Small Businesses Archives

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How marketing and advertising can save small businesses

August 17, 2023 No Comments

Most, if not all, local small businesses in Northwest Arkansas that are struggling or have failed can be attributed to their lack of marketing and advertising efforts, which becomes evident once you delve into the complete truth about them.

I know of a business owner in Northwest Arkansas who says he will shut it down any day due to a lack of business, yet who still will not make even a single free Facebook or Instagram post. He also doesn’t do any internet, radio, billboard or television advertising, nor does he use hangtags for doors, send out direct mail, do email blasts, use SEO or sponsor a Little League baseball team. There is just no marketing whatsoever.

I don’t think this situation is that unusual for many small businesses. Why is this the case? There are several reasons, including:

The owners of these small businesses think they can’t afford it. They see marketing and advertising as an overhead expense, like rent or insurance, and if they can avoid spending anything there, it is money they can put in their pockets and take home to their families.
They don’t believe marketing and advertising work. My experience is that if you spend “X” on marketing and advertising, you will get a certain number of sales or dollar amount of sales from it. So spend X, and get X times 10 or X times 20. What will that kind of volume increase do in terms of business viability and profitability? Think about your own business. But for this relationship to work, it takes consistent activity and spending. I have often heard, “We tried advertising, and it didn’t work.” You can’t do it once or twice and expect that to produce results. It may not.
These small business owners are hung up on the idea that “word-of-mouth is the best advertising,” so they do nothing. They forget that to get word-of-mouth, customers have to buy from the business or use it in the first place. Without marketing and advertising, you will never get the word-of-mouth flywheel going.
They don’t know how to market. Most small business owners are good at something — they are good cooks, carpenters, sewing, or getting people to exercise correctly. That’s why they went into business in the first place. But what they don’t know anything about is marketing and advertising. So instead of going outside their business to find help, they give up. There are so many marketing companies and advertising sources that can help a small business, not to mention marketing students who would love the chance to work with a real business here in NWA, that there is no excuse for not being able to get help.

Let me conclude by saying that I am not someone who’s just done a lot of reading about this stuff and is now opining about it. In my businesses, I always invested in marketing. That’s how two of my companies got on the Inc. 500/5000 list — one of them three times. And today, the new and existing businesses I am involved with heavily invest in marketing and advertising and have a revenue growth curve that reflects that.

Contrary to what your CPA/tax advisor may tell you, a small business can be worth far more than what you can extract annually. The value of the business is directly related to the revenue growth rate, not to mention that a growing business tends to be more profitable than a stable (i.e., stagnant) business.

So now is the time for small business owners to stop handwringing and start investing in a consistent marketing and advertising program. Do it now before it’s too late.

By Mark Zweig

([email protected]) Mark Zweig is the founder of two Fayetteville-based Inc. 500/5000 companies. He is also entrepreneur-in-residence in the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas and author of the award-winning book, “Confessions of an Entrepreneur.” The opinions expressed are those of the author.

Sourced from TB&P

In News

8 Instagram Features Perfect for Small Businesses

May 19, 2023 No Comments

Sourced from appPicker

Instagram isn’t considered one of the best marketing tools, but that is because the larger companies have a hard time breaking its formula with raw capital alone. They have to pay massive amounts to influencers on Instagram to receive far less value for money than if they paid Facebook or Twitter influencers. As a result, smaller businesses are able to sneak into the public view and make some gains on a brand-by-brand level. Here are a few Instagram features that favour smaller businesses.

Create a Wall of Branding Messages

Put simply, you can turn your Instagram account into a big repository of your branding and marketing messages. All you have to do is put your evergreen stuff in there, and it will still be interesting to the people who visit. Added to which, it helps spread your brand message on social media.

You Can Buy Attention Three Ways

These days, you can pay for Instagram promotion through their marketing systems and tools. This is expensive and fairly inefficient. You can pay influencers and celebrities to promote your brand, but that is even more expensive. Or, you can go online and buy Instagram accounts from a company like Fameswap, and then exploit the accounts of other people who have already built up their audience.

Test Your Ads Through Instagram Stories

This is a trick as old as time. You can run all your most shaky ads through Instagram to see how people react. Oddly, if people do not react at all, it probably means your advertisement is okay for mainstream use but may need improvement. Nevertheless, taking a few chances and running a few risky ads through Instagram is rarely a bad thing, even if you don’t gather much data.

You Can Ask Your Customers For Input

As with all social media, you can ask your followers and potential customers for input on your services, your products, your brands, your offers and your social media posts. As a smaller business, you can be more interactive and authentic with your customers.

