The squeeze is on for small businesses: How do I conserve cash, but expand efforts to attract new customers and grow sales at the same time? Fortunately, the two are not mutually exclusive. You can do both. Here are some tips and low-cost tactics you can try to cast your net for new customers, and keep those you have:
1) Try do-it-yourself online PR: One of the many areas the Internet has changed dramatically for small business is public relations. While PR pros have 
much to offer, you can also get results yourself online. Whenever you have legitimate news – a new product or service for example – write a press release that includes contact information for your business and links to your website. Submit through places such as PRWeb.com. A new site called LowCostPressReleases.com will help write, edit and distribute your releases for low fees. 24-7 Press Release, a low-cost, online press release distribution service catering to small business, lets you attach videos or other “rich media” content to your releases as well.
2) Entice with Free Shipping: Offering customers free shipping is a proven way 
to boost sales. To find out how to coax more orders with free shipping, download a free shipping e-book (it’s free, too) at the website FreeShipping.org. The e-book offers nuts and bolts on free shipping, and details of how to implement a free shipping program.
3) Use more email marketing: Email marketing services used by small business are seeing record volume as more biz owners seek effective, low-cost ways to market. One small biz option is VerticalResponse.com, a self-serve email marketing firm that helps you create, manage and analyze your own campaign. Dotster.com, a web services provider, offers several low-cost email marketing solutions for small business. EmailBrain lets you create, manage, send and track newsletters and email campaigns.
4) Participate in pay-per-click: PPC advertising is one of the most flexible, cost-effective ways to market online. Set whatever spending level you want, change it anytime and test different messages to your heart’s content. “Keep changing your headlines, copy and offer until you find the combination that brings in sales,” says MaryEllen Tribby, CEO of business publishing firm Early to Rise. Google AdWords is a great start. For business-to-business, the leader is Business.com. In local search, DexKnows.com just revamped its entire site.
5) Yelp about your biz: At Yelp.com, customers can rant — or rave — about a business they’ve used…maybe YOUR business. “Yelp for Business Owners” offers free tools and features that will help businesses participate in this word-of-mouth action. Get email alerts when your biz is reviewed; respond to reviewers, update your business info, and more.
6) Match up with the big guys: Business Matchmaking is a public/private partnership that sponsors a series of events nationwide where small business 
owners can secure selling opportunities from government agencies and major corporations through face-to-face meetings. The program started a few years ago and has been a big hit; limited spots go quickly.
7) Free service biz ads: Servemehere.com is a new site that lets you advertise services free to thousands of potential clients who can browse your profile and schedule appointments online 24/7. Professionals (lawyers, message therapists, tutors, etc.) can display their appointment schedule or personalized calendars for further client convenience.
8. Use Free Office Live Workspace: Microsoft still considers its Office Live site in “beta,” but millions have signed up for a free online workspace on the site, and are using it to bring people together and share docs with groups. Office Live Small Business is a terrific, affordable place to not only build a professional-looking online presence, but get free or low-cost help marketing it as well.
A great list but I would also add another item to it: consider doing a virtual event it is a great way to stay in front of customers, generate new leads and help close business already in the pipeline. There are simple very inexpensive ways to hold virtual events and there are more robust, feature rich and scalable solutions (like Inxpo, ON24 or Stream57) that are perfect for putting on events with partners that include virtual exhibits, informative conference sessions, product demos as well as networking with attendees. While people are reluctant to travel, they are even more likely to attend an event that they can attend from their desk. Even if you are simply doing a product demo or better yet, offering some educational information, a virtual event will get you more exposure and more leads cost effectively. Visit virtualedge.org to find out more and locate virtual event providers.
Very informative article! Thanks for writing it. As you know, small business owners or new online entrepreneurs sometimes don’t know where to go to publicize their business or how things work online. Thanks again.
>> Ted <<
Great article! I think more people will be trying to understand and utilize the internet in order to cost-effectively market to potential clients during this recession. It can be less expensive than traditional marketing and can help you to achieve even greater results. I just wrote a blog about this too, check it out – Recession Tips: Marketing To Your Potential
Some really useful info here!
Internet marketing is usually started as a means to more income so spending money is not high on some peoples personal agendas!
But you must market if you want people to know you exist – I will be checking out servemehere and the business matchmaking services – hadn’t heard of those before – so Thanks!
Kymmy
Using free and open source software applications is a great way to organize your home office/small office as well as save money on expenses. DealDogs.net has an interesting article entitled “FreeOffice: 10 Great Free Apps For Instant Office Productivity” that reviews ten no-cost applications that work great. This is the article link here which provides descriptions, links and videos about each application, from a word processing office suite to free faxing.
Great post I really enjoyed it and will be coming back shortly and linking back to your site from mine.
Great information about email marketing! Welldone! But email marketing is not as easy as it seems. Most people are under misconception that collecting email IDs and using a bulk email sender can make you successful. But most businesses are not selling one product. They are selling different products for different markets. So they should have different email lists. Email Marketing is difficult in these days. I do not want my comment considered as spam here so will not discuss my blog, but if you visit my blog you will find how I am successfully using different products for my email marketing.
Thank you for all of the great tips and links. You’ve included very useful information.
Howdy there,Terrific blog post dude! i am just Tired of using RSS feeds and do you use twitter?so i can follow you there:D.
PS:Do you considered putting video to your web site to keep the people more entertained?I think it works., Myrna Banaag