Arjo Wiggins is just one of a number of local businesses who have recently announced the loss of over one hundred staff and other large companies are feeling the strain.



Smaller and medium sized business may be growing increasingly anxious, given that these larger companies are struggling. However, the situation for smaller businesses can vary considerably, depending on whether or not a few important strategies are considered and implemented.

One of these proven strategies to help survive a recession is a surprisingly cost effective one - online marketing; so just why is online marketing effective?

Unsurprisingly, increasing numbers of us are choosing to locate businesses, services, and products online. Interestingly, all aspects of internet marketing are measurable. Gone are the days when the closest approximation to measuring the effectiveness of a campaign was to ask, ?So, how did you hear about us??. Online marketing is completely transparent.

What exactly did the visitor type into the search engine to find you? Also, what search engine led them to your site? How long did they actually spend reading through your information and what actions subsequently occurred ? The beauty of internet marketing is that these questions (and hundreds more, actually) are all answered. You can use this data to improve your online profile and more importantly ? your bottom line.

So where do you start? There's no right answer because every business is different. However, for small and medium sized businesses who rely entirely on support from local residents; one of the most important (and not to mention cost effective) ways of maximising their exposure and protecting their position is to subscribe to a website catering for the local residential and business communities. This also means that the community website saves you the time, work and cost involved in ensuring that website visitors can locate your web profile easily through relevant key word searches - for example, ?Dartford restaurants?, or ?Cars for sale in Dartford? etc. The local community website will constantly be looking at ways of improving and increasing the number of relevant search terms for which they are located on the first page of major search engines.

A very good way to locate such a site is to simply enter the search term, ?Dartford directory?, or ?Dartford guide?. Any site appearing top (or thereabouts) of a major search engine, such as Google, will invariably also have a strong presence for the most popular searches including ?Dartford?.

For businesses used to paying for often overpriced print ads, the costs of online marketing will be very refreshing. For example, the cost of a monthly or even weekly ad with a local paper could well be similar to a whole year online. Furthermore, you can rest assured that every visitor to the site has chosen to find it through a specific search ? at their convenience.