Like any other business product or service, gift baskets must be marketed. Those who promote their businesses do well, and those who don’t will be disappointed.

Three ways to make your gift basket business profitable.

1. Set up a way to capture the names and emails of visitors to your site.

You’ve no doubt been on many websites where a box floats into the page asking you to sign up for a free item.

You can do this by offering a free newsletter, free reports, tips or other item they may value. This list is very valuable. If you don’t capture this contact information, you may have lost the chance to sell to these potential customers forever.

But if you are emailing them announcements, special sales information, gift-giving tips and so on, they are more likely to return or call to buy a gift basket.

2. Sell more to your current customers

Once you’ve landed customers, stay in frequent touch with them. Encourage them to expand their purchases by adding a balloon or other added value for which you can charge an additional fee.

Your current customers are valuable because they’ve already shown faith in your company and product. One example of a company that does this well is Vistaprint. You probably know them for their free business card offer.

Each time I take Vistaprint up on an offer for free postcards, a free t-shirt, or other imprinted product, I must go through several pages of offers to upgrade my order or add additional products. I don’t mind going through these because I’m getting the product free.

How do they make money, you wonder? Well, they don’t offer everything free. And, you must pay to use your own image if you don’t want to use their stock images.

Each time I receive a shipment from them, there’s another little sales booklet offering more free items with the special access code to purchase from their website. They are smart marketers and know that waving the offer of free products in front of me works. Besides, once I receive the products and see the quality of their products I’m much more inclined to buy at regular price.

3. Hustle

The owner of a balloon supply store once shared with me that folks keep calling his store asking if they sell gift baskets. He had to keep turning them away. He said to me, “You gift basket designers aren’t doing your marketing.”

Unfortunately he was right. During the 18 years I’ve been consulting and speaking to gift basket business owners, I’m amazed at how many do very little to go after business. Putting an ad in the paper and putting up a website is not marketing.

To make your business profitable you must

• take advantage of every networking opportunity possible to ask for orders
• follow up on every person you meet at Chamber and network meetings
• keep up with trends such as putting updates on Twitter and Facebook to keep news about your business in the public’s mind
• modify your business to draw in more business. This may mean partnering with another company, raising your prices (some of you aren’t charging enough and people think you must offer an inferior product,)  or changing your designs and offering to meet trends and current demands.

I recently heard a story about a sandwich shop that was in a busy shopping center. During the summer, people kept coming in the store all day long asking, “Do you sell ice cream?”"No,” the owner announced to each person. Finally, he got so annoyed that he put a sign in the window: WE DON’T SELL ICE CREAM.

What would have been a smarter thing for the store owner to have done since there was obviously a demand for ice cream?

Are you meeting current demands of customers, or are you turning away money?

If you’ve spent the year attending networking meetings and building business relationships, it’s time to reap the benefits of all that connecting. Begin by sending greetings expressing your gratitude for the help, advice, leads and encouragement you’ve received.

If you aren’t a member of a networking group, perhaps you enjoyed exchanging tips, strategies and constructive criticism with a mentor, colleague, peer or informal group of business associates. Time out for tea or brunch would be a wonderful way to show your appreciation. If this isn’t convenient, how about sending a small gift with a card.

Next, let your contacts know how you can save them time and stay within their budget by taking the stress of holiday giving off their hands. Wise companies know that the recession is no time to cut back on their gift-giving. With keen competition going aggressively after customers, it’s time for your business clients to thank and reassure their customers with tasteful and affordable gifts.

The time you spent nurturing your network can pay off in holiday orders if you take the steps now. The rewards of a business network are countless and priceless.

As you plan your holiday designs note that during times of economic downturn one of the hottest niches is the spiritual and inspirational market. Many people are drawn to products that comfort, encourage and draw them closer to family and friends. To find the wholesale sources you need for this niche, get our directory, Religious and Spiritual Products Directory, priced affordably at $17.

This week we’ve been talking about reasons your website sucks.

Reason #5: You are too timid about promoting your website online.

Networking online is fast, efficient and powerful, and yet many companies are not sure they should network online.  Are you one of them? Let’s take a look at another popular social network website, Facebook.

Originally called thefacebook, Facebook was founded by former Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg (while he was at Harvard) who ran it as one of his hobby projects with some financial help from Eduardo Saverin.  Facebook become popular within months across dorm rooms at Harvard, and soon at Stanford
and Yale.

