How do you market your small business? If your answer is “with business cards, phone calls, and a firm handshake”, then you are seriously slacking. In this day and age everything is going online. Businesses have had websites for over a decade but most of them back then were at best just a copy and paste of their business card and company mission statement. That’s an OK place to start from but the internet has changed a lot since then. Everything is instant now and consumers prefer to do everything online now from shopping to dealing with customer support. Further, potential clients usually search Google for the services they are looking for and if you have a weak online presence then the odds are that you won’t even show up on their internet radar and risk losing that potential new revenue stream.

There is an upside, though, as a research report by Borrell & Associates found that 46 percent of small and medium size businesses in the U.S. have no online presence. That means you have a great opportunity to possibly give your small business a big edge over the competition who may also be currently lacking in this arena. This may not seem like that big of a deal to you but little details like how high you show up in Google search results to the number of other people’s social media profiles you appear in can be what makes or breaks a consumer choosing your firm over another. Clearly then you want your small business to have an online presence but how should you go about creating one. Hiring a social media “expert” can be costly but luckily there are some cheaper do-it-yourself alternatives online. Two noteworthy examples are the online presence building “mega markets” like Business Center 3.0 and Alterian which act as a one-stop-shop for all your internet marketing needs. Smallbiz Technology continues, “Businesss Center 3.0 provides a set of tools for small business to grow and build their online business. Here you can easily build, market and monetize your website, all by yourself, without being forced to spend a lot of money of various SEO experts, social media managers, web developers etc.! You’ll also be able to monitor and manage social media marketing and learn what people are saying about you or your business on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, LinkedIn or Foursquare. If you like, you can also set up an e-commerce store and sells your goods online.

Alterian is another company that offers an integrated marketing platform, and offers several tools for monitoring your online activities. Web content management, email marketing management, social media marketing or engagement management and analytics – Alterian has the tools for the job, you just have to pick out what you need. “Being able to integrate ones marketing (and other business components) is important. Having customer information in various database is a recipe for disaster, especially the more you grow.”, says Ramon Ray, editor of Smallbiztechnology.com. “ Having said that it’s important to consider that if you need a GREAT web site, maybe the company who builds web sites, sells security solutions and makes mango juice is not the company for you...””