Free Advertising

One thing a new business can do when they have just started or don't have a lot of money is free advertising. It can start up your customer base and let people know you are there. The best place I have found for this is Facebook; whether in a topic group or your personal account. That is the main place that has helped grow my business since I started. Another thing you can do that is cheap or free is hang your banner at events. I am going to an event this weekend and am taking a banner to hang in my area and it will not cost anything to hang it up. So everyone that is there will see it over the weekend. You can get creative with posts and pictures and sometimes they will bring in just as much business as paid advertisements. Since I have started my business I have not spent one penny on advertising, but most, if not all of my sales comes from my free advertisements.

Promotional Sales

One way companies promote their products is through having sales. One company I am a dealer for, DAC, has promotional sale twice a year. One in March, and one in August. These two months are when most new customers join and most customers buy in bulk. 

Other companies might not like to have a whole month for sales but would rather have a few days. Both are great for companies because most new customers will buy during these sales and returning customers will usually buy more. In turn they might create more profit in these sales than during regular pricing.

Should you hire friends or family?

When hiring people for your business you might think to hire your friends and family. But is that a good decision? In some cases it works great and in others the relationship between the owner and friends becomes hateful. One company I know the owner hired all of her friends to run and operate her store because she couldn't be there to do it herself. None of these friends had any experience running a store or any customer service. They now have a bad reputation for customer service and  have lost me as a customer because of that. I'm not sure if the owner knows about their bad reputation or is just choosing to ignore it, but I will be surprised if they are in business next year. So in my opinion you can hire friends or family if they know how to do the job correctly.