Marketing Strategies to Grow Small Businesses

Our mission is to provide our small business clients with effective ideas and implementation for today's rapidly changing marketplace. Our objectives are to:

	Increase your visibility
	Build your brand
	Automate your marketing efforts
	Improve your ROI on every marketing dollar spent

Make our team part of your team to make your business more profitable and effective.

Create an online presence. Struggling to take your business online for the first time. Visit our new ezine, Savvy Marketing Secrets for ideas on how to market your business on and off the Internet.

Follow-up. Some small business owners spend so much effort chasing new customers, they fail to follow-up with the ones they already have.

Consulting. Need help developing content for your site. Click here to learn how we can help.

Writing for the Web: Most people scan web pages selecting only the material that interests them. They rarely read word for word, according to a study by Jacob Nielsen and John Morkes. In a series of articles on Useit.com, Nielsen and Morkes describe an eye-scan study that examined where web viewers eyes actually hit the page.

The same studies showed that low-literacy viewers plow through material, often missing key features. Either way, when writing for the web, you can make content more scalable by:

• Highlighting key words
• Using meaningful subheads, not clever ones
• Employing bulleted or numbered lists
• Limiting paragraphs to one idea
• Using the inverted pyramid style used by journalists

Marketing Trends to Watch

	College Grads: Move your marketing efforts online to reach this demographic.
	Affluent Working Women: This group is growing and may best be reached online.
	Asian Population Growth: 31% of this fast growing marketing is in the South.
	Word-Of-Mouth: To build buzz, target women. They are more likely to tell a friend.

Here's an interesting twist: sustainable or green marketing. Watch this video to learn more.

Trends in Traditional Media

	Yellow Pages: Transition away from print if you are targeting younger audiences.
	Simultaneous Media Usage: There no longer is a captive media audience. Consumers frequently participate in more than one form of media at any one time.
	Newspapers: Newspaper websites are becoming the number-one portals in their geographic markets; drawing a larger, younger and more affluent readership.

Hot Online Trends

	Social Marketing: astute marketers are using web sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to reach audiences in fresh new ways.
	Blogging: Frequency and great content are the magic ingredients for using this tool. Search engines love it when you continue to add fresh, updated information that is relevant to your niche.
	Audio & Video: There is a lot of it out there, but the next challenge will be to improve the quality. Just any old video is no longer good enough.