Sometimes the best way to witness marketing done properly is by watching a couple of kids run a lemonade stand.  You will likely witness creative advertising, incredible energy, and careful relationship building. Here are nine lemonade stand marketing tips from Jim Loico’s article that you can use to promote your services:

1. Give people something for free and they will feel obligated to return the favor

2. Give potential customers a taste of your offerings

3. Make it “Extra Special”

4. Don’t Be Afraid to Tell Your “Neighbors” (Network!)

5. Do What You Need to Do to Be Seen

6. Be Persistent

7. Build Anticipation 

8. Find Good Partners

9. Advertise Your Popularity

At ABCey Events, we believe in continually using the power of marketing to increase awareness and excitement for our client’s events. Many of these tips are pretty common sense, but they’re practical and can apply to any sales practices. Which one of these marketing tips do you utilize within your organization?

One of our favorite sites to search for inspiration is StumbleUpon. This week we came across Save on Crafts, a premier website for catering, special event planners, and wedding planners for all types of events. They have every supply you might ever need for creating your desired ambiance & decor for your upcoming soiree.

Their incredible inventory includes floralytes, fiberoptics, lights, stemware, preserved flowers, freeze dried petals, eco-friendly confetti and all types of decorations. You can also find feathers, millinery, baskets, vase lights, natural touch flowers, crystal trees, wishing trees, apothecary jars, guest registry books, paper crafts, floral supplies, vases and other party supplies.

If you are looking to save some cash, this site can help reduced your costs from 20-50% by purchasing the raw materials. They also have a live chat system on the site to help you find the perfect piece to your puzzle. There is a Projects and Inspiration link to use for even more creative ideas, from “How-To’s” to “What’s Hot” and “Trending now.” Here at ABCey Events we love using the best materials to create the best decor for that extra special touch. We hope you love this site as much as we do. What DIY projects will you be attempting now that you’ve found Save on Crafts?

Here at ABCey, we are always looking for ways to acquire more PR. It should not cost your company thousands of dollars, nor should it require you to invest hundreds of hours. With these few quick tips, you should be a PR magnet in no time!

1. Read More, Watch More, Listen More: If you want more media exposure, its most-valuable to actually ‘get the media’. This means watching more television, reading more newspapers, magazines, and websites, and listening to more radio than you ever have. By making yourself aware of these media aspects, you’ll become more aware of what is considered interesting and compelling in the media. This makes your PR much easier, and more effective.

2. Get to Know the People Working in Media: You will learn which reporters, editors, and bloggers are interested in your company and the topics you’re discussing. By interacting with them, especially through social media, you’ll realize when opportunities subsist. Through social media efforts, other companies may write about your company.

3. Be on the Lookout for the Newsy Angle of Your Business: Another way to acquire more PR is to identify as many stories possible to pitch to the media. Every time you do something new, create something better or improved, or organize an event, that is reason for more exposure.

4. Pitch Your Story Regularly: Omit all possibilities of getting rejected. “If you don’t play, you don’t win.” When you have a steadfast flow of media stories, you’ll always have something to pitch. Learning how to write brief media pitches will increase your chances of getting media coverage.

5. Act Like an Expert-Because You Are: You have an advantage because you know more about the subject than other people do. Speak with authority, share your knowledge with others, and offer your opinions.

Because we’re always looking for ways to gain PR, we here at ABCey found this article to be very helpful. Do these seem like helpful tips? Is there any advice your company has to offer?

For the full article, click here!

Excerpt from Entrepreneur by Barry Farber: Move from “I Hate” To “I Love to Sell.” Five great tips for those of you out there who hate cold calling and sales as much as we do!

It would be great to wake up every day full of enthusiasm about moving your business forward through the sales process. But there are days when we get tired of sales calls to new prospects and feel as if what we used to love has morphed into a feeling of “I hate to sell.” No need to worry; it’s normal. And there’s not a top sales producer I know that hasn’t gotten into a rut once in a while. You just have to figure out how to get out of it.

