The Small Business Environment Has Changed
A small business can contend with a large enterprise through today’s technological solutions. Consider this as a hypothetical example: totally outsourced infrastructure. Using cloud computing you can outsource the cost of your internal servers, the cost of end-user portals, the cost of office space, and even the cost of certain personnel like those in payroll, or IT. 
This is all made possible through cloud computing. Computation, Big Data, software design, network management, and more can all be pursued through the cloud, and independent of location. All that is necessary is having valid access information for a given network, and a secure internet connection. One reason so many small businesses are going to the cloud is that they can save tens of thousands of dollars a month. Technology has a lot of little “life hacks” of this kind that businesses who are savvy will employ in 2019 to give themselves a competitive edge, increase profit margins, and decrease operational costs. Today’s business is on the edge of tomorrow, to make a cliché phrase. What this means is that you need to know what comes with the dawn of 2019. One area where you can be the early small business bird who gets the profit worm ahead of competing peers will be in the world of blogging. Following, tips from skilled bloggers with advice for small businesses will be explored to help give you an idea of what you’re facing, and what you can do.
1) Frank Telesphore, SEO BH
I realized a long time ago that my blog only has so much visibility on the web. It’s like a marble on a sheet stretched over an empty space. That marble’s weight is drawn by gravity into the sheet, and it pulls on the fabric’s elasticity, making a dimple. No matter the size of the marble, it only pulls the sheet down in one place. However, if you’ve got multiple marbles of similar weight across the surface area of the sheet, you can pull the whole thing down incrementally. This takes balance, and here the analogy breaks down; because round objects on such a taut surface will group together. The point is, you can make a bigger imprint if you’re pushing on the surface area of marketing outreach from multiple separate “nodes”—or, in this case, on the surface area of the internet from different blogs. Guest blogging is a great way to increase your online visibility. Basically, you send some of your content to blogs which are similar to yours. They have their own audience, and ideally, it has a crossover with yours. Ultimately, you can “double down” on the reach of a single piece of content. In terms of 2019 considerations, you’re going to want to ensure all content is optimized for smartphone use, as mobile web engagement has outpaced that of the desktop variety. Also, you’ll want to create content that is animated, pictorial, film-based, or of the infographic variety. Attention spans are down, but susceptibility to visual stimulus is up.
One big trend I’ve noticed businesses following in 2018, and getting primed to be prolific in throughout 2019, involves co-opting user content. The truth is, people are social. They like to talk. They want to talk. They’re going to talk. And they’re not always going to have things to talk about, meaning over time, they’ll get in the habit of providing exposition for any aspect of their daily grind which is of interest to them. 
When you provide clientele with good products or services, there is a natural likelihood that they’ll go online and write about what you’ve done for them. Get links to that information and post it on your own pages. Whenever you have user reviews, you want that front-and-center. Search engines will key in on words and phrases matching what you do. User reviews can increase your online visibility. Also, you’ll eventually get customers loyal enough they’re essential “apologists” for your company. Think of those who love Apple, and those who love Microsoft. Or Chevy, and Ford. These rivalries cut deep. Co-opt them by contacting passionate customers, and putting their opinions on your blog. Becoming interconnected online, co-opting user content, and finding innovative ways to secure reviews will be key in 2019. As a closing cherry on top, one tactic to get reviews if you don’t have them is to write reviews for customers you know are satisfied, show those clients the review(s) you’ve written, and get their permission to publish in their name.
3) Hamza Mikou, Blogger, Digital Marketing & Web Development Specialist
Understanding and safeguarding resources are critical to the success of any business. And small businesses are no exception.And this will go throw a few steps:1- PROTECTING THE CASH FLOW: When it comes to cash flow, it’s smart to hope for the best while preparing for anything worst. So always try to choose the right customer that can always pay in time and minimize debt especially when it comes to your business charges.2- BE A SOCIAL MEDIA BUTTERFLY: You should be a social media butterfly fluttering around through the different online networks making friends and communicating with everyone. Also, don’t forget to establish an up to date social media crisis management strategy by listening and monitoring.3- ALWAYS GIVE SOMETHING EXTRA: Give your clients a discount or a free gift with their purchase. It can be an ebook, a report, a study or even a donation to their favorite charity. But don’t forget to give them a community to belong to, a blog, a forum, or any place with free resources to develop their own business or life.4- YOUR EMPLOYEES: Build a foster workplace environment and listen to your employees, don’t forget that they know your customers more than you do. A happy employee means more productivity and brings new & creative ideas.