Watch and Maybe Even Copy Your Competitors

You can copy your competitors posts, ideas and sales. You can check out what works for them, and then make your own version. The great thing is that there is nothing they can do about it. Plus, you don’t have to try their methods right away, you copy their stuff, make your own, make it better, and then release it when the time is right.

Try Instagram Live For Certain Promotions

There are certain companies that are able to make the most of Instagram live. Haunted houses are pretty popular at the moment, and there are times of the year when fireworks are popular too. If you are running events that are live themselves, like live standup comedy, then you can do very well with the Instagram Live features. There are even people making unboxing videos of their own products, so you could try that too. They seem to be oddly popular for unknown reasons.

You Can Upload Videos of 60 Minutes

If you run a business account that is verified, you can run videos of up to 60 minutes. If you have the sort of content or even the types of services that warrant a 60 minute run-time, then you have an advantage over all the accounts that cannot post 60 minute videos.

Get Yourself Listed on Google

If you have a fully fleshed out Instagram profile and a well maintained Instagram account, then you will appear on Google when people are searching for your business. It doesn’t have a big impact, but it is one more Google result in your favour, possibly ranking above the Instagram profile of your competitors.

Sourced from appPicker

In News

How to turn an idea into a successful online business

October 28, 2022 No Comments

Sourced from Evening Standard

Everything you need in one place to get your business off the ground

Whatever you’re thinking of selling, from candles and cakes to life coaching sessions or spare car parts, if you want your business to succeed, you need to be online.

Your business is all about you, to a degree, you’ve been there from the start and poured your heart and soul into its creation but it’s also about your customers. Where they are in the world, what they like to do, what makes them tick and (most importantly) how they want to shop.

Growing a successful business is a delicate balancing act. You’ve already got the product – creating that is often the easiest part – but if you want to make an income now you need the tools to connect it with your customers.

But before you start dreaming of where you’ll spend your first million, or how many countries you’ll visit when you retire early, you need to go back to basics and create an online marketplace for your company.

Squarespace connects the dots and provides an all-in-one platform to stand out from the crowd.

It’s a one-stop-shop making it easy, convenient, and quick to create and manage an online shop in four easy steps.

Visit Squarespace to create a free website today.

Create a website

You’ve probably already got a name, so now just choose from a new domain or link an existing one to your lovely new website. Then, choose from award-winning templates to give your business the presence it needs online. You’re free to pick professionally designed website templates that you can then customise to your heart’s content. Once it’s up and running you’ll then have the tools to analyse how people use your site to find out exactly what makes your customers tick. How long they spend on your website pages, what they’re looking for, how often they’re coming back and even what time of day they’re coming to you. These are the details that really give you an insight into your customers so you can learn the best way to connect with them.

Start selling anything

There really are no limits when it comes to selling on Squarespace. From poodles to purses and everything in between. The same goes for the size of your company too, whether you’re selling brownie boxes in your spare time, or you have an industrial-sized oven and you post out baked goods all over the world. Customers can select the products they want, pay, and checkout safely and securely all in one place. If you need a calendar, you can give your customers the ability to book appointments. You can even add an extra income source by charging for access or downloads if that’s what works for you.

Create a website with Squarespace today

Build your brand

Now you’ve got the foundations in place it’s time to shout about your company from the (virtual) rooftops. Reach people through a variety of networks with professionally designed social content and keep fans of your company up to date with email lists that match your brand. You’ll also have access to built-in SEO tools to maximise your visibility and give yourself the best chance possible of creating a thriving business.

Experiment with extra channels and services

Every business is different and that’s why you’ll have the flexibility to add the tools that will really help you. Choose from third-party services to manage your business and fully customised tools to suit your business’s needs. There’s also a marketplace when you’re in need of hiring some extra help, from designers to developers. Businesses aren’t all 9-5 so if you get stuck, need advice, or just someone else to chat to, there’s also a friendly community and help and support available at any time of the day or night.

Visit Squarespace.com to start your free trial. Visit the website for full Ts&Cs

Sourced from Evening Standard

In News

10 Small Business Growth Strategies for 2022

January 13, 2022 No Comments

By Lauren Wingo

Business leaders and entrepreneurs share their top small business growth strategies for the year ahead.

2021 has been a year of rapid transformation across all industries as the country has dealt with shifting political and economic climates, as well as mitigating hot-button issues such as climate change. In a year filled with change, there are some trends making their way into the new year that you and your business should keep an eye out for.

To lead your business in the right direction as we head into 2022, here are 10 small business growth strategies entrepreneurs recommend.

Leverage your suppliers’ new product rollouts

Distributors and businesses across the country dealt with supply chain issues with the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic and its subsequent economic disruptions. In 2022, businesses must be aware of scarcities within the supply chain and get ahead of manufacturing and transportation challenges by working collaboratively with their suppliers.

