7 Tips To Use Instagram in Your Small Business Marketing

Instagram, once the red-headed stepchild of the social media world, has now turned into a runaway beer truck, exceeding 700 million users in early 2017. Small businesses are now adopting the social media platform as a primary method of generating revenue. Today, Instagram boasts over 1 million advertisers.

So if everyone else is on Instagram, why isn’t your business? Not leveraging Instagram for your small business is a lost opportunity, and should be remedied immediately! The potential Instagram provides from a marketing perspective is enormous! So let’s get started.

No cost online marketing training here

Here are a few tips on marketing and gaining a following:

Use Those #hashtags

Are Lack of Reviews Effecting Your Small Business?

Reviews are a great way for your small business customers to get an idea of what your business is like. Through reviews they know what services you offer, how well you offer them, and the quality of your products without even leaving their home.

Reviews are also a valuable tool for a small business to know what their customers think about them. It’s a convenient way to get honest feedback of your services and find out what you need to fix to keep your customers satisfied.

What your customers say about you is just as much advertising for your business as any marketing strategy you could employ. It’s unfiltered, honest, and sometimes a bit dramatic.

No cost online marketing training here

While reviews can be loud and sometimes deceiving, no reviews at all can garner the same effect. Are no reviews better than bad reviews? Read ahead to find out.

Is your business good or bad? No one knows…

Managing Your Small Business Marketing Funnel

With the over whelming success of the Digital Marketing Age, you may think that the concept of a marketing funnel is now defunct. And, yes, what used to be a fairly direct route from drawing in leads to converting them into clients has now exploded into a multitude of micro processes.

However, the concept of a Marketing Funnel is still a good way to create a marketing plan that needs multiple levels of engagement to convert leads into clients. Today, in this era of social media and smart phones, we are definitely in a (sometimes) brave new world of marketing plans.  Even when we’re ready to run screaming from our computers after trying to make sense of all the rapid changes that have evolved.

If you use a marketing funnel plan for your small business, there are probably some adjustments that could be made to your process that will help you see even better results in lead generation and subsequently converting those leads into paying customers. Here are a few procedures to improve your marketing funnel and provide even more successful results quickly.

Carefully Research and Develop the Stages of Your Buying Process

Making Your Own Small Business Marketing Videos

Professional marketing videos promoting your small business aren’t cheap. You get what you pay for when it comes to marketing your products and engaging your audience. However, there are tools you can use to accomplish these tasks without breaking the bank. You don’t need Hollywood; you just need fast and free.

Incorporating marketing videos into your small business strategy accomplishes several things:

• Their versatility allows them to live in several places like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, your website, and your blog.
• They are eye-catching, enabling your audience to digest the same information in a more engaging format.
• Marketing videos are easy to repurpose by trimming, expanding, or converting to GIFs for easy sharing. Infographics also make great videos.

Grab our free Social Media checklist and free online marketing training here

How to Make a Video Like a Professional

You don’t need expensive equipment to make a great video. Sometimes you don’t even need your own footage. An idea is a great place to start. Try storyboarding your plan and writing a script. Find or create the footage you need. Edit it using an online app. Upload for viewing!

Free Stock Footage

Using Images to Improve Your Content Marketing

Whether they are inserted into the header or placed within the main body of text, images are an illustration of your small business contents core idea. Including simple images that relate to as wide an audience as possible will help maximise the work your content can do.

Where Can I Find Photos?

There are a number of places on the web you can find royalty free images that are free to download.  Even more where you can pay to download. The easiest way to find the latest resources is to do a search for “Royalty Free Images.” Pixabay is a good place to go.

No matter where you go for images, it’s vitally important to give proper attribution when required. A good rule of thumb for attribution is to credit the contributor of the image and include the website where you found it, ie: “Photo Courtesy of ABCD from FreePics.com.”

The same goes for a registered trademark or trademarked product. For example, if Nike Swoosh or an actual Nike product is seen in the photo, include a statement like, “Nike, the Nike logo, and Nike Products are trademarks of Nike Inc., registered in the U.S. and internationally.”

Image SEO 

6 Ways to Improve Your Email’s Subject Lines

Email marketing campaigns are a great way to get more eyes on your small business newsletter or website since you can reach thousands of people at once. However, your campaign won’t be successful if nobody opens your message. According to Madison Logic, over 122 billion emails are sent an hour, so knowing how to stand out from the crowd is important.

Your email’s headline is arguably the most important part of the message since it’s the part readers will see first and make a split-second decision whether opening the message is worth their time. Headlines that aren’t interesting will quickly be marked as read or deleted. In fact, copywriter coach Chris Marlow claims that studies have proven that headlines are responsible for 50-75% of an ad’s success.

Grab our free  Social Media checklist and free online marketing  and email marketing training here

Knowing just how much of your campaign’s success rests on the headline alone, it’s important that you really take the time to examine how effective your headlines are. Here are a few great tips to craft better headlines:

Personalise your subject line.

5 Steps to Using Facebook Live for Your Small Business

5 Steps to Getting Great Results with Your Live Broadcasts

Facebook Live is a free streaming tool you can use to boost your business. But before you dive in there are some key factors to take into consideration to avoid risking losing your credibility.

Facebook Live is an excellent way to get the engagement Facebook wants on your Business Page with their latest algorithm updates. As long as you're prepared, you will garner a great reach and higher views than natively uploaded videos.

With Facebook Live all you need is a 4G or better Internet connection, a Facebook profile for yourself or your business page, and you can take advantage of up to 4 hours of free live streaming.

Getting these set up isn't hard but with the volume of new live streams happening per hour you'll need to work on your videos in order to draw in users.

Grab our free Facebook, Twitter and other Social Media checklist and free online marketing  and social media training here

Keep reading to find out what you need in order to draw your followers in when you're doing your next live broadcast.

Step 1: Get the Word Out