When evaluating advertising options, it can be easy for online marketers to limit themselves to traditional banners and email campaigns. However, marketers should consider a multitude of options to obtain leads and attract customers.

In my last post, I examined how several traditional advertising mechanisms can generate reaction from both existing customers and prospects. This week, we’ll review how successfully manipulating Pay-per-Click (PPC) advertising and search engine optimization can get your brand in front of your target audiences even more prominently.

Since you are only required to pay for the click-throughs generated by your text or banner ads, Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is a great option for any business. The challenge of PPC advertising is to ensure you pay the right price for the product you are selling. Pay too high, and you’ll spend more than you need or, in the worst cases, end up losing money. Pay too little, and you might not generate the traffic you desire.

Search engines were the first online media tool to provide PPC advertising forums, with Google being one of the leading providers. As more people use Facebook, its PPC solutions continue to gain popularity. Furthermore, with Facebook’s ability to narrowly target a specific profile group, its advertisements can be more effective than Google’s.

If you want to reach a wide range of web sites through one company, consider promoting through advertising networks. For example, instead of looking on your own for web sites that reach mothers with young children, an advertising network can generate a list of several sites that reach this demographic from its network of publishers.

Local Search is an ideal advertising opportunity for businesses who want to drive customers to their brick and mortar locations. Google has a powerful local search engine which drives traffic to local businesses upon searches that include a ZIP code, city name or another local identifier. Sites such as Yelp can help direct customers to specific locations, combined with reviews and other relevant details.

There is not yet one single perfect way to generate the response you desire with online advertising. However, by taking advantage of all the digital outlets available today, you can put your company in the best position to get noticed and expand your customer base.

Ramon Ray is a technology evangelist, writer and editor for Smallbiztechnology.com.

Many companies today are finding new ways to use the Internet to obtain leads and attract customers. While maintaining an engaging website and reaching out to customers through social media networks and blogs can generate awareness, these tactics should be viewed as just the start of an efficient online advertising campaign. Today, the opportunities to increase business online are endless.

Advertising through the web can lighten the budgetary burdens of your campaign. While purchasing advertising on the radio, magazines or TV can be expensive, advertising online is relatively less costly, and you can spend as little or as much as you like.

When planning your digital advertising campaign, consider these more traditional options to help you reach the widest audience possible:

Research opportunities to advertise in an email newsletter that reaches your target audience. If you can verify the reach of the newsletter in respect to your desired customers, advertising here can  produce significant sales leads.

Cost-Per-Call Advertising – If you need to make your telephone ring and are tired of making cold calls, you can purchase unique toll-free numbers that are displayed on web sites, similar to traditional banner advertisements. Instead of a “click through”, you get a phone call. You can track detailed information about each call, enabling you to measure which web sites, advertising copy and time of day prompted the most response.

Traditional banner advertising is still popular, but requires more input than cost-per-click advertising to generate results. Traditional banner advertising is sold on a CPM (cost per million) basis, usually in units of 1,000, meaning that web sites will offer banner advertising based on how many page views your advertisement generates. Of course, a page view is not as valuable as a click, but can still be effective in the right instances. If you want 500,000 page views, a CPM deal means you would pay 500 times the CPM. If the CPM is $5, you would pay $5 x 500 ($2,500) for 500 page views.

Mobile Advertising – Banner and text advertising within applications and web sites on smartphones is gaining popularity. With the Droid, iPhone, iPad and other mobile products stirring up consumer and business interest, the next landscape for advertisers to reach customers is via mobile devices. As with any advertising outreach, you should test how effective a mobile campaign would be for your company before investing significant resources. This research might include working with a company or consultant who has expertise in this new area of advertising to give you the best prospects for such a campaign.

Another way to advertise is via text messaging. Text advertising with permission (much like email marketing) is a way to reach customers at the right time and right place. If connected to location-based services, you can reach customers when they are near your business. Let’s say it’s a hot summer day and you have a special sale on ice cream, and want to quickly let your customers know. Or maybe there’s a snow storm forecast for two days from today. Why not send a text to all homeowners in your database about a sale you’re having on essential snow kit items, such as shovels and salt?

Aside from traditional advertising mechanisms, the web now has several alternatives available through paid search and pay-per-click programs that can help bring your brand directly to the eyes of potential customers. Check back next time, where we’ll examine the best ways to maximize targeted search outlets.

Even in today’s high-tech environment, face to face remains the optimal way to conduct business. In person, you can experience the human interactions that add that extra something to your meeting – the warm shake of a hand; the nod of a head; the raised eyebrow across a table; the inflection of one’s voice.

However, with tighter restraints on time and money resources, many people are not able to meet face to face as much as they would like.

Traveling within the city in which you live can take time, but is usually doable. When it comes to traveling across or outside of the country, however, travel often becomes cost prohibitive – and that’s not even counting the stricter security restrictions and additional transit headaches that make modern travel more arduous than ever.

