Spinfield: Web marketing trends today, tomorrow, and beyond…

I was recently asked, “What kind of on-line marketing can you do with a very small budget?”

While sometimes I wish that all of our clients were Fortune 100 companies with multi-million dollar on-line marketing budgets, some of our clients are small-to-medium size businesses where on-line marketing is new to them. They do not have the budgets, time or resources to devote a lot of attention to running a successful campaign, yet they want big returns on the things they do.

I came across this very situation in March and was able to successfully drive an online marketing strategy with very little budgeted dollars. Here are some tips on ways to run a low-budget online marketing campaign.

• Pay-Per-Click (PPC) - A targeted PPC campaign with highly relevant long-tail keywords can have a significant impact on your target reach
• Grass Roots - Spend some time to contact bloggers or media members who would like to write an article or do a report on your event. It only takes a few people to get a conversation going around the net
• Find an advertising partner with built up ad inventory - Finding a company who builds up advertising inventory with many sites and then re-sells that inventory to advertisers is a good way to get banner ads or text links on multiple site inexpensively. Sites like AdBrite can help you achieve your goals without the cost of going directly through major sites like MySpace or Yahoo
• Post on friends “Walls” - If your company has profiles setup in MySpace, Facebook or other social networks and has actively been building up a “friends” list, then use that to your advantage. Post a message to all your friends about your event. Send invites out to everyone on your list asking them to visit your site or to pre-register. This can have a big impact on your numbers, especially if you have a lot of friends.
• E-mail - E-mail marketing to existing customers, sales reps, local stores, etc. with a tool like Pulsar can have a big impact on your event. This will enable people who already have an interest in your company, brand or products to come back to your site. Just make sure they have opted-in to receive your communications!

So those are just a few things you can do to make your on-line ventures a success with a small budget. Figure out who your target audience is then give some of these a try. You’ll be surprised at the end result.

To learn more read Jim fisher’s blog post on Marketing Warfare: The Ten Best Ways to Market Your Business Online.

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