Having a home based business offers many great opportunities and advantages over owning a regular brick and mortar business or working in corporate America. One advantage that a more traditional business might have over a home based business is in the area of advertising and marketing. In order to be successful you must be good at marketing a home business. Although you might think that you have to work harder at marketing a home based business over a traditional business that is not entirely accurate. In this article I will show that it is not a question of which is easier or harder, it is a question of which is more efficient.Typical Marketing and Advertising MethodsBusinesses typically engage in several marketing and advertising activities that they use to try and generate new business. Some of these methods are Television and newspaper ads, flyers, signs and billboards, radio segments, direct mail advertisements and face to face presentations. Although these are great ways to get the business names out into the community, it does offer major disadvantages. First these advertisements cost money, sometimes a lot of money. An ad in a newspaper can cost anywhere from $200 to $1500 or more depending on the location and the size of the ad. Television and radio segments cost even more. Due to this cost, the advertising that most businesses can do is limited. Since it is limited you must work hard and direct your budget to the largest audience possible for the lowest amount of money possible. Finding the appropriate audience can be extremely difficult. Generating business from that audience is even more difficult. Often times you must repeat advertisements multiple times using the same venue for the ad to catch on. Again, this is costly to the budget.The one thing that you will notice about the methods summarized above is that they do not seem very efficient; in fact a lot of if might be trial and error. Research the market, construct and implement, and advertise your product or service, and wait and see if it generates business. If it generates business stay with it until it fades, if it does not generate any new business, or the cost does not outweigh the benefit of the advertisement, then start over. That is why you often hear the word campaign associated with the marketing and advertising industry. Campaign is defined most commonly in terms of a battle or war. Utilizing these methods, you are actually searching for your customers. I do not know about you, but marketing a home based business should not be in the same sentence with a battle or a war. Marketing a home based business should stay in line with the reasons why most people start a home based business, flexibility, efficiency and cost effectiveness.Marketing a Home Based BusinessThe Internet is the biggest market in the world. In fact, 60% of all people that buy something use the Internet in some way or another to make the purchase or assist in making a purchase. The number of people using the Internet is growing each and every day so why would you not use this in marketing a home based business. It still requires the same market research however there is one glaring difference. Once you have done the research the customers search for you and you no longer need to search for your customers. Wow that sounds a lot more like an efficient method to marketing your services or products than the methods described above does it not? Now you can focus all your efforts on researching and leave the rest to the consumer. Marketing a home based business has its difficulties. You still must find a market to deliver material and content to, but you are marketing in the greatest market the world has ever seen and income generating business comes to you as opposed to you looking for it.