“We rely on supply availability and over-the-road transportation,” explained Karen Olson Beenken, president and CEO of Blue Rock Companies. “Our supply has been cut over the last 18 months to accommodate larger metro markets. We’ll utilize the different new product rollouts our suppliers offer and work to grow those.”

Educate client partners on new paradigms

It’s important to inform your clients and partners about changes you’re making to better benefit your business across a shifting economic landscape. If the changes don’t land, it may be time to consider other options, said Larry Kidd, president and CEO of hire.

“Our company is in the talent business and [is] painfully aware how much the talent pool has changed,” said Kidd. “We are working with our client partners to educate them on the new management styles, increased compensation packages and other aspects of recruitment and retention.”

Prepare for potential contracting opportunities with state and federal governments

The Census Bureau reported this past June that there were more than 4.4 million new U.S. businesses created in 2020, the highest total on record. While business creation has soared, data is showing that a large number of companies have left the state and federal government markets.

“The Department of Defense outlined at a recent conference that between 43% and 60% of the small business industrial base is no longer in the federal space,” said Padma Vatsavai, CEO at Vinformatix. “The impact [on] the small business community is due to quite a few changes in state, local and federal acquisition.

“Strategic sourcing and category management are the name of the day,” Vatsavai added. “[We’re focused on] building a strong programmatic teaming strategy so that the company can prime or sub any opportunity.”

Get creative on sales and marketing opportunities

The digital marketing landscape has become increasingly challenging due to congestion and evolving regulations, said Joe Shamess, owner of Flags of Valor.

“This is forcing many traditionally digital companies to explore other sales channels and marketing strategies,” he said.

To mitigate these challenges, Shamess said his company is getting creative with its selling methods by expanding its national retail sales channel for select products and growing the company’s Amazon sales channel for its full product catalogue.

Small business owners will now be able to bring in more specialized freelance workers to carry out tasks without having to deal with the hiring and training costs that are often associated with recruiting a full-time employee.

Eden Cheng, co-founder, PeopleFinderFree

Widen your business’s online footprint

Phil Strazzulla, founder of Select Software Reviews, explained that small businesses must adapt and be “practical” when it comes to sales, as consumers continue to favour online and mobile shopping.

“[Businesses] need to widen their online footprint to gain a significant proportion of customers from the current market,” said Strazzulla. “A simple way to sell products is to have a [seller account on] Shopify or Etsy. To sell services, … list [your company] on freelance and contract websites.”

Learn video SEO strategies to rank higher on search engines

Video marketing has become an integral part of a successful marketing strategy with the rise of live videos on platforms like TikTok and Instagram. It’s estimated that by 2022, videos will account for 82% of all consumer traffic. That’s why video SEO should be a top priority for businesses in 2022, said Leslie Gilmour, a marketer at ServisBOT.

“Small businesses that incorporate short-form videos into their website posts will see more organic traffic coming from search engines,” explained Gilmour. “As TikTok continues to grow, search engine algorithms will shift to articles and posts that include short-form videos. Short-form videos from TikTok and YouTube may even become the main point of ‘how to’ searches.”

Utilize partnership marketing to reach a broader audience

Partnership marketing is a strategic collaboration that gives you and your partner company a chance to reach a wider audience together, explained Tyler Martin, founder and certified business coach at Think Tyler.

“Collaboration with another company can aid in the development of better marketing initiatives that benefit both parties,” said Martin. “If your target clients are similar, you may pool your resources to better your marketing techniques, build your brands and expand your audience reach.”

Martin suggests starting with complimentary items or services from one company offered with a purchase from the other.

“For example, if a consumer purchases a product from you, you can provide a discount coupon that they can use to purchase discounted products from your business partner,” said Martin. “Co-branding of a product or project can also boost both companies’ marketing power.”

Consider hiring more gig workers

The number of gig workers, freelancers and contractors has grown exponentially over the last few years and they make up a large portion of workers within the current market. Eden Cheng, co-founder of PeopleFinderFree, says this share of the job market will continue to grow in 2022.

“Small business owners will now be able to bring in more specialized freelance workers to carry out tasks without having to deal with the hiring and training costs that are often associated with recruiting a full-time employee,” said Cheng. “With the importance of being agile in today’s economic environment … as well as the rise of remote work, … skilled outsourced contractors will be the key to successful business growth moving forward.”

Work with micro-influencers

While small businesses may be competing against larger businesses to work with online influencers, collaborating with micro-influencers is an option to consider, said Anton Giuroiu, architect and founder of Homesthetics.net.

