A lot of small business people that I speak with are very curious about online marketing, but don’t understand how it can directly increase their business. Many of them are seeing less return from their advertisements in traditional media like The Yellow Pages, newspapers and direct mailing campaigns, and are looking to explore new ways of expanding their market share. When the advantages of online marketing are laid out, it is easy to see how it is oftentimes a more cost-effective marketing solution for small businesses.

These are some of the many advantages that online marketing offers over traditional media outlets:

1. Reduced Cost

The starting cost of online marketing is only a fraction of the thousands of dollars that Yellow Pages, television and radio ads cost. For example, you can get a free listing on Google Local that will be just as effective as a costly online Yellow Pages ad. In addition, while traditional ads may only run for a short time, a search engine optimization campaign can deliver long-term results. You can also save money with online Pay-Per-Click advertising where it is easy to experiment with small ad volumes until you perfect your strategy and then expand your marketing budget when you are assured of a positive sales return.

2. Everything Is Measurable

When you place an ad in the newspaper or a magazine, it can be difficult to assess the direct sales impact for your business. With online marketing, everything can be tracked and illustrated in detailed graphs that illustrate traffic growth, leads and sales conversions from your specific search marketing campaigns. Using a free traffic analysis tool like Google Analytics, it is easy to calculate your return on investment (ROI) so you can appreciate the excellent value generated from your online marketing budget.

3. Brand Engagement

In the crowded market, you need to establish and maintain positive brand awareness and client loyalty. Apart from word-of-mouth and leveraging your personal relationships with your established clients, a website is the most important marketing tool a business can have. A regularly updated website with well-written content that maintains people’s interest is essential to showing people exactly how your business is distinctive – and how you offer the best value to your clients.

4. Demographic Targeting

The degree to which an online marketing campaign can target and measure the response from specific demographics and regions is often astonishing to business owners who normally use traditional media. New demographic prediction and online advertising platforms allow you to specifically target the specific consumer demographics most likely to buy your products. In particular, if you want to target young people between the ages of 16-30, you’ll need an online marketing strategy to reach them where they spend the bulk of their time: On the Internet and on social media sites.

5. Real-Time Results

With online marketing you don’t have to wait weeks to see a significant boost in your business. With a paid search marketing campaign you can experience real-time results that enable you to fine-tune your marketing message to achieve your desired effect. If your marketing strategy isn’t working effectively, real-time monitoring tools allow you to easily pin-point exactly where you are going wrong.

6. Easily Refine Your Strategy

Using online marketing analytics and tracking tools you can test conversion rates at a fraction of the cost of a traditional media campaign. Online marketing levels the playing field and allows savvy small businesses to compete in competitive niches that previously would only be open to large corporations and their massive marketing budgets. If your marketing strategy is not bringing in the return on investment (ROI) that you desire, you can work to perfect it without having to launch an expensive new campaign as would be required with most traditional media outlets.

7. Long-Term Exposure

The benefit of an organic search marketing campaign that optimizes a website for specific keywords is that you will achieve a long-term return on your investment. Once your website’s visibility is well-established with search engines, it is easy to do regular low-cost maintenance of your strategy. The early adopters of new online marketing platforms like social media marketing will have a significant head start over their competition.

8. Product Information

Today’s savvy consumers want to compare reviews and opinions of friends, trusted bloggers and industry experts before they make a decision. If you can provide quality, linkable information that is what people are looking for, then the next step of converting users into paying clients can be very easy. With social media networks like Facebook and Twitter re-enforcing the value of positive word-of-mouth exposure, trust is more important than ever in the marketing field.

9. Less Intrusive

Most savvy consumers dislike intrusive traditional marketing methods like direct mailing, print ads and television advertisements. When someone buys a newspaper or magazine, they want to read interesting articles not be bombarded with irrelevant ads. While mediums like television can still be useful for maintaining awareness of large corporate brands, it is not an effective medium for most small and medium-size businesses. With online marketing, you can target consumers precisely when they are searching for products and services that your business can provide.

10. Holds Their Attention

When people read the newspaper or a magazine they may scan over the advertisements beside the article but there is no way to engage their attention. With online marketing you can encourage them to take action, visit your website and read about your products and services which results in vastly increased “stickiness” of your marketing message.

The Top 5 URL Link Shorteners:

Bit.ly – This is probably the hottest link shortener at the moment. It shortens your URLs, has a nice sidebar for sharing on Twitter and it also tracks each click on your shortened URL if you’re interested in social media analytics. It fully supports 301 Redirects so it is SEO friendly.

TinyURL – This is one of the original link shortening services. It doesn’t have any tracking features like bit.ly, but it supports 301 redirects, has a unique toolbar that integrates in your browser and allows you to quickly shorten URLs. One advantage it does have is custom URL aliases, which allow you to give a custom name to your shortened link.

Su.pr – This is a new link shortening services from massive social media network StumbleUpon. It offers many great features including post scheduling on Facebook/Twitter, extensive statistics on the clicks you receive and what makes it unique, it promotes your website by automatically stumbling your page with each click on the shortened URL. This can be a huge promotional tool, since StumbleUpon’s community of 8 million members is legendary for providing massive influxes of traffic form the service. Initially, there was some controversy with this service because it used SEO unfriendly 302 Redirects, but they have since changed to 301 Redirects so Stumble away!

Tr.im – This service offers very short URLs along with detailed statistics and integration with Twitter clients. It also offers 301 Redirects so it is 100% search engine friendly. If you want very short and slick looking URLs then Tr.im is an excellent option.

Cli.gs – This is one of the fastest growing link shortening services because it offers one of the best combination of features. It has real-time analytics, geo-targeted destination URLs and a number of great tools to integrate it with Gmail, Wordpress, Twitterfeed and Firefox.