With all the buzz about Social Media, it’s no doubt you’ve heard about Twitter. It’s growing with new users at an amazing rate with thousands of new sign ups every day. But, the biggest question I get is how to use Twitter for business marketing. Most people don’t just get it.

Now I do admit there is a ton of useless stuff on Twitter but it can also be a great tool to market your business and communicate with your customers and prospects easily and all for free.

Here’s 3 ways you can effectively use Twitter for business marketing without having to spend a ton of time or any money at all.

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Email marketing is a great way for any business to keep in contact with customers and prospects without spending a lot of money. The only drawback to using email marketing in your business is that a lot of people get a ton of spam email each and every day.

More and more, I keep seeing businesses going about email marketing the wrong way and in reality it actually hurts their reputation and sales for their business.

Here’s 3 mistakes that I see all the time and how you can avoid them and keep your readers happy to be on your list and looking forward to each and every one of your emails.

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If you want to use Twitter for business marketing you will need to develop a large following of people (called followers) in order to get the most out of using Twitter for business. Just like email marketing, you need to build a large list that you can communicate to.

Most small business owners don’t get how Twitter can be an effective marketing tool. This is great for a business owner like you that wants to take advantage of the Social media Tools Out there and get great exposure with out spending a fortune on advertising and marketing.

In order to build a following on Twitter, here’s a few great ideas that will get the snowball rolling.

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I have a question for you?

How many contacts does it take for a prospect to make a sale on average….1 time? 3 times? More?

How about 7 to 12 times!

Rarely does someone buy the first time that they connect with a company or person unless it’s an urgent need.

Most of the time, they will need to think about it. They want to do more research. They might need to discuss it with a partner or their spouse.

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Now I use Social Media Marketing for a huge part of my marketing and I even teach others how to use it as well. But, one thing that I am seeing more and more is companies dropping everything else that they do to market their businesses to JUST do Social Media stuff.

Everyone is teaching classes and there is buzz everywhere about how you HAVE to be using Social media.

Now, I do agree that you do need to use Social Media Marketing in your business. Social Media Marketing is a large piece of our overall marketing, but… notice the critical word in this sentence “piece”.

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Everyone’s buzzing about social media these days and Twitter is just one of the Social Media tools that you can use to market your business. So, in this How To Marketing article, we’re going to show you a couple of great tips that you can use to market with Twitter in your business.

It’s about relationships.

Remember that all social media tools online are about communication and relationships. Though these tools are great ways to market your business, you need to keep this in mind first. Build relationships with your followers. Answer their questions. Talk to them, don’t just pitch them all the time.

The worst thing you can do is to just post tweets with how great you are and your current specials. It’s ok to add these as part of the process but scatter them within other posts about what’s going on, sharing good resources and just being part of the conversation.

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I still hear it from most business owners… “I don’t get it. I don’t have that much to say. I don’t want to do that. It’s just too much work”

Well, if you want to get your name out there more. Get more prospects. Get more customers and provide better customer service to your existing customers, then a blog is the easiest way to do all these and more.

So, why is it that blogs are so powerful and why should you have one? Let me count the ways!

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Well, as great as it sounds, even the best mousetrap still won’t sell if people don’t know it exists. They still won’t buy it if they don’t see the value in it.

In today’s age where people are swamped with advertising messages all the time, you need a better message than everyone else to stand out and be noticed.

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Promotional items are a great way to get your name in front of your prospects and customers each and every day. You see promotional items all over the place. If used correctly, they can be a great addition to your marketing mix. But, if you don’t know how to choose the right promotional item, it can be a huge waste of your marketing dollars.

If you are already using promotional items in your business, then this guide will help you determine if you have the right product for your business. Picking the wrong promotional item to promote your business can be a complete waste of your marketing dollars if you aren’t careful.

Follow these simple tips when choosing the right promotional product for your business and adding promotional products to your marketing mix will pay for itself tenfold.

1. Is the product something that will be very useful to your prospect or customer?
Make sure that the product you use is something that is useful to your prospect or customer. If your business is business to business then the cute “Chip clips” with your company logo and phone number on the side will be mostly useless.

