Your best marketing tool is a big mouth. All photos courtesy of Mark Simon.

What do you do? What do you offer? What? I can’t hear you! Speak up!

Marketing is the sum of all the different ways you let people know about your product or service. Having a great talent or product isn’t good enough. You have to let people know what you can do. YELL it out to the world.

The most basic form, and often the best form, of marketing is your mouth. The best sales tool is your passion for what you do and what you offer and personal contact with potential clients. It is whom you know. You may not like to schmooze, but it is your best form of marketing. Learn to do it well.

However, there are many other types of marketing that help as well.

One of the laws of marketing is — repetition sells. Many marketers say that people have to see an ad at least three times before they will be moved to make a purchase. So if you are placing ads in periodicals for what you offer, one ad will not allow you to judge its value. You need to place it at least three times.

If you use direct mail, send out pieces on a regular basis. You don’t have to do it every month, but a few times a year will be loud enough to remind clients you are around and what you offer. Consistency also shows stability. Every time I send out a new set of postcards, we get flooded with new jobs.

You also need to place your marketing in the place your clients look for the services you offer. For instance, if people tend to look in the yellow pages for services you provide, place an ad in the yellow pages. If the broadcast networks are likely to find your services in the pages of AWN, make sure they can find you there as well.

The Web is a favorite marketing tool for most. The cost is low and the coverage is worldwide. The biggest problem with marketing on the Web is the amount of competition. To cut through the clutter, you have to market your web address and design your site to rate high on the search engines. Make sure every piece of paper and every e-mail you send out has your web address listed on it. Get your site listed on as many search engines and relevant listing services as possible. AWN.com, ProductionHUB.com and Mandy.com are great examples of places to list your company and services.

I have found one of the best uses of our websites has been to speed up business and lower our overnight freight costs. When a potential client calls, we can direct them to samples of our work online and close a deal during the call. Just a few years ago, we had to send samples overnight to every potential client at a cost of around $35 each.

There are a few tricks to determining your best marketing approach. First, step back and pretend you want to find the same product or service you offer. Where would you look for it? Make sure you place your marketing there.

Another idea is to look at how your most successful competition is marketing, and do the same thing. Where are they finding clients? Where are they placing ads? What associations are do they actively participate in?