With the emergence of smartphone devices, social media marketing will be playing a major role online for many years to come. Now with over 2 billion people using Facebook, Instagram, and other social media sites, it’s becoming easier for businesses to gain a huge, loyal following.

Here are the 6 advantages of social media marketing for your business:

1. Brand Exposure: If your customers have purchased your products and services and it has benefited them, the natural thing for them to do is to tell their family and friends. When they share your products and services through social media, their recommendations can spread like wildfire, having your brand exposed to a vast number of people.
2. More Traffic: Without traffic, your business will struggle and traffic is extremely crucial if want to sell your goods and services and pursue a large following. On social media, it is always best to talk to your customers and encourage them to visit your website. Another idea would be to send them a free eBook or gift to subscribe to your newsletter. This can help you gain more traffic as well.
3. Very Affordable: One of the advantages of using social media marketing is that doesn’t cost much compared to other ways of advertising. On Facebook, you can start with 5 dollars a day for a post you would like to boost and scale the bid once you see activity. Very affordable for those who have a low budget.
4. Increased Brand Loyalty: There are times where things in your business don’t go according to plan. Someone may have ordered a product and it’s taking too long to be delivered. They may have complained through social media about the long delay of delivering the product and you can respond to them stating that you’re sorry for the long wait and can offer them a free gift in addition to their order and have it delivered on time. This is an excellent way to have your customers feel confident in your brand and would want to continue doing business with you. This is brand loyalty at its finest.
5. Customers are happy: Like we previously mentioned, once you gain the confidence and trust of your customers, they will always be happy and continue to do business with you. Whenever your customers are happy, they will share the good news with their friends and family that they should buy goods and services from you for interacting with them and treating them with respect.
6. Having an insight into the marketplace: On social media sites like Facebook, it’s easy to get an insight of your marketplace. When you can narrow it down to demographics, age, work history and the like, you can target your message to that audience, without having to go through a lengthy research of who your buyer persona is.

We are over halfway through the year, and today we would like to talk about the SEO strategies for 2018 that businesses would need to watch for and implement.

When it comes to SEO, the strategies used today are tweaked and changed consistently. Even when one approach has worked in the past, it can be completely inefficient in the future. However, some strategies have been improved. Let us explain what these SEO trends are that we need to look out for:

1. Using Voice Search: Voice search is becoming the most popular way for users to search the web. Every day millions of people ask their phone for the answers to their problems. How do you get everyone’s phone to respond with your answer? This is the million dollar question that we have the answer too. Simply put, you must provide the best answer. In-depth, you must give more details, in a fast and easily understood manner. Not only should you answer the question but you should answer any questions that may arise. So if the question is, how do I tie my shoes? You should provide multiple ways to tie your shoes, provide images or videos to support it, and answer questions such as, how do I tie my shoes when I can’t see or how where do I buy new shoe strings. Providing links to answer these questions is better than having a user go back to Google to search more.
2. Think Mobile: Although using laptops, at this time, is never going out of style, almost everyone today owns a mobile device. How could this information help with SEO? Simple. Let’s say someone wants to call a plumbing service. All they would have to do is search for a plumbing service on their smartphone and call the number. With Voice Search and Call Only Extensions, it is easier for customers to contact your business on a mobile device. Also, make sure that your website is mobile-responsive. To test your website’s mobile responsiveness, you can add in your domain URL in the Mobile-Friendly Test tool from Google and find out your results.
3. Create Video Content:  Youtube is the world’s second largest search engine. This means that your potential customers will be looking for your products and services through video content. When you combine long, quality content with engaging videos, you will begin to reach more people on both platforms which will then typically lead to more conversions.
4. Writing In-Depth Content: Gone are the days where you could write thin, keyword-stuffed content and ranked on the first page of Google. In 2018, high-quality, relevant content remains and is still king. Well-written articles with infographics, images, and video to help solve your customer’s problems will always reign supreme. When a website has long, quality content, the searcher that’s looking for a solution to their problem will have everything they need in one area.

Conclusion

We hope that we’ve helped to understand some of the top SEO strategies for 2018. Using these four strategies should help to boost your websites search engines results, giving your site a higher ranking.

When it comes to designing your website, you shouldn’t feel embarrassed. Not everyone is born with a super creative mind. To be a top-notch web designer, it is a must to practice this skill on a daily basis. Having said that, what if you, as non-designer, can design a site that looks beautiful and elegant compared to well-talented web designers? Well, guess what, you can. Just follow some of the tips below.