The success of any business, large or small depends on your efforts to dominate the web. Identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats facing your business. This can be done by employing the latest digital marketing and technology tools which can also improve your user experience, build customer relationships, increase sales & profit. I would suggest selling your products or services on multiple channels & marketplaces including Amazon, eBay, and Google Shopping to reach the maximum audience. Marketing automation is another major factor you need to focus on. You can accelerate your business growth while also reducing your team’s workload by automating processes and streamlining workflows.
5) Erman Ergun, JotForm
Customer feedback is quite important for small businesses. You need to know about what your customers need, and how they feel about your service. Their opinions are the key to making your service better. Our users choose Mobile Forms to keep getting feedback anytime, anywhere; even when they don’t have an internet connection.
You don’t need a complex process, actually, if you make the forms as simple as possible for your customers you can easily acquire clear feedback. Some of our customers use kiosk mode which enables them to turn their phones or tablets into a survey station. The main idea is, you don’t want to overcomplicate the process.
Have a clear and logical reason for why you are doing social media, and how it is helping to advance and raise awareness about your business. It is not enough to ‘just hire a millennial’ and tell them ‘to do social media’. You need someone who understands and cares what your business does, and is able to communicate this with others.
Focus on service revenue. Small businesses should take a cue from their much-larger competitors and shift their focus away from selling products in favor of providing consistently valuable solutions to customers via service contracts or managed services. It requires significant infrastructure support and unique selling strategies, but the revenue model improves cash flow and insulates businesses from ebbs and flows in the economy.
With the rise of freelancing platforms and remote working culture, it’s getting easier to access talent from anywhere in the world. This is an immense opportunity for small businesses to take advantage of the gig economy and work with experts who can help them grow. Content marketing is crucial for a small business. With Google’s algorithms increasingly rewarding trustworthy and authoritative content, it is essential for SMB’s to work with experts who can create high-ranking content. Having content written by a freelance expert writer with in-depth knowledge of a subject not only helps build credibility and trust among customers, but it is also favoured by search engines. By hiring qualified writers for online content, small businesses and startups can stay ahead of the game and be on a level playing field as their competitors.
9) Arash Asli, Yocale
Always enjoy the journey or the quest you’ve set out on and take some time to embrace your surroundings and be grateful for how far you’ve come and looked forward to where you’re heading. By working on that, you start treating your life and work more as a process of small accomplishments instead of as one big milestone you have to achieve. When you go hiking a mountain, and you have your head down trudging along and all you’re trying to do is get to the top fast as you can. You’re missing out on the best part… The journey and the view along the way. Remind yourself to look around and enjoy the moment.
Now it is a high time where people losing their trust in the largest brands like Amazon, Google and Facebook due to many serious scandals on human rights violations, privacy issue, and even online cheating. It is the best time for the small business owners to revitalize their communities in small towns. The best suggestion for every entrepreneur is to think out of the box to overcome these aforesaid shortcomings coming in the path of success of your business. We advise the small business owners to outsource their accounting and bookkeeping activities for all betterment of their business.
- Cost control is one of the most obvious reasons to outsource. It controls capital as well as operating costs.
- You will get technology and infrastructure without investing in extra capital. As a result, you will be in a better position to invest the fund elsewhere to get the most of it.
- Avoiding large expenses at early stages gives your start-up and small business the financial stability and strength to compete in the market.
- You can start a new project right away depending on the outsourcing services. Often it has been seen in-house staffs are not that expert to deal with the circumstances effectively.
- Outsourcing frees up your staff and reduces their workload. As a result, you will get more time to restructure and deploy the staff force in some other productive work to generate profit.
11) Matthew Osborn, director of marketing, Apruve.com
Being a small business comes with one very large benefit, speed. Without the layers of red tape that exist in a large corporate entity, your business can quickly implement campaigns in less than half of the time. Use this to your advantage by creating numerous campaigns and continually testing what works and what doesn’t. Through marketing automation, small businesses can expand their reach to the size of a large corporate entity without the overhead but with double the speed.
Make sure your website has a great user experience so that your potential clients are not overwhelmed or frustrated (is anything worse than a website that takes foreverrrr to load?!). It is important that potential leads can easily navigate your website, and quickly learn how your company can help them. Creating a separate mobile site, or making sure your website is responsive is increasingly important as more and more people use their phones for shopping and product research. Once you have an upstanding website, you can further stand out by sharing your company’s story, visuals of your employees, and outline why you stand out from your competition. It is important for small business’ websites to connect and engage.
