The Wall Street Journal has an article today about small business owners marketing on Facebook, where ad prices are up and clicks are down.

You can read the article here, but you may need a subscription.

A graphic appears with the piece, titled “Marketing Avenues,” listing the top five marketing methods for firms with fewer than 500 employees:

1. Company website – 50%

2. Facebook and/or other social media – 27%

3. Print yellow pages – 25%

4. SEO / Organic Search – 18%

5. Internet yellow pages – 15%

This list is indicative of why companies actually succeed in spite of their marketing, rather than because of it. Yellow pages?! Really? 

I run a thriving revenue growth consultancy focusing on small to mid-sized businesses. It has never been busier here.

Here’s what I’ve learned: especially for business-to-business companies: Facebook and Twitter activity has almost no impact on revenue. (Consumer companies have slightly more success on Facebook for obvious reasons.)

So I tell my speech audiences and my clients, be on social media, but understand there are about a dozen more effective pathways to bringing in new business.

Here are the platforms and behaviors that generate the most immediate impact on new revenue for my clients:

1. A growing list. This is probably  the single most important platform we can utilize. Your list becomes your own social media, where everyone can buy from you. 

2. Communicating value to that list. Testimonials. Case studies. Tips. All we’re doing with our marketing is helping people.

3. Driving people with the first two tools to your Web site, which continues helping them and works to convert leads to prospects, and prospects into customers.

4. A good media effort. Building relationships with journalists and bloggers allows you to flip the switch when you need some new revenue. Media also eats up stories of family business and entrepreneurial success.

5. The personal effort platform. In an era when it’s easier than ever to talk to millions of people at once, the personal communication is nearly extinct. In this category are phone calls, personal emails, drinks (!), coffee…think personal relationship building. It’s easy, it’s quite enjoyable, and it’s damn rare. Think about it — how many truly personal communications, just to you, do you receive in a business day? When’s the last time you got a hand-written note?

The five tools in the Wall Street Journal are lazy. And each one of them requires a financial investment, mostly advertising-related.

My list requires a bit of personal effort, and all of my tools are free. You can execute my plan yourself, in 15 minutes per day, with no investment besides a bit of attention and elbow grease.

My plan will immediately separate you from the crowd, and bring fast business. The list from the newspaper drives you deeper into the pack and focuses on clicks.

Do you want new revenue, or clicks?