The way in which small businesses market their products and services has evolved significantly over the past couple of years. With the rapid growth of social media and on-line marketing, small business owners can use a variety of efficient and inexpensive methods to successfully market their business through these new channels.

Web presence

Historically, I don’t think there was ever a point in time where your on-line presence was such an important part of selling of your business. Your Web site is the digital face of your company; it represents who you are, what you do, and what you’re all about. There are a few key aspects of your on-line presence that you should focus on.

Brand/identity: Did you make your own logo? If so and you don’t come from a graphic design background, maybe it’s time for a revamp? A brand refresh is never a bad thing; it’s an opportunity to redefine your look and feel.

Engage: Focus on engaging your customers by designing a dynamic Web site, not something static and boring in which content never changes. Adding interactive features and functions to your Web site to facilitate customer interaction can be extremely beneficial.

Call to action: Add a call to action on every page. A visitor should be able to contact you or sign up for something from every single section on your Web site. The average time spent on a Web site is not that long, and you want to make it as easy as possible for people to get in touch with you.

Search engine optimization: SEO encompasses Web site structure, content, and coding. There are various best practices that need to be applied to ensure your Web site is indexed efficiently by Google and other search engines. Coupled with your SEO initiatives you should combine this with search engine marketing options such as Google AdWords, which is a cost-effective way of promoting your business. You also want to ensure you measure your on-line marketing initiatives via Google Analytics, which allows you to monitor traffic, how long people are on your site, where they are visiting from, and which keywords they searched for in order to reach your Web site. Analytics allows you to tailor your SEO and SEM strategies to ensure they are as effective as possible.

Social media

If you are not leveraging any means of social media, it’s time your business embraced this powerful method of engaging and interacting with existing and potential customers. The social media space is a vast ocean of opportunity, so I am going to focus on discussing three platforms: Twitter, Facebook, and Digg.

Twitter: The Twitter platform is microblogging at its finest. You are restricted to 140 characters per post which provides enough room for a thought, a comment on a news article, or a short conversation with another Twitter user. Twitter is a powerful B2C and B2B platform which allows you to engage on a different level with your customers. A lot of large organizations run their customer service units on Twitter as it’s a quick and efficient means of providing customer service.

Facebook: Depending upon your business, Facebook might be the least effective social media platform to promote your offering. I think this one comes down to target demographic and the type of service/product you are offering, but generally Facebook is considered a social playground. If Facebook had a simple means of segregating business and customer contacts like LinkedIn, for example, it might merit some consideration, but I do not see a lot of value in investing time and effort into this social media platform from a business perspective. You should definitely consider Facebook, but not rely on it; your ROI will most likely come from other platforms.

Digg: Digg is a platform which allows users to find and share content from anywhere on the Internet. There are no editors; it’s just one big pot of aggregated information covering blog posts, videos, and images. Users then have the ability to “Digg” a post and the more popular it becomes, the closer it gets to landing on the front page. Digg also allows users to post comments and provides an interactive forum for discussion. Digg is the perfect platform for news articles and blog posts and is a simple and easy way to spread the message.

It is important that your business acknowledge the power of the Web and how social media plays into your overall marketing strategy. One must embrace these new marketing channels even though they can be intimidating and unfamiliar. I would suggest defining a digital strategy for your business, starting with your on-line presence and how social media can integrate and provide maximum return on investment for your efforts.

Martin DesRosiers is the director of technical services for Fully Managed, a Vancouver-based technology management services company. You can follow him on Twitter.