Small biz marketing tips

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...

A man recording a vlog, with the quote, "The best way to create great content is to share what you're passionate about"A man recording a vlog, with the quote, "The best way to create great content is to share what you're passionate about"

Five Brainstorming Ideas for Great Content Marketing

Content marketing can be a very effective part of a long-term marketing plan, particularly for service businesses. This is why 70% of marketers actively invest in content marketing. It is, especially, one of the most cost-effective forms of marketing a small business can do. We’ve talked about that here already, so I won’t go into all that now. Suffice it to say, content is a good thing. Of course, one of the major downsides of content marketing is that you...

Man writing in a calendar, with the quote, "Marketing, like puppies, can't be set up then just left alone."

Four quarterly marketing checks every small business should make

We just blew through the end of another quarter, which means several things for small businesses, including taxes. Sigh. Let’s talk about marketing checkups. If you’re not already doing so, you really should be checking in on your marketing every quarter, especially if you tend to get it started and then go off and do other things, like run your business. Marketing—like children, puppies, and a lot of other things in life—can’t be just set up then left to sort...