Here, we will give you great web design tips even if you don’t have a creative bone in your body:

• Build Your Brand Identity: It all starts with your brand. The questions you need to ask yourself are, what does your brand name represent? What makes you as brand stand above your competition? When you find the answers to your questions about your brand, you start to picture images of what your brand identity should look like.
• Keep it Simple: Web design doesn’t have to be complicated. Far from it. Realize that using web design that leans towards the minimal end of the spectrum is usually the best approach. You always want your design to be simple, elegant and easy on the eyes.
• Learn Color Theory: Like we mentioned about your brand identity, you will have visuals that will pop into your mind. What are certain colors that will fit with your personality and brand image? You may have favorite colors that may resonate with your website that will have it looking very professional. Please try not to use all the colors of the rainbow for your web design. Use a few colors and again, keep it minimal.
• Use Proper Photography: Make sure that you are choosing the right quality images for your website. In addition, make sure that you are careful of using copyrighted photos. In most cases, it is best to use your own pictures to design your website, so you don’t get into legal problems.
• Be Consistent With Your Web Design: Everything from your website must be consistent at all times from your images, to the fonts, to the color schemes, and to your content. Every element must fit together when someone navigates through your pages.

Conclusion

Even though you may be a non-designer, use these web design tips for your website, which help you build your website like the professionals.

I’m sure many us can remember a time in our lives where someone said something negative about us. It certainly doesn’t feel good when knowing the things that were said negatively about us were not true and we had to handle the situation by proving to others that the rumors were false. When it comes to promoting your business online, there are others out there that wish to put your company in danger and at risk of losing revenue, and above all, your reputation. With the emergence of social media platforms, it most certainly makes it easy for companies to have a target on their backs. Having said that, here’s the question:

What is Reputation Management and how it can help your company alleviate any bad press online?

Reputation management is a technique that incorporates marketing efforts and campaigns to bury negative reviews, information or search results and promote content that positively shows the desired image of a company.

Here’s how Reputation Management can manage your online presence:

• Increase Sales and Revenue: The internet is the primary spot for individuals to connect to when they are searching for answers to their problems. It is the best place to search and research for all kinds of topics. One of the best ways to use Reputation Management and increase your sales and revenue is to directly engage with customers through the means of social media and your website. Of course, this should be done in a positive light and you must be transparent so your customers can continue to trust you. The company who is implementing Reputation Management should make sure they find a reputable person or marketing company to take over this role.
• Build Credibility: Like we mentioned previously, gaining your customer’s trust is of the utmost importance for a business to survive online. Whether you’re in the B2C or B2B market, the internet gives your customers a voice to say whatever is on their mind online if they aren’t happy with your service or your product. One negative comment about your brand will spread much faster than a positive one. Once you have a reputation management strategy in place to alleviate negative reviews, it helps you build your credibility as a brand that deeply cares about its customers and wants to improve your services and products.
• Build a Brand Image: With Reputation Management, you can definitely build a better brand image for your company. Once you or a marketing agency can monitor the responses that are being put out by bad press comments, any attacks can be dealt with swiftly. This can be done by publishing a social media post, where positive dialogue can begin to build your brand’s image moving forward.

Conclusion

Building credibility and brand image are paramount. In the end, businesses make mistakes and it is their duty to have their loyal customers trust them again and continue to service them in the most ethical way. This is the power of Reputation Management.

Summer time brings lots of fun at the beach, pool parties, barbeques, and fun gatherings.  It also can be a time for sales slowdowns for many businesses.  Depending on your business model, industry, product and or service, your sales can lower drastically during the summer months.  This drastic reduction in sales can lower profitability, cause you to lay off staff, and be enough of a downturn to instill worry about your business potentially affecting your quality of life.

This thought our idea does not have to be the reality for your business.  While these trends are cyclical in many business models, there are tactics and processes you can employ to mitigate or lessen the effects of the summer sale slow down.

Because most millennials are enjoying summer break, parents are taking vacations while their children are off from school, and many people in general tend to enjoy more time off during the summer months.  This is a great opportunity for your company to redesign and execute a well-developed Social Media Marketing strategy for your company.

With more users (your customers) reviewing social media during the summer months at a more frequent pace, a well-developed Social Media Marketing program will ensure your brand, your products, and your services are or remain at the forefront of your intended audience.  You will have more opportunities to present your business to your customers in the summer months.

