As a small business owner, promoting your company can be a costly venture. Traditional off-line marketing strategies often require a high financial investment. For many companies, the Internet delivers the highest return on investment in terms of marketing and advertising. Below you’ll find powerful strategies for promoting your small business online without breaking the bank.

1. Have your small business listed in Google’s local search results. Listing your business with Google will also ensure that your company name appears when someone does a search for your neighborhood in Google maps.

2. Post special offers on online classifieds sites such as Craigslist.com. Craigslist is one of the most popular sites on this web, and you can harness this traffic by posting free advertisements.

3. Have your website URL added to all of your existing advertising and communications. List your URL in your yellow page listing, on stationery, business cards, flyers, and advertisements.

4. Promote your business with a pay per click advertising campaign. PPC programs such as Google AdWords allow you to pay for your website to be displayed at the top of the search engine results page (SERP) for target keywords. The best part of PPC advertising is that you don’t pay a dime unless someone clicks your ad. Click costs start as low as a penny per click (depending on the competitiveness of your target search terms).

5. Find blogs and forums focused on your city or region. Go to a search engine and enter your community name with the word “blog” or “forum.” Post comments with a link back to your site on these active online communities and watch the traffic flow.