Promoting your Business while traveling

Well, as many of you know, we have been on the road for over 3 weeks now. The million dollar question is, how do you go about promoting your business while traveling? As we have discussed in prior posts, there are many different ways that you can promote your home based business, but the key here is to keep the costs down and maximize your business exposure.

One of the easiest ways to promote your business while traveling is to have some form of signage on your vehicle. It is important that your signs are easily read, remember people will be driving past your vehicle, and will not have a lot of time to read any small print. (you really don't want people straining to read your sign, you may cause accidents). You do want your signage to be eye-catching and cause people to sit up and take notice. Getting some form of signage for your vehicle will cost some money, but it will pay dividends down the road. How will people know you are in business if you do not have some form of external advertising? As always, before you spend money, make sure you are comfortable with the type of sign you will have on your vehicle. Also, be sure that you get several quotes from different sign places. You may even want to let some of the sign shops know that you are comparing prices, you may be able to negotiate a better deal, or depending on what you have to offer, you may be able to work some kind of trade agreement.

After you have signage on your vehicle, it is much easier to let people know you are in business while you are traveling. We don't have signs on our motor home, but have an eye-catching sign on our trailer. The majority of time when we are traveling, the trailer is attached to the motor home, so by default, the motor home has a form of signage too. Be sure your signage has some way for the people to contact you, either a phone number or website or e-mail or some combination of the above. It is highly likely that people will not contact you while you are driving around, but when you are stopped, expect people to either come up to you and ask about your products and services, or they may use your posted contact information. We have had many occasions where, when we stop at rest areas or store parking lots, people come up to us inquiring about our products and services.

Lastly, be sure to park in populated areas. I do not mean stopping in the middle of the street, more like parking in lots that have lots of foot traffic. You do not want to park far away from where the people are, you want them to see your vehicle. When we are traveling, we strive to be in RV parks that have many campers. As much as you may want to have some peace and quiet, going to quiet places will not help you to advertise your business. On many occasions, when we are checking into RV parks, (RV park offices are major hubs of activity) we almost always get questions regarding our signs on the trailer. Many of the inquiries have lead to business.

In a nutshell, just by advertising your business on your vehicle, you can generate more business without directly approaching strangers. By having people come to you and inquire about what you have to offer, you have turned the tables and now instead of selling to the customer, you are providing a requested service to a new, prospective customer. The new contacts are not afraid of you because they have come to you with a question, you did not approach them with an "offer". You are now placed in a position of providing a requested service and are not viewed as a salesperson. This is an excellent situation to be in and much easier to continue to promote your business.

If you are looking for a small home-based business idea, please review http://www.hawgwash.net/. We may have some opportunities that would interest you. Please feel free to contact us with any questions you may have.

Until tomorrow...