Networking. Nothing beats having a lot of friends and acquaintances to point you to certain opportunities and recommend you to their own friends. Don’t miss out on gatherings that can expand your network. Remember to smile and establish eye contact.

Posters. Use catchy designs and brightly colored paper if you can. Often there are billboards around campus that are reserved for students so you may want to try placing some posters there. Don’t forget to include your contact information.

Flyers. For a more proactive approach, try handing out flyers about your services in crowded places like outside the canteen, the mall, the park, or any other relavant sites. You can also drop them in household mailboxes.

Newspapers. If you can to broaden your scope, why not place an ad on the local paper? This will probably work best if your services target an older demographic. Do this on the day of peak readership to make it cost-effective.

It may be a high tech world but low tech promotion still has its uses. Try the methods above to get your business going, all of them at the same time in a blitz for maximum effect.

Would love your feedback, opinions, recommendations for making the show better:

Let me share with you some of the things I do to strengthen my online presence. They can be surefire means to widen your customer base online and boost your overall profit. Don’t miss the chance.

1. Provide great quality. This is the most important thing of all. Most, if not all marketing and online advertising to date, require topnotch, not mediocre products or services. You can’t go on an online endeavor if the quality of your offer is poor.

2. Opt for free advertising. Tell friends about your site. Join online business forums. Sign up to LinkedIn, Facebook or Myspace, and broadcast your site on your profile. These things are free advertising in themselves.

3. Syndicate with RSS feeds. Syndicated web contents give you more web exposure. If you wish to share your site contents, create RSS feeds and make them available for syndication.

4. Use signatures. When you join forums or send e-mails, use a signature after every post. Place the name of you biz together with your name, and include a link to your website.

5. Submit online press releases. Make fresh, interesting and newsworthy releases and post them in PR websites. Regular updates brace your online visibility.

6. Dig ‘tempters.’ Place something in your site which your visitors will keep coming back for. You can create a forum / chatroom, or incorporate online games to ditch visitors’ boredom.

7. Link to other sites. Choose credible sites and link your site to them. Not only does this create traffic, but also increase your reliability with the association you create.

8. Try affiliate marketing. Offer an effective affiliate program for your products and/or services. Satisfy your customers’ needs so they will be glad to refer you to others for a small commission.

Which of these tactics have you had the most success with? Share your experience with us in the comments.

Ahmed points out that Danica Patrick clearly leveraged her “car racer” brand to get into SI Swimsuit magazine. But one has to wonder whether there will be any negative kickback from the appearance.

Why? Well, it’s arguable that the two brands conflict with each other a bit. As the AutoBlog puts it, it’s “difficult to take her seriously as a driver when she’s topless.”

The lesson to learn from this is that brand leveraging isn’t always a win-win situation. You need to think deeply about whether the positives outweigh the negatives. In Danica Patrick’s case, it depends on what she really wants to be known for. If her ultimate goal is to be recognized for her sexuality, then this is a very smart move. But if her ultimate goal is to be known for as a pure car racer, then maybe not.

Lesson: know exactly what you want to achieve and be aware that while you are moving closer to one thing, you may be moving further away from another.

The fact is that whether you are testing a few dollars in the AdSense waters or millions on a Super Bowl ad, there are always unknown dynamics at play. The science of market research aims to eliminate as many variables and unknowns as possible, but even then, a flop is still possible. On the flip-side, there is always the potential for unexpected success.

Even if you don’t have a marketing firm like Victoria’s Secret did for the 2008 Super Bowl, you can still learn some basic principles to properly hedge your advertising bets to minimize your chance of a flop, and maximize your chance of success.

Check out my article at AdSavvy for more on this topic.

Put as little as possible on the poster (illustrations or text). Don’t clutter your poster with useless catchphrases and images. Make sure that every single letter and every single line is there for a reason. If your poster is for an event that your business is sponsoring or coordinating, just put the What, When, Where, and contact information for that event. They don’t need to read inside jokes, what kind of food you’ll be serving (unless the event is highlighting a specific food product), how many people are expected to attend, or your mother’s maiden name.

Arrange the design and lettering to attract the attention of passers-by. Although you shouldn’t clutter your poster with elements, it should be attractive. You can do this with the size, color, and layout of the poster. Even the particular choice of graphic or illustration can make passers-by curious about it. The headline or main graphic should be large enough to be recognizable from a prescribed distance, usually 10-15 feet, depending on your preference.

Put your poster where it can be seen. Poster placement is important. Put it in a high-traffic area, but make sure it’s not too crowded that it will be inconvenient for people to stop and get a better look at your poster. Also, make sure that it’s located near your target audience. If your poster is advertising gym clothes, it’s best to place it near a gym or sports center.

Design and text must complement each other. The design should not detract from the impact of the words. The words contain the information, and the design should merely support it. Don’t make the graphic the highlight of the poster.

Review your poster. It’s important that you “test” your poster. Look at it carefully. As some friends to look at it, and listen to their feedback – especially if they belong to your target market. See if they get the message instantly and if they want to commit to an action because of your poster (such as visit your website, call you for orders, etc.). If something doesn’t work, you can fix it at this stage and review it again.

