Finding Customers for Your Home Based Business

Ideas for Contacting Potential Customers

By now, you should have quite a large list. Great! Give yourself a pat on the back - you are halfway there.

From this list, you now want to add even more to it - where and how can you contact these customers to make them aware of your products and/or services? This step in probably the most difficult step of the entire process, but without a doubt the most important.

This is where you can let your creativity, as well as personal skills and interests, shine. What motivates you to purchase a new product or service? What companies have caught your eye in the past? Write them down. How can you adapt these ideas for your business? They do not need to be complex, nor do they need to be expensive. Only effective, or at least potentially so.

For example, a Craft Business might come up with:

• Craft Fair: Find out how much it will cost to be a part of the Craft Fair; ask who their target audience is, and what marketing takes place. Find out if there will be a door prize, and if I can donate an item for it.
  

• Crafting Courses: contact senior's complex, school, parks and recreation, library, local craft store, hospital, to offer crafting classes.
  

• Hospital: How can I get my products in their gift center? In their gift cart?
  

• Welcome Wagon: contact to see how to offer products to new members of the community.
  

• Article: How to . . . article for local newspaper, magazine, etc.
  

For more ideas, check out Inc. Online's article - Steal This Strategy. A very long, but excellent, article about stealing advertising ideas from the big giants.

Decide Who To Contact

By now, you should have a huge list of organizations, people, and businesses to contact. Being able to follow through with all of your ideas will, for most parents, be impossible, if not because of time, then money. But that is OK! Just keep your list in a safe place for future reference, and for any future customer base building adventures.

From this list, pick five to 10 of what you think are the most feasible contacts. Take this list, and start the initial research on each idea. Contact whoever that you need to - but don't commit to anything - yet. Just gather as much information as you can on each idea for the time being.

For instance, using the

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