Small Business
How To Develop a Simple Social Media Plan for Your Business
Almost every business must have some social media presence in order to stay relevant in today’s market. Small business owners can quickly be overwhelmed by the number of platforms and best practices for each one. When this happens, they wind up spending far too much time trying to navigate social media and burning out before they gain much traction. If you have already run scared from social media, all is not lost. The best part about social media is that its memory is short. You can get started with a strategy that is not at all overwhelming, and no one […]
How to Migrate Your Service Business to Google Analytics 4
In Google’s latest version of Google Analytics, there will be a transition to an entirely new platform. Google Analytics Universal will stop collecting data on July 1, 2023. Google Analytics 4 is a powerful development in website data tracking that accounts for user privacy and offers better information on how individual users experience your site. We reviewed the importance of collecting website analytics and previewed the upcoming Google Analytics 4 (GA4) changes in a previous article. If you haven’t yet set up your GA4 dashboard, follow this guide to start collecting key data from your website right away. The […]
What Small Business Owners Need to Know about Google Analytics 4
Many businesses think of their website kind of like an interactive billboard. They hope it is a good advertisement, but the site passively waits for someone to click on a call to action. In reality, business owners can collect a ton of website data that allows them to turn it into their top-performing sales agent. This data is collected using analytics, the technology that tracks user behavior across the internet. While there are several analytics tools on the market, Google Analytics is the most popular. Not only is it free, but it is fairly simple to understand and customize. […]
Digital Marketing Trends for 2023
Digital marketing is constantly evolving, which can be both exciting and exhausting. It’s exciting for small business owners to have new, and often more customized, ways to connect with their ideal clients. But the constantly changing landscape and new learning curves can be exhausting for busy owners with so much on their plate. There are some constants in digital marketing. A robust digital foundation – website, SEO, social media, and pay-per-click campaign – is always in style. What evolves are the technologies and tools that allow you to expand beyond that foundation for optimal reach and conversion. For 2023, the […]
How to Optimize Pay Per Click for a Successful Ad Campaign
Of all the ways to advertise on the internet, pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns are the most efficient and direct. Though it does take time and effort to perfect them, they are an effective way to reach the customers who are actively seeking your product or service. Compared to pre-internet marketing, PPC is most like paying for the upgraded business listing in the yellow pages. Remember when people visited the phone book to look for a specific service or product? The businesses that paid to have prominent ads, rather than a simple business listing were more likely to get the […]
Why Do Marketing Personas Really Work?
If you’ve been following my posts on developing Marketing Personas and how to use them, you may be worried that personas are too narrow-focused to bring in enough customers. It’s understandable why you might believe that targeted messaging leaves money on the table. It’s important to remember that digital marketing is different than the decades of traditional advertising we knew before the internet. Digital marketing allows you to reach the most profitable customers on a consistent basis – a detailed marketing persona will help you connect with those ideal customers. Quality over quantity will improve your bottom line. If you haven’t […]
I Have Marketing Personas, Now What?
Marketing personas provide value to you as the business owner in understanding the motivations and buying patterns of your best customers. If the concept of a Persona is new to you, back up and read the previous blog post on why you need a Marketing Persona. If you have already gone through the effort of building marketing personas for your business, keep reading to find out the best way to leverage this valuable data for business decision-making. How Do I Use My Marketing Personas? To see persona-driven marketing in action, let’s imagine a marketing campaign for a garden center. We’ll […]
Does My Business Need a Marketing Persona?
Running a small business demands that we know who uses our products or services and what drives a purchase. Yet, many businesses, big and small lean on basic demographic information to make these decisions. To begin to build a more targeted and effective marketing plan, you need to know more than demographics about your best customers. Building a customer persona takes some time and know-how but can help to clarify messaging, select digital marketing platforms, better target ad campaigns, and provide content ideas that generate more leads and sales. Creating buyer personas, and continually using them to guide your business, […]
Small Business Marketing Trends for 2021
At the risk of sounding repetitive, 2020 has changed us. It’s changed marketing. We are all looking forward to better days ahead, but we are not there just yet. Many of the marketing lessons we learned in 2020 still apply and will continue to apply through the pandemic. As business has evolved this past year, so has technology. There are some exciting hi-tech changes coming in 2021 that will shape how businesses market despite our evolving environment. Read on for a breakdown of marketing trends that will impact small businesses in 2021. Marketing During a Pandemic This time last year, […]