldom encounter this myth in companies that build physical products, because they’re much better acquainted with the reality that spending up-front time ultimately results in more efficient manufacturing and more profitable products.

Unfortunately, many companies assume their problems come with the territory, just like traffic noise comes with living in a big city. Have you ever noticed, though, how much more annoying the traffic noise is when someone points out that it’s there? You can do the same thing: bring the points of pain to the attention of the management team, identify the cause, and propose design as your solution. It may take a while to have an impact, but be persistent, tie the problems to dollars, and you’ll eventually get through.

10. Unhealthy corporate culture

For design to work in an organization, that organization has to be basically functional. By this, I mean there needs to be open communication at all levels of the organization, clear delineation of responsibility and authority, competent staff, and trust between managers and their teams. Some degree of risk-taking must be acceptable; otherwise, no one will be willing to stand up and say, "I believe we need to do this." In healthy companies, certain kinds of mistakes are OK, as long as people learn from them. Senior managers challenge their teams to do better, but never ask the impossible, and they give their teams clearly stated problems to solve, instead of specifying solutions.

If your company lacks these qualities, work on fixing these major issues first before you try to implement design. Again, you’ll succeed in getting management’s attention if you tie these problems to dollars: talk in terms of lost productivity, employee turnover, and project delays. A good human resources manager will be your ally in this.

Facebook’s fan pages are easy to set up, but not so easy to master. Unfortunately, Facebook’s system for setting up and maintaining pages is needlessly complicated and sometimes buggy. It can be a little frustrating, but that’s the price of reaching a network of 300 million people. It’s worth the effort to put Facebook to work for your business. We can help:

1. Setting up Your Page

Take your time while setting up a Facebook fan page. The category you choose at the very beginning is something you can’t change—unless you want to dump all your fans and start over. Different categories let you display different information (hours, parking and public transit options for a restaurant, mission and products for a website), so choose wisely. This site explains the differences.

Once you’ve picked your category and set up your page you can start adding basic info (most of this information will be in the “Info” tab that isn’t visible until a user clicks on it). You can also add a short bit of copy to the sidebar on your wall, which is an important place to give a basic overview of your business.

Like every other social networking site, your profile photo is an important branding opportunity. Facebook does zoom and crop images when it displays thumbnails, so it can be helpful to properly size your image so any important details aren’t cut out in thumbnails.

Take a look at the settings before you finish and make sure you’re comfortable with the default settings. By default Facebook fan pages are designed to be interactive, which means fans can post content on your wall. This is a great opportunity to hear from your customers, but you’ll probably want to keep an eye on it.

Don’t forget to publish your page when you’re ready to go live.

2. Status Updates

Status updates could be called the heart and soul of Facebook. Much like Twitter, these are the constant stream of updates that show up on the “wall” of a profile. Each user’s homepage shows a flood of status updates from their friends—so you can see what a vital opportunity these updates are to communicate and connect. Each status update can be commented on and “liked,” which gives ample opportunity for feedback.

It’s important to understand the place of status updates. The average Facebook user has 130 friends, which means quite a few status updates will come and go on their home page in any given day. The bottom line is that one or two status updates won’t change the world. You need to have consistent and quality updates to connect with people. And it doesn’t hurt to repeat an important update—don’t assume because you posted it once that people saw it (just don’t go overboard either).

Feel free to double up on your status updates. Facebook can automatically publish your updates to Twitter, and a number of applications can import Twitter updates to Facebook (though sorting out the best method can be complicated).

3. Applications

There’s an unending supply of applications to give more utility to your Facebook page. You can add extra tabs that contain unique content and post extra information in the sidebar of your wall. The applications can do things like post your Twitter feed, hold contests, conduct polls, play music and more. Not all of these will tie into your status updates, which means you’ll need to find ways to make sure your fans find them.

One of the standard applications you’ll want is Static FBML, which lets you add basic HTML. It’s very basic (javascript and iframes aren’t allowed), but you can add images and other extras to customize your page.

