Small biz marketing tips

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...

A business owner works late in a dark office. Captions says, "Time to do marketing will never just appear in your day. You have to make time if you want growth. "

Too busy for marketing? What to do instead

Well. Those of you who check in on us periodically may have noticed that we went totally dark on the new-blog-posting-on-social-sending-emails marketing front for about seven months here recently. Yeah, we know, a marketing company not doing their own marketing is a bit of a bad look. That said (wiping the egg off our faces), we—as small business owners—are not alone on this sort of thing, so let’s take the moment to talk about what happened. The short story: we...

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?)...

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...

What are value propositions and why should you care?

Like many snazzy marketing terms, “value proposition” is a fancy way of saying something that is actually really very simple. In a nutshell, a value proposition is the reason why someone would buy your product or service. Of course, like a lot of simple things, you sometimes need to put a good deal of thought into your value proposition(s). More on that in a bit, but first, let’s talk about why you need ‘em. Why do you need a value...