Imagine having to sell a product or service without using words, only pictures. It may sound scary, but a savvy marketer would embrace the challenge by creating a pictorial storyline demonstrating the value of a product or business. The best marketers understand the basic concept that advertising is in itself a form of illustrative storytelling, relying upon verbal imagery to connect … Read More
More Customers Trust Online Reviews as Much as Personal Recommendations
A recent study on consumer behavior and local businesses reported that more customers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations to determine the quality of a business. The study reported that in 2014, only 12% of consumers do not read online reviews, as compared to 15% in 2013 and 24% in 2012.
Facebook 101: How to Write a Facebook Post for Business
Facebook for business is one of the best ways to communicate with your customers. It’s fun, engaging, and easy to do- for the most part. Writing and sharing your posts on Facebook can be tricky, especially as Facebook introduces more and more features. It can be fairly intimidating to write and post something on behalf of your business that could … Read More
Why Nobody Reads Your Emails
Email marketing is a very important tool in engaging your customer base and growing your small business. Maximizing your success means making sure every email of yours will be read—and where appropriate, produce the desired call-to-action. However, that’s not always the case. Often times, people won’t read your entire email. With every email you craft, you’re investing time and effort … Read More
Yelp’s New Messaging Feature
Yelp just came out with a new instant messaging feature on their website, where customers can engage in conversation with local businesses. In 2011, Facebook came out with a private messaging system for business pages as well, but this is a big step for Yelp. For the most part, Yelp’s platform hadn’t really encouraged conversations between businesses and customers—that is, … Read More
The Power of Storytelling To Engage Your Audience
Bob owns Good Eatz. He had always been a cook, but three years ago, he decided to buy a restaurant and run his own business. He loves two things: food and making people happy. Bob thought that the two would be enough for him to run his small business. However, Bob had a problem. After a year of trying to ramp … Read More
Chunk—good for PB&J, better for emails
I was going through my email inbox the other day, clicking on various emails from businesses that I’d given my email addresses to (retail clothing stores and some restaurants) and noticed something. After about 15 seconds on each email, I would abort. Something about the way the email was formatted made me want to leave and look at something else. Most … Read More
Does Social Media Affect Our Emotions? Controversial Facebook Experiment Says Yes
In 2012, Facebook ran a study to learn more about how the emotions of our friends affect our own mood. For the Facebook experiment, they changed the algorithm of over 600,000 users to feature more or less positive and negative content and studied how those users responded (Did they write happier or sadder statuses? Did they comment with happier words when shown photos of animals … Read More
7 Social Media Musts for a Small Business Marketing Plan
Social media is a powerful platform for small businesses. It’s free to get started and can deliver great leads, new customers, and more revenue because there are millions of great prospects using social media. There are a myriad of platforms and just as many strategies for each. So what are a few ways to get started with social media for a … Read More
How To Thank Your Customers on Social Media
As a local business owner, your day is busy enough. You have to do a myriad of things every single day by yourself, and most of the time, marketing is far down on the list of priorities. Even more so, maintaining and managing each of your social media channels is hard. Remembering to regularly post, update your profile and monitor … Read More
