In the present world, advertising is shifting towards digital media, and experts say that small business owners should keep up with that trend in spite of prevalence of billboards and newspapers ads. Whatever the product is, marketing the product to target customer is critical. With the limited budget advertising decisions should be taken wisely. According to Eric Schiffer (head of marketing firms' digitalmarketing.com and socialmediamarketing.com) "You can easily throw a lot of money down the drain if you don't think about the right strategy and right platforms". Owners can build a local business profile on either Facebook or Twitter, and they will be presented with buttons to "promote" or "advertise" their page. Using this process will enable the owners to identify and convert customers at far less cost compared to search based advertising. According to Sidney Smith "E-mail is still king, and building out your e-mail list is so important". Services such as ConstantContact, Vertical Response and iContact can be used to manage an e-mail marketing list. Companies uses GPS data to push coupons and deals via text messages to individuals near a store. To know more about usage of social media, e-mails, text messages and loyalty cards for advertising visit: 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/small-business-guide-how-to-invest-your-digital-advertising-dollars/2014/04/20/67f5ad6c-c4a7-11e3-bcec-b71ee10e9bc3_story.html  .

The toughest job for small business owners is to develop a cost effective marketing plan. Unlike large organizations, small business owners have limited resources in their hands. Hence they need to be more careful while developing a marketing plan. Communicating with consumers should be their primary focus while creating a marketing strategy. For more details about marketing strategy tips please visit Chad Brooks (senior writer of BusinessNewsDaily)'s article link: http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6289-making-the-most-of-your-marketing-plan.html

It is important for every business to allocate resource and budget appropriately in each department of the organization. But things get difficult for small or start-up businesses because initially small business runs out of both money and resources. It often happens that management allocate maximum budget for marketing. In an article by David Holland (CEO of branding and marketing firm Data Source), offers three marketing strategies to help small businesses save money. For more details please visit Nicole Fallon’s article link: http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6236-money-saving-marketing-tips.html

A recent report suggested that small businesses are not concentrating on their online presence. Researchers said that 70 percent of small businesses spent less than one hour per week maintaining their online presence. On the other hand only 51% spend time on social media once a month or less. Small business owners are also not concentrating on their website to improve sale. This article tells us details about the different ways small business owners can give their online presence a boost in order to increase visibility, generate interest and capture any buzz. Read more at: http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6419-bolstering-small-business-online-presence.html

Social media is one of the best tools in terms of lead generation for small-business owners. The role of a company's presence on social media has started to include customer service, building brand awareness, and lead generation. High-quality content marketing is another lead-generation tactic for small business owners to generate lead and engage consumers. Read more about this topic at: http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6399-social-media-lead-generation.html

In a recent research it is found that most small businesses are now spending their budget in retaining existing customer rather than acquiring new one. The research also found that 61% small businesses generate 51% of their annual sale from repeat customer. To read more about this aspect, please visit Ayaz Nanji's article link as given below:http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2014/24869/small-businesses-focused-on-existing-customers-in-2014