Marketing is something every business owner must do in order to continue bringing in new business. Customers may move away, experience financial hardships, or go through major life transitions. All of these things can change the amount of money that is spent with your business. If you're lucky, the amount will increase. Most likely, those customers experiencing these life changes will reduce the amount of money they spend. That's why you can't count on your current customers to keep you in business. You've got to constantly market yourself to existing customers and to people who've never done business with you before.

The problem with marketing for small businesses is that it can get expensive. If you've ever had brochures printed or spent endless nights tweaking your Web site, you know marketing can be costly in terms of time and money. There's good news for those of you who are short on time and have small marketing budgets. There are some marketing techniques that are absolutely free and don't take as much of your time as some of the more expensive marketing techniques. They are also common-sense techniques; if you haven't been using these tips before, you'll wonder why you didn't think of them in the first place. Use these five techniques to build more interest in your business and turn prospects into profits.

Smile, You're on the Telephone!

When you answer the telephone, smile before you greet the caller. It may sound silly, but smiling can change your entire attitude. If you answer the telephone and sound grumpy or annoyed that someone is interrupting you, the person on the other end of the line will wonder if you really want their business. Smiling helps you to present your business in the best possible light and will also help your callers feel special.

Adjust Your Hours of Operation

Just a few decades ago, businesses were closed on Sundays and you were lucky if you could find a store that was open past 6 p.m. Fast forward and now stores are open seven days a week often until 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. While you may not be able to operate a physical business location twenty-four hours per day, you can take some steps to help your business accommodate those customers who are used to being able to get information at the crack of dawn or in the middle of the night. Set your voicemail to give information about your business when you're closed for the day. Have a Web site that gives customers information about your hours, prices, and location. Even if they can't visit you at 3:00 a.m., customers will feel more confident if they can get information about your business whenever they want.

Speedy Service and Response Times

Time is valuable for your customers. If they need information to make a decision, they want it as soon as possible. If they order a product, they want it to arrive as soon as possible. You can market to your customers by striving for prompt responses to all inquiries and by focusing on speed when it comes to delivering orders and completing projects. A communications policy is one way to put customers at ease. Try to respond to all e-mails within 12 hours; if you can do it sooner, that's even better. Many companies strive to answer the phone within three rings so customers are not waiting. Deliver orders and completed projects as soon as possible while still providing quality products and services. Your customers will notice.

Hold Contests

One of the easiest ways to generate some interest in your business is to hold a contest that customers can participate in to win prizes. The prizes are often gift certificates or products/services from the business sponsoring the contest. Contests can be very basic and focus on getting the 100th customer or the 10th caller on a certain day. Other contests are a little more complicated and require customers to submit an entry or do something that makes use of the sponsor's products and services. For example, a baking powder company might have a contest to find the best recipe using their brand of baking powder. Not only does this generate interest, it can also increase sales as people try to create the winning entry.

Keeping Up Appearances

Have you ever walked into a retail store to find clothing on the floor, spilled candy and soda stains, or dingy customer service areas? Did it make you want to buy anything from the store? Probably not. Even if customers are the ones throwing clothing on the floor and spilling drinks, you should be making sure that any messes are cleaned up promptly. It may help if you have set procedures in place for cleaning up messes as they happen and then maintaining the cleanliness of your office at all other times. You should also make sure any employees you have are dressed neatly so that they can represent your business in a positive way. A dress code can keep policies consistent and provide a way for employees to know what is acceptable when it comes to dressing for work.

As you can see, these marketing tips are pretty easy to implement and cost nothing if you stick with the basics. The key to using these techniques successfully is to make your customer the focus of everything you do. If you're changing the way you answer the phone or when you're available, it should be for the benefit of your customers. Policies regarding communication response times should be implemented with the customer in mind. Contests should benefit the customer in some way, even if you are using the contest as a marketing technique.

Marketing is something you need to do to keep your business going and continue serving your customers. If you don't have the budget to create a full-scale marketing campaign complete with glossy brochures and product catalogs, use free marketing techniques to build relationships with prospects and current customers. Once you build these relationships and see sales begin to increase, you can then put some of these profits into doing more marketing.