Now before you start counting I am not talking about employee legs or any other type of leg you may have around or in your business, I am talking about marketing legs. How many different marketing methods do you have supporting your business. Imagine you business is the table top and each method of marketing is a table leg.

There are many business out there who are supporting their table top with very few table legs, in some cases there could be just one table leg. Now I’m sure you’ll agree with me here, but a table with only 1, 2 or 3 legs is not going to be too stable when one leg is removed.

If you are solely dependent on 2 forms of marketing, lets say existing customers and pay per click advertising. If one of these two marketing methods is removed, for what ever reason, your table is highly likely to come crashing down to the ground. Just because everything is running happily right now, you have only limited control over pay per click advertising.

To prevent your table becoming un-steady all you need to do is add more and more table legs to it, by adding more marketing methods to your business you increase your stability incase one or marketing methods start to lose their effectiveness or are stopped completely.

Now at this point I relies you might be sat there racking your brain for other marketing methods to try, I know I did when I first heard about this concept. But don’t worry many of the marketing methods out there are not difficult to do and in many cases do not require you to risk your hard earned cash.

I would recommend that you try and aim for around seven different marketing methods to give you business a high degree of stability. If you lose a marketing method it will not lead to crunch point, giving you time to rebuild another marketing method to replace that leg.

I suggest that you consider the following marketing methods to support your business. There are many methods out there but these are ones that I have endured prolonged success with and some I am just getting started with.

Natural Search Engines

Getting a first page position on Google can give you steady stream of traffic, it however doesn’t happen overnight and requires a lot of time. The results are worth it.

Pay Per Click such as Google AdWords

Google AdWords allows you to reach 100 million people in minutes, however if not managed correctly it can be costly, steep learning curve.

Email Marketing

You can use email marketing to both your existing and prospective customers, although you cant just simply send emails out to anyone anymore. Have a look at my article on emails and Auto Responders here…

Direct Mail

For many companies direct mail is a big source of income, but it has to be done right. You can’t predict the results so start small scale and focus on the exact type of person you want to focus on.

Press Releases

This is a bit of an un-tapped market, if you can write a press release about how your product saved another company time and money. PR websites, Local newspapers, business magazines are all potential targets.

Video Marketing

Video is huge on the web, 50% of web traffic is video. You can create videos for your products and let them lose on the likes of YouTube and Viddler. Check my article on video marketing here…

Social Media

There has been an explosion in social media on the web, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Linked In. Its all about building relationships, use this to your advantage to meet prospective customers.

Not all these marketing methods will work for all business so try and pick and chose, but remember just because non of your competitors are ding it, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. Now its your turn to jump a head.