If you aren’t yet using email marketing to help grow your business, say goodbye to 1999 and enter 2019! With excuses ranging from “I don’t have time” to “It’s too complicated” here are 3 of the most important things, you can do to win at email marketing in 2019. Signup Forms with Welcome Automation. If you have a website or presence anywhere on the internet, make sure you have a way to capture email addresses from digital visitors. After that, make sure to set up a welcome email, or better yet, a welcome series. These are just emails that are automatically sent to each subscriber after they signup. Don’t overthink these emails. Just provide your new subscribers with a warm welcome and show them you have competence in your industry. Answer this question with a series of emails: Why should they do business with you? Cart Abandonment Automation. Over 70% of website visitors will abandon the cart. What better way to increase sales than to set up automation that brings potential buyers back to your store. It will take you less than 45 min to set up and can generate 15% – 25% more sales. Up-sell Follow-up Automation. The old saying, “Strike while the iron is hot” has come a long way and it’s still relevant. Happy customers are likely to buy from you again. Ride that way and set up follow up automation that offers upgrades, related products, and services or maybe a refer a friend deal. Whatever it is, strike while the iron is hot!
As a small business, we make use of cloud software to gain not only operational efficiency but improve client communication. The ability to see the same data at the same time as our clients lead to better conversations about business performance and tax efficiency. If you are a small business owner then we would recommend using either FreeAgent or Xero for your accounting needs.
15) Graham Lee, Marketing Manager at Vonigo
Optimize for your customers’ convenience. In 2019, that means recognizing that most transactions start with some amount of research online and that the bulk of that traffic is on mobile. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly and offers customers the most convenient experience possible. Do you do deliveries or perform home services? Offer online booking. Need to confirm appointments or schedules? Use email automation and software tools that keep things up to date and on-task. Increasingly, businesses that recognize the value of their customer’s time will be the ones that win the business. Invest in your company’s infrastructure now, and reap the rewards of building an admired brand that stays ahead of your competition.
16) Rohan Mendiratta, Marketing @ SendX.io
Despite so many new marketing channels emerging lately, it’s never been a better time for small businesses to enter the market. However, when it comes to actual revenue, Email Marketing still remains one of the highest and most predictable ROI channels there is. Most businesses tend to ignore it because they don’t see enough ROI upfront. Which makes their email marketing investments hard to justify and they end up trying out other channels instead. When it comes to Email Marketing, one thing that is frequently overlooked is optimizing for maximum efficiency throughout. It’s extremely important to focus on speed and on the things that actually move the needle. At the same time, being capital-efficient with software costs must be a high priority for your small business to ensure maximum positive returns. Getting bogged down on creating the most beautiful email or creating the most advanced automation sequence is only going to cost you time and money. Especially if you aren’t at a place where you can justify solid ROI from Email Marketing yet.
The customer is everything. If you only have one customer or thousands, help them in any way you can so they have the experience you would want.
You’ll want to focus more on mobile SEO and geotargeting. Nearly half of all Americans will check their smartphones before they get out of bed each day! And nearly one-third of these searches are location-based queries.
Businesses, both large and small, face huge threats. A single compromise has the potential to shut fledging businesses. SMEs, in particular, may think that they don’t need security. However, they are the ones on the radar of the attackers out there as they are usually easy to target. One reason SMEs find security hard is that it is hard. Small businesses may not have the required skills to secure their online presence and, it does not make sense for them to acquire those skills or hire a security team. Another reason is the perceived costs associated with cybersecurity.
We recommend outsourcing the security of your business to experts. A few clicks and your business can be as secure as it can get.
Set aside some budget for security, consider this as insurance for your business. It is not as high as you think and is totally worth it.
This year, don’t rely on your fate to secure your online business, make sure your store gets the security it deserves.
Social Marketing is trending and Facebook is one of the best platforms where you can find your audience and customers, use this tool https://doopchat.com/ to transform your Facebook Comments into Sales.
Content marketing is a critical component of search engine optimization for any online business’ 2019 marketing strategy. Whether you are working on a shoestring budget or have a dedicated writing staff, you can grow your business online astronomically if you commit to creating consistent, engage long-form SEO content, videos, infographics, etc. that are well aligned with what your target market is searching for. In most cases, writing a blog post or creating a video can do done virtually for free (minus the time cost) which make the potential return on investment massive.Our clients have 3X-10X their website traffic and revenue by utilizing this content marketing strategy. You need to invest in doing keyword, competitor and search volume research to make sure you are not going blind and creating worthless content pieces. Imagine what you could accomplish with 10s of thousands of additional targeted website visitors in your niche? All you need to do at that point is to turn your attention to monetizing or converting them over to leads.
