May 7th, 2010 
Maria Helm 
Large companies such as McDonald’s and IBM often boast marketing budgets comparable to a third world country’s gross domestic product. So how’s a small business owner to compete?
The answer is short: in 140 characters or less.
Well, who hasn’t heard of Twitter, a free micro-blogging service that lets users share “tweets” — brief text messages less than 140 characters long that subscribers or “followers” can read and redistribute? Twitter’s popularity is booming. With about 75 million users who send more than 50 million instant instant updates a day via computer or mobile phone, it’s a classic case study in frequency and reach.
No surprise, then, that industry leaders such as Starbucks (@Starbucks), Dell (@DellOutlet), and Zappos (@Zappos) all use Twitter to drive direct sales, offer promotional discounts, and engage
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If the people already know you, buy from you and trust you, you can ask them to do things like sign up for a managed or retained service, or perhaps buy additional or upgraded products. That same request on a cold list (or list of people who don’t know you) is very difficult and in most times will not work. You’ll need to use email to drive them to a website to sign up for a free “something”, download a free report, sign up for a seminar, or some other ‘baby step’ action that will lead toward making the sale.
More and more small business owners are finding ways to cut costs. However, there are areas in your business that you can’t afford not to spend money on such as Marketing. There are ways to get the word out about your business that won’t cost you an arm and a leg. If you have a tiny marketing budget, you can try the following examples. I’m pretty sure there are other entrepreneurs that may find a few marketing ideas to try as well.
We all have to sell, whether we realize it or not. For those of us who own our business, we have products and/or services to sell. Some make their living selling goods and services offered by their employers. Even if you’re not a salesperson by profession, you still have to sell. Anytime you need to convince someone to agree with you or get buy-in to your latest scheme, you are selling. You have to sell if you want that plum project. How about if you want to manage that high-profile account, or if you want your boss’ approval on your latest plan? Well you have to sell and get the order. To be a salesperson who sells, consider these :
