Back in 2003, Nick Carr wrote an article for the Havard Business Review titled “IT Doesn’t Matter”. This obviously had a lot of headline readers furious. With a worldwide IT spend of $2.6 trillion dollars, it’s no wonder why Nick Carr was labeled a heretic and blasphemer. It seems we live in a day and age where assumptions about IT run rampant. Ever since a young Intel engineer named Ted Hoff, back in 1968, found a way to put the circuits necessary for computer processing onto a tiny piece of silicon, the business world has dubbed IT as the backbone of commerce. And there’s no doubt that this assertion rings true in many ways since it spurred a series of technological breakthroughs—desktop computers, local and wide area networks, enterprise software, and the Internet.

Working out of the Atlanta Tech Village, I have ran into loads of companies that are operating off of a shoestring budget with limited capital to spend on marketing efforts. Sometimes, even the thought of using paid advertising makes a small business owner shutter. Mainly because owners aren’t necessarily marketers, and there’s a lot of uncertainty around the return on investment. However, there’s a number of ways that a small business can leverage digital marketing by spending very little and targeting exactly who their customers are.