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Increase visibility in your community:Join local organizations which provide business networking opportunities, or start your own. Do volunteer work for a large charity. You’d be surprised at the marketing support such activities can bring.Submit information to blogs:Blog writers are always looking for content for their websites. Target appropriate ones and send them press releases and descriptive e-mails.

Participate in some online marketing groups:Search Twitter and other social-networking sites for groups meeting to discuss marketing. For example, Understanding Marketing holds a chat and Q&A session on Twitter that focuses on small-business marketing. It’s live each Tuesday from 8 to 9 p.m. eastern time. Search #smbiz on Tweetgrid.com.

Reward your present customers:Offer an exclusive incentive to your regular customers”only your regular customers. Notify them via e-mail and other contact methods, and direct them to an otherwise inaccessible page on your site where the offer appears.Get your customers to bring in new customers:Offer an incentive like a discount to customers who get new customers to make a transaction with your business.

Spruce up your site:Stale sites will not attract business. Fresh, frequently updated Web sites show your customers that you are a vibrant and active business. Let users subscribe to get update notices, then update frequently.Provide free, helpful information to your customers:Such content should be related to your type of business and can include tips or hints or reviews, or other information that can help drive sales.

Offer your noncompeting business customers a link exchange:A link exchange is much like a bulletin board at your business that holds your customers’ business cards. The more links your business has to its Web site, the better your search engine placement, and the greater the number of people who see your business’s links, the more will visit you. Yes, use Facebook and Twitter:Having a Facebook page may earn you a new business.

Use downtime for marketing:When times are slow, keep employees busy contacting customers. Create e-mail marketing documents your employees can send to individual customers. Having personal contact with customers gets results. Mass e-mails are less effective and, with today’s e-mail spam filters, may not be seen by many. Go for quality contacts rather than quantity ones.

If you’ve been selling on eBay for some time, you probably have a list with a few hundred or even a few thousand customers. Have you done anything to market to these customers?

It’s been said that obtaining a new customer can cost over 5 times what it would to keep an existing customer. You’ve invested your money to get someone to buy from you in the first place…why would you throw that money away?

Following up on your previous customers is a great opportunity to increase profits. Create an email database and then keep in regular contact with them. If they were satisfied with your service they won’t mind hearing back from you. Let them know about any specials or offers by emailing them once a week or so.

Here’s the secret: when you send your customers back to your eBay auctions or to your store, use the eBay Publisher Network. What is the eBay Publisher Network? It’s eBay’s affiliate program where eBay will pay you to send people to the eBay website.

That’s right, eBay will pay you! But what’s the catch? I haven’t found one yet. Sign up is a breeze, and you can start making affiliate links and commissions really quickly. I’ve earned $757.21 in eBay affiliate commissions by sending out only 8 emails to past customers - and that doesn’t include the repeat sales I made from sending them back to my listings.

So how does it all work? All you need to do is put the affiliate link in your email, they click the link, and then eBay will let you know if they make a purchase. Anything purchased on eBay within 7 days after clicking the link, you’ll get the affiliate commission for it.