In some ways, this year feels like it has dragged on and on. And in other ways it feels like it’s zipping by! I realized this week is Thanksgiving! Then, I started to think how I haven’t started my holiday shopping yet! As a small business owner, there is nothing like shopping for client gifts to make the holiday stresses pile up! With Black Friday and Cyber Monday in front of us, small business owners are starting to think about finding the right gifts for their family and friends and CLIENTS too. You’re probably one of them and if you’re…
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I bet the holiday shopping season is going to be a little different this year. Every November, you see the same news story on Black Friday: hundreds of people crowding outside of Walmarts and Targets around the country, waiting to grab as many deals as they can. It’s the biggest shopping day of the year with sales galore. COVID-19, however, has changed all that. I suspect that we won’t see the insane crowds as usual outside of stores this Friday, November 27th. As large indoor gatherings are prohibited, stores won’t allow a borderline mob to roar in, grabbing everything in…
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You want to know the real problem with content creation? It’s like being on a treadmill. Every single week, you need to have a new blog or a new podcast ready. This is accompanied by social media posts, an email campaign, and all of your other digital marketing content. It never ends! That’s one of the reasons why so many small business owners fall off the content creation train after just a few weeks. They start out strong, keeping up with the pace. But soon, they start to fall behind, maybe missing a single week. Then it’s two weeks. And…
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Have you ever heard the phrase, “Aging gracefully?” While I personally think that aging gracefully is a virtue, I can tell you one place where age really does matter: your website. After just a few years, even the most cutting-edge, beautiful, and well-designed website starts to look a little dated, or even worse, doesn’t function properly anymore! In fact, many websites look like they’ve gone without any updates for over a decade! Although, to be 100% honest, there are far fewer of them than there used to be. Over the last few months, COVID-19 has pivoted millions of small businesses…
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Are you the kind of person who finds it easy to make new friends? Or are you more the type that prefers to meet and chat with people online? Either way, your skills are going to come in handy if you’re creating an email nurture sequence to entice new subscribers to become paying customers! In business, it’s critical to always follow up on things. If you leave potential customers and clients to their own devices, the chances are that they will get distracted by their daily lives. To keep them as active prospects, you need to nurture the relationships. A…
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Copywriting is at the heart of most marketing strategies. Everything from writing ads to crafting webinars to coming up with taglines requires a certain amount of copywriting skill. As a small business owner, you need to effectively communicate your brand’s key messages through compelling copy that converts people to paying customers. But how do you do this? If you don’t know the different types of copy, proven strategies to get customers to engage, and ways to deal with writer’s block ( a particular nightmare for all writers out there), you’re likely going to be stuck staring at a blank page…
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Are you on social media? Of course you are! Who isn’t! Do you remember your very first exposure to social media? Oh my gosh, for me it was Classmates.com! Haha. But for many of you, it may have been MySpace! Do you remember what it felt like to, for the very first time, have unlimited reach? You could make friends and connect with anyone in the entire world. Communication was the way of the future. That was the promise of social media in the late 90s. But no one could have predicted what it would become in the 2010s! Facebook,…
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2020 has been quite a year! I mean it’s already September! How did that happen? Since the new year is right around the corner, I’ve been thinking a lot about my marketing strategy and where I want to see my business in the new year. So with that being said, my first stop is always my website. Several times a year, I take a good look at my website, the services offered, the messaging, design, and everything else that makes for an excellent user experience. If things have broken, I need to get them fixed. If some copy doesn’t flow…
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About 30 years ago, do you know one of the best places to connect with your customers? Their car. The very first thing they did after they got into their car in the morning was turn on the radio. And chances are that it remained on for their entire commute to work, both back and forth. This offered advertisers a captive audience (literally, if the driver was on the highway!) But then around 15 years ago, things started to change. People stopped listening to the radio as much when they headed to work. Instead, they would put on music from…
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Recently, I’ve been creating a lot of different types of content that allow me to get closer to my audience. I don’t just want you to read my words, but also hear my voice. I believe that this will create a stronger connection with you! (Is it working?) To get started, I’ve obviously picked podcasting. It’s a fantastic way to get your name and content out there, but it’s also entirely audio, with no visuals. Excellent if your audience is going out for a walk or running errands, but less so if you need to communicate complex ideas that require…
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