2019 is almost over and it is time to plan for the new year. You should already have a marketing strategy in place or at least a draft that you can tune in January.

The best practice will be to go through 2019 and figure out what worked and what didn’t. Optimize past strategies and explore and test some new strategies, even those that are outside your comfort zone. 

Take for granted that you already have a great visual brand identity, a fast website that has all the requirements to grab potential customers attention, the key points for 2020 should be:

ONLINE REPUTATION

People that don’t know your business will search online and if you a good reviews/reputations you have higher chances to convert those people into clients. If you don’t have a good reputation or you don’t have any reputation at all you are basically invisible. Google reviews or any other reviews from a known website will help you to build your reputation.

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Organic posts are definitely important to keep followers informed, updated on your business, but that is not enough. You need to enlarge your borders and reach out to a new crowd so that you will be always busy and therefore avoid a down period. Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Youtube ads will help you to spread the word and increase your business visibility.

CONTENT STRATEGY

The development of interesting content that is informative or self-explanatory, whether through a blog or video, makes you and your business an expert/authority of that industry. To be an expert or authority in your field is synonymous with trust and trust is equal to sales.

EMAIL CAMPAIGN

Even though social media is a great tool to communicate with your own audience, you have to keep in mind that the audience (followers) are never yours. If, for example, tomorrow Instagram or Facebook decides for some reason to close the channel you will lose all the contact. Instead, if you create your own email database you have full control and can contact then when you want and how many times you want.

Today email campaigns, if done properly, are still very effective. Obviously, the content has to be tailored to your audience. Everybody is different, everybody has different needs.

Doing all the above, you will help you be 100% ready for the new year.

For any questions or help please email us to email@mrsmartweb.com

You don’t need to have a masters degree to know that a business without customers doesn’t have a long life or at least an easy life. In order to make a profit, you need customers and to get customers you need to have a marketing strategy in place.

In most cases, entrepreneurs run their business using some sort of technique they’ve heard about or have seen others use.  The reason why business owners generally follow this path is that they think they are saving money, but in reality, they are hurting their business and brand financially.

Following are some benefits for hiring a digital marketing expert:

YOU CAN FOCUS ON RUNNING YOUR BUSINESS
Since an expert is taking care of the marketing aspect of your business, you can actually focus on managing inventory, developing new products or services, overseeing your staff fulfilling and orders.

COST EFFECTIVE
Outsourcing your marketing needs is cost-effective because you don’t have to pay employee benefits or a salary and you have more control over your budget and goals.

NEW IDEAS
Even though you know your business better than anyone, a digital marketing expert sees your business from a different perspective and creates new ideas based on the viewpoint of the consumers.

CONSISTENCY
Experts will make sure that your marketing campaign includes a consistent message and uses the same colors, logo, and taglines to ensure your brand and your goods or services are instantly recognized.

USE OF THE LATEST TECHNIQUES AND TOOLS
Marketing experts know how to get a company noticed because they have knowledge of the latest techniques and tools that will help implement the right strategy and get faster results for your business.

Let’s plan your next Digital Marketing Strategy.

Word of mouth marketing is one of the most effective ways to bring in business. Getting a recommendation on a product or service helps build confidence in buyers, giving them a certain level of assurance that their purchase won’t be a mistake.

For those businesses that have a small budget, word of mouth is definitely the way to go.

Here are 5 tactics to promote your business through word of mouth:

1. PROVIDE EXCELLENT CUSTOMER SERVICE

Great customer service is what makes the difference when your product/service are more or less at the same level of competition as others. Showing customers that they are important to you and treating them with the courtesy and respect they deserve is certainly a reason for customers to talk about your business.

2.THANK YOUR CUSTOMERS FOR THEIR BUSINESS

Being grateful to your customers, thanking them and showing them your appreciation with a special discount or giving away a gift card, is another reason for them to talk about your business.

3.BE ACTIVE IN SOCIAL MEDIA

Having a business page on all forms of social media like Facebook, Google +, Linkedin, Twitter, and Instagram will help reach target customers and always invite them to share your page. In addition, always engage with customers and ask them for a testimonial or review for your business.

4. ASK FOR TESTIMONIALS AND DISPLAY THEM

Testimonials coming from satisfied customers definitely help to build trust and credibility. It is important to show them on your website and social media and be visible.

5. GET POSITIVE PUBLICITY

Sponsoring local events or festivals puts your business at the forefront of people’s minds and makes them inclined to spread the word about your business. Also, using the media to tell people about your business, can be an effective way of spreading the word, increase your credibility and generate sales.

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The marketing approach in 2019 is going to be, definitely, different from the 2018, because businesses are more aware that digital marketing is the way to go if you want to competitive in this era.
The 2018 was all about being active on social media and posting relevant content. Most the business followed the trend and because of that Facebook and Instagram changed the algorithm few times during the year to keep the social media platform always fresh and interesting. The change that really affected the most was the way posts were seen by the followers. Went from 100% visualization down to 10%.
Therefore, in 2019 posting organic content is not enough but it has to be complemented by pay ads in order to be more visible.

Besides social media the trend to focus on in 2019 will be:

• Social Media Pay Ads

Will help generate a lot more traffic and leads.

• Video Content & Video Streaming

Video is getting bigger and bigger and will be a must in 2019 because it helps businesses to be more visible and promote products and services more effectively and plus to build brand loyalty.

