Small Business Marketing Ideas from the Big Brands
Website
Heading into a new year, there are three major trends for websites. As with messaging and marketing campaigns, simplicity is in demand for websites—reducing clutter and features and/or design elements that are not needed to improve usability. Storytelling is being combined animation and user interactivity and responsive web design is the new standard so sites render properly on every type of device.
- Make sure your site views well and is easy to use on a desktop, laptop, tablet and smartphone.
- Own your site URL and set up analytics.
Mobile
ExactTarget surveyed 2,500 global marketers on their top 2014 priorities and 41% said 31-50% of subscribers open their emails on mobile devices and 24% report that their emails are opened on mobile devices more than 51% of the time.
- Confirm that your site is easy to navigate, attractive and intuitive for mobile users.
- Ensure contact information is easy to find.
- Highlight the calls to action.
The survey revealed that 68% of marketers surveyed say email marketing is core to their business and 88% believe that email marketing does or will produce ROI for them.
- Make the offer look like an offer.
- Convince readers they will learn something by reading on.
- Repeat the call to action.
- Fulfill offers via email.
- Make lead nurturing part of your campaign plans.
Social Media
According to Marketing Profs, 34% of global marketers surveyed said they are seeing ROI from social media marketing, but 52% believe it will produce ROI eventually. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are the most popular channels and Google+ has the highest planned adoption rate in 2014 (18% of respondents plan to introduce). In light of the point above about image-centric content and the need to work on multiple social sites, it might pay for your business to try these tips.
