If you want to find customers in a recession you will probably be hunting for creative promotion methods, and I'm guessing it will be even better if there is a plan that's available to anyone with a rock bottom budget - or even for those looking for completely free advertising.

The best way I have come across to get webpage visitors, without a doubt, is Article Marketing.

It's free, the leads are targeted and they are looking for whatever service you are promoting, and what's even better, unlike an expensive month-long advert in the national press, new customers keep coming month on month. I have sites I haven't actively advertised for more than 4 years - yet targeted visitors arrive over and over again.

You really don't need to be (or hire) an expert with website promotion tricks, although if you are able, that's great. But you do need to use article marketing well. While you will get SOME traffic, with a haphazard approach, it won't be the best you can reach for the time spent.

Some business owners may be afraid to even look at article marketing because they think they're not "literate" enough. This should NOT be an obstacle. Needless to say your submission needs to be correctly punctuated and free from spelling mistakes, because that will reflect on you and your company as "sloppy". However a good spell-checker, in Word or even the one in your browser, will highlight the changes you need.

If you still feel unable to create content for your articles, you can hire authors to write them for you at a surprisingly low cost and, if you pick a good author you can end up with excellent work. Tip - give authors a small project to work on first, as some are better than others. Just one of my initial mistakes!

Another alternative is to purchase low-cost PLR articles and rewrite them yourself. Please note that th rewriting step is vital; it is what puts your own personality and stamp to articles that other people may already be using.

So having dismissed concerns about being unable to produce good articles, you're well on the way to starting to use article marketing to get free traffic. It really can be that easy.

My initial attempts were successful even with a handful of "raw" articles I'd written myself without considering any of the finer points. But for just a little extra thought, trying out a few more tips and tricks, I could have done so much better.

Some of the article marketing concepts that can help you boost your results are:

- How to make up your mind what keywords to use?

- Are you trying to get prospects to sites that already have too much competition?

- Which article sites are the favorite ones to submit to?

- Should you present your work to many sites or just a few - is more always better?

- What is the best way to structure articles?

- How to choose the best title for your article?

- How to defeat writer's block?

- What about Google's duplicate content penalty?

Formatting your articles for the benefit of the people who will download them

The REAL benefit of Article Marketing, that most people aren't even aware of.

Examine some of these finer points and you'll be streets ahead of most article marketers who don't even know the questions to ask.