The best way to get new business is to spread your name around by word of mouth. If people know who you are, they are more likely to utilize your services. But how do you do that?

When you first get your business going, you should sit down and make a list of everyone you know. Go through all your address books and your Rolodex and dig up those numbers. Then make notes for each person—why would they want to know about your business? How could they help? Who do they know who might be interested in your services.

Armed with your list and your notes, you should begin to make phone calls to each one. Keep the calls brief, and remember—these are not sales calls, they’re just information calls. You’re letting these people know that you’re open for business. Tell them what you’re doing, ask them if they have any questions, and mention how much you would appreciate it if they would keep you in mind and refer you to anyone else they know who might need your services. You may be surprised how quickly this will turn into some lucrative business opportunities—your friends and family will be happy to help you, but not if they don’t know that your business is out there.

If you have a business web site up and running, you need to make sure you register it with search engines. Before you start this process, you need to come up with 10 keywords that people might use to search for your site and a 20-word description of what your site has to offer. Here are links to services that will submit your website to major search engines for free:

Another great way to market your web site is to offer a newsletter of your own, similar to the ones mentioned above. The keys to offering such an e-newsletter is to make sure that it does not go out too often—twice a month is probably plenty. It also shouldn’t give away too much information—you want to use the newsletter as an opportunity to tell people about news and information that helps them understand why they need your services, and then use it to drive traffic to your web site.

Yahoo Groups
There are several free services available that allow you to run a free listserv without having all the software and server space yourself to run one in-house.