Tag Archives: Marketing

The Power of Online Reviews for Small Businesses

Posted on May 17, 2012 by in Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Small Business

A Yellow Pages telephone phone book was delivered to my front porch recently, and as I brought it into the house I stared at it in bewilderment. A phone book? I asked myself. Who even uses these anymore? Every business I need to look up is on the internet.

According to the latest research, I’m not alone. A Small Business Search Marketing Survey recently conducted by American Express OPEN revealed that 66% of consumers turn to the internet to find local businesses. Moreover, just over 75% of those who rely on the internet reported that they read online reviews of businesses regularly or occasionally, and that positive reviews make them more likely to trust that business more.

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Who Broke My Email!? An Explanation

Posted on May 3, 2012 by in Email, Marketing

Ever received a marketing email that looked… off? Sure you have. Gaps between images, hyperlinks rendered nearly invisible against a background color, strange spacing around the text. We’ve seen it all, and you probably have, too.

Who’s to blame for these goofs? In a lot of instances, individual email clients can wreak major havoc on an email — certain elements tend to display differently from one client to another, and even from one computer operating system to another. But there are a lot of things that can go wrong before an email even arrives at a subscriber’s inbox. Thankfully, Litmus has created an infographic that details what to be mindful of at each stage of the email process, from creation to delivery. …

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The Big Tease: Getting Us Hooked on Super Bowl Commercials Before the Game

Posted on February 2, 2012 by in Integrated Marketing Campaigns, Marketing, Social Media

I hate television commercials, and I’m willing to bet you do, too. They’re annoying, they’re unrealistic, and perhaps most infuriating of all, they always air much louder than the actual show you were engrossed in before the break.

With my DVR, I can get around this. There’s nothing I love more than being able to fast-forward through the commercials. It makes me feel like I have the upper hand on the advertisers. That I’m beating them at their own game.

And this makes the advertisers very, very sad. Indeed, as traditional television viewership has declined, so has advertising revenue. The television ad market dipped 21.2% between 2008 and 20091, and since then it hasn’t exactly made a comeback.

But there remains one time of year where the advertisers can still beat me at my own game. One very special day where they know that they have nearly all of America’s attention…

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New Year’s Resolutions, 2012

Posted on December 30, 2011 by in Marketing, Productivity, Small Business

I’m torn when it comes to New Year’s resolutions — I like the idea of having goals, and I hate people setting themselves up to fail.Resolutions should be achievable, and I like action items to help move us toward that goal, whether it’s increasing business sales or losing some extra holiday pounds.

There’s nothing like January 1st to make us all evaluate how we could do things differently in the next year. Here are 3 actionable New Year’s resolutions for your business:

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