4. Importing Blog Content

You also have the option of importing blog content to your Facebook page. The easiest approach is to import the RSS feed of your blog using Facebook’s Notes. The upside is that it’s simple and easy, plus users can read and comment on your entire post in Facebook. The downside is that users can read and comment on your entire post in Facebook without ever visiting your blog. Depending on your end goals that may be a problem.

There are also a number of third party applications that will import blogs. Some will display them in boxes on your page, which is less helpful because you’re relying on users to go looking for those boxes. Other applications (like RSS Graffiti) will import the blog content and post it as a status update, which delivers the content directly to your users.

5. Choose Where People Land

One thing you’ll notice is that each fan page has multiple tabs for content. You can add as many as you like and there is an option to change the default tab people first see when they view your page (Edit Page: Wall Settings: Edit). So you could build a custom tab introducing people to your brand instead of just sending them to your wall. Some folks have even experimented with using this functionality to show unique content to non-fans.

6. Communicate

One of the bonuses of the fan page is that you can send updates directly to all your fans (personal profiles can only send a message to a maximum of 20 friends at a time). These updates appear in a special tab in a user’s inbox, which mean they can be easy to miss. But these updates can also be targeted by location, age and gender. That’s a huge bit of demographic targeting courtesy of social networking.

7. Share More Content

Just like a personal profile, a fan page can add all sorts of extra content, like photos, videos, events and more. Default fan pages also come with a discussion board built in. Be sure to take advantage of these extra goodies and post some content, even if it’s just something fun. Make sure something appears on those extra tabs—if you don’t want any content there, consider removing the tabs so users won’t wonder why they’re empty.

8. Get a Custom URL

The first challenge when you launch your Facebook fan page is to secure a custom url. By default the link to each Facebook fan page is pretty ugly. But once you get 100 fans you can add your own custom url (http://www.facebook.com/yournamehere). You just need to cross that magic threshold.

9. Spread the Word

And the best way to cross that threshold to 100 fans is to spread the word. One quick way is to become a fan of your own page. That update will show up in your profile and other folks might see it and check it out. You can also suggest your page to friends and add the page to your favorites. From there you can go beyond Facebook and add a ‘fan box’ to your website that promotes your Facebook page. Consider promoting your Facebook page in other channels like a blog, e-mail newsletter, link on your website, etc. People can’t become a fan on Facebook if they don’t know you’re there.

10. Examples

Finally, it’s always worth checking out a few examples to see how some of the best are doing it. Take a look at some of these major Facebook pages to see what’s working for them:

• U2
• TOMS Shoes
• Apple Students
• Ford
• Mashable

You can also search for your competition and see if they have a presence on Facebook and if so what they’re doing. Also check out these five inspiring examples for more.

The security of your computer and data is crucial for you and the success of your company. Lost or stolen information can reveal company secrets, or expose your confidential or personal information. The more you do to keep your computer secure, the safer your information will be. Use these 10 tips to learn ways you can help protect your computer, your data, and your company’s network.

1. Work with your IT department

Make sure that you install all of the patches and updates that your IT department recommends. In addition to installing Windows and Office updates, your IT department might require you to install additional security software, such as a firewall or custom software to help you connect from remote locations.

Making these regular installations will keep your computer and your company’s network as secure as possible.

2. Use strong passwords

Passwords provide the first line of defense against unauthorized access to your computer, and a good password is often underestimated. Weak passwords provide attackers with easy access to your computer and network. Strong passwords are considerably harder to crack, even with the latest password-cracking software.

• A strong password Is at least eight characters long.
• Is at least eight characters long.
• Does not contain your user name, real name, or company name.
• Does not contain a complete dictionary word.
• Is significantly different from previous passwords. Passwords that change just slightly—such as Password1, Password2, Password3—are not strong.
• Contains characters from each of the following groups:

                        1. Uppercase and/or lowercase letters.

                        2. Numbers

                        3. Symbols (!,@,#,$,%, etc.)

3. Don’t enable the Save Password option

Make it mandatory for you—or someone else trying to access your computer—to enter your password on all operating system or application settings. If a dialog box prompts you about remembering the password, rather then requiring you to enter it, just choose no. Allowing the password to be saved negates having the password at all.

