Read Their Lips Let your customers do the talking with word-of-mouth marketing.

When it comes to chatting up your homebased business,there's nothing more helpful or economical than effectiveword-of-mouth marketing. Stop and think about it: If you see an adproclaiming that one office supply store has the best prices onanswering machines, but your friend tells you another storeactually has lower prices, who are you going to believe? You'reobviously going to believe your friend, because he or she has noagenda, and therefore is a credible source.

The same applies when it comes to word-of-mouth referrals. Someof the most successful homebased marketers are those who are ableto take their base of happy clients and encourage them to sharetheir satisfaction with friends and peers. While word-of-mouthtechniques vary, you can generally expect positive results if youdo the following:

• Call your satisfied customers and ask them to call onepotential client for you. Most people are happy to do this, andthese days especially, help like this is considered "goodkarma." As they say, what goes around comes around. Anotherway to handle this: After you complete a project with a satisfiedclient, ask that client to fill out a feedback card and ask for onereferral.