Let’s face it, marketing can be hard! In each marketing blog post, we hope you’ll find the information you need for your business marketing success.
How Many Layers Does Your Social Media Have?
Social Media, like every other advertising medium works best for your brand when it’s layered. But the beauty of social media is that it’s easy to layer. Here are the top 5 ways to layer your social media for maximum effectiveness: Use Facebook as a collection point addresses for your email newsletter. Your Facebook page…
How Clearly are You Seeing Your Marketing Efforts?
I saw a tweet this morning from @DeeBlick of The Marketing Gym about assessing our marketing efforts that read: “Being painfully honest about where you wasted money on marketing is positive. Don’t repeat the same old lacklustre stuff. Embrace change.” It’s a good reminder to all of us to make sure that we make an effort…
How Good is Your Elevator Speech?
We’ve all heard it, we need to be able to describe our company and what we do in the space of time that it takes to travel from one floor to another in an elevator. And even in knowing it, it’s still difficult to conceptualize and spit out unless you’ve taken time to think about…
Why Your Business Should be on Facebook
I was chatting with someone the other day whose experience on Facebook was that of a meat-market/single’s scene. She was (rightfully) mystified as to why her business (or any business for that matter) should be on Facebook. With that experience on Facebook, I can see why she was confused. The truth is, almost everyone is…
Using Online Advertising to Spread Your Message
Advertising online is an easy, and relatively inexpensive way to spread your message to your targeted audience. With most online advertising you only pay for those ads that are actually clicked on, and you have the ability to target who will see those ads. You certainly can look to smaller sites (television and newspapers for…
Blogging-Like Eating Vegetables
I really don’t like blogging. I do find it a necessary evil today no matter what business category you fall into. Blogging seems to lend credibility to who and what it is that you do. It can make you an expert in the field that you work in. It adds great material to your website,…
What is Social Media Good For?
I sit with a lot of people who don’t understand why they should care what someone is drinking today, where they ate lunch, and that they just got in their car. What I try to explain to them is that those are the elements of our lives as human-beings. And while we may not have…
Sometimes it’s Knowing When to Break the “Rules”
You can read as many management and marketing blogs, books, and white papers. Talk to as many experts, listen to the pundits and take as many classes as you want to learn all the “rules” for marketing your business. But here’s the thing. None of them, not a single one, knows your business better than…
Just Because it's a "Deal" You Shouldn't Always Buy
From time to time, we all get an amazing “deal” that comes across our desk from the media. And it’s tempting to throw $300-$500 dollars at something that we’re getting for 75% off or even 50% off. But in those moments, it’s critical that you remember what your strategy is, and why you pursue it.…
Competing for Attention
As a small business owner, I know, it is HARD to keep the focus on growing your business when the needs of your current business continually take all your time and attention. But here’s the thing we all know, intuitively, if we don’t focus our attention on doing those things that grow our business, we…
Syncing up Your Messages
I’ve sat in a lot of rooms lately with small business owners and discussed the imperative nature of syncing all their outbound messages together. And while it sounds good, it’s very often not something happens with great regularity. But doing so will help you to maximize your brand message and get the highest levels of…
Blue Sky Marketing (NOT!)
Remember when our marketing lives were easy? Unlimited budgets, no concerns about the economy, fabulous television ads… those days have been gone now for awhile, and I think that as marketers, we’ve gotten better, smarter, and more responsive. We’ve had to think carefully about every dollar we spend, we’ve had to project and hit ROI…
Your Brand Online
Twenty years ago, those of us in the business world began hearing that we needed to create a website for our business. Frankly this confounded a number of business owners. They asked, “Why would I need a webpage for my business when everyone either calls or comes in now?” And they were right – right…
So What’s Your Social Media Strategy?
So what’s your social media strategy? I’m sure that when it comes to most marketing endeavors that you attach some strategy to it. Have you done that for social media? No I’m not talking about an ROI, I’m talking strategy. What is the base for your social media, Facebook? Twitter? Is location based social media…
Branding a Local vs National Company
I had the opportunity the other day to chat with a friend who is a brand marketer for a national brand. During the course of our conversation, I was struck (again) by the same-ness and at the same time, the different-ness that comes with branding a national vs. local brand. At its core, branding is…
Tweeting is Word of Mouth
We were recently out of state attending a client’s strategic planning session. We didn’t know much about the area, had been very busy in the weeks leading up to that we didn’t do a lot of investigating on the internet. It also wasn’t a vacation to pull up all the to-do’s of the place you’ll…
Social Media-Build Your Own Audience
Traditional Media has been doing it for years, building an audience through programming and marketing and then turning around and selling your business the opportunity to talk to their audience. Social Media is the opportunity for YOU, the local business owner to create your own audience to communicate to and through. Building an audience in…
Using Product Promotions to Extend Your Brand
Once you’ve established your brand position, and even created a branding commercial or two — it is inevitable that the next call you receive from your boss (or the CFO) is a plea/mandate to run a promotion to sell your product (yesterday)! In that moment the balance sheet requires moving a product for the financial…