4. Use network file shares instead of local file shares

Rather than opening up your computer to co-workers, use network file shares to collaborate on documents. And restrict access to the network file share to only those who need it. If you’re working on a team, you have lots of other options—such as using Microsoft Office Groove 2007 or Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007.

5. Lock your computer when you leave your desk

If you’re going to be away from your desk for a while, make sure your computer is locked.

To lock your computer:

1. On your keyboard, press CTRL+ALT+DELETE at the same time.
2. Click Lock this computer (Lock Computer if you’re running Windows XP).
3. To unlock your computer, press CTRL+ALT+DELETE and enter your password.

6. Use password protection on your screensaver

Sometimes you’re away from your desk for longer than you unexpected. Plan for those situations by setting up your computer so that it locks itself after a specified amount of time.

7. Encrypt files containing confidential or business critical files

You keep valuable and sensitive data on your computer. You might have sensitive information about your company or clients, or your personal bank statements on a laptop you use at home and work. Encrypting your data keeps it as secure as possible. To help keep unauthorized people from accessing your data—even if your computer is lost or stolen—you should encrypt all sensitive data. In the Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Windows Vista, you can use BitLocker™ Drive Encryption to encrypt the entire volume. In Windows XP and all editions of Windows Vista, you can use the Encrypting File System (EFS) to protect important files. We highly recommend that you learn how to encrypt a file or folder to keep it safe.

8. Don’t open questionable e-mails

If an e-mail message just doesn’t look right, it probably isn’t. Forward the e-mail message to your IT administrator to verify before you open it.

9. Encrypt e-mail messages when appropriate

If you’re sending confidential or business-critical information, encrypt the e-mail and any files attached to it. Only recipients who have the private key that matches the public key you used to encrypt the message can read it.

10. Use the Junk E-mail Filter in Outlook

Receiving spam, or junk e-mail messages, isn’t just annoying. Some spam can include potentially harmful viruses that can cause damage to your computer and your company’s network. The Junk E-mail Filter reduces the amount of junk e-mail messages, or spam, you receive in your Inbox. Good news—if your junk mail filter is already active. But you can always change the settings.

Neil Wilson asks:

’”Get Ink” is the fundamental marketing mantra. You guys are natural self-promoters. What do you find is the best way of getting your name in the frame?

10 ideas that come to mind when I think about ways to get people to notice you/your product:

1. Provide something of value

The first step is recognizing that marketing is asking for someone else’s time and attention. You need to provide something worthy of those valuable commodities. So keep your message brief and interesting. When you educate or entertain other people, they’ll pay attention. If you bore them, they won’t.

2. Know your hook

Imagine you are a reporter who wants to write an article about your company. What’s the hook? What’s the angle that will be interesting to someone who normally wouldn’t care about your software? We’ve got a lot of mileage in the press out of staying small and focusing on “less.” What’s unique about your story?

3. Stand for something

Know and expose your company’s philosophy and mantras. 37signals started with a manifesto back when we launched as a design firm. Even though it’s from 1999 and our company has evolved a ton since then, you can see the seeds of many of our current ideas there. That sort of belief foundation will help guide you (and others) to your story.

4. Get your face out there

It’s tempting to think you can do it all from a keyboard. But emails are a poor substitute for real, face-to-face interactions. Go to conferences and meetups, take someone you admire out to lunch, etc. It’s ok to “network” — just don’t be a douche about it. Which leads to…

5. Try building real, sustained relationships

Actually be a friend instead of a guy trying to get something. Keep your interactions human (a sincere, honest note will go a lot further than a buzzwordy press release). Seek out ways to help others. It’ll all come back to you.