Posters and fliers. This is stating the obvious. However, don’t just stick them anywhere. If you’ve got a white poster, it’s going to get lost when you stick it next to a bunch of other white posters. Look for a color that highly contrasts with your poster, and place it next to that. It’ll catch more attention. Also, the design of your poster should be important. We’ll go into details about effective poster design in the following blog entry.

As for fliers, giving them out randomly is a waste of time, money, and paper. Whenever some person at my uni hands out fliers, I often avoid eye contact. Sometimes you even see fliers lying around, thrown just 3 minutes after they were handed out. Don’t give away fliers randomly. Hand them out to people whom you know would be interested. For example, if you’re selling calculators, you’d have a better return of investment on your flier if you hand them out to physics, math, or engineering students rather than fine arts students.

Word of mouth. This is the best and the cheapest way to get customers. If they like your product, odds are, they’ll tell everyone about it. However, don’t just expect that people will spread the word around about your products on campus. You need to generate some kind of buzz. You can do this best with a secret. Let’s face it – no one can keep secrets. And it’s the fastest thing to spread around because the “forbidden” quality makes it even juicier. For example, if you provide a completely legit term paper editing service, and someone gets extra high marks on a term paper, you could tell someone “I’m sure his paper was really good, but he probably got some extra help. There are some term paper editors out there. I actually do that kind of thing myself. Of course, I won’t tell you if I was the one who edited his term paper.”

Parties. Do not under estimate the networking that can take place during parties. For example, one of my ventures is selling food that I make myself. I can attend a sorority or fraternity party, and while I’m hanging out I can tell some key people from the group that I cater parties as well. The idea is that you should mingle during parties, and, if you have the chance, you can tell people about your products or services there.

Campus media. If you’ve got a campus radio station, website, or paper, don’t forget to tap into these resources. Just make sure that you look at the guidelines for submitting an ad or event, and follow wach rule carefully. You don’t want to miss out on your chance to advertise just because you missed a few guidelines. Try to be friendly to the staff of your campus media – this often has its benefits. They might put you ahead of the queue, or make sure that your ad gets played.

Do you guys have other ideas? If so, just place ‘em in the comments.

As the web develops, the two biggest commodities are going to be 1) content and 2) functional infrastructure. Any business that can provide new/better content, or new/better functionality will succeed. That’s the great thing about the web, it enables good ideas to succeed, almost naturally.

Well, we were recently contacted by Custom Ink about their new custom T-Shirt business. In the past, for several of our businesses, we’ve had t-shirts made for customers and employees. It’s really a great business idea. If you have a good design, you can get people to advertise your company for free. Plus it builds employee loyalty (hey, I’m part of something that’s important enough to have a t-shirt design).

The great thing about Custom Ink’s business is that they’ve leveraged great functional infrastructure on their site to make do-it-yourself T-Shirt design easier than ever (or at least easier than we’ve ever seen). That’s the key. If you empower the people to do make something they want, then the customers will come.

So we put Custom Ink to the test. We browsed around at their wide variety of custom product options (they offer much more than t-shirts – athletic wear, business wear, and even outerwear).

We decided to go with a maroon microfleece vest. After selecting the product and color, we were presented with an extremely easy to use Java based customization application. The only downside was the initial load time, but once the application loaded up, we had our product designed in a snap. You simply add text and any graphical art and position it on the product by dragging it around. Very, very easy. Plus you get to see exactly what the product will look like before you place an order.

If you’re looking for an easy to use, clothing customization solution for your business, you really don’t need to look any further than Custom Ink

Since College Startup is all about giving you the tools you need to run a successful online business (whether from your college dorm room or not), we’re striving to provide tangible services that you can use to make your dream of a successful new online business a reality.

A few months ago we announced an easy way for you to get started with an online presence and to acquire online leverage (which is critical at the beginning) via the One Big Startup Package.

Today, we’re announcing a new service for our readers to help get the word out about your new business, service or product:

Announce Your Startup

For $100 you get a front page press release of your new business, product or service with 3 high quality, middle of the content, links back to your site. Not only do you get high-visibility exposure from our regular readers, but you get the intangible benefit of a highly trusted set of links. Links are the foundation of building an online presence and the key to building leverage.

So if you’re really going for gold with your new startup business, and you know you have a great product, consider getting off to a great start by spreading the word through a College Startup “Announce Your Startup” press release.

Contact ryan #at# college-startup #dot# com for more information.

Tell me a little bit about your background and how you got started with your business.

I am a senior at Babson College. My partner and I met two years ago when we co-founded the Invenio Group. The mission of Invenio Group was to bring college entrepreneurs, who intended on starting companies together before graduation, together to share resources, experiences, and eventually equity. The group lives on and Jason and I are proud to be a part of it. I also work for Babson College as an author, and will have published four case studies by the end of this year. Of course, I also blog.

