What’s a good way to market to small business owners?

Many sales people are looking for the best way or a good way to do something. As you know from your sales efforts, different clients respond favorably to different stimuli. So it’s always best to have an arsenal of tactics at your disposal. Where one method will work best with some small businesses and clients, another method will work better with a variety of others.

Here are several ways to get the word out to your prospective markets:

1. Buy ad space in your local newspaper.
2. Buy airtime with your local radio or TV station.
3. Join several networking groups.
4. Volunteer to conduct an onsite brownbag seminar for several target prospects.
5. Speak at local groups and organizations.

Now that these standard methods are listed, here are some methods used today:

1. Invest in a good SEO partner. A good partner will help get your website up to par, identify relevant key words for you business, and get you high placement in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for organic searches. They will also help you in creating pay-per-click campaigns, link building campaigns and email campaigns. If you are a part of a small or medium business, then your company is probably investing in one of the many marketing houses for SEO expertise to generate leads and increase market share. However, if you are a one-man shop or a single sales person with a website and a very limited budget, talk with an SEO consultant to get an idea of what’s needed to make your site pop on the Web.
2. Take advantage of the Linked-In Forums for displaying your expertise in your field. There are consultants online right now, who are landing sizable contracts. They built up a sizable market simply by answering forum questions to the best of their ability. 
3. Take advantage of the resources provided by Vertical Response on conducting an effective email campaign for your market. Conducting a viable campaign is a little more complex than the “email blasts” that were common a few years back. Now you have to take into consideration a number of variables in order to get the biggest return on your time and effort.
4. Use Twitter to create a large targeted market. A couple of years ago, no one quite knew how to use Twitter to assist them in generating sales. However, with the tools available today, quite of few individuals are using Twitter to build a market, drive traffic to their site and sell their products and services online.
5. These are just four of several tactics that are becoming popular in the Web 2.0 era. Remember that these methods will generate leads for you and increase your exposure. Remember, however, that once you have their attention, you still have to use your selling skills to move them through your sales cycle and complete the sale.