6. It’s the message, not the amount you spend on it

Companies that spend tons of ad/PR dollars to convince people their products are worthwhile are like guys who spend lots of money on gifts and dinners to woo a woman. What kind of relationship are they really building? Successful customer relationships are like any other long-term relationship: They start with a foundation of communication and showing you care about the other person.

7. Give stuff away for free

People love free. Offer a free version of your product, provide coupon codes, etc. Whenever we include a coupon code in a newsletter, there’s a big uptick in upgrades.

8. Ride the wave

Seek momentum and ride it. Is everyone buzzing about the iPhone? Then make an iPhone app. Are people interested in rapid development processes? Then blog about building your app in, say, under a month. Find out what people are talking about already and then figure out a way to get in the picture.

9. Be in it for the long haul

Recognize that promotion, like other aspects of building a company, takes time and effort. If you’re starting from scratch, you have to claw your way up. It’s uncanny how many “overnight success stories” you hear about are actually people who busted their asses for years to get into the position where something might take off. Don’t expect instant recognition.

10. Be undeniably good

Steve Martin was on Charlie Rose last week. At the very end, he gave his advice to someone who’s trying to make it in any field: “Be undeniably good.”

When you first started your business, you probably did a lot of research. You may have sought help from advisors; you may have gotten information from books, magazines and other readily available sources. You invested a lot-in terms of money, time and sweat equity-to get your business off the ground. So…now what? For those of you who have survived startup and built successful businesses, you may be wondering how to take the next step and grow your business beyond its current status. There are numerous possibilities, 10 of which we’ll outline here. Choosing the proper one (or ones) for your business will depend on the type of business you own, your available resources, and how much money, time and sweat equity you’re willing to invest all over again. If you’re ready to grow, we’re ready to help.

1. Open another location

This might not be your best choice for business expansion, but it’s listed first here because that’s what often comes to mind first for so many entrepreneurs considering expansion. "Physical expansion isn’t always the best growth answer without careful research, planning and number-planning," says small-business speaker, writer and consultant Frances McGuckin, who offers the following tips for anyone considering another location:

• Make sure you’re maintaining a consistent bottom-line profit and that you’ve shown steady growth over the past few years.
• Look at the trends, both economic and consumer, for indications on your company’s staying power.
• Make sure your administrative systems and management team are extraordinary-you’ll need them to get a new location up and running.
• Prepare a complete business plan for a new location.
• Determine where and how you’ll obtain financing
• Choose your location based on what’s best for your business, not your wallet.

2. Offer your business as a franchise or business opportunity

Bette Fetter, founder and owner of Young Rembrandts, an Elgin, Illinois-based drawing program for children, waited 10 years to begin franchising her concept in 2001-but for Fetter and her husband, Bill, the timing was perfect. Raising four young children and keeping the business local was enough for the couple until their children grew older and they decided it was time to expand nationally.

"We chose franchising as the vehicle for expansion because we wanted an operating system that would allow ownership on the part of the staff operating Young Rembrandts locations in markets outside our home territory," says Bette. "When people have a vested interest in their work, they enjoy it more, bring more to the table and are more successful overall. Franchising is a perfect system to accomplish those goals."

Streamlining their internal systems and marketing in nearby states helped the couple bring in their first few franchisees. With seven units and some time under their belt, they then signed on with two national franchise broker firms. Now with 30 franchisees nationwide, they’re staying true to their vision of steady growth. "Before we began franchising, we were teaching 2,500 children in the Chicago market," says Bette. "Today we teach more than 9,000 children nationwide and that number will continue to grow dramatically as we grow our franchise system."

Bette advises networking within the franchise community-become a member of the International Franchise Association and find a good franchise attorney as well as a mentor who’s been through the franchise process. "You need to be open to growing and expanding your vision," Bette says, "but at the same time, be a strong leader who knows how to keep the key vision in focus at all times."

