She’d been wanting to buy a new bed for some time now. She didn’t want just any bed. It had to be the one she dreamed of. It had to be a a very special bed. There was a good sale on today. If you spent a certain number of dollars on furniture, you also got a free television set.

She and her husband finished breakfast at the local pancake house and headed for the furniture store. The bed of her dreams was standing right there in front of her. It was a beautiful gleaming cherry wood sleigh bed, just as she had always dreamed of owning.

It wasn’t just any wooden bed, it was carved with curves and swirls on the sides and the headboard and foot-board had a curve that met in the center of each in a fancy carving. It was so perfect that she couldn’t believe her good fortune.

She felt like shouting with joy as she went through the motions of looking at a few other beds. The salesman asked if they wanted designer bedding. She tried lying on several mattresses. They felt hard and that was what she and her husband preferred. They declined the designer name but did buy a brand name mattress and box spring set.

Oh look she told her husband there was a twin sleigh bed over in the next aisle. Another furniture salesman said no one manufactured twin-size sleigh beds. Maybe he didn’t want to earn a commission on her sale. He hadn’t seemed at all interested in helping them. Now, there it was, making a liar out of him.

They walked over to the front desk and the cashier. As they passed a loft bed she made a note to tell the next door neighbors about the price. They wanted to buy one for their little boy. This would be the solution to him needed more play space in his bedroom.

Her excitement over the gorgeous bed had made her forget all about the free TV. Imagine that. She went back to look at them with her husband. He had not forgotten because he was more excited about the television than the bed. They examined all the sets that qualified. Finally, they decided to take the one that was high definition.

The friendly salesman made out the sales slip. Of course, the one they got was not on the display floor. It was a new, dust free absolutely perfect bed. The mattress and box spring were, of course, protected by plastic. They walked over to buy a mounting device to put the new TV up on the wall at home. It was definitely a good shopping trip.

When I was twenty-three, I had what I believed was a good business idea. I was going to sell pet insurance as I knew a contact in the industry.

At the same time I would also attempt to make money via offering a fostering service to the people that I knew.

By reading a number of books on marketing for small businesses and by asking a good friend of mine who has a business which is to do with selling external doors, I managed to find some potential routes which could help me to get started.

Direct marketing

This happened to be the first area that I tried. I had a small leaflet produced which explained the speech coaching service that I was offering and then with the help of some friends and family, went around my local area delivering them. This was not as successful as I hoped it would be, however I am sure that this area of marketing could work well for other types of business.

Newspapers

I then decided to speculate to accumulate. I contacted a number of the local newspapers in my area and paid for an advertisment which would appear on a weekly basis. This advert would reach quite a large number of people and even though this was quite an expensive form of marketing, it did work for me in the early days.

Open days

I wanted to expand the area that I was going to offer my services. I decided to hold an open day or presentation in various parts of the country which would help to promote my business.

This was successful as newspapers were happy to report this open day free of charge, as it was a local event which would be of interest to their readers.

Yellow pages

For around three years I advertised in the telephone directory Yellow Pages. For the first couple of years their adverts really did work for me but in the end the prices were just high in comparison to the amount of business it generated. The majority of people in the United Kingdom now have access to the web and for me this is very much the future; there will even be “internet houses” within a few years. Yellow pages or as it is now called Yell, has become more expensive when in reality probably less people are using it.

These adverts were of benefit for a while and could well be of use to other small business owners. I just think that you can achieve better value for money these days by advertising in other areas such as the internet.

Websites

About ten years ago, in fact it was in 1999, I had my first website built. The web designer who produced the site is still a good friend of mine today and I have to say that he did a brilliant job. This is probably the best form of advertising that you can have; a professional looking website which fully describes the service that you are offering. I have worked hard to promote this site and it is now doing well in the major search engines.

Radio and television marketing

I can not really write too much about this form of advertising as I have not personally given it a go. Why not? I hear you ask. Well purely because I think that it costs too much money. That being said I have read reports about just how beneficial radio and TV adverts can be for a business.

I am sure there are many other ways of marketing a small business and I will seek them out in the future for my own business.

The above ideas are what I have learnt about and as you may have read, I have tried some of them myself with mixed success. Every business is obviously different and it is basically a form of trial and error to find which ones will work.

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