“As influencer marketing is becoming more popular than ever… micro-influencers are going to be the best option for small businesses because they don’t cost as much and they are more open to collaborating with small businesses too,” explained Giuroiu. “With a couple of these small influencers helping [your business] reach specific audiences, growth will not be an impossible feat in 2022.”

Prioritize company culture

Throughout the pandemic, businesses have been dealing with “The Great Resignation” as workers are quitting their jobs at record-high rates. One of the reasons for this is that people are changing their definitions of what they consider a healthy work-life balance and what they want in a company culture, explained Amanda Ma, CEO of Innovate Marketing Group.

“The pandemic has shifted the way people incorporate work into their life, whether it’s moving to another state for cheaper housing or not going into the office every day and [getting] the opportunity to do remote or hybrid work,” Ma said. “Our agency went from full-time in-person to full-time remote to … a hybrid model. We surveyed our team members to see the model that works for us.

“Not all solutions are made equal, [and] culture is part of that,” she added. “A big factor [for employees], in addition to salary and benefits, is culture, [so have] a culture strategy in place.”

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images/fizkes

By Lauren Wingo

Sourced from CO

In News

The Many Benefits of Social Media for Small Businesses

May 29, 2020 No Comments

By Anders Hjorth

Social media can empower small businesses and provide access to markets, clients, insights and advertising capabilities you wouldn’t expect.

Social Media empowers small businesses and opens opportunities formerly reserved for large corporations. It can feel overwhelming and scary, but do you ever hear of a small business experiencing social media downfalls? Not really.

Social media for small business makes complex business processes accessible, gives you direct access to market research and opens up world markets for you. Let’s look at the advantages of social media.

Here are some advantages for businesses using social media:

Social media empowers your marketing
Events can be held online
Sell direct to end users with higher margins
Advertise at a lower cost
Get direct user feedback
Extend your business reach

Marketing benefits of social media

Social media empowers your marketing and puts you in direct contact with end users. You can reach out, you can interact with them, and you can collect their feedback. You get insights into audiences you are targeting, helping you build an effective social media marketing plan.

Let’s go through some of the advantages of social media for the marketing of your small business.

1. Build a community

Social media brings people together via direct relationships. Your social media presence creates a community of users around your brand or your products. And this community can create user generated content (UGC) and strong ambassadors for your brand.

Microsoft uses the community approach for end-user support on a dedicated technology platform, but using social media, you can start building a user community at no cost.

Microsoft has created a user community as part of its support. Source: Microsoft

2. Word of mouth

A Nielsen report shows people trust “recommendations from people I know” at a rate of over 83%. With TV advertising, it’s a much lower 63%, and online advertising only 48%.

Word of mouth is more powerful than advertising and much easier to activate via social media. Your business can use the power of social media communications between people to be seen, heard, and observed online.

You don’t need a full-fledged social media strategy to enjoy these benefits. Just ask questions like: “What do you think of our product?” and “If you liked this, would you mind sharing?”

Suggest that people share a post on social media as in this blog on sustainable development. Source: ICLEI

3. Content marketing

Social media existed for a number of years before content marketing concepts and inbound marketing appeared ten years ago. Both are based on search marketing and social media.

With content marketing, focus on creating remarkable content which resonates with your target audience. It builds awareness and engages users.

Inbound marketing takes this engagement as the first step in a user journey that draws the user toward your commercial offering. Valuable content and experiences have that power. Social media is a key component in content marketing and allows you to market to your audience without advertising.

Software sales often uses inbound marketing, as in this example. Source: Tableau.com

4. Advocacy

Your brand and reputation will exist in the market whether you are part of the conversation or not. According to Jeff Bezos “Your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room.”

David Brier, a branding authority, puts it this way: “If you don’t give the market the story to talk about, they’ll define your brand’s story for you.”

A large part of this conversation happens on social media, where you must create that brand positioning story. Use one of the most powerful mechanisms on social media: advocacy, where a person talks favorably about your brand. Advocacy is used in two distinct ways on social media:

Employee advocacy
Ambassador advocacy

Employee advocacy uses employees’ personal voice and network to weigh in on a brand conversation. Employee advocacy testifies to a strong corporate culture and sense of belonging. It can be very effective and generate a lot of natural engagement.

When community members act as natural brand ambassadors, they can be powerful advocates for your brand and product. Brand ambassadors sometimes receive some type of free product, service or privileged access to information.

Ambassadors for

SEO software company Majestic represent a geographic region and act as spokespersons for the product. Source: Majestic

5. Social media influencers

Social media influencers are similar to brand ambassadors but are typically paid to present a brand or a product to their audiences. They come in many forms and shapes and can help access niche markets. Using them isn’t simple or straightforward, but can add social media power to a small business.

