Don't Get Lost in the Hype - Turn to Thrifty Marketing

With no intentions of belittling a legitimate economic situation, let’s not lose sight of all the opportunity that lies before us.  While some industries like real estate and construction have had it pretty tight for the last year or so, a good portion of us have been chugging along with good sales to speak of.  I don’t know about you, but the government or the stock market doesn’t determine my success or failure at what I do.

If you look at statistics for employment rates of small businesses as recently as last month, there has been an increase in job creation.  America is still doing business.  People are still buying things and somebody has to sell it to them.

If anything, this is a good time to out manuever your competition.  While they stand still in a hyped up panic, you can run circles around them.

Web marketing has shown to be an effective and thrifty form of promotion for businesses.  Compared to many of the traditional forms of advertising, a lot of bang can come from a smaller web marketing buck.  How are you capitalizing on your website right now?  Are you utilizing it to its fullest extend?

Here are a few thrifty web marketing ideas to consider:

1. Submit press releases to online press release syndication services such as PRWeb and PRLeap.

Press releases are a simple, effective and often over looked method of promoting your business.  In addition to sending press releases to traditional media outlets, like newspapers and magazines, you can also submit press releases online.  Sites like PRWeb.com, PRNewsWire.com and PRLeap.com all are examples of sites you can submit your press releases to.  These sites syndicate your press release to various online sources where they can get redistributed over and over in various websites across the net.

There is a small fee to get an account setup and submit press releases, which varies depending on the site, but, it can be well worth it due to the visibility you can receive from it.  Search engines tend to pick up on press releases too, so it is another way to increase you rankings for keywords.

2. Start a blog and a syndicate it through services such as Feedburner and Technorati.

If you have a niche, scratch it with a blog!  Blogs are a great way to get your knowledge out for all to see your expertise.  It builds creditability and can pick up traffic from search engines and even searches within the blog service you are using - I get alot of hits on my WordPress blog from users on WordPress's site.  There really is no excuse to not have a blog as there are plenty of free providers for blogs - Google Blogger and WordPress to name but two.  

3. Participate in social networking sites.

You are on Biznik now, so I assume you have this topic covered.  If not already, also look into the other big names in social networking such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and Flickr.

4. Put on a webinar.

Sites like Webex can get you started on webinars - seminars you host without actually having to leave your office, or clean up after as it is all done online.  

5. Optimize your website for relevant keywords that customers are searching on.

If your website can't be found online, it is not going to bring you traffic or ring up any new sales.  Know where you rank in the search engines and shore up your weak areas and track improvements.

6. Try a pay-per-click campaign, such as a Google Adwords, for very direct marketing to your target audience.

Sure, you can spend a boatload of cash here, but you can also work with a smaller budget.

7. Start an enewsletter campaign to your customer base.

While I believe the effectiveness of email is dimensioning, it is still a good way to connect with those users that just are not yet hip to the whole web 2.0 concept and think Twitter is a website for bird watchers.  Just don't let emailings replace good old fashion face to face communication and regular phone calls.

8. Create promotional videos that can be used on sites like YouTube.

Recently hearing that more searches are being conducted on YouTube than Yahoo is really proof positive that video needs to be part of your marketing.  For internet distribution, video really doesn't need to be expensive to create and many sites are avilable for free distribution - YouTube, Vimeo and BlipTV to name a few.

9. Use your website statistics to get a better idea of your market and how to better tap into them or to find and fix trouble areas.

Make sure you check your website statistics regularly to find out what kind of habits your visitors have.  Are they staying longer than 30 seconds or ditching before your home page loads?  Are they still visiting that old orphan page you forgot was still on the server and contains out-dated product information?  Are the majority of your visitors coming from a blog site of a disgruntled former customer that is telling everyone how horrible you are?  Important things to know.

10. Donate online to charity.

Not exactly a marketing tip, but a little good will always yields a positive return down the road.