If your small-to-medium enterprise has a small-to-tiny marketing budget, don't despair - online advertising can give you the tools you need to reach a massive number of customers without exceeding your budget. In addition smaller businesses have always benefited from the ability to move more quickly than their larger competitors. The internet provides the perfect platform to exploit this advantage for SME's (Small & Medium sized Enterprises)

Learn why online advertising is so great for marketing on a budget, and how you can put its power to work for you.

Online marketing offers cost effective advertising with enormous reach

One of the reasons why online marketing is so popular to the SME is that there are numerous opportunities to attract a huge number of potential customers with little to no budget outlay. Some examples of free online marketing methods include:

Search engine marketing

In July 2007, UK surfers followed a link from a search engine 29,000 times every minute. This is a gigantic audience, and you can achieve high rankings in the major search engines without spending lots of money.

Corporate blogging

Weblogs give companies a method to reach out to their potential customers, proving their value, building trust, and driving visitors to their websites. Blogs cost little to nothing, and more than three-quarters of companies who have one say that it helps to increase website traffic and popularity.

Email newsletters

A good email marketing campaign delivers your message to thousands of pre-qualified leads, and costs little to send. For this reason, email marketing volume surpassed direct mail for the first time in August of 2007.

Viral Marketing

Online marketing gives companies an easy and cost-effective way to encourage customers to spread the word about great deals and experiences. Using word of mouth to reach new customers is highly effective and incredibly inexpensive. It is the second most effective way to drive people online to find businesses, other than television, and word of mouth recommendations are trusted by between 60% and 90% of shoppers.

Enhanced ability to track return on investment

Another reason why online advertising is great for marketing on a budget is that when you do spend money for ad campaigns, you have an unprecedented ability to track your return on investment. By using visitor tracking on your website, you can see exactly which campaigns are most effective.