3. License your product

This can be an effective, low-cost growth medium, particularly if you have a service product or branded product, notes Larry Bennett, director of the Larry Friedman International Center for Entrepreneurship at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island. "You can receive upfront monies and royalties from the continued sales or use of your software, name brand, etc.-if it’s successful," he says. Licensing also minimizes your risk and is low cost in comparison to the price of starting your own company to produce and sell your brand or product.

To find a licensing partner, start by researching companies that provide products or services similar to yours. "[But] before you set up a meeting or contact any company, find a competent attorney who specializes in intellectual property rights," advises Bennett. "This is the best way to minimize the risk of losing control of your service or product."

4. Form an alliance

Aligning yourself with a similar type of business can be a powerful way to expand quickly. Last spring, Jim Labadie purchased a CD seminar set from a fellow fitness professional, Ryan Lee, on how to make and sell fitness information products. It was a move that proved lucrative for Labadie, who at the time was running an upscale personal training firm he’d founded in 2001. "What I learned on [Lee's] CDs allowed me to develop my products and form alliances within the industry," says Labadie, who now teaches business skills to fitness professionals via a series of products he created and sells on his Web site, HowToGetMoreClients.com.

Seeing that Labadie had created some well-received products of his own, Lee agreed to promote Labadie’s product to his long contact list of personal trainers. "That resulted in a decent amount of sales," says Labadie-in fact, he’s increased sales 500 percent since he created and started selling the products in 2001. "Plus, there have been other similar alliances I’ve formed with other trainers and Web sites that sell my products for a commission."

If the thought of shelling out commissions or any of your own money for the sake of an alliance makes you uncomfortable, Labadie advises looking at the big picture: "If you want to keep all the money to yourself, you’re really shooting yourself in the foot," says the Tampa, Florida, entrepreneur. "You need to align with other businesses that already have lists of prospective customers. It’s the fastest way to success."

5. Diversify

Small-business consultant McGuckin offers several ideas for diversifying your product or service line:

• Sell complementary products or services
• Teach adult education or other types of classes
• Import or export yours or others’ products
• Become a paid speaker or columnist

"Diversifying is an excellent growth strategy, as it allows you to have multiple streams of income that can often fill seasonal voids and, of course, increase sales and profit margins," says McGuckin, who diversified from an accounting, tax and consulting business to speaking, writing and publishing.

Diversifying was always in the works for Darien, Connecticut, entrepreneurs Rebecca Cutler and Jennifer Krane, creators of the "raising a racquet" line of maternity tennis wear, launched in 2002. "We had always planned to expand into other ‘thematic’ kits, consistent with our philosophies of versatility, style, health and fun," says Cutler. "Once we’d begun to establish a loyal wholesale customer base and achieve some retail brand recognition, we then broadened our product base with two line extensions, ‘raising racquet golf’ and ‘raising a racquet yoga.’"

Rolling out the new lines last year allowed the partners’ current retail outlets to carry more of their inventory. "It also broadened our target audience and increased our presence in the marketplace, giving us the credibility to approach much larger retailers," notes Cutler, who expects to double their 2003 sales this year and further diversify the company’s product lines. "As proof, we’ve recently been selected by Bloomingdale’s, A Pea in the Pod and Mimi Maternity."

6. Target other markets

Your current market is serving you well. Are there others? You bet. "My other markets are what make money for me," says McGuckin. Electronic and foreign rights, entrepreneurship programs, speaking events and software offerings produce multiple revenue streams for McGuckin, from multiple markets.

"If your consumer market ranges from teenagers to college students, think about where these people spend most of their time," says McGuckin. "Could you introduce your business to schools, clubs or colleges? You could offer discounts to special-interest clubs or donate part of [your profits] to schools and associations."

Baby boomers, elderly folks, teens, tweens…let your imagination take you where you need to be. Then take your product to the markets that need it.

7. Win a government contract

"The best way for a small business to grow is to have the federal government as a customer," wrote Rep. Nydia M. Velazquez, ranking Democratic member of the House Small Business Committee, in August 2003. "The U.S. government is the largest buyer of goods and services in the world, with total procurement dollars reaching approximately $235 billion in 2002 alone."

