By David Bell

If you are trying to promote your business now, you can move in one of two directions:

You can take the conventional route to promotion and mount an elaborate media campaign, spending a considerable amount of money.

You can let your creative juices flow and mount a low-cost promotion effort, using a potpourri of attention-getting strategies to bring your message to the buying public.

Now, to be sure, conventional advertising is valuable. If your enterprise is large enough or if you're selling numerous product lines, you may find that a full-fledged media campaign is the most efficient and cost effective way to promote your business.

If money is tight, however, or you're not sure you can amortize the heavy cost of a media campaign over a period of time, the following is a assortment of low-cost techniques you can try. Not all may be appropriate for your particular business, and certainly it would be costly to try them all. But you're sure to find some ideas that will work for you.

PARTIES. Everyone loves a party. Why not celebrate the anniversary of your business or some special holiday by offering baked goods and beverages? If you're running a service business, perhaps you can offer an open house or obtain a small banquet room in your community. Besides refreshments, be sure the place is brightly decorated.

GREETING CARDS. Do you send out greeting cards to major customers or clients? Holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries make nice greeting card occasions. Greeting cards create enormous goodwill and keep your name in front of people.

SEMINARS. In this information hungry age, people love to receive advice, especially about their personal needs and hobbies. If you sell health foods or run fitness classes, perhaps you can offer "wellness" seminars during lunchtime to your area's business community. If you're an interior decorator, perhaps you can offer one-hour decorating workshops to any group of ten people who will gather in someone's home. If you're running a printing business, perhaps you can offer tours and layout seminars at your plant.

MAGAZINES. For free advertising space, many publications will write an article about you or your product if you purchase advertising space with them. One way publications sell advertising space is to agree that if the advertiser purchases the ad, he will also receive a certain amount of free editorial space. This free editorial space essentially doubles the amount of space you get for a given amount of money. This editorial space is devoted to an article about the company or individual or product, and it has the added cachet of seeming to be work of an outside source. The editorial company be written by the publication staff, or the advertiser may provide the copy.

GO WHERE THE PEOPLE ARE. Can you open sales information booths at community fairs, festivals and swap meets? This promotional technique can work for gift retailers, craftspeople, and personal service firms. If you have the people and the time, can you handle regional fairs or even trade shows?

COMMUNITY SERVICE. Nothing brings you to the attention of the people faster-or more favorably-than community service. Ask yourself how your enterprise can be a "good neighbor" to your community. If you're running a lawn care and gardening service, perhaps you can offer one season's services at no charge to a needy charitable organization or nursing home in your area. Hundreds of people will hear about your work in the process. Volunteer for various community causes. If appropriate, you can step in during community emergency, offering products and services to help an organization or individuals in need.

BADGES AND NOVELTIES. You can easily and inexpensively produce badges, bumper stickers, book covers, and other novelty items for distribution in your area. You can imprint your business name and the first names of the customers on many of these products at little cost and distribute them for free. Or you can tie your novelty program into a contest: once a month, you can offer a prize to any individual whose car happens to carry one of your bumper stickers or badges with peel-off coupons, redeemable at your place of business.

CELEBRITY VISITS. With a bit of persistence, you may be able to arrange to have a local media celebrity, public official, or entertainment personally-even a fictitious cartoon character or clown-visit your service. The celebrity can sign autographs, read stories to children, perform cooking demonstrations, or perform any one of a hundred other traffic-building activities.

By all means, advertise in the media if you can. But don't neglect your greatest promotional asset-your mind. Ponder the products, services and events you can offer the community and devise a creative promotional strategy around them. You'll have to invest a bit of time and energy in the project, but the payoff will be worth it. You'll save hundreds-or even thousands-of advertising dollars and better yet, you'll travel a well-worn shortcut to profit.

I hope this helps in your future marketing decisions