Is your social media marketing feeling a bit sluggish like a muggy summer night? If you need to stir up a breeze and refresh and increase your connections online, it’s time to re-engage with a better grip on how to assess the environment in which you are posting, your social media content and helpful statistics. You likely already have some … Read More
This Time, It’s Personal: Creating Your Unique Brand Identity
Sometimes in the quest to promote our businesses we can get sucked into trying to look like everyone else. Mimicking the qualities of successful people is fine; it can help us improve and try on new ideas or approaches. But you must stay connected to the core of what makes your brand unique or you risk disappearing into a sea … Read More
Improving Engagement in Email Marketing
Email Campaigns: 3 Simple Steps to Improve Your Reach Show of hands: Who is using email to stay in touch with clients/customers and VIPs? Excellent. Now, are you keeping an eye on your response rate? As email continues to be the most important tool for work, getting people to read and react to your incoming message can become more daunting … Read More
Time to Go Mobile
Does your web site work for those on the go? Can someone find your business online “single-handedly”? Think about it. Where are they when people look at your website? If you have a business that targets other businesses, do your clients and prospective clients tend to work on the road or at a desk much of the day? Do you … Read More
How Do You Know When to Redesign?
New clients often sheepishly shake their heads as they admit how long they’ve been meaning to update their brochure, web site, fill-in-the-blank. Whether it’s time or money or ever-slippery priorities, small business owners and other harried types know that they should point some of their fractured attention toward marketing in order to lure new customers/clients. But how can you tell … Read More
Ode to a Fridge: Why Design Matters
I have an unusually deep fondness for my refrigerator. If there was a fire, I would grab the crazy cats first, then give a longing look at the fridge and say goodbye, knowing that saving it wouldn’t be possible. Or logical. Or even sane. Mentioned this to a client once and — rightly so — got a look of puzzlement … Read More
Are You Now or Have You Ever Been: Where Are You Listed Online?
Ever wonder if you are on some kind of list? How did you get there? What are people saying about you? Seems like the expansive frontiers of the internet would make it easier to track that sort of thing. And in some ways, it does. The unsung workhorses of your marketing mix are those directory listings in all the nooks … Read More
Finding Your Voice: Who Are You on Social Media?
You’re starting to get the hang of it. Posting updates on Facebook, creating a page for your business and maybe dipping into the river of noise that is Twitter. But how are other people “hearing” your voice? Do you come off like a knowledgeable and engaging business person? A super chatty wanna-be celebrity? A vague, disconnected cipher? Honing your “voice” … Read More
Are YOU the Master of Your Domain?
Imagine if you had to pay an annual fee for the privilege of using the address for your office. What if you didn’t know or remember exactly who “rented” that privilege to you or where to go to keep it? You might find someone else has snatched it up or some interloper masquerading as the keeper charges you three times … Read More
Translating Marketing Trends for Small Biz, NFPs
The 2010 Kellstadt Marketing Group Symposium held this spring for DePaul University alums, students and grad students offered some intriguing insights into what they called the Next Gen. Much of these sessions serve marketers in corporations looking to expand and innovate on a grand scale. But the Grotto approach is to glean what we can from the big guys and … Read More