Effective marketing campaigns don’t necessarily require big-company budgets. Following are eight ripe opportunities for cost-effective marketing with fast results.

1. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising

Perhaps the fastest results come from PPC advertising. Establish an account with one of the major search engines, pick your keywords, write three-line ads and advertise online in 24 hours. Set daily spending limits and track results. With careful planning and execution, you can get thousands of targeted visitors to your Web site in a week.

While Google, Yahoo, and MSN are happy to take your money while you are learning, at least you are only paying when someone clicks through an ad to your Web site. Your first ads may not be the most effective. But if you stick with it and learn as you go, you can improve the results dramatically and generate pre-qualified traffic to your site on your own within a month.

You can start PPC with as little as $50 to $100. However, you will learn faster and more quickly with an initial investment of $500 to $1,000. It goes without saying that you need a good website, and most importantly targeted landing pages to convert new visitors or accomplish whatever other objectives you set.

2. Email marketing

Email marketing is great for relationship building, especially with strong house lists. Great email incorporates four elements of success:

• Copy: The creative message that tells your target audience why they should buy or try what you’re selling.
• Offer: The specific offer you’re making to add immediacy and close the sale.
• List: The mailing list you use to deliver the message. Watch out for rental lists that cannot confirm opt-in or double opt-in permission.
• Delivery: Use any of the smaller Email Service Providers (like Emma, Constant Contact, etc.) to keep initial expenditures in check.

Make sure your landing pages and Web site are optimized for each email marketing campaign.

3. Local Internet advertising

If your market is local or regional, you can use local internet advertising to reach only the people you want. Get listed in online directories and use paid-search ads specific to your marketing area. You can take advantage of companies that specialize in local on-line advertising and only pay for qualified click-throughs or phone calls. Your budget to start should be in the $500-to-$1,000 range. Again, you should make sure that your website is ready and that you have targeted landing pages to convert new visitors or accomplish whatever other objectives you set.

4. Trade shows and events

If you’re already signed up for a trade show or event, work to make it more effective and more measurable.

The secret to a successful trade show booth is drama. Tell a story that people want to hear. Don’t just rent a clown, or an orangutan. Create something special. Think outside the box. Figure out ways to get people to walk around being billboards. Preplanning startswith:

• Setting the right objectives, with specific, realistic metrics
• Selecting the shows that will give you the best results
• Booth strategies: design, signage, staffing
• Pre-show promotion and post-show follow-up
• Trade show marketing measurement tools

Or try addressing your customers’ needs and showcasing your expertise and solutions with an online seminar. For less than $500 and a week or two of your time, you can set up a meeting or conference facility online and get great tutorials that show you how to put on a top-notch presentation. Then all you need are a few dozen (or a few hundred) of your best customers and prospects, and the show is on.

5. Traditional advertising

Vertical trade publications are still worthy of your attention. But they must tied to landing pages to gauge their effectiveness. Try advertising in journals related to trade shows and events in which you’re already participating for a double hit. The creative product—strong positioning, compelling copy and relevant graphics—are key determinants of success.

A lot of technology ads are essentially talking to themselves, boasting about leadership spouting buzzwords and generic fluff rather than insightful information. Rather than saying: “We’re great!” it’s much more effective to state, “Here’s what we do, and here’s what distinguishes us from others.”

Research shows that professionals actually use trade ads as one of their primary sources for keeping up with what’s new. While they don't always have time to read all the technical articles, they do skim the ads — and read ads that clearly relate to their professional needs. You may want to engage an advertising agency or creative team to give your advertisement the greatest chance for success.

6. Sales support

Sales literature — including professionally prepared collateral material, brochures, spec sheets, Web site content, catalogs, or lead-generation and prospect qualification tools — can be one of the most important communication vehicles your sales force uses to market your products or services.

In most cases, the format and quality are as important as the content. An outside agency can help you make certain that your messaging lives up to its potential. Your company has an important story to tell — one that interests customers, prospects, partners, analysts, employees and investors — a story with character, set in a particular place and time, with energy and perspective, a story that defines and differentiates.

Strong design, as well as production values, can also help create a professional image that maximizes the closing ratio, or conversion, of prospects to customers and increases your chances for sales success.

7. Publicity and public relations

For the past 50 years, PR professionals have been writing news releases to catch the attention of editors. However, they had little control over whether their carefully crafted releases got published. Today, the tables have turned. You can now bypass the editorial gatekeepers and publish news directly to your target audience by using personalized emails, corporate blogs, online news groups, consumer forums, and more. Plus, you can optimize news releases for search engines and social media to drive traffic to your website and improve your company’s search engine ranking.

Find the most compelling story you can—a case study, a new product feature, a strategic partnership and what it means for your customers—and send a press release to the online press release distribution services and key publications serving your industry.

The most effective news releases today are packed with keywords – not buzzwords. They’re also chock full of links to useful information and interesting images that make readers want to click on those links again and again – each time landing on a page of your website. And, the more often they click through to your site, the greater the chance your news will stick in their memory.