AspireIQ helps brands find influencers who fit their requirements and can increase their exposure. Source: AspireIQ

Travel destination promoters use social media influencers a lot. Inviting an influencer on a trip and having them share the experience with their audience makes the destination tangible, accessible and attractive. Search a travel destination on YouTube to see this in action.

Extended benefits of social media

Social media has expanded marketing by creating person-to-person communication, allowing your brand to enter into conversations with end users. Another dimension of social media disruption lies in dematerialization, or doing more with less.

There are no physical limitations on social media, and technology enables a business to do more at a lower cost, like creating live events or extending their business hours and international reach.

6. Live events online

Today, any company can stream a live event to their user base to showcase new products and services. They can even have one-to-one exchanges, at a low cost with tools such as Facebook Live or one of the many online conferencing platforms.

Dutch Shell Plc uses their chief financial officer to broadcast their quarterly reports. Source: Youtube

7. International reach

Social media has no geographical barriers so the world is your audience. Social media does, however, have language barriers. Your reach will be limited to the languages you communicate in.

Although automatic translation is improving, you probably need native language skills to persuade and sell products. Your international reach could be limited by local regulations and taxes, but once you cover them, you can market to the world.

The internet lets you offer your barbecues worldwide. Source: Weber.com

8. Extend your business hours

Brick and mortar business and their owners have limited hours, but your social media profiles never sleep. They’re always open and make your business a 24/7/365 non-stop selling machine.

If you have an e-commerce business, your shop doesn’t close at night, and your audience is global. Program automatic responses and chatbots, and your social media profiles can be your customer service when you’re not available.

Book your trip to the Eiffel Tower on its Facebook page. Or you can contact it via Messenger. Source: Facebook

Advertising benefits of social media

The internet has had a powerful impact on the value chain in many industries: shopping centers are disintermediated by e-commerce, insurance agents are disintermediated by online insurance, travel agencies are disintermediated by flight sales and online hotel booking.

Social media has eliminated your need for an advertising agency for much of your promotional activity.

9. Social commerce

Social commerce combines capabilities of e-commerce with the human interactions of social media. Consider Amazon.

It integrates several media aspects into the user experience: user reviews and ratings, recommendations based on users’ preferences, and the possibility to find Amazon products on social media outside the Amazon platform itself.

At the other extreme, we have Instagram. It integrates e-commerce directly into social media by product tagging and direct checkout without ever leaving Instagram. Social commerce may be the future of shopping, especially impulse buys.

Products that appear in photos on Instagram can be tagged with their price, and the user can click on the product and buy out without ever leaving the app. Source: Instagram

Social media is a great place to showcase your products, in the form of images, videos or descriptive texts. More than just a showcase, social media is a great place to advertise.

10. Powerful targeting

It’s easy to access Social media advertising, and you can use it in sophisticated ways. The first step for many advertisers is to simply “boost” a publication to get more exposure.

This multiplies the number of impressions of a normal publication. No need to do artwork or write ad copy, simply use what you have and expand the exposure of something that has already proven successful.

Facebook Ads offers incredible targeting capabilities because of the extensive user data it holds. Facebook lets you target users via geography, demography, interests, behaviors and more.

11. Scalability

You can scale advertising campaigns almost endlessly, reaching audiences across the world with complex ad sequencing and retargeting setups. This can be part of a wider social media campaign, spanning several social media platforms and reaching your target audience in different ways.

Use this scalability to your advantage, reducing risks while increasing profits.

12. Measurability

Social media analytics lets you measure almost all social media activity, especially advertising. Master the four basic social media metrics and you’ll be able to interpret and optimize everything you do on social media.

Measure your performance on social media by looking at your input, engagement, following and reach.

Customer service benefits of social media

Social media profiles, always on and easily found, make it easy to contact a brand for after-sales service. Many companies use Twitter and Facebook for customer service. Users post direct feedback via reviews and post comments. Read and analyze their comments to tweak your marketing message.

13. Direct user feedback

With Twitter, you can allow any user to exchange direct messages with you, and Facebook has an inbox system to receive messages, feedback and questions from your users. Some social media management tools centralize messages from various social media platforms and post them in one place.

DHL has created a dedicated Twitter account for customer service.

Chatbots are another way to initiate and extend the user feedback loop automatically.

14. Reviews and ratings

Users can review your products and rate your company on social media. Many companies worry that a few unsatisfied users could make their overall service look bad.

In reality, most reviews are positive, and they have a positive effect on companies who provide great user experiences, which will generate great reviews.

