As the new year officially gets underway, we would like to help you ensure your business can answer some basic but critical questions:

Over the past couple of months, we’ve taken a closer look at different aspects of email marketing. Just in case you missed any, here’s a recap of what we talked about!

So, you’ve put together a substantial email list and you’ve planned a strong email campaign. How do you tell if it’s working?

Not everyone on your marketing email list is created the same. New leads and established customers need different information from your company, and this is where segmented email lists can help.

Your business has big things happening, and you want to let people know about it! Emails are a great way to share good news, but what should those emails include? We’ve identified three of the most important parts of a great marketing email.

Keeping in touch with your contacts is an essential part of running a successful business, but sometimes it can be difficult to decide what to send in your marketing emails. To help you out, here are four different emails your company may consider sending. 

The CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing) Act, passed in 2003, sets rules for using commercial email and lays out the penalties for violation of these rules - and the penalties are no joke. Each separate email found to be in violation of CAN-SPAM can carry a fine of over $40,000!

You might have the most creative and effective email campaign ready to go, but what good is that if you don’t have anyone to send it to? Building and growing your email list is essential to generating leads and converting those leads.

Last week we took a look at how keeping a content calendar can help you stay on top of your digital marketing strategy. But building and using that calendar requires a large amount of content.

As your business develops and refines its digital marketing strategy, you’ll want to keep a content calendar. A content calendar is a schedule of the content you will post and when you will post it, and it can be used across platforms.

Over the past couple of months, we’ve been focusing on how to use social media to promote your small business. In case you missed anything, we’re going to take a look back. Here we go!

Does your small business create video content for YouTube to market its products or services? If not, you may want to consider the following:

Are you a Snapchat user? The app has exploded in popularity - from 5 million daily active users in December 2013 to over 150 million today. So, how can Snapchat help you with marketing your small business?

Anyone else here a former Pinterest addict?? When it first appeared on the scene, I couldn’t get enough of all of the craft ideas, cleaning tips, and delicious-looking recipes. While I still occasionally spend time on Pinterest, it’s not hours a day like it once was. That’s why I was surprised to learn that Pinterest is still growing! From September 2015 to September 2016, Pinterest added 50 million monthly active users - up from 100 million to 150 million.

Instagram isn’t just for selfies and pictures of what your friends are eating. With over 500 million active monthly users, Instagram is an excellent marketing tool that your company should consider using regularly.

With 450 million users, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional social network. HubSpot notes that LinkedIn’s affluent and influential membership provides a valuable demographic for marketers.

With 313 million monthly active users, Twitter has a wide (and growing) reach. Using Twitter for your business can help you build and manage relationships as well as assist with providing customer service. Businesses can use Twitter to share great content that can help drive traffic to their site - and convert visitors into leads and leads into customers. Twitter is a useful tool to add to your digital marketing tool belt.

As of the end of 2016, Facebook had 1.86 billion monthly active users. Monthly active users are users that have logged in during the previous 30 days. The graph below (from Smart Insights) illustrates that Facebook is certainly the dominating social network site.

If used correctly, social media can be a small business’s marketing dream come true. It can give your company the reach and exposure that it might not otherwise be able to attain with a small business’s limited resources and budget.

You’ve probably heard the term “digital marketing” more than once - probably many times, in fact. And for good reason...it plays a HUGE role in business today. But, what is digital marketing?

Over the past 5 weeks, we’ve talked a LOT about the different aspects of copywriting. Here is a quick review (and some bonus tips) in case you missed anything!

You’re sitting at the computer and staring at the screen trying to figure out the best way to start that blog post or sales letter or marketing email...and you’re stuck. How do you even begin?

Good copy is imperative to a successful business. There are numerous types of copy including email, websites, blog posts, brochures, direct mailings, social media posts, and TV and radio commercials. The type of copy you use depends on many factors such as your target audience, budget, and resources available. Once you’ve decided on your advertising media you can begin to design copy specifically for it.

I think we can all agree that in today’s world most of us have more demands on our time than we can possibly meet. So when it comes to grabbing someone’s attention to read an advertisement - whether it be a direct mailing, an email, or an inbound marketing blog post - you don’t have a lot of time to make sure your reader is going to stick with you while you make your pitch. Copyblogger tells us that 80% of people will read a headline, but only 20% will read the rest of the copy. So, how do you get readers to stay with it and (hopefully) sell to them in the end?

This week we continue our series on copywriting by taking a look at what makes good copy. There’s no easy answer to this because of the many different types of copywriting. Obviously, if you’re writing copy for a magazine ad it will look much different than if you’re writing a blog post for your company’s website. In addition to various types of copy, there are also different techniques for writing good copy.

A Mission Statement is a brief but informative summary of a company’s overall objective. It addresses what that company does, why they do it, and who they do it for. It should be concise, meaning no longer than a short paragraph, with one to two sentences being the ideal length. It should be easy for everyone involved in the company to remember and repeat, and for your customers it should resonate as informative and true.