Marketing has been around a long time. Without it, most businesses would never have survived. Though I’ve met some business owners in some towns who say they’ve never advertised. I guess their service is so good their customers just talk about them. That’s the best kind of advertising there is - and you don’t have to pay for it.

But most of it, even if our service is darn good, still have to pay for some form of marketing.

Traditional marketing works. So why abandon it, right? Internet marketing works. So we should use it, right? Well, it depends on who you talk to.

The key to any kind of marketing, of course, is effectiveness. The bottom line: Will it increase your ROI? Traditional modes of marketing like the yellow pages are being replaced rather quickly by online versions of the same product, except that the online version is much more flexible and versatile and has the power to increase ROIs tremendously more by reaching a broader base of people interested in your core product or service. Other modes of Internet marketing are doing the same thing. But this is no reason to assume that small business owners should abandon traditional marketing streams.

Sure, you can give up on some of those methods. If you find that your reach is declining through certain traditional marketing methods that you used to see gains on then that could be a sign that it’s time to try something different. But there are still traditional marketing practices that work. That’s why I recommend something I call integrated marketing.

Integrated marketing is taking the best of traditional marketing and coupling it with the best strategies from Internet marketing to tailor a marketing strategy that works for your business. We will examine your business model to see what you have done in the past and to evaluate your current marketing blueprint. If something is working for you then we won’t change it. But if it isn’t then we can find something to replace it, something that will increase your ROI.

Today is the day to look at changes to your marketing plan, changes that could propel you into the 21st century and reach more customers with fewer dollars. Find out how now.

I understand your small business dilemma. You only have so much budget for marketing each month. You can’t spend it all online.

That’s true. And I wouldn’t suggest that most small businesses with a local presence spend their entire advertising budget online, but you should be spending some of it online. The question is, How much?

First, let’s discuss how much you should allocate to marketing in general. You should earmark 15%-20% of your revenue each month to marketing. In other words, if your company brought in $10,000 last month then allocate somewhere around $1,500-$2,000 next month to your marketing or advertising initiatives - online and off line.

That’s just a figure. Spend more or less depending on your individual circumstances. Do you have a lot of overhead? You might have to spend less. Is most of your profit free and clear? Spend a little more. But how much should you spend online?

If you are new to online marketing then you’ll have to do some testing. Don’t just jump in and start spending money wildly. Take some time to understand the principles before you get too deep into it. But you should be doing some online marketing. I would recommend that you start with 10% of your total marketing budget to online marketing and test a few things to see what works best for you. Then you can slowly increase your online marketing budget to 50% of your total marketing budget, cutting out those off line marketing efforts that aren’t working as well as they used to.

If your total marketing budget is $2,000 per month then start with $200 per month as an online budget. Let’s say you decide to build a website and SEO it for best performance in the search engines. After that you’ll need to do some other things to market your business. Examine your options and see which online marketing methods might suit your business goals and needs. As your online presence grows, you can increase your budget and cut off the off line marketing measures that are making you less in terms of ROI. Do this until you reach 50% of your total marketing budget being spent on your online marketing. Keep only those offline marketing efforts that are making you money and cut the rest.