Here are some ways to turn your “I hate selling” days around:

1. Show up. Activity that introduces you to new contacts not only can open up more opportunities for business but also give you that boost of energy that accompanies adding qualified prospects to your pipeline. How many times have you been on your way to a sales meeting or networking event thinking to yourself “this is a waste of my time,” only to meet a person who brought you significant business several months later?

2. It’s not about you. If you think selling has to do with how well you can talk, then you’re missing out on a huge part of your business. After you show up, shut up–doing so might help you love selling. Every time you’re with prospects or customers and they start asking questions about you, answer quickly and then turn it around with questions to get them talking about themselves. Since so many people love talking about themselves, you’re in no danger of listening yourself out of a sale. Nobody’s ever said, “I don’t like her; she listens to me too much!”

3.Attitude is king. Maybe you’ve heard over and over that attitude is everything. Well, there’s a reason for that. When you have a negative attitude people pick up on that, and it’s contagious. Every day you wake up, your attitude that day has more to do with your sales success than any other factor. Let this knowledge influence your choices: Read positive materials and surround yourself with people who drive you and inspire you. A study of top executives determined the four attributes that contributed to their success were knowledge, experience, intelligence and attitude. When the executives were asked to rank them by importance, knowledge, experience, and intelligence together only comprised 7 percent, while attitude determined 93 percent of their success.

4.Plant seeds in the right soil. One of the biggest factors that contributes to your attitude about selling is rejection. The more rejection we experience, the more we feel like what we’re selling is of little value or worth. Many times rejection has more to do with whom you’re calling on to make a sale. When the person isn’t qualified to make the decision or doesn’t have a real need for your services, you have to learn to walk away and move on to more worthwhile accounts. Imagine planting seeds in the desert–it can be very frustrating. If you employ the advice from tip No. 2 above, “It’s not about you,” you’ll know the person you’re speaking to and can target questions to determine where your product could be of service.

5. Hard work. This is one of the best ways to beat the salesman blues. It makes up for our deficiencies. Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.

Are you an Entrepreneur with a great idea, but not sure how to reach more customers, investors, or both? Or are you a Small Business Owner with a great product and service, but feel like your marketing just isn’t working and you are wasting a great deal of time and money?

If you answered “YES” to any of the questions above, please come join me at BizTechDay 2009.

When: October 22-23,2009 (Thursday & Friday)

Where: Hyatt Regency SFO, Burlingame

BizTechDay 2009 is a practical, hands-on and experiential Small Business Strategy, Social Media and networking conference where expert speakers and business leaders (from Google, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Yelp, Virgin America, Elance, Constant Contact, Justin.TV, WordPress, CBS 5, and Comcast Business Class) share their insights and experience and help your business get up to speed in this economic downturn.

Tim Ferriss (the author of 4-Hour Workweek) and Kevin Rose (Founder of Digg.com) will be joining this year!

Through high-impact keynotes & panels, small group executive round table sessions, hands on demos and one-on-one meetings, you will learn about Raising Money, Selling and Social Media Marketing for your business:

MONEY TRACK
* How to Raise $100,000 to 3 Million. Meet Paypal Angel Investor and Founder of the Keiretsu Forum.
* How to Raise $5000 – $100,000 for Your Business.
* How to Access Investment Capital and Make the Federal Stimulus Program Work for You. Meet Experts from the Governor’s office.
* Building Partnerships with Fortune 500 Companies

MARKETING/SELLING TRACK
* Building a Strong Business Brand. Meet Experts from Google, Yelp, Linkedin, Facebook & Twitter
* Securing Your Number One Spot on Google
* Selling to the Baby Boomer and GenY Communities
* Selling to Women & the LGBT Communities
* How to Make the Media Love You – Join Sue Kwon, Emmy Award Journalist with CBS 5
* 13 Things All Business Owners Must Know About a Compelling Business Website
* How to Use an Email Marketing Campaign to Build Your Database and Close Sales

SOCIAL MEDIA TRACK
* Twittering with the Star with Kevin Rose & Tim Ferriss
* How to Get Media, Celebrity or Blogger Attention for Your Business
* Strategies of Building Your Online Community from Zero to Millions
* Turning Visitors into Customers Using Viral Videos
* How to Market Your Business on Facebook
* How to Make Money on Twitter