User reviews reveal what users preferred and what they didn’t like. Source: Facebook

You’ll inevitably find some fake reviews on rating platforms. If you want to increase your reviews, simply solicit feedback from more users, and improve the things your users are unhappy about.

So many benefits but you can’t have them all

Limited time won’t let you plug into all these social media benefits. Social media is work intensive and results come from hard and consistent work. Not so different from the offline world, is it?

Be selective and invest in social media actions which offer the biggest payback for your business. Set long-term objectives and work consistently toward them to extract significant value from social media.

By Anders Hjorth

Sourced from the blueprint

In News

How Small Businesses Can Leverage Influencers When Advertising On YouTube

July 19, 2018 No Comments

By Omar Jenblat

Watching online videos already accounts for one-third of all internet activity. Video content is most definitely one of the most prominent online marketing trends out there right now. And it’s no wonder: Videos receive a 157% increase in organic traffic from search engines. Videos are a powerful marketing tool — even more so when they are posted on YouTube. Google seems to prefer YouTube videos over any other platform when filtering search results.

When YouTube was created in 2005, surely no one could have imagined just how important the video-sharing platform would become to marketers around the world. Just behind Google, YouTube is one of the world’s largest and most important search engines. This means a great video can not only attract new customers but also boost your SEO ranking as well as general online presence and prominence.

At BusySeed, we use YouTube as part of many of our clients’ social media marketing strategies. We love to use YouTube for clients that have products or services that can easily be incorporated into a storyline. When we are not helping clients to create their own videos to share on YouTube, we often use influencer marketing to raise hype around a product or service.

Although YouTube may not be the first social network that comes to mind when considering a social media marketing strategy, it is just as important as Facebook or Instagram. The video-sharing platform hosts over a billion users and should be especially attractive for businesses looking to reach a younger, hipper consumer base since YouTube reaches more people between the ages of 18 to 49 than any U.S. cable network.

While the statistics are convincing, actually developing and implementing a social media marketing strategy on the platform can seem overwhelming. The general idea may seem simple: create quality videos, post them on a regular basis and grow a larger consumer base. But 400 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every minute of every day. It can be difficult to stand out from your competition, but there are steps that even small businesses can take. In my opinion, one of the easiest things you can do as a small business to effectively partake in advertising on YouTube is to partner with an influencer.

Influencer Marketing

Before making a purchase, only 33% of individuals do not research online. A lot of this research takes the form of watching videos like testimonials, reviews or product demos. On YouTube, a lot of this type of content is produced by online influencers.

There are a number of different platforms to help facilitate working relationships with companies and individual influencers. When trying to find the perfect influencer for advertising on YouTube, there are a few different things to consider. First of all, find an influencer that shows interest in your industry. For example, wellness brands will probably have a better match and see more results from a fitness blogger than a gaming channel would.

Before committing to one influencer, take a look at their content. Do they post regularly? How much interaction do they receive on their videos? How is their like-dislike ratio? If possible, take a look at one of their previously sponsored videos and see how their viewer base reacted.

Younger generations greatly prefer online social influencers over the traditional celebrity you may see on TV doing testimonials. Of teenage YouTube users, 40% say digital influencers know them better than their friends. And 60% of the same group reported that influencers have an influence on their purchasing decisions. Not to mention, more than 80% of people trust reviews online as much as personal recommendations.

If you do decide to partner with an influencer, there are a lot of different types of videos you can create to help increase awareness about your business as well as its products. Unboxing videos are certainly a craze on YouTube. These videos highlight influencers opening different packages and showing what’s inside while saying a few words about each product. There are currently more than 70 million that appear on YouTube when you search “unboxing.”

These videos are great for raising awareness about your brand and especially for boosting product sales. If your main priority doesn’t revolve around product sales but rather the general perception of your brand, consider featuring interviews with industry leaders, behind-the-scenes content or customer testimonials.

YouTube Ads

Businesses are also able to create normal advertisements that appear in search results as well as before and during YouTube videos. There are currently four main types of ads available for businesses on YouTube: TrueView, pre-roll, bumpers and display ads.

TrueView ads are skippable and pay-per-view. Pre-roll ads are non-skippable, pay-per-click videos placed before a regular YouTube video. And bumpers are non-skippable, pay-per-view ads placed before a YouTube video.

In addition to these ads, there are less common formats like overlay ads, which are semi-transparent overlay still ads that appear near the bottom of a video. Sponsored cards are the last option marketers have for ads on YouTube. Viewers are shown the card for a few seconds and have the option to click an icon in the right corner of a video to browse all cards.

