Getting more bang for your buck (Small Business E-commerce Link Digest – October 2, 2009)

As you’re all aware, Friday means link love here at thinks. And this Friday’s no exception. As ever, there are tons of tips on the Inter-Tubes to tide you over this weekend and a key focus this week seems to be all about how to stretch your marketing dollar and do more with less. To wit:

• The incomparable Bryan Eisenberg offers a radical, though damn fine, idea on how to trim your online ad budget. Bryan notes,
  

  “No online budget doesn’t have some fat to trim.”

  That echoes our mantra that you should always ask, “What’s the least you can do?” Bryan includes a heap of tips to help answer that question.

• Long-time FOT (that’s Friend O’ Thinks for the new readers among you) Mike Moran asks what’s happening to marketing research? Money quote:
  

  “There’s a cheaper way to get the insights. I’m putting my money on this explanation. And the Internet is the culprit, if you’re pining for larger market research budgets.”

• One core way to get a bigger bang for your buck is to increase your conversion rates. And Watching Websites now offers proof that one core way to increase conversion rate is by speeding up your site. If you think about it, that makes lots of sense. After all, if customers are in a hurry to buy from you, why would you want to make them wait?
• And, finally, eWeek looks at Google search options to keep pace with Bing. How does that help you get more for your money? Easy, if your customers are coming from Google, it’s best to know what they can look for, eh?

Finally, since this post is about saving money, maybe you can use those savings to help fight cancer. It’s Lee National Denim Day, which is one worthwhile charity for fighting breast cancer. Or, you can help out The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society . Either way, give ’em a hand. That’s a result we can all be proud of.

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