Consumers still purchase in the summer months, however, consumers will purchase from those brands that resonate with them and appeal to their needs and desires.  If you are nowhere to be found, if you are not interacting with your potential customers, and if you are not at the forefront of their attention when they are using the public and digital mediums, your sales will drop alongside of the rest of the businesses who realize a drastic sales slowdown during the summer months.

E: info@theadleaf.com | P: 321.255.0900 | Skype: Chris.Delarue

I Don’t Have the Money to Market my Business

If we had a nickel for every time we have heard the statement “I Don’t have money to market my business”, “It’s not in the budget”, or “We’ve spent so much money in marketing we are not going to do it anymore”, we would be billionaires!

Here’s the skinny. In the 1980’s my grandparents spent $2500.00 per month for a full page phone book advertisement for their business that may or may not have procured customers with their local audience of 25,000 citizens. Why? Because we had to market? Said Grandma. It wasn’t something we could afford to gamble with if we wanted to stay in business. Sure, we had referral customers, but people move away, retire, and their life situations changed.”

In business, like in life, we make time and money for what we ultimately feel is important. If you truly started a business without capital funding to run your business and execute your business plan, then you do not really have a business. What you do have is a whim and a prayer. That is not only dangerous for you, that is dangerous for your customers, employees, vendors, and will open you up to potential legal action should you default with one of many of the folks I just listed. In most situations, when we hear those statements around the availability of money written in the first paragraph, the sad reality is, is that the business owner or decision maker really doesn’t understand executing a business plan and budgeting critical expenses like compliance education, legal counseling, training, and marketing. Understanding the fundamental problem that we really do make time and money for what we “think” is important in business, the expense categories I just listed are treated as a luxury expense. The 2016 business playing field screams to us that these expenses are anything but luxury items.

In September 2013, Forbes Magazine and Bloomberg Weekly reported that 8 out of 10 business fail within the first 18 months. In addition, another sad reality is, is that many of the small business clients that approach our marketing firm to engage in marketing services have waited to the absolute last conceivable minute to do anything about marketing, they(you) are in jeopardy of losing the business and closing the doors. Many believe that $500.00 and one month of marketing is going to somehow function as the magic bullet that saves your business from failure. That is not the case. If you have waited to execute your business plan until you are in trouble, I’m afraid to tell you it may be too late.

Now that we have called out what the typical small business owner trajectory is, here is how you can prevent you and your business from becoming just another statistic and failed concept. First, educate yourself in writing a business plan. Put together funding to run your startup company. You are not the first person that has thought up a great idea, or invented a game-changing widget, or developed the best possible concept. You cannot start a business without funding and a business plan, it will not work. Interview and be sure you have vetted the right vendors to support what your needs are. Understand that you are not the subject matter expert in all areas and don’t treat critical expenses such as legal compliance, Human Resources training, corporate compliance, and Marketing as luxury expenses because they are not. Think about this conceptually like a baseball or football team. There is a reason why the pitcher is not playing all positions on the team. It’s simply because he or she is not great at right field or shortstop. He’s the pitcher! Finally, just like you would expect for the services(or goods) you sell, hire and pay your business contacts an appropriate and fair market value fee for their services. If you think you can get away with going the cheap route for any needed expense, you are going to make a devastating and costly mistake in 2016. Your competitors are educated, they possess business the professional business acumen that you don’t have, and they have been seated at the table long before you came around. If you think that you can take short cuts and create a pathway to business success you are going to become another Forbes and Bloomberg statistic in 2016.

E: info@theadleaf.com | P: 321.255.0900 | Skype: Chris.Delarue

In 2015 social media marketing and social commerce drove 30% of all website traffic to websites-did you know that? With Millennials (Customers born around 2000), social media is their number one used search method to find goods and services. Gen X(1960-1980) and Gen Y(1980-2000) use social media as their 2nd preferred search option for goods and services behind Google, which is number one. Everyone says social media is the next big thing but I haven’t had a single sale from Social Media!

There are many reasons that you might not have success with Social Media Marketing. I, would not allow a Dr’s receptionist to operate on a broken bone should that emergency arise. I cannot figure out for the life of me why so many of you think you are the best person to manage marketing and social media for your business? As the florist, plumber, electrician, counselor, dentist or doctor wouldn’t your time be better spent utilizing your skills as the subject matter expert in your field?