Working with your local SBA and SBDC offices as well as the Service Corps of Retired Executives and your local, regional or state Economic Development Agency will help you determine the types of contracts available to you. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the SBA also have a Business Matchmaking Program designed to match entrepreneurs with buyers. "A fair amount of patience is required in working to secure most government contracts," says Johnson & Wales University’s Bennett. "Requests for proposals usually require a significant amount of groundwork and research. If you’re not prepared to take the time to fully comply with RFP terms and conditions, you’ll only be wasting your time."

This might sound like a lot of work, but it could be worth it: "The good part about winning government contracts," says Bennett, "is that once you’ve jumped through the hoops and win a bid, you’re generally not subject to the level of external competition of the outside marketplaces."

8. Merge with or acquire another business

In 1996, when Mark Fasciano founded FatWire, a Mineola, New York, content management software company, he certainly couldn’t have predicted what would happen a few years later. Just as FatWire was gaining market momentum, the tech downturn hit hard. "We were unable to generate the growth needed to maximize the strategic partnerships we’d established with key industry players," Fasciano says. "During this tech ‘winter,’ we concentrated on survival and servicing our clients, while searching for an opportunity to jump-start the company’s growth. That growth opportunity came last year at the expense of one of our competitors."

Scooping up the bankrupt company, divine Inc., from the auction block was the easy part; then came the integration of the two companies. "The process was intense and exhausting," says Fasciano, who notes four keys to their success:

• Customer retention. "I personally spoke with 150 customers within the first few weeks of consummating the deal, and I met with 45 clients around the globe in the first six months," notes Fasciano. They’ve retained 95 percent of the divine Inc. customer base.
• Staff retention. Fasciano rehired the best and brightest of divine’s staff.
• Melding technologies. "One of the reasons I was so confident about this acquisition was the two product architectures were very similar," says Fasciano. This allowed for a smooth integration of the two technologies.
• Focus. "Maybe the biggest reason this acquisition has worked so well is the focus that FatWire has brought to a neglected product," says Fasciano.

FatWire’s acquisition of divine in 2003 grew its customer base from 50 to 400, and the company grew 150 percent, from $6 million to $15 million. Fasciano expects no less than $25 million in sales this year.

9. Expand globally

Not only did FatWire grow in terms of customers and sales, it also experienced global growth simply as a result of integrating the best of the divine and FatWire technologies. "FatWire finally has international reach-we’ve established new offices in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, Holland, Germany, China, Japan and Singapore," says Fasciano. This increased market share is what will allow FatWire to realize sustained growth.

But you don’t need to acquire another business to expand globally. You just need to prime your offering for an international market the way FatWire was primed following the integration of its technologies with divine’s.

You’ll also need a foreign distributor who’ll carry an inventory of your product and resell it in their domestic markets. You can locate foreign distributors by scouring your city or state for a foreign company with a U.S. representative. Trade groups, foreign chambers of commerce in the United States, and branches of American chambers of commerce in foreign countries are also good places to find distributors you can work with.

10. Expand to the Internet

"Bill Gates said that by the end of 2002, there will be only two kinds of businesses: those with an Internet presence, and those with no business at all," notes Sally Falkow a Pasadena, California, Web content strategist. "Perhaps this is overstating the case, but an effective Web site is becoming an integral part of business today."

Landing your Web site in search engine results is key-more than 80 percent of traffic comes via search engines, according to Falkow. "As there are now more than 4 billion Web pages and traffic on the Internet doubles every 100 days, making your Web site visible is vital," she says. "You need every weapon you can get."

Design and programming are also important, but it’s your content that will draw a visitor into your site and get them to stay. Says Falkow, "Putting together a content strategy based on user behavior, measuring and tracking visitor click streams, and writing the content based on researched keywords will get you excellent search results and meet the needs of your visitors."