Many small business owners are always looking for ways to stretch their advertising dollars.  And depending on your area of industry, this can often prove to be a bit of a challenge.  Luckily, we now live in the age of social media and the Internet, so marketing your business is often much more affordable than those older practices of flyers and newspaper advertisements.

Pay Per Click

 First of all, any business owner, small or large, needs to have a professional website today in order to remain competitive.  But attracting large amounts of traffic to your site is often where we need some help.  Cost Per Click and Pay Per Click marketing is a great way to spend only what you can afford.  This is a method of getting your link “special treatment” with the search engines.  You pay them to highlight your company website at the top of the page. But you only pay if someone clicks on the link!  Cost Per Click can cost only fractions of a penny, depending on your choices of keywords, the times of day that you choose to advertise, and other contributing factors.

Email Marketing Campaigns

 Email marketing is a great way for small businesses to remain in contact with their existing and potentially interested customers.  In the early days of the Internet, many of these strategies proved rather unsuccessful as emails would get lost in the recipients’ spam folders.  But today, there are some very affordable email advertising software and autoresponder programs that can guarantee a 99.9% deliverability rating.  Use your emails to offer discounts and promotional items, or market your business by giving away free tips and advice to keep your clients interested and engaged.

Social Media

 Social media is here to stay.  And best of all, these sites are FREE!  Facebook and Twitter are the most popular, but don’t discount other sites like LinkedIn and Instagram.  LinkedIn is great for developing Business to Business connections, improving your brand name recognition, and building a network of like-minded professionals in your industry.  Instagram is a social media site based around the use of pretty pictures rather than text posts.  This might be the perfect choice of small business advertising if you want to show off some of your past projects.