• This must be a great article opportunity for the local and national press. A good news story?? The Government actually giving money to support businesses?? You’re the only one in Nottingham to run this scheme?? Talk to the papers, send them a really juicy one-paragraph article pitch with some amazing pictures and then circulate the completed article to your database – it’ll improve your credibility no end.

• Take some time to create a full profile of your very best (or ideal) customer. What age are they? Where do they shop? What do they do for fun? What papers do they read? The better the picture in your own mind of who you are trying to attract, the more you can focus on marketing aimed directly at them. This could actually save you money in better, more targeted marketing.

• Set aside an uninterrupted 60 minutes a day to concentrate on marketing and nothing else. Get as much help as you can from seminars, workshops and books and make a plan. Measure your success and whatever works, do more of it.

• Ask one of your new Own Art customers if they’ll mind being a case study. Their story will appeal to people and make the offer real.

• How about a label by some of your more eye-catching pieces, with “yours interest free for just £…. /month”?

Networking is a fantastic way of building a support structure of like-minded people, as well as a great source of suppliers, an unpaid sales force and sometimes even new business. There are plenty of groups and informal get-togethers where you don’t have to pay membership fees or commit to so many meetings per month.

Maybe you’re doing some of these already, but there’s always room for more and I’m afraid things rarely happen as quickly as we’d like them to. But they will happen and you will be doing people a huge favour by letting them know you exist.