Video ads are best for storytelling marketing geared toward generating more interest in your company. Still ads, like overlay ads or sponsored cards, are best if your business is focusing on increasing sales for a specific product or sharing a specific brand message.

Currently, only 9% of American small businesses have a YouTube presence. Get involved now, and stay ahead of all of your peers.

Feature Image Credit: Pexels

By Omar Jenblat

President of BusySeed, Cofounder of BusySeed Deutschland UG and coffee connoisseur.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

10 Top Suggestions for Increasing Sales, Getting Found in Search and More

February 23, 2018 No Comments

By Annie Pilon

If you want to improve your small business’s sales, you can go about it a lot of different ways. You can change the way you approach sales calls, you can focus on increasing online sales using SEO, or make use of any number of other strategies. Here are some thoughts about some of those options from members of the online small business community.

Apply Analytics to Your Sales Calls to Dramatically Increase Sales

If you want to improve sales for your small business, you might be able to use hard data and analytics to make your pitch really resonate with prospects. In a post on Smallbiztechnology.com, Marc Prosser shares some strategies you can use to apply data to your sales calls.

Learn About the Voice Search Revolution from These Queries

Voice search is becoming a lot more common for everyday consumers. So that means it’s something that’s going to impact small businesses quite a bit in the coming years. Bryson Meunier dives into some voice search queries to examine what businesses should learn a recent Search Engine Land post.

Consider the Worth of Social Media Marketing

Plenty of small businesses use social media without having any idea what the investment in time and resources is actually worth to them. In a recent Prepare 1 post, Blair Evan Ball examines the worth of social media marketing for businesses.

Use These Online Brand Guidelines for Small Businesses

No matter what you do to market your business online, keeping your brand image in mind should always be a top priority. To keep a firm grasp on your brand online, take a look at the guidelines listed in a recent CorpNet post by Barbara Weltman.

Take Advantage of Low Cost SEO Strategies

SEO doesn’t have to be an expensive strategy for marketing your business. If you don’t have the resources to dedicate to a massive undertaking, you can take advantage of the low cost strategies in a recent Pixel Productions post by Chris Hamil. Members of the BizSugar community also commented on the post.

Improve Your Twitter Hashtag Research with These Tools

You probably already know that hashtags can be a great way to improve your visibility on Twitter. But if you’re not using the right hashtags, they won’t have as much of an impact. You can make better choices by researching your hashtag options using the tools included in a recent Social Media Examiner post by Lindsay Bartels.

Choose the Best Colors for Your Brand

Colors can make a major difference when it comes to designing your brand. And different colors tend to carry different meanings and connotations. So it can be beneficial to have a grasp of the psychology of color. Kelly Morr elaborates in a recent DIY Marketers post.

Overcome the Challenges of Being Your Own Boss

Being your own boss might sound like a dream come true for a lot of people. But as seasoned entrepreneurs know, it also comes with a lot of challenges. Katie Lundin explains how to overcome some of those challenges in a recent CrowdSpring post.

Look Forward to These Email Marketing Trends

Email marketing has been a mainstay in the marketing strategies of small businesses for years. But though the format remains, some of the trends have changed over the years. Ilma Nausedaite of MailerLite offers some trends to look forward to in email marketing this year. And the BizSugar community offer some thoughts as well.

Use Google Trends to Improve Your SEO Strategy

Having a firm grasp on the topics that are trending online can help you gain visibility for your business through social media and SEO. And Google Trends is a great resource for examining some of those topics. Get some tips for using Google Trends in a recent Noobpreneur post by Ivan Widjaya.

If you’d like to suggest your favorite small business content to be considered for an upcoming community roundup, please send your news tips to: [email protected].

Image Credit: Shutterstock

By Annie Pilon

Sourced from Small Business Trends

In News

Highly Effective Local Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses

January 11, 2018 No Comments

By Alyssa Gregory

Using local marketing in a small business is all about targeting potential customers in your town or region with your marketing activities, through both digital marketing and traditional offline marketing tactics. Local marketing can help you focus in on a specific geographic area, and when it’s done effectively, it often translates into attracting the shoppers who are likely to become customers. The initial reason for this may be because your business is close to where they live and it’s convenient for them, but the reason they stick around is because you are offering something they really need and want.

This is why local marketing can also help you build credibility for your brand, develop a positive reputation and foster customer loyalty over time.

If you are ready to get started with local marketing, pick a few of the marketing ideas listed here and try them in your small business to see if you can grow your local customer base.

1. Focus on Local SEO

This first tactic should be considered a marathon instead of a sprint because it is not something you can do overnight. Instead, you can plant the seed for future web traffic by beginning to target keywords that are specific to your local business. For example, if you have a business named Smith Dry Cleaners in Walpack, New Jersey, you may want to develop content on your blog and website that focuses on targeting the keyword phrase: Walpack dry cleaners. This will draw in potential customers who live in your area and are searching for local dry cleaners.

