So you have a carpet cleaning company. You've got everything sorted - an office, a system and a ready staff. Now you have to find customers to stay afloat. But you don't like the word marketing. It makes you think of million-dollar advertising campaigns with overpriced athletes or celebrity endorsers. How can a small, low-key, local business afford something like that? You obviously can't afford David or Victoria Beckham to do your marketing. You probably don't even have the funds to hire an ad agency to conceptualize the campaign. So, forget it. The truth is you don't even need those.

Local businesses providing specific services to a defined local market needs localized marketing, pure and simple. Internet marketing is the way to do it if you want to do it cheaply and effectively. Here's why:

1. You can do it yourself. If you already spend a lot of time on the internet emailing friends and family and keeping track of every friend on your Facebook network, you can do the same for your business. You may not be very techie but that really is a non-issue. You can learn, just as you learned how to use emails and online shopping. You can also hire a virtual assistant to help you. There's an internal pool of talent available online and with competition from Africa, Far East, and even Western Europe where you would find top-notch help at unbelievably low rates.

2. You can do it free. If time is all you have to invest to market your business, it's a good enough investment. You can do your own article marketing and social networking and create a strong online presence for your business. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the key and it's not rocket science. It's very easy to learn, even easier to do. You just need loads of patience and enough enthusiasm to see results.

3. You can do it from home. That's right. You don't have to drive anywhere to do your marketing. Because everything is done online, you don't only do it wherever you find you're in the mood to; you can do it anytime and from any device. All wireless or mobile devices released in recent years are WiFi-ready and WiFi connectivity is just about everywhere. A simple tweet telling your network about a latest promo while you're having a cup of coffee at a train station is instant, free marketing. A mobile upload of Facebook of snapshots taken at your carpet cleaning company premises is an excellent visual advertisement of your business. You don't even have to pay extra for any of these.

Equalizing Opportunities for Marketing

Unlike marketing via traditional tri-media, online marketing knows no bounds. Bigger companies don't necessarily get more exposure. In fact, it's the other way around. Internet marketing allows small companies to dominate and grow into large, international businesses if they know how to play their game right. Master the various parts of internet marketing - SEO, affiliate marketing, social media advertising and pay-per-click advertising- and you will soon have bustling carpet cleaning company operating in various cities outside of your home state.