22) Fiona Foster, Marketing Manager, CUE Market Place
Focus on content that is relatable and valuable to your customer base. We have a small business blog and YouTube channel and continually need content. Over the years, I’ve learned that the most successful material is taken from daily interactions. It could be from our own business, a conversation with a customer, or something a friend says at dinner. Taking inspiration from real-life problems often gets more engagement than a piece we’ve crafted around keywords or trending Google topics. Plus the writing usually comes more easily.
Google isn’t a set it and forget it platform. We have seen important business information drop from Google business listings due to changes from Google. Remember to check your listings every few weeks!
Always constantly monitor your servers and network components, web sites, web applications and email infrastructure making sure that you will not lose any clients due to problems with your online presence. Remote monitoring services enable you to increase the efficiency of your business operations and to reduce the risk of failed Internet transactions and loss of revenue.
25) Chris Makara, Interactive Marketing & Digital Strategist
Identify tasks that are repetitive and look for ways to automate when possible. Leveraging this approach will free up your valuable time in order to spend it on more important tasks. An easy thing to automate is your social media scheduling. While that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t monitor and engage with your followers, it does mean that you can easily keep your accounts active with content in order to trigger the engagement with your audience.
26) Mike Forrest, Archmore
Business success does not come from just doing things right.
You have to do the right things right.
27) Rick Shimko, Unific
Learn to say no. As a small business with limited resources, you cannot act on every new idea or opportunity. Stay true to your vision and remember for every new milestone you hope to achieve, somebody in the organization is going to have to do the work to get you there. Continually changing priorities without that in mind will keep you spinning in circles, instead of running ahead of your competition.
Digital advertising is important, but don’t forget about inexpensive low hanging fruit like optimizing your product pages to increase sales and lower your abandoned cart rate. You can’t scale up by just doing more of everything you’ve been doing all along. Growing your company calls for a new game plan, new strategies and building out your team.
Don’t try to cut corners when it comes to Web Hosting and Site Design. Website is not only your digital identity but your ONLY identity. You are judged by the site you have. So, don’t go for free web hosting and get a professional designer to design your website. The amount you spend on this will be your investment and not an expense. Good luck!
30) Kevin Urrutia, Voymedia
Maintain a personal relationship with your business relations too, and both have to be combined, ask your customers how are they doing in life, ask them about their well being because it creates a personal relationship that is something which will last longer and it will create a long-lasting impact.
31) Charles Coxhead, WPDevShed
We have worked with many clients, developing sites and providing follow on support and maintenance, and we’ve noticed that the best performing client sites, the ones that attract the most traffic and customers, have a common thread….they all sell by teaching. It is a little counter intuitive, selling a service in particular, by teaching your market how to solve the problem that your product or service addresses. But it actually makes a lot of sense, when your market are looking for solutions they are probably not searching for you specifically. Instead they are searching for answers to the problem they have. Often this means they are Googling for solutions, and so if you are actively providing answers then you have a good shot at showing up and attracting those people looking to solve the problems you are expert in. And demonstrating your expertise is also another good reason for developing content that teaches. They very act of doing this shows potential customers that you know what you are talking about. And assuming your product or service solves a sufficiently complex problem there is a good chance those customers looking for answers will look to you to provide the solution.
Don’t rely on Social Media. Get your website up to snuff.
Specialty retailers have largely been sold a bill of goods when it comes to social media. It has been over-promised, but too often under-delivers shoppers to your door. With retailers’ attention focused on social, they often overlook the critical importance of their home page to excite interest and draw shoppers in. With shoppers relying more on mobile to find places to shop, they are more likely to discover your store there, than on social. Make sure your website’s home page sets the right first impression. A recent study found 75% of shoppers base their opinion on a store based upon how the website looks and feels. If that first impression doesn’t say you are up-to-date and in tune with what they are looking for, you’ve lost your chance. Make sure your website and the all important “About Us” page communicates effectively.
