Tag Archive for: marketing

How to Excel at Small Business Marketing Top Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to Track

In life, we measure all sorts of things. Weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar all help keep tabs on our health. Measuring cups and spoons ensure your built-from-scratch birthday cake comes out beautifully. “Measure twice, cut once” is a mantra among both professional carpenters and DIY home improvement enthusiasts.

Measuring success in business involves paying close attention to key performance indicators (KPIs). These are metrics that provide you guidance on how your small business marketing initiatives are performing. If you’re not moving the needle on your business objectives, KPIs can help you identify why.

There are some KPIs that stretch across different content platforms. For example, conversions and click-through rates. Both apply to social media, paid advertising, and email marketing. Others are specific to marketing platforms. Social media marketing benefits from monitoring likes, comments, and shares. 

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Small Business Best Practices For Outsourcing Business and Marketing Activities
Small Business Best Practices For Outsourcing Business and Marketing Activities

I don’t need to tell you that as a small business owner, you have a lot going on day in and day out. One look at your calendar, inbox, or stack of voicemail messages paints a picture. In your position, it can often seem like you have to “do it all.” 

Or should I say: one look at my calendar/inbox/whatever. It’s a disaster and I’m not proud of it, but it’s the life of an business owner.

Might there be a better way to accomplish your business goals? The short answer is yes. Outsource as much as you can!

This is a bit of, “do as I say, not as I do.” I’m really good at outsourcing some things, but sometimes struggle to let go of others. On the whole, though, over the nearly 13 years that my agency has existed, I’d say I’m winning on the letting go wars! And you can too.

If there are business and marketing activities that you wrestle with, outsource them!. Doing so will allow you to do more of what you’re good at and less of what you’re not. Before you head down that path, here are a few things to think about.

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marketing-messages-that-stick

marketing-messages-that-stick

You try to create the most compelling marketing messages. You know how important it is to speak directly to your target audience and share ideas, features, and tips that will capture their attention. But try as you might, it seems like you’re pushing a bunch of boulders up a super-steep uphill. Your messages seem on-point to you, but your audience doesn’t seem to remember them. And if they do, they don’t seem to remember them long enough to buy your products and services. Never fear! You do have options—good options, actually.

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Critical Twitter Lessons to Aid Your Marketing

Critical Twitter Lessons to Aid Your Marketing

Twitter is one of the big boys when it comes to social media marketing. If you’ve yet to begin using it for your business or don’t know how to use it well, this post is for you! The following articles will get you up to speed and help you use your Twitter account as an effective marketing tool.

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We're All Search Marketers Now

As social media grows and matures, it seems pretty clear that there are a few aspects of this integrated discipline that are becoming increasingly important, yet are undeveloped skills in most social media practitioners.  One such aspect is search marketing.

Just a few short years ago search engine optimization (SEO) was a highly specialized discipline, and primarily was being executed within standalone SEO firms and some digital agencies.   The guys (yeah, mostly guys, though a few gals too) who were search experts often had coding backgrounds, and they really understood the nuts-and-bolts of how the search engines, and websites, worked.  They used this info to help static websites get noticed by the engines, and then they extended that knowledge into paid search, also called PPC (pay-per-click) or search engine marketing (SEM).  Blogs came along and they figured out the best ways to optimize those too.  If you needed to build a website or blog, or run a PPC campaign, you knew who to call.

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