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.