Think about this one. The best you can hope for with an item like this is for the clip to be used by employees in the break room. The president of a Fortune 500 company doesn’t usually have bags of chips hanging around their desk.

This might work with a residential service like real estate or lawn care but be sure to keep the use of the product in mind when choosing your next promotional item.

2. Is the product ACTUALLY useful?
There are thousands of products out there that you can stick your logo on. Honestly, most of them are just silly, fun or cute items. Some of these items might work if you are catering to children but do they actually do any good in most cases? Not really.

I have a friend in the Promotional products business. Every time she comes back from a trade show, she brings me a bunch of fun cool toys to play with. (yes, the kid at heart!) Now I love getting these and love to have fun with them but when it really comes down to it I would never actually buy any of them for my business. It doesn’t make sense. They aren’t useful items that I will keep in front of me and use every day. See what I am talking about here. Stress balls, goofy pens with sharks on the top, table top golf, etc. They may be fun to play with but do they have a practical use to promote my business? Nope. Not one bit.

Most of them end up in my drawer and I forget about them until the next time I dig in there. You don’t want your marketing dollars shoved in a drawer or worse yet, given to someone’s kid and shoved to the bottom of their toy box.

3. Does the product have staying power?
You want to pick a product for your business that will last a long time and get used a lot. I’m still a fan of pens for my own business. BUT, I also had a lot go in to the pens we use in our business. First off, I don’t use cheap pens. The cheapest pens you can find will also break easily and run out of ink fast.

So what happens to these cheap pens? They go right in to the trash!

Spend some money on good pens. I’m not talking about the expensive metal engraved ones. Just good solid pens that have good ink, feel strong and don’t fall apart. Nothing annoys me more than a pens that falls apart in my pocket.

Think about pads of paper. These are great too as they do get used by a lot of people but don’t go for the cheap small pads with 25 sheets on them. Guess what happens once they run out? Poof… your marketing  is now gone too.

4.  Also be sure to include your contact information AND what you do on all your promotional items in order to get the most out of them. It doesn’t do you any good to have your logo on a pad of paper if not one knows what you do. They might end up writing down quotes for the services you offer from your competition and not even know the difference. Be sure to include your website also.

No matter what type of promotional item you use for your business, be sure to put some thought into it and follow these simple tips to make sure that you’re money is well invested and will get you a great return.

Most small businesses focus all their energy and money on marketing to new customers all the time. Now you will always need some degree of this and new customers help you grow your small business but you need to also focus some of your efforts on marketing to your existing customers and making them loyal repeat customers for life.

This is where most small business marketing falls short for most businesses.

It is ten times easier to sell to an existing happy customer than it is to find another new customer. Did you know that? If you customer is happy with your products and services, then you can easily sell them again and again as long as you keep providing valuable products and services to them.

So how can you keep selling to the same customers over and over again?

Offer an upgraded package on the initial sale
When someone has already agreed to buy your product or service, what can you offer them that will enhance the product they bought? What other products compliment the product they are buying.

This can be anything from a warranty package on that new computer to an accessory kit for their new MP3 player. What products and services do you have that you can add on to an existing product in your business? Be creative. As long as the product makes sense, there is a large chance that the customer will buy the extra in order to complete the package.

So what can you do in your business? Carpet cleaners add extra carpet protection products, fast food offers drinks and fries, car dealerships offer warranties and tinted windows. Think about it and see what you can do in your business that might make sense.

Just by offering these upsells in your existing products can make a huge increase in the sames for your business and doesn’t require any additional customers than you have already walking in your door.

Many franchises understand this concept and have it built in to their sales process but most small business owners never think about creating a systemized process for this in their own business. This is one of the biggest mistakes I see small business owners make in their marketing efforts.  As a small business owner, if you could give yourself a 10% raise without having to spend any more money on advertising or marketing, wouldn’t that be great? You bet it would.

It’s the easiest thing you can do to increase sales in any business and increase your income without an more stress or scrambling to find more new customers.

Do you want to learn more on how to create the perfect systemized process in your business? Learn the #1 secret to increasing sales by asking one simple question and claim your free video at http://MyBusinessMarketingMentor.com/claim-free-video