Why Small Businesses Need to Embrace Digital Marketing

Almost half of all businesses don't have a digital marketing plan in place. Is your company among them?

If so, you need to make some moves. Small business digital marketing is essential for scaling your business in 2018. Advertising is on its way out, and digital marketing is taking the world by storm.

Want to learn more about digital marketing for small businesses, and how to create an effective online marketing plan? Read on to learn more about the importance of digital marketing strategies for small businesses.

It's the Way of the Future

83% of businesses report that their digital marketing tactics are working to grow their business. There's no denying that we live in a digital economy today. Smartphones are so pervasive that people spend 24 hours per week staring at their phone.

In the twenty-first century, you'll find people on digital outlets more than anywhere else. In the past, car passengers would certainly read bus stop benches as they zoomed past on the highway. Now, they stay occupied by the phones in their pockets.

Same goes for other popular forms of advertising, like newspapers, for instance. Every major news outlet has an app now, so people turn to their phones to get the latest news. It's easy, digestible, and usually free.

Even magazines are turning more and more toward digital publication. You'll find fewer places to place print ads in 2018. Those ads won't get beneath nearly as many people's eyes as digital strategies, either.

Connect with Your Ideal Client

One of the most potent uses of digital marketing strategies is to connect you to your ideal client. Digital marketing offers ways to market directly toward the exact demographic you're trying to target. Traditional advertising methods don't allow this direct targeting method.

Here's a social media marketing example. On Instagram, you can find hashtags that your ideal clients are searching on the app. Once you see these hashtags, you can begin to use them on your posts to reach that demographic.

Here's another example relevant to content marketing. By writing a blog and hosting it on your website, you can attract organic leads that are interested in what you have to say.

With some light research, you'll be able to find the questions your client base is asking online. From there, you can even tailor your blog topics to answer those questions directly. With some search engine optimization, this can land your potential clients right onto your website.

Your Small Business Digital Marketing Plan

Digital marketing is the only way to scale your business in 2018. As old traditional advertising methods die out, small business digital marketing has become a much stronger alternative. It's also the best way to reach your target demographic directly.

Want to learn more about how to dive into online marketing for small businesses? We can help there.

We specialize in inbound and video marketing, two of the most significant branch of digital marketing today. Get in touch to find out how we can help you scale your business!


Why You Need An Inbound Marketing Agency

 

With inbound marketing being the most effective strategy for growing your brand online, it is crucial that your business is focusing on and adequately executing each of the incoming components to achieve optimal results. They must be fully operating to reap the rewards of generating quality traffic, leads, and sales for your business.

However, this can prove challenging for some brands. Not having the time to create ongoing content, overwhelmed by all the different strategies and how to manage them, and unsure where to begin in online marketing are all common obstacles that some businesses face with implementing inbound marketing. If any of these hurdles hit home, hiring an inbound marketing agency is your solution.

In fact, check out these four reasons why your brand should strongly consider an inbound marketing agency to help improve your online strategy:

Leverage the Experts

Online marketing techniques are always changing. What works today in SEO, for example, may not work tomorrow. Instead of trying to keep up with the trends, leverage the expertise of an inbound agency that knows of the latest marketing techniques. They know what’s working in online marketing and what’s not. Use their knowledge to your advantage so you can focus on what you do best in your business.

Enhance Your Content Strategy

The key to a solid content marketing strategy is aligning your content with your ultimate business goals. If you consistently find your team struggling with content ideas an inbound marketing agency will help you get a clear picture of the brand's goals and target audience so that you’ll never run out of ideas of what content to share.

Eliminate Paralysis by Analysis

Because there are so much information and plenty of internet marketing strategies you can implement, some companies get stuck in trying to decide which techniques to use, what to do next, or what tools to deploy and so forth. Your inbound marketing agency will know which online tactics and marketing automation tools that are best for your unique business goals and objectives.

Bottom Line, Get Results!

You've spent a lot of money on your websites, yet your pages are not generating any traffic or leads. You're not even showing up on the organic searches in Google! It’s simply time for you to get results. Every day that you wait in trying to figure it out, you miss opportunities for leads, sales, and new customers. Contact us today for a consultation on how you can get to your next level and create the results you deserve!


inbound marketing - b2b strategy

Inbound Marketing: Defining How it Can Work in the B2B Industry

inbound marketing - b2b strategy

At one time, the B2B industry seemed to treat inbound marketing almost like it was a foreign concept that only applied to B2C. While it is partly true, it doesn't discount the possibilities of using this technique with those selling to other businesses.

