Every small business has the same basic problem – a great service or product and not enough dollars to market it properly.

Advertising is expensive and can be hit or miss. How do you make your target audience pay attention to your message? What sort of budget and time should you allocate?

Before you start down that road however, go back to basics and make money now. Here’s how:

Re-connect with old clients. People drop off for a variety of reasons – often because you’ve simply not kept up the relationship. Go back through your old contact list. Email then, then phone them offering a special offer.

If you’ve a local business, connect with local residents and business with something quirky (more…)

THOUSANDS of people are now sporting wristbands in memory of a teenager killed in a motorbike crash.

The multi-coloured bands have helped raise thousands of pounds towards a memorial for Joseph Took.

Nathan Goligy organised the wristband tribute as a permanent reminder of his close friend, Joe, aged 18, who died after a motorcycle crash in Abbey Road, Barrow, in February.

Since receiving an initial order of 400 bands a fortnight ago, Mr Goligy has since ordered and sold a further 1,400. (more…)

KIND-HEARTED cops across Basildon are going “above and beyond” the call of duty to show support for an injured colleague.

Officers across the borough are wearing blue and grey rubber wristbands, displaying the words “above and beyond”.

The wristbands were designed by PC Simon Bailey to raise cash to support their colleague Reece Clarke, who was injured in a road accident last year.

But as well as helping to raise money to pay for the 19-year-old’s future treatment and (more…)

A simple suggestion from a Blaxland boy keen to help his younger brother has snowballed into a full blown campaign for autism awareness stretching across Sydney and beyond.

Dylan Forster has always looked out for his six-year-old autistic brother, so it was no surprise when he came up with the idea to sell wristbands at Blaxland Public School to raise awareness and money for the condition.

With support from his school that initial thought has grown into a two-week series of events and expressions of interest in similar campaigns at eight Sydney schools and one as far as Albury.

The spark for the campaigns occurred when Dylan, 10, came across a bunch of the wristbands in the glovebox. (more…)