The Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act, or FISA, is the new anti-spam bill passed by the Government of Canada in December, 2010. One of its main provisions is that marketers and commercial enterprises have to have the consent of recipients before sending them any unsolicited electronic messages.

Your online business is well established, with a presence that has already generated some interest. You’ve got a few reliable customers and you’re making a tidy profit off of your services. But your profit margins are either stagnant, or they’re wilting in the midst of a weak economy — despite your best marketing efforts. What can you do to help boost interest in your online company?

Do you need a new way to market your business? Are traditional ways of advertising not getting the results you want? Is public speaking and talking to people something you enjoy doing? Then perhaps running a seminar to enhance awareness of your business and/or service is something you should consider.

In my last article, I discussed how using silly clichés and the like in the face of a recession and shrinking sales is … well … silly. I also said you need to recognize the recession exists and then start doing something about it.

I went through this myself. I noticed this past spring that my contacts from my website were dwindling. Since my contacts are the lifeblood of my business (generally, every client I get and writing project I do starts with a contact from my website), I knew something had to change.

All business owners have one thing in common: We need customers!

Unfortunately, it costs money to get them into your store, money that most of us just don’t have to blow. Advertising is expensive, and most of the time we can’t even tell if it worked! Did we just blow thousands of dollars on a coupon pack that no one will read? Will anyone call about the ad I put in the newspaper? Are my expensive flyers sitting in someone’s trash can? We’ve all been there. A persuasive salesman comes into our business, paints the rosy picture of phones ringing off the hook and orders coming in faster than we can fill them, and the next thing you know, we’ve just written a large check we can barely afford.