Marketing Your Business on a Tight Budget

There's no way around it, marketing your business is essential for its success. In fact, successful marketing can provide your business with a significant return in a very short period of time -- even on a tight budget. In the past the only choice a business had to market their business effectively were outbound marketing tactics such as advertising, direct mailing, cold calling and so on. Outbound marketing can still be a bit expensive, but there are so many over avenues that you can take today that are much more affordable.

The article below discusses some ideas for marketing on a shoestring budget:

1. Start small. Set aside a small budget to begin with. Re-invest some of the dividends from these campaigns into further marketing.
2. Leverage free tools. Social media tools and many free online tools can help you do marketing well. Build a following on free social sites, create profiles on professional business sites. Submit your business to local online business directories.
3. Shop for discounts and coupons. Many marketing tools and programs will offer you a free trial. This can translate to profit before you spend any money. Google Adwords is a good example of this as Google will often give people a $50 or $100 Adwords coupon to start their paid search engine advertising campaign with. (Tip: Do some extensive research about effective Adwords campaign before using your free coupon so you can increase the chances of getting good results with it)
4. Try tier two advertising programs. If you think a search engine marketing advertising campaign sounds too expensive, consider doing an ad campaign on a specific site, instead. Facebook advertising for instance, can be less expensive than many other online marketing campaigns and can provide you with laser targeted focus to geographic areas, age groups, gender, interest levels, and so on.

You can read the rest of the article here.

If you're a small to medium sized business that has yet to implement a successful marketing campaign, it's due time. Both inbound and outbound marketing is a way for you to build relationships with your current or prospective clients and grow your business -- faster than many of your competitors. Today there are many companies that you can hire -- and for a reasonable price -- to manage your marketing campaigns, like Classic Image.

These companies will handle the day-to-day marketing needs of your campaigns while you can focus on what matters most... growing your business. In many cases you can get a reasonable quote to jump start your campaign, ensuring that you don't break your bank.

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Hashtags and Social Media Marketing Power

As an online business or even a small to medium-sized business, social media marketing is a serious way to market your business. Now, while most business owners know this [or at least have an idea], it is still likely that they don't know just how much social media marketing can grow their business, helping them surpass their competitors. This is equally true of online businesses and small to medium sized businesses.

For those of you who are familiar with social media, I'm sure you know about hastags - you know, the # symbol that everyone puts in front of a word or phrase they want/need to stand out. While this hashtag frenzy can be a bit over the top with everyone over using hashtags, they are imperative for social media marketing.

The article below is about the use of hastags and how they can "pack serious media marketing power":

Q: I’m operating my fledgling company without a budget for advertising and marketing. Can I use social media hashtags to drive sales and build my business? If so, can you offer tips so I get the best results for my efforts? 

A: For the uninitiated, hashtags—the # sign before phrases in social media—have changed how small businesses connect with customers. First used by Twitter in 2007, hashtags have been adopted by Pinterest, Instagram and other platforms. The symbol packs serious power. 

Search #SparkandHustle (that’s my company) on these sites, and you’ll see what people are saying about my conferences for entrepreneurs. I’ve connected via hashtags with thousands of people to promote my business. Joining the ongoing conversation is an effective way to target audiences, serve them better and compete with rivals. In doing so, you should focus on two areas: 

1. Incorporating hashtags in your social media posts to attract new fans and followers.2. Searching hashtags to find people interested in what you have to offer. 

Here are some ways to achieve objective No. 1. First, whenever you share content, include a relevant hashtag so your post can be found when your target audience searches for related help. 

You should also piggyback on hashtags that are popular and tweet them, suggests Lena West of Influence Expansion Academy, an online business growth school. “If you work with small businesses, the #SMB hashtag is often used in tweets related to small-business concerns. If you use it, those tweets will come up on searches for that hashtag, leading to more visibility for your company.” 

And you should create your own custom hashtag to enable anyone interested in your area of expertise to join the conversation, says Dana Lynch, whose Amplify-Mobile develops apps for small businesses. “Use it across platforms—a hashtag is useful only if followers know about it—so promote it everywhere users can find your brand,” she says.

If you're a small to medium sized business that has yet to implement a successful social media marketing campaign, it's due time. Social media marketing is a way for you to build relationships with your current or prospective clients and grow your business -- faster than many of your competitors. Today there are many companies that you can hire -- and for a reasonable price -- to manage your social media marketing campaigns, like Classic Image. 

These companies will handle the day-to-day marketing needs of your campaigns while you can focus on what matters most... growing your business.

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Content Marketing: How to Grow Your Business With Content

Content is King...it's Just the Way It Is

As a small to medium sized business you might have heard the phrase "content is king" somewhere along the line. It might seem crazy, but the truth of the matter is that content IS king and content marketing is something that small to medium sized businesses will need to take advantage of at some point or another, especially if they are looking to grow their business. 

