On the marketing front, I would suggest that small business leverage the internet instead of spending large amounts of money on traditional, outbound marketing, such as radio, TV and newspapers.
A solid inbound marketing strategy will deliver more results for little or no money (you need to be smart enough to value your time). First you must make sure you have a strong web presence from a website or blog. That website needs to be optimized with the right keywords that will reach your target persona.
Then, the small busniess needs to create great content to the site that will interest that target persona. Something that their friends will want to see also. Create lots and lots of content. This too is optimized to the identified keywords.
Then promote that great content through social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Facebook more for B2C and LinkedIN more for B2B.
This all takes a bit of time to establish. To get quicker results now, the second part of the equation is to convert those visitors into leads. Create offers that will be placed on your website as a call to action. Once the visitor sees the call to action and click to it, they will be taken to a landing page with a form. The offer has to be good enough to get someone to fill out the form! But once they do, it is a lead.
Your lead nurturing program that follows can be email campaigns if the visitor is not necessarily ready to buy now, or you can cal them up right away. Depends on the industry and the offer.
The third component is analyze. Have a way to analyze everything so you can make adjustments to your content, offers, calls to action, and landing pages.
In the end, you will have a very productive communication system with your current and potential clients.