Internet marketing for small business owners is not as hard as it seems. I know that it seems daunting when you are first looking at it. I know it was for me when I was first getting started however, it is surprisingly easy and there are a number of ways to do internet marketing for small business that does absolutely nothing to increase your company's overhead because it is completely and totally free.

The first step to internet marketing for small business is a website. Having a presence on the internet is essential. Online yellow pages are also something to consider and I have found it to be one of the best submissions I have ever done for my business. Websites need to be targeted to the audience you are trying to market too. Therefore, the first step to building one that is going to work effectively is to find out the audience you want to target and the demographics of that audience.

Once I built the website and had it submitted to search engines, my next step was link sharing. Link sharing is basically, where you ask a site that has related material or services, sometimes even complementary like golf accessories would ask to share links with a site that sold golf clubs, if they would place your link on their site in exchange for you placing theirs on yours. Normally as long as the information on your site is related, they will agree. It is free advertising and most companies have already made code so all you have to do is paste it onto your website.

Social networking, this is a great way to get in some free marketing. I started with my group of friends on sites like Myspace, face book, and just let them know about what I had to offer. I got a decent response and still have people show up that are from these sites that have heard from their friends about my website. No internet marketing for small business strategy is complete without email marketing.

Email marketing is something that is completely free and easy to set up. I created a simple set of emails. Based on the opt in form that customers fill out when they visit the site. This does two things. It tells me about the customer, personal information such as their name that I can then use in the emails so that they are personalized. It also tells me their location. After all, it does not do much good to send American holiday emails to European customers. Finally and most importantly, I have their permission to send emails to them. This prevents any issues with spam.

Another way to bring in customers is promotional items these work wonderfully and do not cost anything to give. Simply use your current opt-in list and offer a promotional item or discount to them if a friend signs up to receive information from your company, of course, offer something to the friend as well to entice them to come. I have found that this works exceptionally well with both product and service based companies.