There was a time that for many small businesses, it was enough to take out an ad in the yellow pages and the marketing for the year was done. That was a 30 minute process and the task was over for the year.

Now, the yellow pages are not working any longer and you are being bombarded with internet strategies that are supposedly replacing the old yellow book. It takes you time - and money - to evaluate all of these strategies.

Let's break these strategies down and see if we can't simplify them for you.

1. Web Site

You absolutely, at a minimum, want to have a website these days. It can be a static 5 page website that has a home page, about us, services, contact us, and maps page. Or, it can be a full blown ecommerce site where people can purchase your entire catalog of products. You can spend a couple of hundred dollars getting a web page designed and running or you could spend thousands of dollars for a complex one.

Find a designer who will work within your time frame and your budget. Be prepared to pay monthly hosting fees on top of the one time design fee. You should also get your domain name and email accounts with your web account so inquire if there are extra charges for these things.

2. Search Engine Optimization

Without Search Engine Optimization, your website is just a billboard in the desert. People might find it from your offline print materials, but they won't find you online. SEO gets you ranked high in Google, Yahoo, and Bing. There are a variety of on-page and off page factors which go into SEO, but your SEO provider will look at the content on your page and the backlinks to your page and make suggestions as to how to improve both.

Search Engine Optimization can cost a one time fee of less than $500 or an ongoing monthly fee of $1500 or more. It depends on the lengths to which the SEO provider is going to go to optimize the site. Generally speaking, though, monthly packages provide longer lasting results.

3. Pay Per Click Campaigns

Google Adwords and the other PPC providers allow you to target your visitors. You pay just for the visitors who come to your site. Their ads pop up when the visitor specifies a keyword or phrase in the search box.

These campaigns are extremely complicated to run and you can lose your shirt running them yourself if you do not do your homework first. If you are not prepared to spend a significant amount of time learning the ins and outs, you would be best served hiring a company to manage your PPC account for you.

4. Social Media

Do you tweet? Does your company have a Facebook fan page? Are you taking full advantage of Linked In? If you don't have a social media strategy, you could be losing out on some of the richness of the internet today. Many companies have taken advantage of social media and propelled themselves to the front of the consumer's eyes. You could do the same.

Hiring an experienced social media company to help you with this is one way to leverage the power of Twitter, Facebook, and Linked In. It doesn't have to be expensive to be on the social media sphere.

Conclusion

Yes, it takes more than 30 minutes a year to manage your marketing in 2010. But, the companies that take advantage of new media marketing will have much better access to their customers than ever before. Don't lament the days gone by, take advantage of the opportunities in the here and now.