This is the second installment of our series detailing the One Grand Smart Marketing Plan - the way to market a business from start-up to success for $1,000 or less.

And most of the tactics can be accomplished for $0.

Here's the business we're going to use as our example: A commercial blogging company that creates blogs and social media strategies for businesses.

For the majority of my career, I have acted as a creative director or strategic consultant in traditional marketing. First, as an employee of several advertising agencies and, in the last few years, in my own virtual agency, Blackwood and Company LLC.

Truthfully, like a majority of traditional ad agency types, I knew very little about blogging or social media. I made ads - TV, radio, print. Brochures. Posters. We offered websites but those were handled typically by a somewhat autonomous few geeks on another floor - or by farming them out to website design firms.

A year or so ago, I started to feel creeping dinosaurism setting in. I knew that if I didn't keep up with the newer trends in marketing, I was in danger of becoming as extinct as the Passenger Pigeon.

And I started seeing my billings slowly becoming endangered, as well, as more and more clients lost interest in the largely unmeasurable forms of classic advertising.

Education comes first

So, I set myself the task to learn all I could about social media - including blogs. I should tell you, my OCD medicine is only partly effective. When I set out to learn about something, I'm voracious; I read and listen to and absorb every bit of knowledge I can find - and I've always been good at research.

Today, I'm certainly not a social savant but I am better informed about these topics than most of my potential clients. And I became a born-again blogmeister. I truly came to believe that - of all the marketing tactics I've used in 30 years in the business - blogging offers more potential return for a modest investment than anything else I know of, especially when combined with a smart social media strategy.

This may come as a surprise to those leading-edge pundits who claim that blogging is dead. In my small, mid-America city, blogging has barely arrived.

There are perhaps a dozen established website companies in my area, but not one blogging expert that I can find. And the website-makers are still mostly building heavy, old-style sites instead of newer blog-based, user-friendly sites.

Grab An Opportunity

As the first article in this series suggests, I saw opportunity. And that gave me the idea. I could begin offering my clients something they didn't expect from a 50ish survivor of traditional advertising: new media that is affordable (often free) and to them at least, very contemporary.

Selling traditional marketing or advertising is difficult. Nobody wants an ad, they want results. It's very hard to quantify advertising results. So, essentially, you're selling air.

But selling a blog is simple. For one thing, it's relatively cheap. I can create and write a dynamic blog for a client at about the same cost as placing one 1/3rd page ad in the local paper or magazine.

For another thing, it's measurable. You can show exactly how many people visited the blog, how many tweeted about the company, how many clicked through an offer.

Blogs are also dynamic. An ad just sits there. Who knows how a viewer reacted to it? But a blog invites comment, feedback - participation.

All those benefits means that I have something I can go out and sell with real passion. (Which is one of the elusive but crucial components of starting any new business; unless you're truly sold on what you're selling, no one else will be.)

And it begins...

So, I decided that I'd start a blogging and social media company. I decided that I'd brand it separately from my agency business, though each would naturally feed the other. If it failed, I didn't want it pulling my established business down; if it flew, I didn't want my older business to hamper it.

I took the advice I gave you in the first chapter and focused my offering: blogs and websites only - with social media as a delivery method.

I've tested the concept with some existing clients and with some new clients and the initial response has been very positive.

So now, like you perhaps, I'm ready to start marketing it smartly on a limited budget.

Next week, we'll name our new baby!

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