It’s easy to spend the majority of your new website budget on design and development without money left over for promotion and marketing, and now, you need to grow website traffic. Maybe you’ve found yourself in this situation? The good news is that you can … Continue reading “10 strategies for building website traffic on a budget”

Digital marketing 101 overview Any business owner likely has heard the term “digital marketing” before, but how well do you understand it and the opportunities it offers for your business? It can be overwhelming as it covers many forms and can involve many strategies since … Continue reading “Digital marketing 101: A beginner’s guide”

It’s important to measure email marketing when running campaigns. Email marketing platforms, such as DailyStory, include built-in analytics tools you can use to understand how your emails are performing. The good news is that email marketing is easy to measure. Most email marketing services, including … Continue reading “How to measure the success of your email marketing campaign”

Instagram Guides are one of the most underrated Instagram features that you may not be using…yet. But Instagram Guides are excellent for sharing curated content with your followers. Users can easily consume a collection of Instagram posts, products and more in an easy-to-digest format. For … Continue reading “4 tips when using Instagram Guides”

How often do you perform a competitive analysis of your franchise competition? If the answer is “not often” or “never,” your franchise business is missing out on valuable insights.  About 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies practice some form of competitive analysis regularly. A franchise … Continue reading “7 steps to gain insights into your franchise competition”

Email marketing campaigns are still one of the most effective tools in your digital marketing toolkit. For every dollar you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $40. In addition, email is the main driver of customer retention and acquisition for … Continue reading “10 ways to create email marketing campaigns that convert”

Now more than ever, consumers want businesses to treat them as individuals. Personalization in your digital marketing can help. In fact, personalization allows you to show that you really know your customers and can create unique experiences for them across platforms. Personalized marketing, otherwise known … Continue reading “8 benefits of personalization in your digital marketing”

Instagram is a must-have social media platform for many businesses, but do you need an Instagram business account? The visuals-first app generates about 1 billion active monthly users and is particularly popular among consumers 34 and younger. Features have diversified since its founding in 2010, … Continue reading “8 benefits of using an Instagram business account (and how to set it up)”

Your brand is your business’s identity. So, your branding is the reflection and culmination of your business’s personality, appearance, voice and overall vibe. It takes about seven seconds for consumers to make an instant decision about whether or not they like and trust your brand. … Continue reading “5 signs that your branding is broken”

With shopping habits rapidly evolving, it’s more important than ever for your multiple marketing channels to work together to engage consumers and ultimately lead them to purchase from you. Enter omnichannel marketing. Even if customers are in your physical store, about 42 percent of in-store … Continue reading “5 omnichannel marketing tips to help grow your business”

Often the punchline to a joke, Millennial consumers should not be overlooked. Born between 1981 and 1996, creative and tech-savvy Millennials are transforming our marketplace. Millennials care about saving, peer recommendations, reading and researching before they buy and environmentally rewarding experiences. In fact, Millennials were … Continue reading “6 tips for marketing to Millennial consumers”

Regardless of the type of small business you have, an effective and engaging website is critical to your brand’s success. With almost 2 billion websites on the internet and U.S. users visiting more than 130 web pages per day, you have stiff competition to not … Continue reading “11 steps to create an effective business website”

Growth marketing is all about your long-term strategy, but the term itself can lead to confusion regarding its true meaning. Because marketing is what’s done to grow a business, shouldn’t all marketing be growth marketing? The answer is no. Growth marketing is a strategy-based, data-driven … Continue reading “Growth marketing: What it is and 4 ideas to inspire you”

These days, there are two different types of PR: traditional and digital. PR, which stands for public relations, refers to a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and the public. Choosing whether your business should focus on traditional PR or digital … Continue reading “6 differences between traditional PR and digital PR”

If your business is targeting Gen Z consumers, you likely already know that what might work for most consumers won’t necessarily work for this audience group. Roughly speaking, Gen Z includes individuals who were born between 1997 and 2012 and make up about 20 percent … Continue reading “11 ways to better engage with Gen Z consumers”

No business wants a recession to happen, but they are inevitable.  Any shrinking of the economy can spur necessary changes not just in business plans but in your digital marketing strategy as well. Since 1945, the U.S. has gone through 11 recessions officially. While many … Continue reading “12 digital marketing strategy tips during a recession”

Social media negativity is a fact of life for both individuals and brands.  As a brand, however, you want to make sure that you handle any negative comments appropriately. Any misstep can become a problem for your business. About 94 percent of consumers admit that … Continue reading “5 ways to handle social media negativity”

Consumer trust matters. As a business, it’s in your best interest to invest resources into building trusting relationships with potential and current customers. Consumers do hold businesses to certain standards and want to build relationships with the ones that they believe in. They don’t want … Continue reading “6 ways to grow consumer trust (and your resulting sales)”

Marketing automation technology has come a long way over the years. But your automation is only as powerful as the thought process behind it. Automation in marketing refers to any email, SMS text message or other marketing messages (or tasks) that automatically happens in response … Continue reading “5 ways to approach automation in your marketing strategy”

The holiday season is a great opportunity to get creative so that your brand can stand out among the countless images of seasonal fun. But since the holidays come back around every year, you might be struggling to break out of a holiday marketing rut.  … Continue reading “11 ideas to inspire your holiday marketing strategy”

Digital marketing has become the primary way to spread the word about your holiday offers and savings.  And since the holidays are a hectic time for consumers, it’s critical to develop a holiday marketing strategy sooner than later that will help you stand out from … Continue reading “7 holiday marketing strategy tips to optimize sales”

Every business should have an SMS marketing strategy as part of its larger digital marketing efforts. SMS marketing is the use of text messages to convey your message to potential (and current) customers. It’s also the way many consumers prefer to communicate. About 75 percent … Continue reading “8 tips to maximize your SMS marketing strategy”

Even with the best planning, your marketing strategy could fail. Digital marketing comprises various online strategies that identify, build and target an audience with the ultimate goal of turning them into paying customers. It includes the following and more: Social media marketing Search engine optimization … Continue reading “8 signs that your marketing strategy isn’t working”

How often do you perform a competitive analysis for your brand? If the answer is “not often” or “never,” your business is missing out on valuable insights.  About 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies practice some form of competitive analysis regularly. A competitive analysis is … Continue reading “Competitive analysis: What it is and how you can start yours”