Thanks to a “retweet” from someone I follow on Twitter (@ranui_organics) I came across this YouTube video about the “Social Media Revolution”. Watch it now if you still just don’t get social media or think it’s just for the younger generation – wrong!  It’s definitely for business too, start using it today to discover all it’s potential.

During a recession individuals and businesses cut back in spending borne out of uncertainty and necessity. As a business you still however need to attract new and retain existing customers. This means you need to become more clever and careful about how you spend the money you do have to market yourself.

Here are a few ideas to help with what you can focus on for your online marketing during a recession with cost effective strategies:

• Learn how to manage your own website so you don’t have to keep paying your web designer to do it. This means having a Content Management System that allows you to easily update text, images, add new pages and so on without knowing html code. The added benefit is that you can easily keep your website up to date and fresh.
• Make the most of all the free online marketing tools out there such as google maps, social networking, youtube videos and photo sharing.
• List on free business website directories like Made From New Zealand and websites related to your industry (see more about this here).
• Make comments on relevant and popular blogs about your area of expertise and even start up your own blog page that can be part of your website.
• Maintain relationships with your customers through regular email marketing initiatives and social media networking to keep them interested and hear their feedback…all for very low cost. These should also work in with content on your website to drive traffic to it.
• Make online “pay per click” advertising work for you and to suit your own budget using Google Adwords.

If you haven’t yet formed a strategy about online marketing for your business then the time to do it is now.

Twitter is a great equaliser when it comes to whether you are a small, medium or large business. Meaning, you no longer need a huge marketing budget to make this form of marketing communication work effectively for your business.

Mostly, Twitter just takes an investment in time. When getting started on Twitter, take to time to:

• see how twitter works first and what people tweet about, so just register and observe for a while.
• work out what your twitter strategy is. what is your objective and who do you want to target?
• follow people or organisations that you want to target and tweet about things that interest them so they will follow you back.
• it’s not about being a sales person, it more about communication and relationships.
• check out the Twitter “101″ Getting Started pages to help with learning the ropes, the lingo and twitter etiquette! Or view the “Mashable Twitter Guide Book” presentation (Adobe Reader 9 required).

By putting in the effort to understand and use Twitter for your business profile you will be rewarded with an excellent marketing tool that can be used effectively in conjunction with your website, blog and other social media pages.

[business:Adept Marketing]

Time and time again businesses get emailed with some sort of offer to list on a website to promote their themselves with promises of better search engine rankings and increased website traffic.

My mantra when it comes to this decision is to only pay upfront for a listing which meets the following criteria:

• It is a well known and quality website relevant to your industry or target market.
• It provides a link back to your website.
• It can provide you with it’s monthly web statistics (unique browser visits) to measure it’s effectiveness.
• It ranks highly in search engine results for your business categories.
• It provides good value for money i.e. the upfront cost is not over the top and realistic for the profile it has and the content it allows you to add.

Know Your Stats!

For any listings you already pay for make sure you can track the traffic sources for your website through tools like Google Analytics, that way when it comes to decide whether to renew any listing you can find out how much traffic you’ve received and work out stats like the cost per click.

There’s a lot of value in checking and knowing your web statistics and traffic sources regularly. Free listings are the way to go for the bulk of your online listings, but there will be a selection of sites that are worth the money if they can give you quality website traffic.

[business:Adept Marketing]