2. Use Location Targeting With Adwords and Facebook

Once you have content developed that highlights your local keywords, you can get even more eyes on it by using location targeting with AdWords. This allows you to have your advertisements shown only in the locations you select, helping you focus your marketing investment on the areas where you’ll find the right local customers.

Similarly, you can use location targeting with Facebook Ads to refine your audience for your local campaigns.

3. Create Landing Pages for Each Geographic Area

It is possible to have more than one local marketing keyword that you are targeting in your business. Perhaps there are a handful of other towns in your local area, aside from the one your business is located in. This means you might have 5-6 keywords to use, each targeting a different town. One way to ensure the marketing content is relevant for potential customers in each of these towns is by creating a few different landing pages that has content specific for each location. You can use each page as the destination link for your advertisements and marketing campaigns that target each local keyword.

4. Use Yelp

Yelp is all about local marketing, so it really is a must-have if you are starting to execute local marketing campaigns. The first step is claiming your Yelp Business Page. Once you have your page claimed, you can update the contact information listed for your business, view and respond to customer reviews, post content like photos and special offers, and view your visitor activity. Yelp is often the first result that pops up when searching for local businesses on Google, whether your reviews are monitored or not.

This is why Yelp should be a piece of the marketing strategy for any local business, regardless of any other local marketing tactics you employ. Social Media Examiner has an excellent article with more tips for using Yelp to market your business that is worth checking out as you get started with Yelp.

5. Try SMS Marketing

SMS stands for short message service and refers to what we refer to as text messaging. Have you ever gotten a text message for a sale at a local retail store, or an update from your dentist that it’s time to schedule your next appointment? That’s SMS marketing. This type of local marketing is a great fit for brick-and-mortar businesses who want to ramp up store foot traffic, service businesses who schedule appointments on a daily basis, and any business owner who want to reach potential customers in real-time.

6. Sponsor Local Events

Depending on where your business is located, there may be a lot of local events every year organized and run by other local organizations. In many cases, these organizations are looking for fellow businesses to support their cause, either by teaming up to organize the event, or just by donating money in exchange for being mentioned in their program and website. Both of these options are an excellent way to get your business in front of local patrons. If your business is in a more rural location, there is no reason why you can’t expand your radius to support initiatives in neighboring towns. Reach out to other businesses and keep your eyes open for calls for support to get started.

7. Team Up With Your Neighbors

If sponsoring an event isn’t really for you, consider going smaller scale and teaming up with a neighboring business to double your reach by cross-promoting. It can be as simple as giving another store your coupons, flyers or business cards to display on their counter while you do the same for them. Or you can create co-branded deals that reward customers for making a purchase at both locations: “Buy one from us, get one half off from them.” There are a lot of ways you can team up with other local small businesses to make a big impact on your customers. Check out this list of ways to cross-promote to get your creative juices flowing.

8. Empower Your Employees to Be Marketers

Your employees can become one of your best marketing methods when you have local business. After all, they are the ones who interface with your customers day in and day out. The key to empowering your employees to be marketers is two-fold. First, they must be trained so they are fully educated about your business, your products and your goals. They can’t promote you if they don’t understand what your business is about. Second, you can encourage front-of-store employees to become salespeople by offering them incentives. Not everything has to be monetary; consider these ideas for employee incentives that won’t break the bank.

9. Join a Referral Network (Or Start Your Own)

Referral networks pass leads back and forth among businesses, and can be a perfect marketing tool for a local business. Because referral networks rely on word of mouth marketing and customer reviews, you can leverage all of the work you’re doing on Yelp and other review platforms. The value comes from leveraging existing customer relationships to expand your reach by getting your business in front of the networks of each of your customers. If there isn’t a local referral network yet, consider creating your own. Read this guide to referral marketing on Shopify to get started.

10. Pitch to Local TV News and Other Media

Local media outlets are always looking for interesting and relevant news stories to share with readers and viewers. If you have an event coming up, a new product launching, or a special in-store event in the works, your local media may be interested and want to feature your business in an upcoming story. If you can tie a business event in with a local news story or hot topic, your small business can instantly become even more relevant and interesting. Follow these tips for getting the attention of local media before you pitch your story.

Try a few of these local marketing ideas, and see what kind of results you get. When you’re ready, visit this expanded and more general list of 101 marketing ideas and add a few new tactics to your list for a well-rounded marketing campaign.

Feature Image Credit: Michael H / DigitalVision / Getty Images