Here’s the list of speakers you will meet at BizTechDay 2009:
* Tim Ferriss – New York Times Best Selling Author of the Four Hour Workweek
* Kevin Rose – Founder of Digg.com
* Porter Gale – VP Marketing at Virgin America
* Michael Gerber – World’s No 1 Small Business Guru per Inc Magazine and the New York Times Best Selling Author of the E-Myth
* Matt Mullenweg – Founder of WordPress
* Kevin Hartz – Paypal Angel Investor
* Fabio Rosati – CEO of Elance
* Joel Comm – Creator of iFart iPhone App – Over 1 Million downloads
* Gary Swart – CEO of oDesk
* Mark O’Leary – Regional VP for Business Services for Comcast
* Randy Williams, Founder of Keiretsu Forum. The World’s largest angel investor network – over $180m invested in 200 companies
* Chris Larsen – Founder of Prosper.com
* Michelle Broderick – Director of Marketing at Yelp
* Alison Covarrubias – Founder & CEO of Hatch Network
* Julie Castro Abrams – CEO of Women’s Initiative
* Justin Kan – Founder of Justin.TV
* Ramon Ray – Chief Editor of SmallBizTechnology.com

And 40+ more thought leaders and successful entrepreneurs.

Plus, you can sign up for one-on-one consultations on Raising Money, Social Media Marketing Strategy, Blogging, SEO, Paid Search Marketing, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and many other essential business topics.

COST
* Regular Conference Pass: $595

Click here to register. Use this Discount Code: “AmandaCeyVIP” for $200 off.

What is social media?

Social media is content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. At its most basic sense, social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content. It’s a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologues (one to many) into dialogues (many to many) and is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers. Social media has become extremely popular because it allows people to connect in the online world to form relationships for personal, political and business use. Businesses also refer to social media as user-generated content (UGC). –Wikipedia

If you are a living and breathing human being, it is highly likely that you are very familiar with the term social media and are also probably sick of it. I remember when the Ad Tech Conference was here in San Francicsco over a month ago…I couldn’t escape the term for the life of me. The social media environment changes so quickly and the pace of change is so fast that it’s becoming increasingly difficult for professionals to keep up, let alone small business owners like myself who have other things to do and worry about.

It was incredible to see what happened this past week after the disputed Iranian presidential election results. Authorities shut down text messaging, blocked Facebook and YouTube and cut off the BBC Persian-language service, but they forgot about Twitter. The simple microblogging service enabled Iranians to tell the world what was happening on the streets of Tehran in real time, and also served as a vital means of communication among themselves.

I’ve been told to focus on the Big 3: Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In. Personally, this is all I can manage for the time being and think these are the most valuable social networks out there. I used to be an avid myspacer when I was younger, and do have a personal facebook page, but it has now all turned to business. It’s becoming more and more apparent each day that if you don’t keep up with this “social media era” per say, you will be left behind. The 90’s were about the World Wide Web of information and the power of linking web pages. “Today it’s about the World Wide Web of people and the power of the social graph. Online networks are fundamentally changing the way we live, work, and interact.” – Clara Shih, The Facebook Era.

For businesses, the opportunites are invaluable. Some of you may not like this, but it’s about turning strangers into friends and friends into customers.-@Bradleywill How often do you buy something from someone that you don’t know, like, or trust? Truth is, often sales are made after a relationship is established. Social media has already helped me source new business opportunities, target marketing messages, and transform communication with my prospects.

I’m still learning and have a feeling this is going to be a very long course that may never end. I’m learning all the rules on facebook and twitter etiquette (aka twitequette), reading books, blog’s, and PDF’s on the subject matter. I’m learning how to build my networks, community, and brand. I’m trying to create valuable content within my industry to engage others that are in my industry, and get my message across. I’m hoping that if I build up my networks enough on all these sites, the word of mouth referral process will take effect and I will never have to make awful sales calls again;)

With that said, hop on the bandwagon if you’re not already…

Become a fan of ABCey Events on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter, and Join my network on Linked In

“Social media means consumers have been given a larger seat at the table. And they’re never going back.” -@bobinmotion