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A man sits at his desk and holds his head in his hands. Over the top is the caption, "Overwhelmed about your marketing options? Not all marketing "best practices" actually are best practices for smaller businesses. Feel free to skip them and breath a little easier."

The top five marketing best practices that don’t make sense for small businesses

Good news! I’m going to take a break from telling you all the marketing best practices you should be doing… and, instead, tell you which marketing best practices are simply not worth it for small businesses. Yes, you read that right. I’m going to tell you what not to bother with. Consider it like a wee holiday. Before I get started on this, let me remind you that these are all marketing best practices. This means, that—if you have the...
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A sign in a store window advertises a cyber monday sale next to ceramic ware, with the quote: "If you run a black friday/cyber monday sale without asking yourself what you are trying to achieve... it may be time to ask yourself why you're running a black friday/cyber monday sale."

Do I need a Black Friday sale? How to decide when (and if) to discount your product

Should you run a Black Friday sale? Let’s break it down. There’s no question that sales drive conversions. And conversions drive revenue. But that doesn’t mean that sales always make the most sense for your business. Your average marketer will push you to run a sale because sales drive revenue, and big revenue results make marketers look good. Also, a lot of us really like the buzz we get when the virtual cash register starts ka-chinging off the hook like...
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A business man in a santa hat, with the caption, "Yes, it's a bit late to be thinking about your holiday planning. But all may not be lost..."

Help! I forgot to plan for holiday marketing! What now?

It’s common marketing knowledge that you should start your holiday season marketing planning as early as August. And if you need to bring in inventory to support it, you should have really started planning right after last year’s holiday season. And common knowledge here is correct – you absolutely should plan early. But, as with many marketing best practices, starting really early isn’t always realistic for smaller businesses, especially those struggling with their marketing function. (Hey! Need help with that?)...
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A spilled penny jar, with the caption, "How do you pay for your marketing budget? Pro tip: make your marketing plan as efficient as possible."

How to squeeze the very most marketing out of your marketing budget

  For those of us not blessed with a Coca-Cola sized marketing budget (oh, the glory!), one of the most pressing questions we ask ourselves is how we can get more marketing for less money.  If 100% of your marketing budget was easily quantifiable by ROAS (Return On Ad Spend), this would be a non-issue, of course. It’s emotionally pretty easy to increase the budget on a program that has a positive ROAS – meaning it’s bringing in more revenue...
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A woman puts electrodes on a young man's head, with the caption, "Constantly and thoroughly testing is the fastest route to marketing success."

Marketing best practices: the importance of testing

We recently put together a social media marketing campaign for a client. When I reviewed the ads with her, she (very nicely) let me know that while she loved half of them, she didn’t think much of the other half.  I wasn’t surprised. I hadn’t expected her to like them. But I also wasn’t about to throw them in the trash. And here’s why: we’d deliberately put together ads that didn’t look like all their other marketing efforts to test...
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