If you own a brick and mortar small business, you're probably frustrated because you're making too little profit and you're getting too few customers purchasing happily from you. Or you're simply struggling to increase your profits to enable you to live the life of your dreams.

The trap I see almost all small business owners fall into, is that they stop marketing like crazy. They seem to get comfortable and "hope" they'll magically make more money.
It ain't gonna happen without constant marketing, and creating several ways to pull in customers!

Take these Four Action Steps to Generate a Constant Stream of Customers For Your  Small Business

1. Market Constantly to Get New Prospects and Customers

If you market to local customers in your immediate area, advertise with flyers, create promotional events, and have permanent ads running in your local press or radio station. You simply have to keep these ads running and stage promotional fun events to be present in front of your prospects on a consistent basis.

If you market nationally, make sure you also market consistenly in front of your target market, via adwords, magazines, TV or radio ads, direct mail and Press Releases etc. Test what medium is profitable to you, but make sure you have a constant stream of prospects becoming aware of your products or services too.

2. Market Your Website With Both Search Engine Optimization Strategies and Google Adwords

Get prospects to your website with Search Engine Optimization strategies and Google Adwords. All Google Adwords clicks should lead to a squeeze page where you get them to sign up for your special report or newsletter. This is the most efficient way to justify the cost of the adwords campaigns. If you simply send these adwords visitors to your homepage, most of them will browse your site and leave… so make sure you send these visitors to a squeeze page and capture their name and email!

3. Introduce Your Customers Into Your "Continuation Program"

If at all possible, get your customers into some kind of continuation program that pays you month by month. No matter what you sell, think of a way to engage your prospects into a monthly payment program (give them a discount for doing this), so you can build your profits exponentially as you manage to get more customers. You don't want to sell them once and then they're gone….

4. Create A Back-End Product or Service For Your Best Customers

Think of a Back-End product or service which you can sell the raving fans of your business. Almost all business have raving fans… those 10% who love your product or service. Create a higher priced product or service these fans will love, which will enable you to generate sales without having to find additional customers.

If you follow these four steps, keep marketing for new customers, and keep developing good products and services for your customers, you'll always be able to make a profit and stay in business. You have to be active and market like crazy though. That's your insurance policy to stay in business and succeed.

What are your strategies for making a small business thrive?

Popularity: 24% [?]

If you want to market your business successfully, the best tip I can give you is to write articles and brand yourself consistently in your marketplace.

Whether you run a blog or a newsletter, you'll always make more money if you're ever present in front of your targeted prospects and customers.

Give them tips, ideas and help to solve their biggest problems. They'll love you for it.

Here are 5 Tips on Writing Articles with Speed and Getting Links to Your Websites with these Articles:

1. Research Your Article Quickly

Use Google's free search tool, Wordtracker or Nichebot to find out what your target markets' dreams and problems are. You can also search the forums in addition. But take the trouble so you're able to solve your prospects' problems, and you'll certainly get loads of traffic to your articles.

Also get expert books at Amazon on your topic and browse in Google to see what other authors on the internet write about your theme. Now, create your own unique and valuable articles to brand yourself.

2. Write the Sub-Titles of Your Articles

Before I write my articles, I break them into 5 to 7 steps. I write a sub-title for each step, and simply fill each step with the content I've researched.

It's very simple, but it works well as the sub-titles create the framework of my article, and it keeps me focused on what I'm writing about.

3. Write a Strong Headline

Simply model effective headlines to draw prospects into your articles. These headlines are always effective:

• 5 Secrets to…
• How to…
• 3 Best Ways to…
• 7 Common Mistakes… And How to…
• 9 Barriers to …
• Success Secrets for….
• Top 10 ……. Tips to …

4. Write Your Article with Blinding Speed

The new Dragon Naturally Speaking Ver. 10 is more accurate and faster than any previous versions. It makes writing articles very easy and extremely fast by simply speaking into a microphone.

And it's much faster than you can type!

So use it if you can afford it. You should be able to write an article in about a third of the time it takes to type it by hand. Remember not to edit your article until you've finished writing it. First get it done, and then edit it later. This is the fastest way to get articles done.

5. How to Use your Articles to Get Links to Your Website

The old method of submitting an article to hundreds of Article Directories to get linking power to your site, is becoming less and less effective.

Find article directories such as ezinearticles.com which have good page rank for its internal pages and submit your articles to these directories. Your article will then have some page rank within these article directories, and you can use your resource box at the end of the article to link back to your website.

This has two advantages. You get good PR links back to your website, and you have unique articles out there which will still be there for a long time to come… What are your article secrets? Let us know

Popularity: 41% [?]

If you've been on the internet for a at least a year or two, and you want to make a living selling products or services, you've certainly learned a lot about how to set up websites, blogs, create an adwords account, and maybe even get some web pages listed successfully in the Search Engines.

Well, I have news for you…

You have skills which are very handy to local business owners. Most small business owners work 10 to 12 hours a day, and don't have the time to fiddle with websites get more business via the internet. In fact, the entrepreneurs I've worked with have so little knowledge of the internet, I've had to set up their email accounts on their computer too, as they had no idea how to do it.

I also realize you're now earning per hour as a consultant and the internet dream of sitting on the Bahamas earning $500 a day has now changed. Well, why not do consulting and earn a good additional income whilst building other products and services? Makes a lot of sense to me… does it make sense to you?

What to Packages to Sell to Local Businesess…

Decide what kind of service packages you want to sell to your clients. For example, you can offer either of these two consulting businesses. Either you assist small businesses and private customers by repairing computers and helping them with software problems…

Or if you're good at marketing you can specialize in helping them get traffic via:
- Adwords
- Search Engine Optimization
- Setup Autoresponders
- Write salesletters
- Set up a Lead Generation Blog
- Get Links to their Sites
- Write Email Follow-ups.

If you lack some of the above skills, you can start out and simply work on them and introduce your new skills to your clients later on.

How To Market Yourself to Local Businesses

Start marketing to your local consulting business by opening up 4 or 5 streams of leads simultaneously. This is probably the biggest mistakes I see in small businesses' marketing. The simply rely on only one or two sources of advertising to generate customers. Don't make the same mistake.

Consider these methods simultaneously to get all the customers you need:

1. Make a list of everybody you know who owns a small business or knows small business owners. Really brainstorm and keep expanding this list. And have no fear. Give them your offer with confidence. Also work on finding well-respected people in your community… their influence may work wonders for you.

2. Advertise in Google adwords where you want to gain clients. Adwords allows you to advertise locally. Set up an autoresponder and build a list of local businesses which need your service. A good idea would be to give them a free report or free consulting for signing up.

3. Do a joint venture with computer repair companies or similar businesses who have clients in your target market. You send your clients to them… and they send their clients to you. This could speed up your success tremendously.

4. Join local networking groups which support each others businesses in the local community. Make sure you give free talks about your speciality to help them. This will also get you new customers.

Remember you can also offer your services nationally if you're confident of your capabilities. It's just a matter of taking action. If you're friendly, helpful and competent, you will find customers who love you and will invest money in your consulting and services.

Let me know your thoughts…

Popularity: 36% [?]