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By dawggeek, January 16, 2010 11:29 am

It must be mind numbing for small business people trying to figure out how to advertise online with all the options out there nowadays. Google adwords, facebook ads, fan pages, twitter, even local newspapers using pay per click / impression ads. Without going into great detail in this post I’ll post my general philosophy for a small business online strategy. I am talking about businesses with 1-10 employees not 100 people operations.

To get noticed online you have to put your name out there. First have a website for people to go to so they can find out what they need to know about you. To get people over to your site you need to combine online ads & offline ads. People still use paper newspapers & phone books for now, so use ads there until paper is no longer relevant enough to do so. That time is coming. Paper news & paper yellow pages will die it is just a matter of time. That is not a wish of mine it is just a fact.

Online you can use a combination of ads and free promotions. Create a Facebook fan page for your business. Invite your friends to join. Post relevant or just entertaining items on your fanpage. That keeps your business at the top of the minds of your Facebook “friends”. The more friends you have the more your promotions get seen. The more friends your friends have the more chances to connect to even more people. Don’t put up blatant ads everyday to annoy people on Facebook. Your friends will not tolerate it. But be helpful or entertaining and you have met your goal. Look at all the games like Farmville that Facebookers play. You can take that approach. For example just post a joke of the day and people will appreciate it. You don’t have to be boring to connect to potential customers.

Online ads like adwords or Facebook ads cost you money but they can be controlled and monitored. If the ad is not getting clicked on then just stop the ad. If you pay per click and there are not many clicks well you are not paying much for a badly placed ad. So improve the ad so it does get clicks. We all will pay for ads that work. With offline ads you can’t tell how many website hits you are getting from the ad. Online ads are much easier to look at and understand what needs to be changed and what is working already.

Ok I did go into more detail than I planned:) . The main point is to get your website up and create ads or free promotions to get website traffic. Keep offline ads going for now that lead to your website also. Any size business can do this affordably  Many small business owners just get frustrated because it is hard to understand all the options online.

If you need help just contact me or do your research online.