Marketing Your Small Business With 5 Low Cost Techniques

It is quite easy to spend thousands of dollars advertising your business. But you can market your business without spending a fortune.

In marketing, expensive is not always best. A good example is advertising in the Yellow Pages. It is very expensive, and for listings that may be no more valuable than a door stop. What happens if your business moves, changes phone numbers or adds services? That listing is locked in for a year!

So what do you do?

Intelligent small business marketers are using the internet. An online business presence is absolutely essential to compete today. Why? Because more and more of your potential customers now search online for a product or service. And they search with a city name, like "Sacramento Plumber" or "Florist Elk Grove". These searches are a golden opportunity for a small business owner.

These tips assume you have an optimized website. Your best bet is a WordPress Blog. They are fairly easy to set up and Google loves them.
5 Proven Online Marketing Techniques for Small Businesses:

1. Local Directories: Set up or claim your listing in Google Place, Yahoo Local, Yelp etc. List your products and services then optimize with photos and videos. Encourage your clients to leave good reviews on these sites.

2. Social Networking: Sign up with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter. Get your name and brand out there.

3. Write Articles: Writing articles about your field of expertise is a great way to get traffic and links back to your site. Establish your self as an expert. Submit to services like EzineArticles, GoArticles etc.

4. Social Bookmarking: These sites let you "share" your website and articles with the world. Check out sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Mixx and Del.icio.us. These will also send traffic and links to your business site. SocialMarker.com is a good free resource.

5. Press Releases: If your business has done something of note, tell the world. There are both free and paid press release sites. PRLog.org is free and generally ranks well.

This just an overview of what you can do to market your business without spending a fortune. You can implement most of these yourself, or hire an expert so you can focus on what you do best, running your business.