Igniting Business Blog

We are excited to announce Tyga McHenry has joined the Igniting Business team as a Web Specialist. Having graduated from the University of Missouri and University of Illinois, Tyga comes to us with experience working in web, marketing, advertising, and IT industries. Tyga uses her experience with the goal to help small businesses better assist their respective communities. She’s been involved in every step of the website design process from planning and mockups to wireframing and development. Serving on our web team, Tyga will play a role in the initial design of website and building out webpages. She’s excited to work alongside our clients to bring their design dreams to fruition on their final website.

One way to generate more revenue in your small business is to acquire more of your best customers.  Rather than continuing broad marketing activities that are not providing quality results, analyze who your best customers and tailor your future marketing efforts accordingly. 

Quite simply: Yes.  Customer reviews can and do affect your small business’s search engine rankings, especially for businesses that sell their service or product locally.  Many users routinely perform searches on local small businesses. One of the best ways for a search engine like Google to determine which organization should receive a higher ranking status is through evaluating the organization's quality and quantity of relevant customer reviews.  So, whether you own a small restaurant, a local plumbing business, or an auto mechanic's shop, if you want to place high on the list of (local) searches, you do need to pay attention to your customer review collection strategy.

Online advertising is constantly transforming. It started as text-based ads with hyperlinks, then became static, clickable images. Soon it evolved to videos, recommendations from trusted content creators, and reviews. The full range of what online advertising means is growing every day, and every avenue leads to more exposure and more recognition. If you have a small business and you're wondering if the time is right to start advertising, here are three indicators you likely should invest in online advertising:

Making the choice to advertise online is a big one. You need to decide your budget, look for the right ad platforms, hone in on your targeted audience, and create effective campaigns that will get you the results you want. You also must consider whether or not online advertising is the right strategy for your business, which involves looking at your current sales, your profit margins, and your competitors through a variety of strategic lenses. Just as important, though, is doing the prep work on your own site so your campaigns direct traffic to a place customers want to go. Below are four areas to consider before deciding your small business website is ready for online advertising:

You can drive traffic to your site with good content. No matter what business you're in, every article, brief post, and description on your website gives search engines more information about your business and gives potential customers a reason to keep exploring your site. While originally intended for Google AdWords planning, Google's Keyword Planner can be a great tool for planning content on your small business website as well.

You have done the research, chosen your niche and have the capital to get started. You are passionate about your work and excited to get started launching your business. For a last check, walk through these five marketing tips for small businesses to launch your business with impact to ensure that you are ready to go.

Did you know every minute there are 300 hours of video uploaded to YouTube? Because of all the “clutter,” videos advertising products and services often have an uphill battle to cut through the noise.  With a few additional steps, you can match your videos to the audience you’re targeting.

Content marketing offers tremendous opportunities for getting your message in front of potential customers.  However, when done poorly or inadequately, content marketing can result in nothing more than wasted time. Here are four common mistakes that can torpedo a small business' marketing efforts.

Join us in welcoming Don Sides to our team as IT Manager.

The Igniting Business team is excited to announce that we are continuing to grow and add new members to our team.  Don Sides joined our team on November 13^th as our IT Manager.  Don will be located in our Columbia, MO office but will service our clients nationally.