What are some free and creative ways to advertise your small business?

My husband and I have a small business of installing windows and doors. We are really wanting to expand and get more business, we need some ideas for local advertising. I'm not really talking about advertising on the web, however we do need to create a website for our business, but I'm talking about locally.

We know about passing flyers, getting an ad in the phone book, and a local commercial, anyone have anything different?
10 Points to the best answer!

well if you do go with flyers, make sure you are printing in full color and get a professional graphic designer to help you out.

You can also get a mailing list or hire someone to mass promote by passing around the flyers (that usually works best). You may want to get a website to bring more traffic there too.

I recommend you call Reduced Printing (www.reducedprinting.com), as they have low cost graphic design and printing services. My company has been using them for everything, and we recently purchased a mailing list from them, and they worked within our budget

What I see alot of is a sign in the front lawn of where a job will or has been. For instance the sign would read, Coming soon, so and so windows and doors. along with address and phone number.
Or roofing completed by so and so with phone number and address
The signs are put on metal rods and pushed on the lawn of their customer.

You can also put up a ad in the grocery stores with tags on it with your phone number.

Have you got your business name, details and phone number on your van/car/lorry/any other transport you use?

Get your business name, details phone number etc. printed on to T-shirts and get family and friends to wear them.

Put business cards in any community centres, libraries, doctor surgeries, hospitals, supermarkets, health clinics,

Leave business cards in cafes etc

Add you business details to the end of any emails you send out.

This is pretty simple, but word-of-mouth advertising is considered ten times more credible than other forms of advertising. Have a friend with a large social network create a buzz about your new business. Or, contact your local newspaper and see if they want to publish a small article about your new business. If you have some unique selling point, local newspapers eat that stuff up.

Offline

1.create flyers and hand out to people.
2.Create your company logo and place on your vehicle
3 Use newspapers like Metro and The times


[Online is a great way and many Biz do advertise for free online its up to you but
www.sellit-right.com [the Gold member option is great for you too. Is a great one.

Answer questions relevant to your product or service on yahoo answers and then put you website address in the source box.

Try to advertise at this website.This is high traffic free classified.