How Much Should Your Marketing Budget Be?

marketing budget allocation

It’s important to set a budget for marketing.

Do you have a set rule for marketing budget allocation?

Or do you just allocate marketing whatever is left after all of the projected business expenses for the year have been set?

USBA suggests 7% to 8% for small businesses. However, you can shoot for up to 20% if you really want to smash it hard in the marketplace.

A survey from the CMO Council, on the other hand, comes with similar results with 74% percent of marketers allocating 4% to 6% of their annual gross revenue to marketing, while only 2% apportion more than 20%.

The size of your marketing budget will fuel your marketing efforts, and so if you’re in a very competitive industry, and most especially if you’re in the early stages of your business, then you should really have a strong budget.

How do you structure your marketing budget?

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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Leverage Digital Word-of-Mouth Marketing for Your Business

word-of-mouth

Word-of-mouth marketing is the best recommendation you can get.

But many businesses seem not to be taking advantage of online word-of-mouth marketing.

In fact, some businesses don’t understand how it can be leveraged so that they can take advantage of the huge rewards it brings.

One thing to remember when it comes to word-of-mouth is that friends and family will believe what they hear from each other over any other form of advertising. Word-of-Mouth has moved to the digital realm.

Online review sites exist for a few reasons, but one of the most popular reasons is that these reviews attract a lot of attention to businesses they are written for, and people love to read reviews.

They especially like to find reviews on a business they are thinking about doing business with. And some businesses have taken advantage of this situation like Zappos.

Zappos decided to do something different than other big companies and instead of spending tons of money on advertising, they invested that money into creating an exceptional customer experience by having the best customer service they could offer.

The result has been nothing short of amazing as Zappos is well known for providing the best in customer service. The reviews they get drive their bottom line because those happy customers leave reviews, and those reviews get read by other prospects. Not to mention that this form of promotion costs less to manage than other forms of advertising.

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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Why Customer Lifetime Value Is Important

measure your clv

Are you measuring your CLV?

When starting a business, it’s easy to overlook some of the more important details once you start getting a customer base. Most businesses rely on getting as many customers as they can as cheaply as they can. This may have been the way to do things in the past, but now things have changed.

So what is Customer Lifetime Value? CLV is something that all big businesses focus on because of its importance. It is the measure of dollars coming in from a customer over the entire relationship with that customer to the business. However, since you cannot speculate how long each customer you have will stay loyal to you, you look at it over a certain period of time. Once you start doing this, the data you collect can show you some fascinating things.

One of the things you might find is where your marketing efforts fell short compared to one customer over others. The other thing measuring Customer Lifetime Value can do is help you refine your marketing strategy so that you are targeting the right customers.

There are many benefits that come from analyzing Customer Lifetime Value including maximizing your return on marketing campaigns, helping to identify and reward those customers who are loyal, and managing your customer relationship as a monetary investment instead of counting them as a number.

Huge industry leaders in eCommerce are outperforming all the rest because of their focus on retaining customers. Some eCommerce giants are reporting 60-80% retention rates while others are reporting only a 20% rate!

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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5 Ways To Be More Engaging On Social Media And Gain More Customers

engage on social media

To reap the rewards of social media, you have to engage.

Social media is not a place where people go to view advertisements, browse through all of the business pages, or read long technical updates about a company. Social media is a place to be social! This means that people want to be engaging in conversations and making their voice heard.

We want to share five of our tactics to make sure your followers stay engaged with your business and ultimately become your customers.

1. Initiate Conversation with your Social Media Followers

If you are at a social event and you want someone to talk to you, how do you do it? You have to talk to them first! Show them that you care about what they have to say by making the first move.

2.Ask For Feedback

Let your followers know that you value their opinion and that you want your products and services to be at their best.

3. Do Surveys and Polls

People love sharing their thoughts and opinions on the internet. The surveys can be things directly related to your business, or just fun questions to get the conversations rolling.

4. Organize Giveaways, Contests, and Promotions

This will get people excited about visiting your page! You can even gain more followers and recognition by having the contest entry include sharing the post or tagging a friend. Even for those who do not win, the excitement for the contest will now be associated with your business.

5. Live Q & A Sessions

Live sessions show your followers that you actually want to hear from them. It also gives you the opportunity to tell your audience the things that they actually want to know about your business instead of just guessing what questions they may be having.

The right digital marketing consultant will be able to incorporate all of these into your marketing plan so that you can see your followers begin to engage with your business.

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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How Online Review Sites Have A Huge Impact On Businesses

online review sites

How do online review sites impact your business?

Most small businesses and companies don’t think about online reviews and the impact they can have both positively and negatively on your business.

Some business owners are afraid to find no reviews, while others are afraid of finding bad reviews. These are definitely not reasons to ignore the power of review sites.

Business reviews are more important now than ever for several reasons. It might come as a surprise to find out that business reviews for some sites now show up in the top search engine results for that company.

For example, try doing a search such as reviews for ‘company name’ and look at the results. Review sites such Angie’s List, Google My Business, Facebook, Yelp, Foursquare, Yellow Pages, and Better Business Bureau are going to show up at the top of the list due to the ranking power of a website that gets thousands of visitors leaving comments about ‘x-brand’ company.