Jason asked me to join the venture about one year ago. His family has been in the diamond industry for almost thirty years and he knew he could leverage their experience. We began operations two months ago and have exceeded all revenue projections to date. Jason and I take a “brutally honest” approach and it has helped us succeed. By this, I mean we acknowledge our mistakes and use them to our advantage. By maintaining complete honesty with each other, we are free to take calculated risks without fear of upsetting our partner or investors.

Paragon Lake is currently concentrating on maintaining sales. We graduate at the end of this academic year and intend to begin making significant investments at that time. We currently have several interns and a staff who handles manufacturing in Los Angeles.

I’ve always believed that being “brutally honest” is one of the keys to business success. As we saw in Enron’s mythical business, it’s not the idea alone that makes money. The idea not only has to be implemented successfully but it has to generate revenue too. Do you have any concrete suggestions for how an entrepreneur can be intentional about being “brutally honest”?

Being brutally honest has a direct correlation with confidence and trust. For the approach to work, all members of the team must have complete trust in one another. This will create an environment where team members can share thoughts and ideas without the fear of repercussions. This ties directly to confidence because any lack of confidence will create tension among team members. A partner who is not confident will perceive any criticism as a personal attack rather than an opportunity to improve the business. This is hugely detrimental to a business, and is very common in startups where the team was not carefully put together.

I’m a big fan of leveraging pre-existennt resources and you’ve nailed one of the best opportunities we all have: family knowledge. Can you describe some of the specific ways that you’ve made use of Jason’s family knowledge?

Jason’s family has provided us important insight as to how the industry operates. Directly, it has helped us form strategic relationships with suppliers and create our own operational facility. Their knowledge has given us a proprietary edge in the process of hand crafting fine jewelry that allows us to produce higher quality at a lower price.

Starting a business is one thing, but letting people know about it is a-whole-nother ballgame. So tell us a bit about your marketing strategies, what you’ve done well, what you haven’t done well, the lessons you’ve learned and what tips you’d give to a new company that’s just starting out.

One of our biggest successes has been having a friends and family newsletter. Each week, we send out a newsletter to about 25 people that outlines our successes and failures of the week. This has inspired many great ideas and led to most of our personal sales. We have not yet identified a sustainable marketing campaign, and have taken almost entirely guerrilla approaches. Early on, we were able to gain sales by posting on free directories and by identifying influential blogs. (Blogs , as you know, can be very powerful)

My biggest tip to new companies is to get out and make personal sales. Personal sales will help you identify the kinks/bottlenecks in the process before you spend serious money driving traffic. You need to solidify operations and make sure your product has some sort of call to action that gets customers excited about making the purchase. You will also gain the confidence and customer knowledge that will inspire great ideas. Only when this I done should you invest in marketing to the world.

When did you realize that you were an entrepreneur at heart and what steps have you taken since then, that others could follow, to realize your passion?

I have always had an entrepreneurial approach. I think it all began when I had my first paper route at age 11. In high school, I found saw the need for weekend entertainment and I held professionally organized dance parties. These provided me the chance to learn about managing people and marketing first hand. I would hire professional security and DJ’s, and 300-400 people would come at a rate of $8 a person. It was quite profitable for a 16 year old to be running. A big lesson I have learned is to trust your gut feeling. If something tells you that there is an opportunity, act on it as fast as possible. Time is money, and every day you hesitate is an extra day your competition has to outperform you.

All business entrepreneurs make mistakes and encounter failures (you know, that big idea that falls flat on its face). Can you share a mistake or failure that you’ve encountered and how you’ve learned from it or even used it to your advantage going forward?

I learned a lot failing on a project called Rib Wrangler. The product was designed to allow people to eat barbeque ribs without getting their hands messy. I still believe the product could be successful, but I realize that I made a lot of mistakes. Designing the product and conducting market research made me realize that there is no such thing as an easy venture. A lot of time and money goes into taking something to market, especially in consumer products. I failed to understand the economics of the business in the early stages and wound up wasting a lot of time. I have been able to apply my lessons learned to Paragon Lake and understand that business I am in. If you can not easily explain how your business makes, and loses, money then you have not done your homework. Three rules to live by.

1. There is no such thing as a product that will sell itself.
2. The first step to success if finding a customer who will buy your product.
3. If you have no competition, there is no opportunity.

So what are your long term plans? Do you see yourself starting any new businesses over the next 10 years or mainly focusing on streamlining and maximizing your current business?

If there is one thing I have learned in life it is that many of your best opportunities can not be planned. With that said, I would imagine that Jason and I will stick with Paragon Lake for at least the next five years. My priority has long been to maintain flexibility in both lifestyle and location. I hope to someday get involved in making angel investments and perhaps explore opportunities of teaching others about entrepreneurship.

Any parting thoughts or words of advice for the readership of College Startup?

In closing — I would like to remind everyone that nothing is easy. Too many entrepreneurs fail to remember that building a business is a long process. Try not to get frustrated when things do not go your way and be sure to maintain confidence in your team. A great team is crucial to success and the best entrepreneurs are the ones who learn from their mistakes and realize they do not have all of the answers.