The Best Marketing May Be the Cheapest Marketing

by Tiffany Simms

Thanks to the constant evolution of the internet and how people interact with it, marketing for small businesses may be getting cheaper. According to Scott Davis, author of an Advertising Age article, “Don’t Be Afraid to Plunge into Emerging Media,” on average consumers spent 23% percent of their time consuming media online in 2007, which means this is where they should be targeted for advertising exposure.

The explosion of Web 2.0 has granted small businesses the opportunity to reach customers via social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin, which costs significantly less than say, through an advertisement in their local newspaper (a full-page ad in the LA Times can run $70,000 compared to $1,000 in a small town’s newspaper). “[T]he use of low-cost web-based marketing tools is playing a strategic role in helping businesses succeed,” stated Laurie McCabe with Hurwitz & Associates in a recent article from eMarketer.com, “Marketing Spending Pays Off for Small Biz.” Hurwitz’s 2009 small business marketing survey revealed two key findings:

1. Small businesses are shifting to cheaper, digital-based marketing like social media, e-newsletters, and search engines instead of traditional channels
2. 66% of small businesses expect a revenue jump this year and had increased, or planned to increase their marketing spending, versus those that expect a decline or no change

With low-cost social media and search engine optimization (SEO) marketing solutions now available, the exposure to customer leads isn’t far behind.