33) Raul Tiru, founder of GlobalOwls
Create something you really love and don’t get obsessed with stories from people who claim you can get anything worth having quickly. Take your time in setting the foundation. Figure out your product/market fit, build up your domain authority, etc. Don’t get overwhelmed. You can build an entire castle by setting one stone at a time. Reach out to people and help one another. It may sound dull, but these are the things fellow entrepreneurs around me really struggle with. As far as marketing tactics, you can just Google them.
34) Glenn Brooks, WebWize
Don’t be afraid to have a fire drill. Sadly many business owners fall prey to retaining clients that continually cost them money, increasing the chance to fail as a business. A good business person will recognize unprofitable clients and send them packing. We are all in business to make money, pay our bills and feed our families; clients that continually ask for free services, bitch and moan about everything we provide and interrupt your cash flow needs to head on down the road. Don’t be afraid to have a Friday afternoon fire-drill with those clients, I guarantee your profit percentage will increase.
Operational cost is always the main concern of all businesses, especially to the small businesses and startups. These operational costs are not only the employee salary but also the necessary technology that requires huge monthly subscription or maintenance cost. On top of it, in many cases, business owners may need to train up the newly hired employee for a few months at their own expense.Recent trend shows that many big companies like Google, Unilever, Facebook, Telenor, Microsoft, etc. companies are hiring professional freelancers who not only have the required skills but also equipped with market-leading software. Why are they doing so? – The only reason is to get the employee who really doesn’t need the training and can serve their projects immediately, avoid purchasing expensive software that is much needed to research & analysis, marketing or execution of different types of works.This trend is real and we can get a proof of it in the statistics too in the survey conducted by the topmost freelancing marketplace. The statistics report below shows the rapid growth of freelancing profession that booms in the USA.
In 2019 and also in upcoming years, this graph will move further to the north and so the small business should give a second thought on this if they really want to cut down their operational cost and maximize their profit ratio.
36) Liuda Nebozhak, Head of Project, Crello
1. Know your customer
I would say that chasing your user – knowing who they are, what their days look like and how your service or product fits within their life – is the best way to attract and retain customers. One of the strongest selling points for Crello has been our ability to release a lot of new designs continuously, be responsive to what the user needs and help them find the right visuals amongst the fresh and new stuff we keep uploading.
2. Help to learn the product
Tutorials and reviews work great because they don’t just introduce blogger’s existing audience to Crello, they are also great for SEO – people searching for, say, “How to design a classroom poster” or “Ideas on Increasing Sales via Social Media” will be able to find the tutorial and both get the answer to their question and learn that they can use our tool to solve their problem.
Nowadays, individual businesses are gaining success with the right efforts. So, for the small business owners, must know some strategies which help them for creating a better future. Initially small business requires rigorous effort and some strategies are:
1) To build brand value, reach out to the local media. 2) Retargeting, engage your interested and valuable customers. 3) Do customer service, both online as well as offline. 4) Give good reasons to your customers to shop with you again and again. 5) Never underestimate online presence or networking. 6) Don’t feel shy to talk with the mentors.
38) Antonio Chau, Founder and President of the Digital Marketing Company Leads Ngin
For small businesses, knowing what your client’s “latent demand” is can be a huge game-changer.
How so?
A “latent demand” is something your client doesn’t know they want until you tell them about it—or until they figure it out after the fact. By introducing them to their own “latent demand,” your credibility and authority as an industry expert is further established.
One of our recent acquisitions is the perfect example.
We created a carpet cleaning business in order to build a portfolio for our marketing agency. During the research and training phase, we discovered something interesting: most carpet cleaning companies do not sanitize their equipment in-between jobs.
Immediately, we recognized the problem … and so devised a solution: a unique selling proposition that explicitly stated how we “clean and sanitize all our tools before we bring them into your home.” By eliminating the risk of cross-contamination, we addressed the client’s latent demand for a clean, infection-free environment.
Most businesses are capable of fulfilling latent demands. They just need to figure out what those are.
Some suggestions:
1) Carefully review your business processes. Be as granular as you can. Examine each step and ask yourself; does this bring value to my client? If so, what is the value?
2) List down the value proposition for each step and rank them in order of relevance. Which ones would your clients be willing to pay more money for?
3) Identify which value propositions on your list your clients may not know about. The goal is to find the items that will get your clients to say, “I never thought of that,” or “I didn’t even realize that was so important.”
If you can get this type of response, you’ve figured out their latent demand.
