Boom Your Business And Beat Bigger Brands

compete with bigger businesses

Are you a Small Local Business?

Size doesn’t matter when you are offering bigger value and personalized services. What you need is to create more visibility online for the people who are looking for what you provide.

What are the advantages of being a small, local business that will enable you to compete with bigger businesses?

Here’s a short list:

Technology Tools

In no other time has technology made it easier for us to do business, communicate, promote, and expand our businesses on such a far-reaching scale. The Web, SEO, and Social Media Marketing allow us to market our businesses in the same way that bigger brands do.

Flexibility with Changing Conditions

Small business owners have way more flexibility to make immediate and necessary changes that are essential to dealing with changing local market conditions. For big businesses, recommendations go through many levels bureaucracy before decisions are made at the top. Execution suffers the same delays down to the personnel on the ground.

Personalized Customer Service

You have the opportunity to deliver personalized, unexpected and exceptional customer service.

How does it feel when you are served by the owner of a restaurant that you often dine at, and get asked if the food is good and what can they do to improve their menu?

There is something very warm and fuzzy feeling about local interactions for both owners and customers.

Access to Digital Marketing Expertise

There are no longer barriers to accessing digital marketing expertise when you can hire an expert by the hour to oversee your marketing strategy and activities.

Contact us if you want to seize the opportunities that digital marketing can offer and reclaim your domination in your own territory.

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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Stop Wasting Money! What is Your Customer Acquisition Cost?

customer acquisition cost CAC

Are you spending your money wisely?

Your Customer Acquisition Cost or CAC is the total cost spent on acquiring new customers (marketing/sales expense) divided by the number of new customers acquired during that particular period.

If you invested $1000 in marketing/sales in a one month period and acquired 10 new customers as a direct result of that marketing and promotion, then your acquisition cost is $100 per new client.

All successful businesses measure their customer acquisition costs. Luckily, promotional activity on the web can be measured very accurately.

Make sure that the pricing of your products and services cover you CAC.

Want to know more? Contact us 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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An SEO Audit is a Must

seo audit

When did you last do an SEO audit?

So, you’re excited to get your business back into the SEO arena… that’s great! However, don’t let that excitement make you miss a crucial step before launching an SEO campaign — complete an SEO Audit first.

Forty-seven percent said in a survey that a full  audit should be conducted every six months. How often do you have an  audit done?

It is of extreme importance for you to gain an understanding of your SEO performance through an independent, objective, and unbiased audit.

Is your SEO performing well or not? Were benchmarks and goals set before the SEO campaign started?

Without an SEO sudit, you will not have a sound SEO strategy. Without a sound strategy, your SEO campaign will likely fall through, resulting in a complete waste of money.

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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Benefit from Business Blogging

business blogging

Does your website have a blog?

Are you blogging?

If not, here are some compelling reasons why you should!

1. Companies that use blogs receive 67% more leads than companies who don’t!
2. Twenty-three percent of Internet time is spent on blogs and social networks, so you need to be blogging!
3. Businesses that blog get more visitors to their website (average of 55% more website visitors)
4. Almost half of the companies in the US use blogs to marketing their product/services because it works!
5. If you blog 16 to 20 times in a 30-day period, you will generate nearly 3 times as many leads as those businesses who do not blog.

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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Get a Virtual Storefront And Say Hello To The Future. Open 24/7.

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Are you open 24/7?

The information age can be glorious. It gives customers nearly limitless information when trying to make a purchase decision, and it gives business owners like you new and exciting ways to reach those customers. It also makes it of the utmost importance to have a solidified and well-crafted website to make your case to potential customers.

Yes, your website is your virtual storefront. Open 24/7.

Not sure where to start? We can help.

Your website needs to sell you and these six things are proven to do that in the most efficient way.

1. The way that your product or service navigation is organized must be primarily based on your potential customer’s needs, and not based on, say, alphabetization.

2. With featured products or services, you can quickly direct your customer to what they are most likely to need. If the weather is heating up, make sure you don’t feature coats. Make educated guesses to showcase what’s hot for each season.

3. A product or service catalog makes sure your customers know exactly what you offer. It allows them to search through and identify what aspects of your product or service that fit your needs.

4. For each product listing, make sure you identify the benefits, features and product specifications. By ensuring you answer all the customer’s questions, you help them arrive at the “yes!” more quickly.

5. FAQs are found on almost every website. Whether they’re questions about shipping times or your return policy, you want to make sure anything a customer may wonder about is clearly spelled out.

6. Testimonials take advantage of the fact that customers trust their peers more than almost anything else when it comes to buying a good or service. If you have happy customers, make sure you utilize that to sell yourself or your products to new clientele.

Feeling overwhelmed? We’re here to help!

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 Need To Optimize Your Website

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Here’s why you need to optimize your website.

An optimized website means that it is structured, coded, designed, and has content published in a way that will allow Google to rank it.

Why is this important? Well, if Google can read your website correctly and interpret your content then it will understand the product or service that you are selling and so present it to your potential customers searching on the Web.