There is abundant evidence that inbound marketing works for both the B2B and B2C industries. Marketing to businesses is no different from marketing to a consumer.

In both instances, marketing supports the sales of a solution or commodity that can address a market problem or demand. Even if the resolution or the end product varies, pain points are the same.

With a well-crafted inbound marketing plan, clients will come to you rather than you to them.

 

Creating Valuable Marketing Content

Statistics show that B2B businesses that blog bring in 67% more leads than those who don't. But the blog won't matter if you don't target the content to the right demographic. Create personas first, to get an idea of what the customers may want to read, see, or hear.

The more compelling your content is to help solve pain points, the more apt businesses are going to find you when searching for information. Using proper SEO to aid you in Google placement, it is worth remembering quality content never gets ignored.

Even if you curate some blog content, make sure it's up to industry standards.

 

Using Email to Reach Customer Leads

Even with marketing automation becoming more and more popular, far too many B2B companies don't use it enough. Sending automated marketing emails to leads is a perfect way to combine reaching out to people while still attracting them with the content you provide.

The key is to entice them first so they'll visit your website to see more. Using video in your marketing emails with some element of storytelling helps considerably. Try to wrap a narrative around a problem and how your business products bring solutions.

 

Using Social Media to Attract Businesses

Using hashtags on social media as you post content works well to attract more business on a daily basis. Try to find out what keywords the industry use. Incorporate those regularly and apply as hashtags on Twitter.

One way to do quick research is looking for those keywords on Twitter or Facebook to see what conversations are taking place. Starting conversations on social media to prove your expertise is a technique you can use.

Contact us to learn more about how inbound marketing can work to make your B2B company grow.


Girl using her drone for filming videos for video marketing

Is it Time to Add Video to Your Marketing Strategy?

Girl using her drone for filming videos for video marketing

You don’t have to look very hard these days to find marketing professionals and researchers puzzling over the millennial consumer market. According to Outside magazine, outdoor retailers are especially struggling to get a foothold on the millennial money mountain. As that article and most current literature suggest, inbound and video marketing are the way to go when it comes to reaching prospective outdoor recreation customers under the age of 35.

One way to take your video marketing strategy to the next level is to incorporate GoPro cameras or drones with cameras into your business model. That content can quickly be distributed to your audience through your website and will generate new leads and sales.

Video drones, GoPros, and smartphones have taken tech, recreation, social media, and video marketing worlds by storm. If you want to start attracting that next generation of outdoor adventurers and nature enthusiasts, you should find a way to bring new components into your strategy. You can set up your own YouTube, Roku, or Apple TV channels for your business. The channel can include streaming photos, videos, and other information related to your particular niche.

You can also get the cameras in the hands of your clients. Encourage them to host their outdoor adventures on your site. You can edit the video, as necessary, for time, quality and content. Remember: Most people do not have the attention span for irrelevant, slow, and low-quality videos.

Implementing new marketing solutions can do the following:

  • Add value to your product or service
  • Create new and exciting viral content
  • Generate new sales leads through social media

If investing in a GoPro or video drone isn't in the budget, there is always the option of renting.

However you want to generate GoPro-, smartphone-, or drone-captured content for your video marketing, make sure to obtain releases.

If any of this sounds complex, remember that there are online resources you can tap into or video marketing experts you can hire.

HARNESS Consulting can help assess the video marketing needs of your brand. Contact us now!


Business Lessons Learned From Climbing

Business Lessons Learned From Climbing

When I started climbing, business was the last thing on my mind. I was going to live the dirtbag climber’s life and travel the world existing only to climb peaks and rocks. I did for a while, and that was incredible. As time wore on, though, I started to crave some stability and grew tired of the financial stress of a jobless, van life existence. When I entered the business world, I quickly realized that climbing had given me a unique perspective to navigate. Here are a few crossover ideas that climbing brought to me for the business world.

Business Lessons Learned From Climbing

The risk is inherent, and foolish risk will end you

The risk is ever present in climbing. Being successful means accepting the risk and moving forward in spite of it. To leave it here would be an oversimplification of the process. A large part of the draw to climbing is learning to mitigate much of the risk while seeking the most rewarding climbs. If you climb something for the sake of taking the risk, you will get bitten and usually sooner rather than later.

Risk taking in business should be the same way. Too many flash-in-the-pan CEOs have written books and given talks espousing huge risk without discussing their efforts to mitigate that risk. You need to have your market research dialed, your business plan polished, and (most importantly concerning today’s marketplace) your marketing campaign together to get the word out about your product or service. I have seen too many businesses approach new concepts or markets with an “if you build it, they will come” attitude toward their marketing.

