If you are looking for some marketing tools for your business, it really depends on how far you want to market your product. If you are a local business, and only looking for local customers, your tools would consist of brochures, local ads in the newspapers, signs and local personal referrals. If you are a business that needs to look for an expanded customer base, there are several online marketing tools that work much better than any local marketing or advertising would. Let’s examine both types.

For local marketing tools, there are several routes you can go. You can go to a print store and get brochures or other paraphernalia printed to pass out to local businesses or friends to let them know about your business. You can put an ad out in the local newspaper or a local magazine. And you can also just do a basic word of mouth referral, using local friends and family. The word of mouth is the only free local marketing tool, and you are at the mercy of depending on people, which may not turn out to much new business. Advertising and printing costs can be expensive and requires more than a couple of brochures or ads to really reach a large area.

If your business needs to appeal a larger base of customers, online marketing is the way to go. There is video marketing, pay per click ads, and social media. Video marketing requires you to make a video ad, much like a TV commercial but you can only see it online. You can post the video on a free video website, like youtube or pay for the video to pop up in an ad on various websites. There is also pay per click ads that is just an ad for your business that pops up on various websites. You have to pay for these ads as well, just like the video ad.

All of these ads can bring a lot of traffic to your website, which will in turn increase your business clientele. The most popular and free online advertising consists of a profile on social media, and there are several websites to choose from for that option. You set up a noticeable profile for your business and get as much traffic to your profile as possible. That traffic from your profile will hopefully lead to traffic to your business website. Sarah is an SEO consultant working for Cube.