Online small business strategies that can make a difference

Small businesses are struggling especially in these hard economical days. In order to stand out and attract more business small businesses need to be creative in their marketing efforts and in improving their efficiency and reducing their cost.

The credit crunch and the economical crisis call for companies to be creative and original in order to be able to ride this turndown and survive into better days. Companies should focus their efforts in two venues. One is preserving cash by improving efficiency and reducing cost. The other is by attracting new customers and increasing or at least maintaining their revenue stream.

The Internet provides a good platform for small businesses to utilize during the economic turndown. The Internet is the perfect venue for high efficiency and cost reduction. The Internet can also be a very useful tool when trying to attract new customers. Operating costs can be lowered by using automation and utilizing many of the free online services. For example lets look at a small business that needs to maintain email connectivity.

One way is to host its own Exchange or other email server. While this option might provide some higher security and flexibility it is also much more expensive that other alternatives. The server and hosting cost together with some IT services needed to maintain the mail server and some other services needed in order to back it up can add up to a significant expense. Instead of hosting its own email server a business can use one of many Software as a Service options. Using this model the business pays a small monthly fee for each mailbox it uses. Another even cheaper option is to use one of the free email services like Hotmail Yahoo or Gmail. If you want an email at your own domain you can pay a very small fee while still using a free service.

While email is just one example there are many other options for online cost savings. But while saving expenses can help a company maintain its cash reserves attracting new customer and maintaining current customer is crucial to maintaining or even increasing the company revenue stream. The Internet is an efficient promotional and marketing tool. For example acquiring new customers can be done in a cost effective and easy while by using one of the many online advertisement services such as Google Adwords. A company can set the customer acquisition cost that is still profitable and try to win keywords that best convert to paying customer at that cost.

The Internet is also a good and low cost tool for keeping in touch and maintaining current customers. Churn prevention is important as many consumers have less money to spend and are less active in looking for products to buy. Maintaining a good customer relationship management can also be done practically free using online tools. Keeping updated information about the company customers such as their address telephone number and email address is crucial to the company success. For example by sending a weekly or monthly newsletter to your customers you can keep their awareness about the company offerings and provide them with discounts and other incentives to keep using the company services or buying its products.