1. Get Involved in Your Local Chamber of Commerce.
For most businesses, your local Chamber of Commerce is not exactly where you are going to find new customers, but what you will find here in abundance is advice and help from others and connections to all kinds of potential affiliates. Just type your city name plus “Chamber of Commerce” into a Google search and you should see all of your local chamber’s information right there on the first page. Give them a call and find out about any upcoming events.
2. Discover Customer Interests and Create Cooperative Marketing Opportunities.
Say you sold healthy smoothies and you happen to be in a shopping center that also has a gym, the opportunity is obvious. Talk with the gym owner and see if you can leave a stack of flyers on the front desk that includes a discount for smoothies, or offer lunch specials to the trainers (who would presumably if they like your smoothies, tell their clients). Sometimes connections are not that obvious, but they exist. If you offer a service like plumbing, get connected with appliance repairmen, or pool cleaners, or a business who does landscape.
3. Join Your Local Rotary Club.
Rotary is a charitable organization with 1.2 million members of loosely affiliated organizations over hundreds of cities across the United States. The primary reason to join of course is because they do really good work for the communities where they operate and for causes around the world. In addition these clubs attract community leaders and are a great way to get connected, and they offer more efficient ways for your business to get involved, and be seen being involved, in your community, which is a win for everyone involved.