Igniting Business Blog

Starting a new year is often a time of personal reflection to determine areas of personal growth for the new year.  Likewise, January is a great time to reflect on areas of growth for your small business.  When it comes to marketing and your small business’ digital presence, you may feel overwhelmed by the variety of avenues, platforms, tactics, and strategies.  Rather than giving up before the year even begins or chasing strategies in (what seems like) 50 million directions, check out our suggestions below to focus your small business on 4 key marketing avenues and successful tactics in each of those avenues. 

When most people consider content marketing, they focus almost entirely on creating the actual content. While that's important, as you need to have quality content to grab and hold your audience's attention, a creator needs to also have a plan for how they're going to get people to pay attention to the content. Otherwise, your message will easily be lost in the shuffle.

Pay-per click marketing, commonly shortened to just PPC, is one of the most popular methods of advertising on the Internet. While it may seem simple at first glance, it takes a lot of hard work and experience to get the most out of a PPC marketing campaign.

Different platforms need different marketing videos. Just like you would customize material for different audiences, demographics, and broadcasting channels, every video advertisement needs to be built according to guidelines of where you're posting it online. Facebook videos, for example, should be short, graphically exciting, and translate well without sound. On the other hand, YouTube videos on your channel need to be informative, instantly recognizable, and easy to follow. However, YouTube advertisements are something else entirely. Here's how to get the most mileage out of YouTube advertisements specifically.

Your social media followers don't immediately convert into customers. The process takes time. Converting followers into customers takes a bit of posting and management strategy. Your audience consists of a wide range of users, and the same directly promotional content for long-time followers won't appeal to new viewers. Mix good, fresh content into your feed, rather than strictly promote your small business. Here are three ways to do that while staying on brand:

The more places online and on social media your audience can find you, the stronger your brand will stand and grow. But don't isolate and nurture your channels independently. Instead, the best way to grow your audience and convert more visitors is to make each platform a tightly-knit part of the whole. Here are two ways to do just that:

As a small business, you may have trouble reaching and connecting with potential customers. How can you use Twitter to increase your online visibility to attract new customers? Twitter can be a valuable platform for many small businesses when properly implemented and utilized.  Below we pose 4 key questions to consider for your small business in making Twitter a more effective platform your needs.

Recently, Instagram released its shopping feature to a general audience, including users in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Spain, and more. The feature gives approved businesses the ability to tag products in a post. Users can then view product details and make purchases through Shopping on Instagram without ever leaving the mobile app.

LinkedIn has existed on the periphery of what most users consider social media for years, but they're making a more and more concerted effort to gain legitimacy in that stage. While it's not as all-encompassing or as interactive as Twitter or Facebook, this platform is especially popular if you’re selling or marketing business to business (B2B). You can incorporate LinkedIn marketing into your small business campaigns with an increasing degree of success using LinkedIn’s resourceful toolset. You’ll find to continue increasing engagement, LinkedIn has further developed its range of features, with one of their newest being Smart Replies.

If your small business is on social media, you're likely there to grow your customer base, audience, and following. Unfortunately, we can make very basic mistakes that will get fewer people to follow us, and may even drive away some users who had already chosen to follow you. Avoid these three practices on your social media platforms.