To meet these demands, large companies have taken advantage of technologies such as web and video conferencing. Today, even small and medium sized businesses are being asked to do more in less time – making virtual communication a necessity. As a result, more tools are available to create the environment of an in-person meeting within virtual parameters.

Any business with a fast internet connection can use a free virtual communication service, such as Skype or ooVoo, to maintain interaction with your colleagues.

Robust video conferencing solutions can present a clear and life-like experience, and are ideal for people who want to reduce their travel while still connecting with customers, colleagues and prospects in a meaningful way.

When determining the best avenues for establishing a virtual meeting, here are a few things to keep in mind:

Finding the right camera is important for ensuring your colleagues can see you clearly. The default camera that came with your notebook computer, or a cheap ‘web cam’ from your local office supply store, may not deliver the best video conferencing experience. Instead, consider purchasing a high-definition video camera which gives you a much better picture than a traditional web cam. High-definition cameras range in price from $50 to $400, and you’ll want to make sure they work as advertised before purchasing for your employees.

When communicating in a noisy environment, having the right microphone is necessary to isolate your voice from the background noise. If your camera has an integrated microphone, ensure that it is sufficient for your needs.

High speed Internet access is critical to ensuring functional video conferencing or other broadband intensive services. Recently, I upgraded to a much faster, 3MB per second (upload) / 15MB per second (download) connection, and my recent video conferences have been notably speedier and more efficient.

If your office is loud, consider moving or configuring your work space to reduce distraction. Sometimes it can be hard, especially when working at home, to avoid having kids or pets near your work station, but you’ll want to take the right steps to make your mobile office as silent as possible, so as not to confuse important project details when speaking with your colleagues and clients.

You should also be sure to adjust the background you have for your video conference depending on your audience. For example, if you’re pitching business to a courier company, make sure the shelf behind you is free of boxes from a competing courier company. In sum, if video conferencing is going to be a strategic part of your business, it’s important to “look your best.”

While there is no perfect replacement for the direct, personal nature of conducting business in an office surrounded by your colleagues, there is a wealth of alternatives in today’s market to meet the demands of virtual employees. Find what methods work best for you and your team, and you can be sure that you stay in the know wherever you are.

I recently examined how basic communication tools can be the most effective ways to reach your widespread colleague network. Now that you understand which tools can improve your collaboration, let’s discuss how you can use these outlets to accelerate document flow and reduce the paper trail to and from your office.

Document collaboration has become a critical element to the modern business routine, enabling you to edit, share and revise documents with others in real time.

Compared to five or 10 years ago, collaboration is relatively inexpensive, thanks to Microsoft Office, Sharepoint and similar technologies. Microsoft’s Skydrive service assists with online, real-time collaboration, while additional services such as Google, Zoho, HyperOffice and others offer online document collaboration.

Telephony can boost your collaboration by combining traditional telephone (voice) services with computers. With a broadband Internet connection, you can communicate with your colleagues online and avoid racking up cell phone charges. Quick verbal communication is key for successful collaboration, especially in such an economical fashion.

When working on the road, offline data access enables all team members to contribute to the discussion from various locations at any time. Offline synchronization permits remote users to access the latest information while ensuring those online can also benefit from the contributions of their remote colleagues.

So now that your data collection has expanded, how can you move your company away from emailing attachments back and forth while struggling to manage a growing document library?

Thankfully, there are a variety of tools in all price ranges (from free to fee-based) to consider. While many are hosted applications, there are others you can install on your server and share across your network.

First, be sure to analyze your business processes and talk with your team about how they work, collaborate and share documents.  A procedural plan can help you better establish how to work with your IT consultant or directly within the company to determine the data management plan that fits your business model.

When evaluating updates, consider that some vendors offer everything in one suite, while others specialize or are stronger in one area (such as document collaboration) than others (such as chat). You’ll need to determine if your priorities warrant the best of breed solution that is “all in one”, or a variety of point solutions focused on specific business processes or challenges.

Regardless of your needs, with a little research and internal evaluation, you can find the collaboration tools that will give your company’s workflow a needed jolt while reducing the complications of getting information from point to point.

Ramon Ray is a technology evangelist, writer and editor for Smallbiztechnology.com.

Collaboration is an important part of a business professional’s life. As knowledge workers, we generate and seek content – our colleagues need to discuss things with us and we need to discuss things with them.

However, this communication often does not happen face to face. Our product manager is on a plane. Our marketing assistant is in a taxi. Our accountant is meeting with clients. Keeping tabs on your contacts can be exasperating.

Thankfully, there are several tools you can use to simplify collaboration and communicate with your employees, peers, partners and customers in real time.

Presence is a tool that enables you to know who is online at a specific time. While email is nice, it could take hours for the aforementioned “product manager” in the airplane to respond. Wouldn’t it be nice to know his assistant is available when he’s not? Instead of emailing the product manager with an urgent question and hoping for a reply, you can contact his assistant. Presence is built into many communication tools (including email, chat and telephone) and using it is easy – just remember to indicate your availability.

