Summer Marketing

How to Market Your Business During the Summer

For many of us, summertime means relaxing beside the pool and soaking up the sun. It’s full of lazy days that are great for individuals, but can breed bad news for small businesses. It’s been called the “summertime slump,” as many small businesses experience a decline in sales during the hot, lazy months. So how can you combat this slump? By staying current in marketing strategies, of course. Check out some of these top recommendations on how to boost sales and market your business over the summer.

Keys to Content Marketing

It’s well into 2015, the year of content marketing. Every marketer has been trying to increase sales with branded content. What exactly is content marketing? It’s basically branded business storytelling. It’s sharing your professional, company and employee stories with your audience to cultivate a client relationship. People tend to trust brands more when they are humanized. Here are three tips to creating your own content marketing strategy:

4 Tips about Marketing to Generation Z

Now that you've nailed down your marketing strategy to millennial's, brands and companies need to turn attention towards the rising demographic, Generation Z. Gen Z are teenagers 19 and younger. They've grown up in a fully digital world with full access to the Internet. This group is comprised of digital natives, but it is important to note that they are not naive. They respond well to genuine brands. 

Negative Online Reviews

12 Steps For Dealing With Bad Online Reviews

For small businesses, online reviews can be a very scary thing. Though they are useful tools for consumers, they also give customers the power to take down a brand. Even just one bad review can cast a shadow over your reputation and deter potential clients.

It might feel like you have no control over what is said about your brand online, but you do have the opportunity to display your excellent customer service and diffuse the effects of any inflammatory comments. Keep these steps in mind when you come across a bad online review of your business:

Content is King

What To Do When Your Content Marketing Consistently Flops.

It’s the painful truth. Your content marketing is more likely to fail than it is to succeed.

As disappointing as that may be, developing content marketing is still a necessary part of your business’s success. But why is no one reading your content even when you pour your heart and soul into creating it?

Design a Logo

4 Key Questions to Ask Yourself When Developing a Logo

For logistically minded folks, a logo might not really seem all that important. You’ve got a great business plan and excellent customer service, so why worry about a silly little graphic, right? Wrong.

Think of your logo as the first thing that greets a potential customer. It’s supposed to encompass your brand and plays a huge role in whether or not people feel an instant connection to your business. If your logo looks almost exactly the same as your competition’s, you’ve lost your first shot at standing out. Think about it. When most people are shopping for new wine, what’s the deciding factor? The label. Your logo functions in the exact same way. It gives customers something to judge your company on before they really know what you’re capable of.

Narrow Your Focus

Are you aiming to own a single idea in your client's mind?

Being in the business world is difficult because you have endless options of what you might focus on. You could choose to spend more on your marketing, launch a new campaign or even introduce a new product or feature to your existing line.

The possibilities can be exhilarating and you usually end up with more good ideas than you can possibly implement effectively. We’re usually reluctant to abandon good ideas, even when the result would be having one GREAT one.