As business owners and/or marketers, we’re all under pressure to cut costs. Unfortunately, many business owners get so intent on reducing costs, they lose sight of what it’s going to do to the business. It’s hard to grow - or even survive - if you don’t have any customers.

Reducing marketing costs without screwing up your ability to grow is easier than you might think.

Here are five ways to do that.

1. Eliminate waste

Over the years I’ve looked at hundreds of marketing programs, and I can tell you honestly that nearly all of them have some kind of hole that either drains money directly or allows leads to be lost.

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.

Edward Lear must have had some precognition about what was in store for us all with the development of the internet when he wrote this nonsensical poem.

Many people do feel at sea after they launch their website and attempt to navigate the sometimes confusing channels of the internet. They wonder why their website doesn’t get more traffíc and why their inbox is not filling up with emails from people clamoring to buy their products or services.

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Are you satisfied with the conversion rate on your landing page?

I hope the answer to that question - no matter what your conversion rate - is an emphatic “No!” Because no matter what your conversion rate is, there’s always the chance that it can be better.

You’ll never know how much money you’re leaving on the table until you start measuring, optimizing and testing. If you’re a newbie to website testing, there are two different schools of thought as to how you should get started.

How much time does it take your website to deliver your marketing message? Assuming the site traffic you generate is the least bit interested in what you have to say, how much of what you’re saying do they remember, or more to the point, how much do they need to remember?

Have you ever thought about, or even considered, how much face-time your website needs to be effective? It is probably the last thing many business website operators ever think about, let alone do anything about.

The market for blogs has exploded. Many companies do not want to invest the time in developing a blog in their respective niche, which has given rise to a whole new cottage industry, blog flipping.

Blog flipping is done in a few different ways. Some flippers buy an existing blog that has potential, but is not currently producing. They take that blog and build the traffic and sales up to a level productive enough to reap a profit from their investment, and then sell it.

Or, more common in today’s blog flipping market, is to research a specific niche, develop a domain / blog, and then sell it.

As the population with internet access explodes, and more and more people are using search engines to find what they need, the usage of local search also continues to rise. For any sites servicing a local or specific geographic audience, submission to local search based engines is becoming more and more important.

What is it?
In a nutshell local search involves the use of specialized search engines specifically created to focus on a selected geographic region to find local businesses and websites focused on your area.

Small business owners may not have the resources to invest heavily in their web presence and finding solutions to problems can be like finding a needle in a haystack. You know something’s wrong but don’t have the faintest idea how to fix it. Is it a technical issue? Are your ads not performing well? Don’t know what kind of traffic you’re getting? Website problems can fall into a myriad of categories. So if you think your website sucks, a) it probably does, and b) you should read on.

1. You Aren’t Getting Traffic

Cars need tune ups and airplanes go into the hanger to get optimized for the next flight. If you are a web owner that has the “upload it and leave it” mentality, consider adding a weekly or monthly tune up to your website. Ten to Fifteen minutes here and there can only do one thing–make you more successful.

1. Start small with the meta information.

a. Examine your Title meta tag on each page. Do they describe the page contents? Do they contain the right keywords to drive traffic to that page? Is at least one part of the Title geo-specific? Example, “Attorney, Los Angeles, CA” and not just “Attorney” or “Lawyer” or “My Law Firm.”

So much SEO.

You might think, from all the buzz about search engine optimization - SEO - that it offers a cure for all the world’s business ills. Somehow, SEO has been propelled from the backwaters of Internet geekdom into the forefront of modern business marketing. For example, if Google’s own search results are any indication, the interest in SEO yields almost 50% of the interest in general advertising. That level of interest seems way out of proportion to the realities of business advertising.

So Why All The Hubbub?