So, how do you ensure your website is optimized? Certain basics need completing such as keyword research, great content, and some technical criteria that a consultant can help you with such as tags, architecture, crawlability, among many other things.

Every worthwhile endeavor takes some amount of effort. Such is the case with optimizing your website to gain more visibility and traffic.

Think about your own experience when searching for information or a particular product. You will most likely click on the top results on the first page never bothering to check the second page when a list of results appears on the screen that “matches” what you’re looking for.

In today’s fast-paced world, customers have access to more information than ever, and they want results quickly. This means that they will choose from the top of the list, which is where you want your site to be.

Optimizing your site can get you there. This ongoing process requires regular maintenance and changes.

SEO rapidly evolves. So keeping up with the changes with your SEO consultant will give you an edge over your competitors.

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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Keep Your Business’ Online Reputation Remarkable And Get More Customers

remarkable reputation

A remarkable reputation will get you more customers.

You do your best to give your customers great service, but does everyone else know that? Keeping up your business’ good reputation online is just as important as its credibility offline.

Here’s some things you can do to make sure the first thing customers see when they look up your business is a business worth visiting:

Make sure your business is listed – Whether it be on niche review sites like Angie’s List, CitySearch, or MerchantCircle, make sure your business is listed on easily accessible and popular review sites to make sure that your satisfied customers have a place to leave great reviews. Don’t miss out on a 5-star review just because your business wasn’t listed!

Ask for positive reviews – If you know you have satisfied customers on your hands point them to ways they can express that satisfaction. So earn those stars and raving reviews. Collect them and make sure that they’re published!

Google your business regularly – Do a regular google search of your business to get a sense of what customers see when they look you up. Do positive reviews show up first? Or does that one bad review from years ago dominate the results? Make sure to regularly keep up with your online reputation so you can quickly and effectively address any reviews that could potentially hurt 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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Putting the ‘Social’ Back into Social Media Marketing

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How social is your social?

If you’re among the business owners who are posting and sharing content through Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms, then you’re off to a good start.

But if you’re not getting the results you’re looking for, chances are that’s because your social media isn’t actually very social. Posting and sharing content just isn’t enough!

However, how do you put the ‘social’ back in social media and take your social media marketing game to the next level? By creating opportunities for your customers to get involved in the conversation and get to know you and your brand.

1. Post conversational status messages.

This will humanize your brand. Remind people that your business is run by individuals who care about their products and their customers, not by some faceless corporate machine. Allow your customers to connect with you on a human level.

2. Post videos of yourself talking to your target customers.

As a business owner, showing your face builds trust and, again, humanizes your brand.

3. Ask questions. Hear their story.

Ask about their needs and get feedback on your products or services. The exchange will benefit both you and your customers. You’ll be helping your customers feel like they are a valued part of your business, and as a business owner, you will gain valuable insight about your target customers.

4. Respond to comments.

Being social means engaging in a two-way conversation. When your customers reach out to you, make them feel heard and keep them engaged by responding thoughtfully to their comments.

Do these things, and your business will not only have gone social, but it will start taking off.

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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Important Design Elements that Your Website Needs

design elements

Your website needs these design elements!

There’s been a lot of testing and research done over the past few years, and it’s no surprise that more people are using mobile devices to find products or services. The one thing that may or may not come as a surprise is that many businesses haven’t adapted to these changes, or even tested their website. Prioritizing user experience should be the first thing you or your website designer should do.

Any website needs to have design elements that make the website easily seen, and also make it easy to navigate should be on the top of this list. Many websites are starting to get rid of images because they take too long for mobile devices to load, if too many are used. However, if you do use images, they should be scaled down, and the images should use text, such as a card menu seen on Microsoft homepage. This one easy design element shows people what they are looking for quickly, and describes it easily.

And if you’re doing to use video or animation, then fast-loading cinemagraphs are the way to go for mobile devices. These small half-photo, half-animated clips, are quite popular, and load quickly. Make sure that your copy is relevant to the visitor quickly depending on their query, and what got them to your website in the first place. Give a quick big picture of what your site is all about, and what you offer the minute the customer gets there. Realize they may be on a mobile device, and test it, or have your website designer continually test and improve the experience.

Make your site easy to navigate, create different designs for the different sections, but use a consistent theme. Use eye-catching transitions from section to section to keep the user interested. And make sure the font for your copy can be easily seen. Visitors still do the quick scan, so if they quickly scan, make sure you grab their attention quickly. Use custom visual and iconography, or images and symbols, that tells your brand story and shows some personality of who and what your business is about.

All of these design trends are based on statistics. And with the statistics comes the realization that effective website design that makes life easier for users when they visit your site, should be the main goal of you and your website designer. Your competitors are optimizing their websites, if you don’t optimize your site, then you will be left behind.

If you would like to learn more about optimizing and using the latest design trends to improve customer experience, contact us today. We will be happy to help you deliver a great user experience.

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.

If you like the information you are receiving, please share this post.

5 Tips For Better Engagement On Social Media

better engagement

Want better engagement on Social Media?

Social media is not a place that people go so that they can 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 with you some of our tactics to making sure that 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.

If you like the information you are receiving, please share this post.

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