I just registered for this year’s New York Times Small Business Summit which will be held November 17th at the Sheraton Hotel and Tower in NYC. I have attended in previous years and it is such a quality event and great for networking. You also appreciate the bargain price of $99.00 which includes keynotes, workshops, breakfast, lunch and cocktails. You can’t go wrong. For more information visit the New York Times Small Business Summit.

Putting your marketing dollars to work in these tough economic times requires smart thinking and a decisive plan of action. With competition heating up, now is not the time to retreat. Retreating in a recession will give your competitors a position of strength once the economy and business capital markets start to turn around. Here are a few things you can do:

- Look at the trade publications that you may have advertised in and check out their online directory or banner ad programs. These programs traditionally cost less and provide measurable results. Within one month of advertising you should be able to determine if your efforts are driving traffic to your web site. Do not commit to a long period of time. Give it a try for a month or two and see if it works.

- If you are doing Google Adwords you can see how competitive and expensive certain keyword and phases are getting. Instead of going for the same phrases that everyone else is doing, add more campaigns that are niche oriented. Build web traffic from multiple, smaller campaigns instead of one big expensive one. Overall, with this strategy, you should get the same amount of traffic at a lower cost.

- Make sure you existing web site is in tip top shape. Are you putting your best foot forward? Check your content, add cross linking from within your site, and expand or update your content to reflect your potential client’s current issues and challenges.

-If you are not nurturing your existing clients and customers with email campaigns that are relevant to their business than you just have not seen the light. Email marketing (not spamming) is the most effective, low cost, measurable marketing tactic you can add to your bag of tricks.

Forward thinking companies do not retreat when it comes to their marketing efforts during a recession they simply adapt.

Recently I was at a networking event and asked a person I had just met if they were proud of their web site. She said to me “Oh, we’re working with someone, but we’ve been working on it for about a year”. I thought to myself “a year?”. One full year of missed opportunities. Let me try to actually break down the cost of this loss in terms of dollar and cents.

Let’s say for example your existing web site generates 50 visitors a day. I will add that by not updating your site through the years and bringing it up to today’s standards you will find that your traffic will continually decrease over time. Now you look into a crystal ball and estimate the performance of a new site. The new site would be more visually appealing, search engine friendly content, compliant with WC3 standards, and contain relevant content that will increase your traffic by 100%. This is a totally realistic number. Now you have 50 more visitors per day or approximately 1,500 visitors per month or 18,000 visitors per year. If those numbers don’t motivate you to do something the next set of numbers should. Now we’ll turn traffic in dollars and cents.

Let’s say you decide not to invest in a new web site, but instead try your hand a PPC (Pay-per-click) advertising, the most popular being Google Adwords. When you set-up an Adwords account you will use the keyword tools to find out how much you need to spend per day and per click to be in the top six positions. Depending upon the competitiveness of your business you’ll get a sense of what those clicks to your web site will actually cost. For a B-to-B marketer a cost of $1.25 per click is a reasonable number. In using this as an example here is the actually cost to you by doing nothing. Not to mention you are giving this traffic to your competitors.

*Calculated by assuming the cost per visitor in the Adwords campaign is $1.25 click.

In conclusion, you can see the true value of traffic. A good analogy? A large billboard on Route 3 just before the Lincoln Tunnel. In Case #1 your billboard is blank. In Case #2 you billboard cost you $1,875 per month or $22,000 per year. In Case #3 the cost is equal to the redesign of your web site and your billboard stays up forever. I rest my case.

Barbara Zaccone will be a co-presenter at the NJAWBO Essex Chapter meeting that will be held at The Wilshire Grand Hotel, 350 Pleasant Valley Way in West Orange, on June 17, from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. Zaccone will be sharing her expertise on using Web 2.0 spaces including social networking sites, such as My Space, Linked-In and YouTube.

The price, which includes a three-course dinner, is $35 for members and $45 for nonmembers with advance registration ($5 more at the door). Reservations can be made online by June 14 at http://www.whoscoming.com/njawboessex.