We have worked with hundreds of clients who have been working on building their business for years only to find that their marketing campaigns have lacked a few major key factors that are simply imperative if you're looking for profit, growth and wealth. 

As a small to medium sized business it is very important that you include these factors within your marketing campaign: 

1. Strong Brand (one that will stand out from your competitors) 
2. Marketing Campaign that includes Social Media Marketing and SEO
3. Content Marketing

With these three key factors incorporated into your marketing campaign you will see that the growth you're seeking will hit home. You might want to consider looking for a company to help you with your marketing needs so that they can focus on marketing your business while you can focus on what matters most -- growing your business.

Content marketing is extremely important and it isn't something that just anyone can succeed in. It takes time and skill, and yes, a little bit of strategy. In a recent article (below), Joe Pulizzi talks about the top ten content marketing strategies from the last 15 years: 

1. There is no silver bullet
Regardless of what anyone says, there is no silver bullet when it comes to content marketing strategy. So many marketers are looking for the perfect dashboard, system, process, and distribution plan for their content marketing. It simply doesn’t exist. We’ve worked with hundreds of small and large brands around the world, and only one thing has been consistent: Every plan we developed was different. Why? It’s simple: The mixture of communicating what your business offers, delivering on your customers’ informational needs, and sharing your own corporate story is impossible to duplicate —  the output from your particular blend of attributes and goals should always be different and unique. 

As Don Schultz, the father of integrated marketing, has always professed, competitors can copy everything about what you do… your pricing, your product, where you promote it… but they can’t copy exactly how you will communicate. 

2. You can play offense or defense 

One of my favorite basketball players of all time is Julius “Dr. J” Erving. I’ve heard many interviews in which Dr. J talks about two ways to look at basketball offense: You can impose your will on the defense, or you can take what the defense gives you. Dr. J always chose to exert his own will, and that worked for him (quite well, in fact). LeBron James, on the other hand, usually takes what the defense gives him, which is why he racks up so many assists.
Both strategies can be effective. At CMI, we decided to exert our will with the term “content marketing.” In 2007, we popped onto the scene and started using the term like it had been around for years. Through lots of planning, strategy, and luck, it worked, and now content marketing is the defacto term for our industry. (Incidentally, HubSpot did the same thing with “inbound marketing.”) 

But imposing your will is just one way to do it. You could also choose to ride the waves of others and pick your sweet spot. A great example of this is Social Media Examiner. When it launched in 2009, many thought it was late to the party… but it rode the social media wave and executed a content marketing strategy second to none, growing into one of the most-trafficked B2B marketing sites on the planet. 

3. Content marketing is the great equalizer 

“David vs. Goliath” is alive and well in content marketing. Large budgets don’t always win; actually, the smaller players usually come out on top because they are equipped to move more agilely and quickly than their larger competition. For instance, CMI had a smaller budget than almost every marketing media company on the planet, yet we came out on top through focus and hard work. I’ve never seen a bigger company move faster than a smaller organization. OpenView Venture Partners is, relatively speaking, a small VC company compared to its peers. On the web, though, it dominates. 

4. You don’t have to be on all platforms 

In many cases, it’s smart to weave your story onto multiple platforms. It’s entirely possible to have a killer webinar series, amazing blog, outstanding video program, and cutting-edge digital magazine all at the same time.
But there is another way. You may decide to focus and work to dominate one platform. How about a killer podcast series? What about an amazing print newsletter? Maybe a blog is just the platform for you. 

Yes, you construct your strategy before choosing your channels, but don’t feel obligated to be active on every channel that your customer uses. The international travel magazine, Monocle, has just a print magazine. No iPad version. No Facebook page. It works for the magazine and its readers. 

Sometimes simple and focused is better. 

5. Subscribers rule 

If I have one regret as a content marketer, it’s that I didn’t focus early enough on generating subscribers. It took us years of experimenting, but we finally found our “Moneyball number:” the subscriber. We’ve found that once someone is a subscriber, they do different things than non-subscribers that lead to more revenue for us. Instead of converting from content to an immediate sales opportunity, we’ve found that converting from content to more content is the best way (for us). (For more on subscribers, please check out these outstanding reports from ExactTarget — a great example of content marketing, as well.)

You can read the rest of the article here.

If you or your business is in need of content marketing or general marketing assistance, Classic Image is a premier marketing and design agency that has helped hundreds of companies over the last decade. They are affordable, too, so you don't have to spend an arm and a leg while you're trying to bring your business to the top.

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Great Innovative Marketing Campaigns of 2013 (So Far)

Photo Courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Regardless of whether you and your business are working on an inbound or outbound marketing campaign, what makes a marketing campaign effective is an emotional connection - an emotional connection with your readers, your audience, your customers and your potential customers. It used to be that the only way to make that emotional connection was through outbound marketing techniques such as cold calling, door to door marketing or direct mailings. Today, thanks to the growth of technology, there are a million different opportunities for a business to truly achieve that emotional connection and obtain long-term customers, making an affinity between your customers, the messages and your product or service.