Moreover, it’s clear that business reviews aren’t going anywhere. In fact, they are becoming more and more popular.

That is why it’s more important now than ever to get involved and build a presence in the online review community. These types of reviews are invaluable to any business for many different reasons. If you get good reviews, then you can look at those and see what you are doing right that makes your customers happy.

On the other hand, negative reviews can show you where you need to improve, and you can either defend yourself online if you’ve done nothing wrong, or you can make things right with an unhappy customer — which shows that you are accountable and genuine.

This builds trust and authority for your small business and also confidence in any future customers that might be looking at how you handle complaints.

The one thing that you don’t want is to have unmanaged online negative reviews without taking the necessary action. This will hurt your business.

Anyone knows that having a good reputation can drive conversions. And with so many businesses out there competing for business, it’s a good idea to manage your online reviews.

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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Social Media Marketing – Does It Work?

social media marketing works

Wondering if social media marketing works?

LinkedIn has over 900 million users. That’s a huge audience. Facebook has an astonishing 1.5 billion daily users. There are 354 million Twitter accounts. The list goes on, and the audiences continue to grow. It’s obvious that if you want to succeed you should be interested in this huge pool of potential clients.

Ninety-one percent of retail brands use 2 or more social media channels. Having control over your social media is essential if you are to become a successful brand. Controlling the messages you send out to your customers is a key factor.

Watch our series on 10 key elements to successful Social Media Marketing.

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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Using Multiple Social Media Sites Can Grow Your Business

use multiple social media sites

Here’s how using multiple social media sites can help grow your business.

Today’s customers are not only sticking with one social media site. Your target audience is active on many different sites every single day. Actually here are some statistics from a recent study that show just that:

– 28% are on 1 site
– 24% are on 2 sites
– 16% are on 3 sites
– 8% are on 4 sites
– 4% are on 5 sites

Now that you know that your potential new customer is constantly using multiple social media channels, what does that mean for you?

It means that you also need to be visible to them on multiple social media websites! But how are you supposed to know which channel is right for you?

Here is a breakdown of who is using each of the top social media channels in 2019, according to Pew Internet Research:

Facebook:

– 82% of online adults between 18-29
– 72% of all adult internet users
– 62% of the whole adult population
– Especially popular with women

LinkedIn:

– 25% of adult internet users
– 46% of online adults who are college graduates use LinkedIn
– Popular with those with high household incomes

Twitter:

– 23% of all internet users
– 30% of online adults under 50
– Most common in urban areas

These statistics show that you could have access to many new customers by simply expanding your social media presence to other networks. We strongly urge you to add your business to more social media sites so that you can begin reaching more of your target audience today!

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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Why You Should Be Using Facebook To Promote Your Business

facebook promotion

Facebook can benefit your business through promotion.

A Social Media Marketing Industry Report by Social Media Examiner revealed that Facebook is the most popular channel used by 94% of the survey respondents.

Twitter follows with 68%, LinkedIn at 56%, and Instagram at 54%.

72% of B2C marketers project an increased Facebook usage more than their B2B counterparts at 63%.

Are you actively promoting your business on Facebook?

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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2 Digital Marketing Success Stories You Can Copy

success stories to copy

Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, they say. Here are two success stories you can copy.

Dacia and Facebook

Dacia is one of Europe’s fastest growing car brands.
The Goal: Their aim was to grow their brand and to generate more leads.
The Result: 60,000 extra cars sold in the last three years. That’s a huge success!

How did they do it?

1. They decided to use social media.
2. They chose Facebook to get their message across.
3. They targeted desktop-using customers and customers who primarily used their smartphones.
4. The tool they used was Facebook’s boosted posts. This allowed them to test the market and find out where their potential customers were and the best time to place an ad in front of them.

The Girl Scouts and Twitter

The Girl Scouts are well-known for making and selling their own cookies to raise funds for the local community.
The Goal: To increase downloads of their mobile app.
The Result: Nearly 20k extra downloads as a direct result of their Twitter campaign!

How did they do it?
1. They decided to use social media.
2. They chose Twitter to do their promotion.
3. They added images to the app to show how delicious and inviting their cookies were.
4. They used the Twitter App Card so customers seeing their Tweet could access the app directly from their Tweet. Simple!

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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Local Business Alert! Local Search Results Will Give You More Business Results

advantages to local search

There are many advantages to local search.

On-the-go mobile users who are near you and who are searching for a product or service on Google at this very moment should find your business. But are they?

Are you visible in Google’s ‘Local Pack’ and expanded results?

Increased foot traffic, phone calls, or visits to your website should mean more customers for local business owners like you, so optimizing for local search results should be important.

Businesses listed in the Local Pack vary from the searcher’s location. If you are nearest to the searcher at the time of the search, then your business listing should appear there.

However, being closest to a potential customer searching isn’t a guarantee that you will come up in the search results. Your listing and your website must be optimized for local search.

Here are some of the important ranking factors based on a study by Moz:

  • Google My Business Listing Signals
  • Link Signals
  • On-page Signals
  • Citation Signals
  • Review Signals
  • Behavioral Signals
  • Personalization
  • Social Signals

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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