With a new Vacaville store and six locations poised to open in the Sacramento area, Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Inc. is revving up competition in the already-crowded Northern California grocery scene.

To sell a house in today’s market, real estate agents can’t simply shove a sign into the lawn, schedule an open house and expect offers to roll in. Competition is fierce. Increasingly, the agents who are successfully selling homes in this marketplace have embraced high-tech marketing, including videos.

Hair rollers went the way of old-time beauty shops, but rollers of a different sort are in vogue at Bella Capelli Salone in downtown Yuba City, where owner Carol Milani sometimes styles hair in her skates.

With megasites Groupon and LivingSocial trumpeting daily deals that lure throngs of customers with up to 70 percent discounts on everything from dinners to skydiving lessons, it’s no surprise local businesses are signing up. After the deal is on, though, does the promise of new customers and more revenue add up?

A Sacramento software startup has launched an iPhone application for runners that picks music to go with a workout and can add customized coaching instructions along with the beat. When users pay to download the coaching data, a donation goes to a nonprofit of the coach’s choice.

While small specialty businesses in the Sacramento area are closing their doors in droves these days, Jon Holloway’s family-operated travel store is still sailing along, albeit in choppier waters.

Like many independent business owners, Christine Trice has a product she believes in and plenty of potential customers. Trice, the owner of Sacramento-based Brown Bag Botanicals, also has a limited marketing budget to reach those customers.

Charles Rieger is building a case for going green. As the executive director of the Solano Center for Business Innovation, the umbrella organization for the newly formed Solano Green Business Council, it’s Rieger’s job to plant the seeds for a greener economy.

For Capital Region farmers looking to expand sales overseas, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s recent trade mission to Asia couldn’t have come at a better time. While any governor’s visit would likely attract attention, it helps to have an international film star as a spokesperson.

As consumers fill their lives with reusable shopping bags, organic foods and energy-efficient vehicles, touting the environmental friendliness of goods and services has become an increasingly important marketing strategy for companies worldwide. This, coupled with vague government guidelines for green marketing claims, is causing challenges as competitors, consumers and environmental advocates demand standards and verification of these claims.