Because there are so many ways to reach your customers in this complex digital world, marketing professionals have a million and one different ways to promote their business, their services and their products.

The article below talks about five of the most innovative marketing campaigns of 2013 -- so far. These marketing campaigns have made their mark and that is only the beginning:

1) Coca-Cola Sharing Can
Coca-Cola has really hit it out of the park recently with their campaigns. They have done an incredible job at connecting with their audience through understanding their motivations and the nostalgic feelings behind craving a can of Coke. Another impressive aspect of recent campaigns is the attention that Coke puts into making each message global. Coke has smartly positioned themselves as a brand that connects millions of people across the world.
Recently, Coke has upped their game with how they get people to not only emotionally engage with their brand, but also with each other. They created a vending machine that enabled people in India and Pakistan to communicate. And in Europe Coke is offering customers a chance to customize their own Coke bottles with their names. The most recent iteration is the idea of having a can of Coke that twists apart into two smaller cans so you can share! I immediately resonated with this. I love Coca-Cola, but I often can’t finish a full can, so having two small cans that I can share with a loved one is genius. Currently, the cans are only available in limited quantities during a trial through their “Happiness Truck”. So that is a bummer, but I have high hopes the concept will make it to the mainstream.

2) Senador Volstead Beer
This is a truly innovative campaign. Senador Volstead is a beer company based in Spain named after Senator Volstead, who decreed the start of prohibition in 1920. So how do you promote a beer that is themed after 1920s prohibition? Why not make it hidden on your own website? I have never seen anything like this, which immediately makes it memorable.When you go onto the Senador Volstead website you might be confused at first because it appears to be a website selling teddy bears. 

3) Game of Thrones Season 3
OK, truth be told, I love Game of Thrones. I also love HBO and I think their marketing is genius. I mean, True Blood? That first campaign truly set a precedent. But what I am really into right now is Game of Thrones, and their marketing campaign for Season 3 was clean, consistent, mysterious, and of course cool.
The big theme for the season premiere this year was a subtle, yet mysterious shadow of a dragon. The beauty behind this campaign was that it was extremely consistent and its subtlety did a lot to build momentum to the premiere. First came the poster and magazine covers:

 4) ORPHEA Billboard Fly Trap
This example appeals to emotions in a different way. Instead of focusing on the warm and fuzzy feelings of nostalgia or excitement over looking forward to something in the future, ORPHEA relies on the relatable pain point of bug hating to bring their customers together. And they used an extremely unique marketing technique to get their message across.

They rented a billboard in Milan and created a giant insect trap using transparent glue that was placed on the billboard in the shape of an aerosol spray. Over time, insects naturally got trapped in the glue and created a huge, and very visible insect trap. Gross? Maybe. Shocking? Probably. Memorable? Definitely! It certainly attracted millions of people’s attention. The lesson here is never be afraid to try something different.

You can read the rest of the article here.

 For B2B businesses or small to medium sized businesses who would like some tips on successful marketing and social media marketing tactics, please contact us at Classic Image today to see how we can help your business with all of your marketing campaigns from social media marketing to direct marketing. We strongly believe that combining inbound and outbound marketing tactics is a great way to help any business flourish

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Cost-Effective Social Media Marketing Strategies for the Small to Medium Sized Business

Ten Ways to Develop Cost-Effective Social Media Strategies

Photo Courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Many small to medium sized business owners find themselves too busy to develop solid social media marketing strategies that will do what they are supposed to...grow their business. Instead, business owners are working in their business, 50 to 60 hours or more per week, not having any time to focus on what matters most. Social media marketing is a way that business owners can expand their reach, but there are certain strategies that business owners should follow to make their campaign as successful as it should be. 

Social media marketing allows you to grow relationships with your potential customers and current consumer-base. If you don't have the time  to focus on social media efforts alone, you might want to consider utilizing a company that is known for growing businesses and their social media efforts. 

The article below discusses ten ways that you can develop your social media strategy to ensure that it provides you with the results you need:

• Does your business lend itself to showing off its work? Strutting your stuff brings to mind visual portrayals, like photographs and video, although it can include other presentation formats. Social media is very useful for businesses where prospects perceive there are high risks. Many bridal photographers use blogs to highlight their work while many bakers use Flickr to show off their masterpieces. Show real patrons using your services with before and after photographs. Don’t forget to get patron’s permission to use their likeness.

• Can you give prospects information they find useful? Think in terms of small bite-size chunks of content. Twitter is great for providing a tip of the day whether you’re an accountant or a massage therapist. Clothing stores could provide an outfit of the day. Think outside of the box when it comes to information. How about food recipes or scrap-booking.

