Increasingly, companies are searching for ways to reach specific niches online and capture customer their information. There are many low-cost tactics companies can do right away to improve their visibility and ensure regular communication with potential customers. Anyone on the first page of Google is your competition, so first identify what terms your customers are using to search for products and services like yours and which online outlets your customers visit for information.

Amy Selbach, Business Development Director for Zenzi, a San Diego based PR and marketing firm offers the following tips:

Make a list of search terms you think consumers may be using to find you online.
Use WordTracker.com and Overture.com to indicate key search terms for your business and include those search terms in your press releases and web content.

Create videos and podcasts and host them behind a registration page. I.e. if you are a tax specialist, offer a tax seminar on the SBA’s Web site or a hyperlink to your site where prospects can download in exchange for their contact information which you can pass off to sales teams.

Use customers to do your marketing for you.

Use sites like stumbleupon.com and del.icio.us.com, which allow members of the community to give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on sites submitted. The more approval votes a site receives, the more it is forwarded to other members of the community who have expressed interest in that type of content.

Establish relationships with key bloggers and Web sites that cover your subject matter. Keep pitching them but also comment on their pages with your product name incorporating key words for your service or product.

Include hotlinks to special landing pages in the first paragraph of your press releases or newsletters rather than your general URL so that you can track where leads are coming from.