The emergence of Facebook and Twitter has kept Chat out of the public eye recently. Chat is a powerful tool for real time communication, as well as quickly transferring files. When chatting, be sure not to annoy your colleagues by overusing the technology, and also make sure to respond promptly, if you are available. Chat is great for a short question or comment. However, if you find you are writing pages and pages of messages, it is probably better to send an email or finish your conversation in person.

Even in this high-tech age, basic communication tools may be the most effective for solving your collaboration needs.

Please return to SMBspot next week, as I dive deeper into the state of collaboration and examine the best tools to help you take collaboration to the next level.

Ramon Ray is a technology evangelist, writer and editor for Smallbiztechnology.com.

Even the most advanced technologies are subject to failure without warning. Since you can’t control nature or predict man-made tragedies, you must ensure that your business is as prepared as possible to recover from data loss.

Data loss can be as simple as an employee accidentally deleting a file or as major as a hurricane causing power loss to servers and making accessibility to your office impossible.

In these types of situations what will you do? How can you ensure your business stays operational following disaster?

The first step is to ensure all of your data is backed up. There are several options to back up your data, and the “best” option is really the one that meets your specific needs.

Small businesses often rely on online backup, as it’s easier to implement than local backup and, most importantly, the data is stored safely away from the business’ location. With online backup you send your files through the Internet to the backup service provider. Every time a file is changed on your computers or servers, the file is remotely backed up to the online backup service.

The challenge with online backup is that it can take anywhere from several hours to several days to send your files to the backup service, depending on the size of the files. Your Internet connection speeds also determine how long backup will take.

In addition to backing up data files, it is also necessary to back up programs and operating system files. Recovering user files is important, but you must also be able to use programs such as Microsoft Office, your accounting program, financial program and other critical tools that you use to create these files.

Another important strategy to consider is ensuring that all servers have an image of their hard drive backed up. An image, unlike just a few backed up files, is an exact replica or snapshot of a hard disk. If the original hard disk is damaged or inaccessible, you can place the image on another hard disk. You will then have your user files and the hard disk back, including your programs and operating system, just like it was never damaged.

Backup is only one part of business continuity. It’s also important to ensure that you have tested plans and strategies in the event disaster strikes.

Telephone - With a managed or virtual phone system, you can still have remote telephone service if you can’t get to your office telephone system. Also, make sure you have the telephone numbers of all employees and their family members.

Website – In the event your website goes down, consider having a backup website ready to which you can easily move from your primary site.

Hosted applications make disaster recovery much easier, as you can still operate and access data without physical hardware. For example, your payroll operations can still flow smoothly if your payroll is being serviced by a service provider and managed online.

In the event of an emergency, the employee who usually handles various aspects of your business might not be available. Make sure your staff and service providers know who is authorized to access and make changes to relevant accounts such as telephone and internet service.

There are many important non-technical issues that must be in order for complete business continuity, but if you can secure the technical issues, you’ll be one step ahead of the game at a time when preparation will help most.

Ramon Ray is a technology evangelist, writer and editor for Smallbiztechnology.com.

More businesses today are getting rid of traditional software services and products in favor of cloud-based storage solutions. By moving to the cloud, businesses can improve workflow and, as a result, reduce costs.

In a March 16 webinar, Ramon Ray, editor and technology evangelist at SmallBizTechnology.com will share his insights into how moving from a server-based environment can enhance your small business. Through faster and more reliable Internet access and low-cost storage options, you’ll learn how working within the cloud is the most sensible option to boost reliability and data security.

Join us for the free webinar titled, “Don’t Be a Server Hugger – Take Your Data to the Cloud for Enhanced Security and Redundancy.” To reserve your seat on March 16 @ 2 p.m. EDT, simply register here.

The right technology can go a long way toward improving a small business’s day-to-day performance. A recent study showed that a BlackBerry user can complete up to an hour more of work each day. Understanding how to maximize your BlackBerry’s capabilities can increase your daily efficiency and reduce downtime.

Cbeyond shares four application management shortcuts that can transform your BlackBerry Curve into the ultimate work tool.

Learn more about how Cbeyond’s mobile voice and data services can help you stay connected anytime and anywhere.

Most modern smartphones come equipped with apps and programs that previously seemed impossible. Such overload can make it easy to forget that at its core, the BlackBerry is a telephone. Small businesses and employees can use their BlackBerry smartphones to improve communication by learning basic contact, voicemail and call management tools.

Cbeyond offers five BlackBerry phone management shortcuts to help you reach key contacts and answer voicemail in a timely fashion.

Learn more about how Cbeyond’s mobile voice and data services can help you stay connected at any time and location.

As business demands more frequent travel, e-mail has evolved beyond a desk and a computer screen. More than half of midsize-business owners say they rely on mobile services to read, respond to and manage their e-mail every day. By understanding how to properly utilize the communication tools on a BlackBerry, employees can remain easy to reach in any situation.

Cbeyond shares four mobile e-mail tips to ensure you remain available and productive while away from your office.

Learn more about how Cbeyond’s mobile voice and data services can help you stay connected anytime and anywhere.