can anyone offer any marketing strategies for a home-based business service?

Well word of mouth really means a lot. If you have a satisfied customer that passes on that info to someone else then that is great. There are many online classified sites that you can post on for free. I have done it. Just type in your city name and classifieds and you'll probably hit a few. I also found leaving business cards pinned to bulletin boards at a bank or grocery store successful. Our bank for instance had a bulletin board and if you were waiting to use the bank machine many people who read over this board. Pass out flyers. This you could do yourself or pay a kid. Wouldn't cost too much. I guess without knowing what your business is it makes the question more difficult to answer.