When Mark was joined by two other fellow Harvard students–Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes–Facebook grew to become a national student network phenomenon. In August 2005, thefacebook was officially called Facebook and the domain facebook.com was purchased for a reported $200,000.

You still needed to be enrolled in one of the participating universities to be on Facebook until 2006 when anyone 13 or older could join. By January 2009 Facebook had moved ahead of MySpace in popularity.

While many businesses questioned whether MySpace was right for them, there was less hesitance for many businesses considering membership on Facebook.  A noticeable difference between the two may account for how they’ve been received by businesses.  MySpace allows to members to customize their pages with HTML and Cascading style Sheets, whereas Facebook mainly allows plain text and now photos, as well as a free classified ads in the Marketplace.

One glance at my grandkids pages on MySpace convinced me that I didn’t want to list my business there (To call their pages and those of their friends “garish” is being polite.) But Facebook has a more professional and controlled appearance. Besides, the History Channel has a Facebook page.I also like the fact that Facebook now has the capability of  linking to my articles from Ezine articles, my blog posts, and my radio episodes from BlogTalkRadio.

You are right to be thoughtful about what personal information you share on any website, but people want to know who you are before they trust you with their money and their projects. Networking websites give you the option of keeping some information private or limiting who views it. That can be useful when you build a big following.

Regardless of which social networking site you select, keep in mind that you’re there to make contacts, offer information, and be a resource.  By building relationships you create friendships and connections who sometimes turn into fans. That will grow your business in ways that old fashioned advertising never could.

You can’t believe how many times I’ve heard gift basket designers say “I love to design, but I don’t like to sell.” Then they ask how they can go about getting customers.

If you are stockpiling inventory, creating beautiful designs, but not enjoying any sales, then you are a gift basket scaredy cat. You are headed down a course that spells financial disaster and mental distress.

But all is not lost. If you are ready to get over your fear of selling and watch your business prosper, here are seven things you can do.

1. Hire an associate or take on a partner who is skilled at sales. This person’s job will be to gather and follow leads to keep you busy filling orders. You will still to work on your own sales skills but the whole burden won’t be on your shoulders.

2. Become active in your local chamber or business network where you can meet potential customers on a weekly or monthly basis. Focus on building business relationships rather than selling. Getting to know your colleagues will reduce your fear and alleviate their hesitance. Most people buy from companies they’ve gotten to know and trust.

3. Listen to your colleagues and potential clients. Encourage them to talk about their themselves and their needs. The more people talk about themselves, the more they like you.

4. Face the fact that no one is a born salesman. It may seem that way to you as you watch others land accounts with little effort. But the truth is, becoming good at sales takes effort, work, perseverance and practice.

5. Face your fear. You are not alone. Good salesmen have had to overcome shyness, low self-esteem, stuttering, physical deformities and many other hurdles. They were determined to succeed and it was this determination that pushed them to learn and grow. You can too.

6. Take a baby step each day toward getting the sales you need to stay in business. You can learn about this by reading articles, books, subscribing to newsletters, attending conferences and networking with the successful members of the gift basket industry. The Small Business Administration offers tremendous free to low-cost help to businesses in every state.

7. Stop thinking of yourself as an interruption. You are offering a service that clients need. By neglecting to offer your gift basket service, you are depriving potential clients of a service that could help their businesses grow.

Companies who invest in the $1 trillion advertising and marketing industry are seeing half of their investment go down the drain reported an Economist article.That’s because consumers are increasingly relying on other ways to make their buying decisions. Word of mouth, an old way to spread news, is still the fastest and most affordable to advertise. Here are some ways to put word of mouth to work for your gift basket business:

1. Get current happy customers talking by asking for referrals. Put it on your business card, fliers and brochures. Offer incentives for new customers who result from these referrals.
2. Give customers and visitors to your website something to talk about: contests, giveaways, but most of all, provide great, unique products.
3. Provide customers with frequent information and updates about your business such as with a weekly newsletter. Ask for their opinions, questions and reactions. Encourage them to forward your e-newsletters to their friends.
4. Give your customers the tools to get them talking. Start a blog, message board, or chat to encourage customers to speak out.
5. Use social media to get the word out about new products, services or to ask for information. The most popular are Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter. You can visit me on all three:

• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Twitter

Get word of mouth working for you and watch your profits grow.