In order to realize success with social media marketing, you must first understand social media(based on your age demographics really define that knowledge level), the concepts surrounding success with each social media channel and the how best those principles will support your company. You must ensure that you have picked the right social media channels for your business, and you must communicate with your customers or potential customers in a way that supports them, not necessarily yourself if you’re not even your own target customer. Additionally, understand what realistic expectations should be surrounding social media success. If you’re constantly plugging your product or service three times per day, seven days per week, you’re drowning your audience, turning people off, and irritating people. Did you know that social media serves as a branding tool for your business first? Did you know that social media also serves as a customer facing or customer service segment of your business? Be meaningful and purposeful with your social media strategy and posting. Are you consistently branding your social media messages? We have seen many small business owners using the same social media accounts for business and their personal lives. That decision is disastrous for the business for many reasons.

Give us a call and we would be delighted to audit your social media marketing performance as well as develop a comprehensive pathway to success in your branding and long term marketing performance.

E: info@theadleaf.com | P: 321.255.0900 | Skype: Chris.Delarue

The typical progression with marketing and the life of a small business owner takes a few twists and turns. Typically, a North American based small business owner will start their business without the appropriate level of business acumen to effectively start and run a business. Forbes Magazine and Bloomberg reported that 8 out of 10 small business owners will fail in business within 18 months. (Published September 2013)

Due to this lack of knowledge, many small business owners in order to save costs (in their minds) will attempt to conduct and manage the marketing themselves. In most instances, this action quite honestly has lasting negative sales impact, profitability impact, customer service impact, and overall business branding impact. In some cases, that negative impact is difficult to realize (at least in the beginning) short term. Once you have realized that the marketing side of the business is taking significant amount of time away from you actually doing what you love(the very thing you decided to do when you opened your business), you realize that you need to hire some type of marketing support.

The next step in business owner life progression brings many of you to a crossroads. Should I hire an in house marketing person( I have read the Craigslist Ads that you have written looking for a marketing coordinator, customer service representative, sales person, personal assistant, and support person *all in one* for the bargain price of $10.00 per hour  ), or should I entertain those “spam” emails and phone calls I receive about marketing?

Once you have realized at this point in your business life progression either: Hire the $1600.00 minimum, per month cost to employ a $10.00 per hour Jack or Jane of all trades to manage Marketing, or hire one of the agencies that have been emailing you (multiple times per day) and calling you regularly. No matter which direction you have chosen, what you should establish are reasonable expectations with respects to how you manage those relationships and how much you should be involved.

Keep in mind that a marketing staffer “might be” but the marketing agency “will be” the subject matter experts in marketing and advertising. You as the business owner are the subject matter expert around your business model or widget(s) that you create and sell. If you truly wish to realize sales and profitability success with the marketing you are paying for, you must be involved in the process. It is critical that you help your employee or agency create content, images, videos, sound bites, and specials or promotions. You must provide feedback and approvals. If you are paying an employee or paying for a service why would you not show direct involvement in something you are paying for? How much time do you need to be involved? That is a great question. The answer is really contingent upon how “bad” your marketing, sales, and profitability performance historically has been. If your sales are down or flat, if your profitability is down or flat, or if your marketing program is dismal-you should plan to invest the time necessary to ensure that your employee or agency is steered in the right direction in support of success for your business. If you hire an employee or an agency and then drop off your mess in their laps, your ultimate success could be improved but most likely would only show limited improvement.

You must be collaborative: If you approach your employee or agency with a jaded eye and an “ah ha I gotcha” mentality, your employee and agency are not going to be able to function in a creative, forward looking, and proactive manner in support of your marketing success. If you spend all of your interaction time looking for items that the employee didn’t complete or the agency didn’t complete instead of looking for creative ways to execute each segment of your campaigns, you are wasting valuable time and resources. It is human nature for “people” to work hard in support of doing a great job. Work to solve the root cause of problems and then focus on moving forward. If your employee or agency missed the mark with marketing did you fail to send in content? Did you fail to create content? Did you fail to direct them with specials, promotions, giveaways? Did you take weeks to provide feedback or an approval on a priority they were waiting for? Did you NOT take the work they sent you over for approval seriously? Did you not even review it? At the end of the day, as a business owner, the only person you are accountable to is the person you see in the mirror. Be sure to be purposeful, honest, and involved with what you are paying for in business. The CEO’s of major U.S. Fortune 50 organizations do not run their day to day operations on vacation 365 days per year, why do you think that you do not have to be: Supportive, hands on, helpful, proactive, and respectful with vendor and employee relationships, while still expecting great success?