1.      You need a website to market your business on the Web.

This is not true anymore. Google, Yahoo and Bing (MSN), the three most used search engines will have information on your business even if you do not have a web site. In my search for ‘lawn care in Westerville’ two of the top 8 listings did not have websites. This is because these search engines want to provide you relevant results in spite of the business not having a website. It also depends on the number of businesses that fit the search criteria in the given geographic area.

2.      Only by spending large sums of money can you get yourself noticed on the web.

Go back to #1 above. You do not necessarily need a website but it does help. You can begin by looking for your business in Google Places, as it is now called, claim your listing and add information that is relevant to people searching for the services you provide. Do this for the three major search engines and this will not cost you anything. The listing are FREE.   Here are the URLs to begin the search: 

Yahoo local http://listing.local.yahoo.com/ 

Google Local  www.google.com/local/add/businessCenter  

Bing or MSN Local  https://ssl.bing.com/listings/BusinessSearch.aspx  

3.      There is no real way to know if the money or time you are spending on the web marketing is paying off unless business increases a lot.

You can easily do this by use of Free Google Web Analytics and a Tracking phone number. The tracking phone number will cost you something but it is money well spent. By tracking phone calls separately from web traffic you will know where your business is coming from. It either allows  you to stop doing things that cost money that or NOT working or to increase the outlay for thing that ARE working.

4.      Any business can benefit by use of web marketing.

This is a half-myth. If you blindly think that you can simply put up a website with clever words, graphics and calls to action and then think you will benefit you may be wrong. Depending on what you are selling this may or may not work for you. In the simplest case, customers need to be searching for the service or products you are selling and you need to know HOW they are searching. You need to determine what words your potential customers are using to find you on the web if they are searching. If you are selling a revolutionary product or service there may very well be no one searching for it.