• Artificial Intelligence (Live Chat & Chatbots)

More businesses will use automate customer service to engage with people that are on their website to provide almost instant answers through a sequence of questions.

• Voice Search and Podcasting

Voice assistants and voice Search is going to grow more and more and therefore website and especially mobile websites they have to be optimized for voice search.

Using these trends will help your business to build a good audience, drive ads to it and retarget those people.

For any questions or help with your marketing campaign leave a comment or direct message.

Marketing is a vital process for any business, especially for start-up business, to increase branding and boost sales. Customers are the focal point, without showcasing them how you can help them with your services and products a business doesn’t have any future.
Following are most common marketing mistakes that any business should avoid:

1) Ignoring Social Media
Social media may not be the most favorite tool for some business owners but we can all agree that nowadays it is essential to market a business. A social media profile increases company exposure at least 30%. Obviously, with a proper strategies in place you can get higher results.

2) Neglecting To Have A Website
A website promotes your business 24/7. No employee can do that. If you don’t have website it means that you don’t have an online presence which also means that you are losing potential clients and online competitors are taking advantage of this.

3) Not Having A Marketing SEO Strategy
Just having a website is not enough. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) allows your website to be ranked high on relevant queries. In other words, a website without SEO is like not telling friends and family that you have a new phone number. If anybody knows about your new phone number how they are going to call you. Adding the right keywords, title and description will help your website rank higher.

4) Not Tracking Performance of Your Marketing Strategy
Knowing how your marketing strategy is performing is more important than the strategy itself. According to the results and progress, you can then review your initial strategy and make the adjustment accordingly.

5) Targeting The Wrong Audience
Targeting an audience is not a simple task. Firstly, you need to understand who your audience is (i.e. age, location, gender and so on). Once you’ve figured that out you need to find the right channel to reach them. Sometimes focusing on a single channel may reduce your exposure. Therefore, it is also important to explore different channels.

6) Focusing Too Much On Competitors
To know what strategy your competitors are using is definitely a good idea. But it is also never a smart idea to mimic them. A marketing strategy that works well for them may not work for you. Even though you have the same business, there are many factors that are different. Therefore, keep an eye on it and perhaps get inspired from what they do, but use the strategy that works best for you.

In conclusion, marketing is a long and slow process that needs constant attention and knowledge of new techniques and technologies. Avoiding the above mistakes will help you put your business on the right track.

The Voice Search is a phenomenon becoming more and more popular as time goes by. This all a started few year ago when  Apple introduced Siri and Google Voice Search. In the last couple of years voice recognition devices such as Alexa, Google Home and HomePod are becoming the device to have in a home. They are used to play music, call people, listen to music, ordering online, searching for something and so on.
Also, nowadays everyone has a smartphone and very often it is used to do voice search instead of a traditional query search.
Some statistics predict that voice research will increase by 50% in 2020.

Why you should care?

Relying on traditional query search for your mobile and desktop website could put your business at risk of missing out in terms of google search results and therefore  in exposure and sales. Just think of mobile traffic versus desktop traffic to your website. The mobile device is always at hand and the voice search will be the way to go in the future.

What you should do?

You should claim or update your Google My Business Listing. Doing that you will improve your chances of showing up for a voice search, especially for local voice search. Factors such as your location, business category, opening hours and phone number will all be factors in determining your relevancy to the query.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page is something that some website already have, but since the voice search is the new trend FAQ page will have a major impact in Search Engine Optimization. Obviously the way the question are articulated need to be written in a more natural and conversational form, keeping the answers short and specific.

Finally a thing to consider is Schema markup which is a code that you put in your website to help the search engines return more informative results for users.

If you want to learn more or have any question leave a comment below.

Cross-promotion is a powerful tool that business’ can use to leverage their brand and get them to a new level very quickly.

What’s a Cross-Promotion? Cross-Promotion is a marketing technique that targets buyers of a product with an offer to purchase a related product. An example of a cross-promotion is a postcard where one side promotes a Interior Designer and on the other side of the card is a Real Estate Agent. Two different businesses, but at the same time related because they can share the same audience.

There are many ways to cross promote and some example can be:

– joint marketing arrangements
– share production of events or newsletter
– referral arrangements
– discount products offer
– gift certificates

If your business needs to get more exposure or is looking to expand their clientele, cross-promotion could be the marketing strategy that can help achieve those goals.

If you have any questions, leave a message or email Luigi@mrsmartweb.com

We always hear that content is king, but with the explosion of social media things have changed a bit. It began with posting a photo with a caption and followed with video posting that became bigger and bigger. In fact, today, videos are the fastest growing content medium. It is projected that for 2019 web traffic will come from video.

Here are some other reasons why you should use video right now:

• Increased Customer Conversions
  Video conversation is higher than any other marketing content because videos demand more consumer attention than any other medium.
• Video Builds Trust
  Video content is likely to engage people and it is a powerful way to evoke emotions online. Evoking emotion in marketing has been proven to have a positive impact in consumer decision-making.
• Google Loves Videos
  There is no doubt that videos improve your SEO. In fact, according to google, adding a video to your website can increase the chance of a front page Google result by 53 times.
• Video content performs well on all devices
  Video fits on all devices and that expands video’s reach and makes it more user-friendly.
• Video marketing can help strengthen your brand message
  Video marketing is the perfect tool to increase brand awareness and enhance brand’s
  message.

In conclusion, video marketing is becoming a vital tool that it is hard to ignore, but before you start, make sure you have a strategy plan on place.