• How do you solve people’s problems? At the core of most marketing is fulfilling prospects’ needs. Therefore, create content that helps people with their problems. For example, if you’re a financial advisor, why not give out tips on budgeting so that prospects have money to invest. Here’s some advice to create a professional blog.

• Does your product lend itself to some form of education? This is a great way to win prospects over. Teach them! Not the old-fashioned school marm but the fun stuff. Think: how to add memory to your computer or how to apply makeup. You can use videos, webinars or ebooks.

• Can your business disseminate entertaining content? This information doesn’t need to be your business’s main focus. Orabrush built its brand with the use of entertaining videos. Is there something funny or engaging about your product?

• Are there targeted or niche communities where your prospects and customers naturally congregate? While this doesn’t apply to all businesses, where it exists, it’s a useful way to participate in the community. You can participate in the social media community and advertise to targeted prospects. For example, yarn shops participate and socialize on Ravelry, a knitting community.

• Does your business tap into people’s passions and/or hobbies?When it comes hobbies and special interests, participants often make different spending tradeoffs. The strength of these interests is great since your customers want to share their share their hobbies and special interests using photographs, videos and blogs. This can apply to fishing as well as it can to quilting.

You can read the rest of the article here.

For B2B businesses or small to medium sized businesses who would like some tips on successful marketing and social media marketing tactics, please contact us at Classic Image today to see how we can help your business with all of your marketing campaigns from social media marketing to direct marketing. We strongly believe that combining inbound and outbound marketing tactics is a great way to help any business flourish.

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Social Media Marketing Tips That Will Help Grow Your Business

In today’s technological world it is almost unmanageable for a small to medium sized business to flourish without utilizing social media marketing. Marketing tactics change regularly, so keeping up the rest of the world is essential. With that said, regardless of what kind of business you run, it is very important to continuously look at other avenues that will grow your business.

Social media marketing or SMM is imperative
for the success of small to medium sized
businesses.
Photo Courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Now, while there are a million different methods that you can utilize it’s also equally important that you find ways that will not require you to spend hours upon hours working in your business, rather than on your business. Social media marketing can do just that, if managed properly and efficiently. Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other platforms are increasingly becoming a well-known—and successful—marketing tool. These platforms can assist your business in obtaining a healthy and growing fan base that will generate leads, word-of-mouth and conversions.

At Classic Image we have managed hundreds of social media marketing campaigns over the last five years. We understand that the concept of a small to medium sized business handling their own social media marketing campaign can be overwhelming, but there are many tips that you can consider utilizing to make your life easier—and to help your business grow. The last thing you want to do is spend hundreds of hours on social media efforts only to find out that your approach will not bring in the results that you desire.

Throughout this blog I’m going to mention a handful of tips that you can use to help strengthen your social media efforts and growing your business:

Get More Leads with a Call To Action. There is no question about it—a social media call to action is an integral and often overlooked element of a social media strategy. Social media gets prospects, customers and the public primed to want to find out more about what your business is offering or to engage with you further. You can use any platform to achieve this, too, such as a blog, Facebook, Twitter or a landing page. If you strengthen your call to action you will receive a better success rate, compared to ones without them.

Optimizing Your Business’ Facebook Posts. Many people don’t even think about adding a call to action to their Facebook page. However, sometimes just the act of inviting someone to share your post will be the encouragement a fan or follower needs to take your suggestions. And this works with any niche. For instance, you can post a link to your blog or another piece of useful information (something that you are offering) and ask your fan base to SHARE the information with their followers or colleagues. It can really be as simple as that. Take the image below, for example. 

 Experimentation. As you continue with your social media efforts it’s always a good idea to experiment with different call-to-action’s. Take Twitter, for example—it’s a fast moving stream of content and because of that updates can quickly flow by readers. While they are deciding on whether to read your full update, a call to action can practically seize the moment. AND if that reader likes what you have to offer they will be more inclined to follow you, retweet your message and visit your page.

Content is KING. So give it the significance it deserves.  Many small to medium sized businesses do not take into account just how imperative content is when it comes to all of their marketing campaigns—but especially social media marketing. Fresh, frequent and quality content is necessary to bring in new clients and customers. In the same respect, though, even the BEST content in the world won’t do a lick of good if people are not engaged. Make all of your content engagement-friendly.

There are many more tricks to the trade when it comes to social media marketing and how to utilize it to truly benefit your small to medium sized business, but the best bet is to test…test…and test again. You will need to test your results and see what works for your individual business because what might work for your competitor might not do any good for your business.

If you are someone who is interested in learning more about how Classic Image can help benefit your business, we are here to discuss your needs seven days a week. We are home to some of the top marketing professionals in the business, but at the same time we are a group of creative professionals that use all tactics to help push businesses to the top.

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