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Reaching new customers to ensure that you have enough new business in the pipeline is challenging at the best of times, but in the current economic climate ensuring that business promotion is as cost-effective as possible is paramount.

Small businesses have always been able to rely on their local newspapers and in particular the classifieds as a cheap way of advertising their trade. More savvy business owners will have also engaged their local paper’s reporters to help promote their business through relevant articles and PR activities in their town.

Local radio advertising has also been an effective way of drumming up trade as rates are usually suited to smaller businesses and offer a good rate of return. However, the Internet is rapidly taking over as the medium of choice for many people, so when promoting any business it is vital that you grab a slice of the attention online in order to be successful. That means not just establishing an online presence, but regularly updating any online sales material and also building relationships online within a community. The latter is especially useful if you specialise in a B2B (business to business) environment, as communication with like-minded individuals can benefit both parties.

However, building a dedicated business website can be expensive and the construction is just the start. Once built there is often additional costs involved, both in time and money, in maintaining the site and keeping the content fresh.

Thankfully there are credible alternatives to building your own website and incurring such expenses. There are now many business networking companies that offer web space to smaller enterprises; enabling them to use their applications and set up a web presence in minutes without the need for any specialist technical knowledge.

Currently, there are a number of major business network enterprises that offer free trade space to small businesses with the option to pay for an upgrade, but even the free space can enable a company to set up an effective presence online. Within minutes business owners can have a website up and running containing rich content such as audio, pictures and even videos in addition to text and features such as podcasts and blogs. Features such as these can help make quite an impact and a statement about the quality of a business, whilst also enabling small companies to be creative in their attempt to sell products or services to a whole new market place.

Additionally, for a small monthly fee such a company profile and website can be greatly enhanced. Usually, any restrictions on the number of products that can be uploaded to the site will be removed. The business will also be included in an enhanced online business directory, searchable by location and business type. But, one of the biggest benefits of being part of such a business directory site is the fact that it is trawled by search engines such as Google, thus enabling your business to be found on the web if users enter the relevant keywords.

So, for a fraction of the cost of building and maintaining an online presence you can score plenty of visits by using an already established business directory website.

Bian Salins is the Managing Editor of BT Tradespace - an online community where businesses can advertise and sell products & services and everyone has the opportunity to shop, chat and share their opinion.