Low
Budget Online Marketing for Small
Businesses
The pressure is on those small local
business owners who have been holding out, hoping against hope
that the Internet would go away. It's become fairly obvious
that that's not going to happen.
As a matter of fact, the Kelsey Group says that "70% of U.S.
households now use the Internet as an information source when
shopping locally for products and services."
It's become obvious that small business owners who don't have
an Internet presence are at a serious disadvantage, and are
losing more ground every day to their competitors.
But where to start? Many small business owners want to get
online but the idea of it becomes overwhelming. One of the
things many people are concerned about is the cost. Having a
professional website created can be expensive, as can the
online marketing needed to promote the site. Fortunately with a
little work, there are some great low budget online marketing
solutions for small businesses.
First, don't immediately buy web space or register your
domain name with the first site that pops up in Google. Web
space can be pricey or fairly cheap; it all depends on what
company you go with. There are some sites that offer free
hosting, but those sites usually force you to include banners
or pop-up ads on your site. If you want to be taken seriously,
you definitely do not want to host your business on a free
hosting site.
There are places on the web that offer a good amount of storage
for less than $100/yr, which is not bad. You can also find
sites that will register your domain name for less than
$10/year, such as the popular GoDaddy.com.
Once you have your website set up, how do you get people to
visit? One of the best ways is to take advantage of social
networking sites like Squidoo.com and MySpace.com. MySpace.com
is a huge site designed to let people keep in touch with
others. However a lot of businesses set up MySpace profiles and
send out "friend" invitations to clients and prospects. Retail
store owners, service providers, authors, bands, magazines and
even tourism companies do MySpace marketing. Same thing with
Squidoo. This form of marketing is becoming even more powerful
than reciprocal linking.
Don't forget message boards, chat rooms and link exchanges
either. They are great ways to get your word out. When you
first began your low budget online marketing campaign, you'll
probably spend anywhere from 5 to 10 hours a week promoting
your site, or you can train an employee, intern or your
resident teenager to do it.
The simplest way of marketing your small business is to include
your website address in your signature in emails and posts to
message boards, even if they aren't related to your business.
While this doesn't market directly to your targeted audience,
it does make people aware of your website. Who knows, maybe
they'll know someone who needs your services.
It's very easy to do low budget online marketing for small
business because so many things on the Internet are free --
message boards, networking sites like Squidoo and MySpace, and
of course, email. The main thing it will cost is time, but even
that can be "bought" at budget prices on sites such as
rentacoder.com and getafreelancer.com. So there's no reason for
even the busiest small business owner not to get their business
online, even if they're on a tight budget.
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