If you operate a small\medium size business – how do you make your customers aware of the products and services you offer? In conversations with several business owners lately, the answer is often "I don't know." While the number of places to market your products and services has increased, the cost of marketing has also increased.  To make matters worse, none of the traditional or non-traditional methods of reaching customers works as well as it may have worked in the past. 

Let's consider the options – you can say to yourself: "Possible" or "Can't Afford It"

Television
Radio
Newspapers
Trade Shows
Direct Mail
Trade Magazines
Telemarketing
Facebook LinkedIn Presence\Ads
Twitter Marketing
Website\Blog
Non-Traditional Marketing
Word Of Mouth

You might say that the list starts with the most costly forms of advertising, and ends with the least costly, although you could certainly re-order the list. 

As a business operator, you also have to determine which marketing\advertising methods will get results.  There is, of course, no point in spending lots of money on magazine ads if the ads don't produce significant additional revenue.  At the same time, there is no point in spending part of your day working on low cost marketing if THAT marketing also doesn't produce results.

In speaking with business owners lately, I hear the same theme:  "there is nowhere we can afford to advertise that provides an adequate return."  There is no easy solution to this issue – but a few ideas:

1) Try to narrow your target market.  If there are 200 decision makers for the product you sell, you can afford to spend $10 on each one if it means you can be fairly certain of getting your message to those 200.  Perhaps some unusual kind of direct mail.  Do a search on "dimensional marketing."
2) Locate a (non-competing) company that markets to the same targets you market to.  Ask them for advice.  Determine if there might be a way to cooperate in your marketing with them.  If they won't talk to you, analyze their marketing. Use their ideas.
3) Related to #2. Borrow ideas from other companies.  If you see a magazine in the doctor's office and you have no interest in the subject matter of the magazine – don't read it.  Look at the ads in the back and try to learn something from what the advertisers are doing.
4) Consider non-traditional marketing.  What does that mean?  It means things like a second website just for one of your products.  Or participating in a LinkedIn group that deals with your area of expertise. Or having a custom message on hold recording done for your phone system so you are delivering your marketing message directly to callers (who are, after all, the best targets for your marketing).  Look at things like our Time & Temperature products or our weather websites – to deliver a service the public that just happens to include your marketing message. 

Good luck!