According to the Internet Advertising Bureau, online marketing expenditure in the UK went up by 4.2% between 2008 and 2009, topping in at £3.54 million. This figure increased during the latter half of 2009 and is expected to continue to grow.

Increasingly, more small businesses are looking to the internet for their marketing and advertising needs. It doesn't need to be costly - there are a few inexpensive and relatively easy strategies for boosting a company's web presence.

Pay per click (PPC) marketing campaigns, such as Google's AdWords, can be a fast and simple way to increase site traffic.

For most small business owners, these PPC programs are useful for the short-term while long-term traffic building strategies are in development.

Article marketing campaigns are useful for SEO and site traffic. Articles distributed by online directories are designed to grab the attention of human readers as well as search engines - but be careful to write with your human audience in mind.

Starting a company blog and posting keyword-rich, relevant content on a regular basis will not only increase the site's search engine ranking, it will also allow you to present yourself as an expert within your specified niche.

Social media has exploded onto the world of online marketing over the past few years and continues to grow in both popularity and effectiveness.

Opening and maintaining accounts with social media sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook will allow you to reach out and communicate in real time with your potential customers and colleagues.

Affiliate marketing programs can be a very powerful strategy for promoting virtual products online.

If your company is selling ebooks, online training courses, consulting or any other service, consider setting up an affiliate program. This will allow other sites to promote your product(s) and can quickly lead to increased sales and web presence.

For many small businesses, generating new leads is the desired return on investment (ROI). In this case you will want to design a compelling landing page.

Your landing page should fulfill three vital tasks: grab the visitor's attention; have a clear call to action for providing their email address; and offer an incentive or free gift.

How do you encourage visitors to give up their email address? You might offer a short ebook on this landing page in exchange for visitors providing it.

The clever thing about offering the ebook is that you can use is as an additional source of visibility. Begin working on an article marketing campaign around the topic and keywords of that ebook. All incoming links from the articles should point to the landing page.

By offering an ebook on the topic of your business' niche, you are also pre-qualifying your leads. That is to say, if they want your free ebook they will likely be interested in what your business has to offer.

Although somewhat time consuming in the beginning, this approach to leads generation will eventually become an automated, around-the-clock program.