The willingness to venture beyond the norm is rewarded

The roadside attractions in climbing seem to have a siren call. The crowds flock to them, and the experience becomes diluted with competition to get on the route and find space on the way up. I have never found venturing out into the backcountry for a climb to be less rewarding than staying by the road. Yes, it is a lot more work to get there and in the beginning, you will ask yourself why you did not just do something easier. Once you settle into the task, you begin to notice the benefits… better views, a feeling of belonging, ownership of the area you are in.

Falling into the trap of providing product or service that is on par with the rest of your industry is understandable but unacceptable. Going beyond the norm for the quality of service and product will differentiate you from the rest. The extra effort will pay off quickly.

Technology will never replace knowledge

Climbing equipment has come a long way from the days of soft iron pitons and hobnailed boots. Modern equipment allows rank beginners to ascend pitches of rock that were unimaginable in the 50’s or 60’s. However, no matter how much the technology improves, if a climber does not know his way around the mountains, and the basics of ropework, his career is going to be a short one.

Technology has fundamentally changed every aspect of the business world. No one can deny that. What it has not done is replace the need for knowledge. Knowing your market, your product, your competition, and your customer will not ever be replaced.

Moreover, technology has not replaced the need for human interaction. People still buy from people even in the age of technology. No matter how fantastic your digital advertising campaign is, people are going to attach themselves to brands that have a unique mission and are represented by solid people.

The view from the top is amazing, but you cannot stay forever

The summit is a major motivator in climbing. Rightfully so. It is a symbol of accomplishment, and for some, it is a symbol of conquest. Stand on top, breathe in the thin air, simultaneously feel powerful and small all at the same time. It is a time to reflect on the path that was taken and take in the view of the surrounding summits. The feeling is fleeting, though, and the inevitability that you must come back down gnaws at the back of your mind. The longer you stay put on top, the more danger you face. Storms, frostbite, exhaustion, darkness, all of these await those who try to linger.

You seek to be at the top of our game in business as well. To stand at the top and see your competitors. Stagnation is a fatal flaw in business as well. Success in business depends on understanding that once you have gained the top in one area, it is time to look toward your next goal, start training, set milestones, and take the first step.

You seek to be at the top of our game in business as well. To stand at the top and see your competitors. Stagnation is a fatal flaw in business as well. Success in business depends on understanding that once you have gained the top in one area, it is time to look toward your next goal, start training, set milestones, and take the first step.


A Brief Guide Using Facebook for Business

Facebook is the ubiquitous king of social networking, universally accepted into nearly all of our lives.  Scanning a user’s timeline reveals stories of relationships, birthdays, wins and losses and connects us in a way never thought possible prior to its invention. As such, Facebook is often used as a Social Media home base for many businesses because of the profound marketing insights the networks provides.

facebook_for_business

Facebook is used for a congregation, conversation, and publication with users engaging with brands that they feel a social connection to rather than those that simply sell toa them.  The Facebook newsfeed algorithm gives preferential treatment to brands that receive significant interaction with their posts, which makes it hard for new businesses to gain any impressions or interaction when their fan base is small.  

In order to solve this issue, Facebook introduced several tools for business to utilize in order to increase their exposure on the platform:

Facebook for Business is an excellent resource to how to advertise on Facebook and grow your sales with Facebook Advertising.  For example, A boosted post is a post from your business page that can reach a larger audience for a fee based on the amount of exposure needed to reach your target.

Facebook Page Insights provides comprehensive analytics of your business page.  By analyzing this data you are able to hone your content based on your audience demographics, the content they engage with most, and the optimal times to share. Ignoring these analytics is most certainly to your detriment. For instance, we noticed that our clients that utilize video were receiving 80% higher engagement.

Facebook Studio is a tool that exhibits the most successful marketing campaigns on Facebook. Each year, the most successful campaigns get recognized by Facebook and this resource can be used for marketing inspiration for your campaigns. See what works and how you can adapt such ideas to your unique marketing goals.

That leads us to Facebook advertising tools:

Facebook Ads are advertising that can be targeted to users based on location, demographics, behavior, and interests. The purpose of these ads can be to grow your fan base, drive traffic to your website, increase a specific conversion (which can even be tracked with a piece of code) or download your app.  Whatever your call to action might be, Facebook offers template-based campaigns that marketers will certainly find useful.

With that in mind, social is one aspect of a successful campaign that must be part of a larger marketing effort in order to generate any measurable results.  HARNESS works with our clients to develop an overall marketing strategy based on their unique goals by identifying value propositions, designing a campaign catered to their audience, and drawing on a variety of tools including those mentioned above.