1. Get a website – Nowadays you don’t have to be tech savvy to create your own website. There are many website builders that are essentially drag and drop. These programs are very easy to use and inexpensive to run. My personal favorites are Inuit Websites, Yahoo Sitebuilder, WordPress, and Circlepad.
2. Get an email address – There are two ways to do this. The first way I don’t recommend is to simply use a free email account service like gmail and use your business name ie “[email protected]”. While this is cost effective, I don’t recommend it because it looks unprofessional. A better solution is to use the services of a website (as mentioned in step 1) that also includes email. You will then be able to create a professional looking email address, for example “[email protected]”. These email addresses are also easily synced with Outlook.
3. Create an Intranet – Intranet sites are a great way for a business to get organized. An Intranet can be used as a place to store important company documents and information that can be easily and securely accessed anywhere you have an Internet connection. Google Sites has a free service where you can easily create and organize your own intranet site where you can also determine who can or cannot see the site.
4. Get a phone number – Traditional business phone numbers are expensive and overrated. Small businesses often don’t get many incoming calls, so it’s not cost-effective to pay for traditional phone service. Again, there are two great ways to cut your costs. Phone services like Phone.com give you a business phone number with a voicemail and incoming call service that starts at around $15 per month with many upgrades available. Google Voice is a free service that will give you a business phone number and forward all calls to an existing number, letting you know in advance that the call is to your business and not your existing phone number. Google Voice also includes a voicemail service.
5. Get an address – stop using your home address or a PO Box! Today, people search for everything on Google and when they search for your business address and see a house or a PO box, there is a good chance they won’t give you your business. Stop! There are alternatives. Many cities now have virtual office listings where you pay $30-$300 per month (depending on the city/package) and have a business listing with mail forwarding and many other features available such as office time/room conferences. Another option is a worker cooperative. A worker co-op is office space that many small business owners share for a small fee. These slots will usually allow you to use your address as your mailing address for an even lower fee.
6. Network – A great way for a small business to connect is to join local small business communities and other communities in your area. A great way to do this is to sign up at meetup.com. Meetup.com is a place where people from your local community get together and have meetups. There are many small business groups on Meetup specifically for networking and most of them are free to join.
7. Email Marketing – Email marketing is a great way to attract new customers and stay connected with current ones. The best tool for email marketing is Constant Contact. At $15 per month, Constant Contact is definitely worth it over manually running email marketing campaigns.
8. Get business cards: This is often a monitored cost. When starting a new business, the owner often gets aggressive and hands out business cards to anyone who will accept them. This can add up. There are several ways to get a good price on business cards. Vistaprint.com has discounts almost every day and if you visit retailmenot.com you can search for promo codes and get deals on 250 business cards for $0-$4. You can also create and print your own business cards as long as you have the right materials.
9. Get Help – A great way to get help without having to hire paid employees is to hire college interns. Interns are usually very helpful, intelligent and interested. They are willing to work for free just to gain experience and a letter of recommendation.
10. Obtaining marketing material: It is very easy to create your own marketing material. Microsoft Office has many marketing materials, templates, and brochures that can be easily manipulated to suit your taste. Additionally, Microsoft Project and Microsoft Powerpoint can be used to create custom marketing flyers and can be saved as a PDF for easy printing.
