Strategic Marketing Designed to Achieve Your Goals Within Your Budget

The short answer is "the kind that works" and that's where understanding what will work for your business is important. It starts with who your customers are, what they need or want that you provide, and knowing where they look for what you offer when they are ready to buy. Then you need to understand what causes them to start looking for a solution and where they go to find information before they make a decision. 

Yes. SEO is very important for a small business, especially if it's a local business. Keep in mind that not all SEO companies use the same approach for SEO, and package options can be confusing to someone who doesn't know what everything means.

Here are the basics to know about SEO: Google looks at the content on a website and the structure of the technical code used to build the site. Google also looks at where a business shows up on other websites online aside from their website. Those are called backlinks to the website. Google shows businesses that have a Google Business page on maps search results when the business is nearby a local search query. Google has an algorithm it uses to evaluate all websites online and determines which ones meet the criteria for providing the best relevant, accurate information that someone is asking about.

If you want people to find your business on Google without always having to pay for ads, you need SEO. 

Yes. But not every business needs to use social media the same way. First, you need to decide which platform(s) are the right fit for your business. The main platforms for business social media are Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn.

Some B2B niche businesses only need to post information on a platform or two. That way, when potential clients come to their website and check out their social media pages, there is great content that helps to further the business brand's credibility online.

B2C businesses usually need to be more active and post content that promotes regular customer engagement. For example, a restaurant or bakery doing a Facebook Live showing what great food is being sold that day, or a fashion brand that shows off new clothing and accessories that just dropped, can drive a lot of customers that buy.

This probably happens more than it should. Some business owners have gotten the impression that if they just run ads, sales will come in. There's a bit more involved than just putting an ad online. A well-thought-out execution plan of what happens after someone clicks an ad needs to be mapped out for an ad campaign to be successful. And then there can be other factors causing an ad campaign to fail.

• It's possible that the campaign settings in the platform you're running ads on aren't optimized properly and you're getting clicks from people who are not in your target market.

• Your marketing message or call to action in the ads could be off, so people clicking on your ads are curious but aren't looking to buy what you're offering. It's important to do some testing to see what works.

• The page where the ad takes them may not be a landing page with a clear call to action, so they just click away.

• You may not have a sales system in place that moves each lead into a funnel that communicates with the lead, nurtures the lead, and keeps them engaged with email marketing and maybe text messages.

Before jumping into an ad campaign, it's important to spend some time setting up the customer experience so when each person clicks the ad, they want to do business with your company.

Most people think AI searches and Google searches are completely different. They're more connected than many business owners realize. AI platforms get their primary information from Google indexed data. If you want your business to show up in AI searches, you need to have your business optimized on Google with relevant information that answers the questions your customers are asking before they know who you are.