39) Allen Greer, FUZE
Don’t try to pretend to be something you’re not. Many small businesses feel intimidated while attempting to navigate a vast ocean occupied by much larger fish. Instead, realize that in 2019 small businesses are back in style! You have nothing to be ashamed about or to hide from. In fact, something we here all the time at our small agency is how refreshing it is for clients to remove some of the corporate red tapes and operate in a consultant/client relationships that is a bit more casual and friendly. Harness the positive aspects of being a small business, and use them as sales and marketing tools. Make a list of the advantages you have over a larger company, and use it to your advantage. For FUZE, we have a lower overhead, a faster turn-around time and give clients a lot of personal one-on-one attention.
40) Rob FitzGerald, Founder and CEO of Connext Digital
Every business decision we ever made was based on real, actual data. And for any business to reap positive results, they must always ensure that their data is up-to-date and accurate. They must perform regular data cleaning and enhancement. This is especially crucial before launching a campaign or before implementing a new strategy. Always verify your data. Data hygiene and appending will not only help you create more targeted marketing campaigns, but it will also allow you to increase your ROI by ensuring that your messages are sent to the right people, at the right time, through the right channels. I cannot stress this strongly enough.
Test everything, and never stop testing. A/B testing is a powerful way to increase conversion rates. There are tons of free and low cost tools available which you can find with a simple Google search… so no excuses. If you have two different headlines, or product/service descriptions, or contact forms etc. and you can’t decide which one to use on your website, run an A/B test to work out which performs best and brings you the most business. With A/B tests I’d strongly recommend testing only one variable at a time so that you can confidently attribute any increase (or decrease) in conversion to a specific change when the test is complete. If you do wish to test more than one variable at the same time, you should run a multivariate test which effectively lets you carry out a number of A/B tests at the same time. With multivariate tests, each visitor to your website will see a different combination of headlines, product/service descriptions, images, forms etc. When the results are in, you can then adjust your website accordingly. Testing is great as it lets you do two things; cut the crap and move forward with your successes. Once you have found something that works, don’t stop there, test it again to see if there is something that works even better.
42) Rob FitzGerald, Founder and CEO of Connext Digital
Every business decision we ever made was based on real, actual data. And for any business to reap positive results, they must always ensure that their data is up-to-date and accurate. They must perform regular data cleaning and enhancement. This is especially crucial before launching a campaign or before implementing a new strategy. Always verify your data. Data hygiene and appending will not only help you create more targeted marketing campaigns, but it will also allow you to increase your ROI by ensuring that your messages are sent to the right people, at the right time, through the right channels. I cannot stress this strongly enough.
43) Gabriela Damaceno, Media Shark
One of the first steps that small business owners make when starting their journey into the digital marketing and SEO world is to get backlinks to their website. Key start point! Get links leading to your homepage will help you to gain organic traffic. However, get links from spammy blog networks and low-quality directories can destroy your Google rankings. Remember: quality over quantity is the best way to go!
44) Nishma Khetia, Wyzebulb
If I knew at the time of starting up, all the things that I know right now, I’d be too scared to start up. Good, I didn’t know everything. Sometimes being naive to certain things help. Courage is the only thing that takes you through the unknowns.
Word-of mouth marketing, or people talking to people has always been one of the most powerful tools to convince and convert potential new clients. With the rise of online creators such as instagramers, youtubers and bloggers, who build strong communities, word-of mouth marketing at scale is possible. We are noticing, that big brands ask us to help them to integrate influencer marketing driven content strategies into their digital marketing mix. They want to leverage people talking about their products to stand out. With tools like Fourstarz Influencer Marketing Platform, small medium business can leverage the power of those online creators. Idea: Instead of asking models, ask a local influencer to come with their friends into your local store or restaurant. Or send product samples for exchange of great lifestyle pictures to influencers in your niche. The advantage of working with these creators: (i) create awareness, (ii) generate re-usable, high engaging and authentic content at scale. Smart marketers use it to leverage it for social proof on their website, newsletters, social channels and as well in Facebook Ad campaigns.
Whenever you implement a change in your site, you’ll first see how it affects the website’s ranking status on search engines like Google. The best way to grow your business is to grow your search ranking up. In search engine-oriented market, SEO is a more effective card to play and to win. For small and less budget business, it’s more complicated to face the established competition. Therefore, in all ways, solid marketing tips can give your firm an active boost up.
47) Alexandra Djordjevic, TheIuvo
Don’t ignore negative reviews if your business gets them. No business is perfect, so you are bound to get 1 or 2 stars Google at some point. However, it’s not the end of the world if you have 20 positive and 3 negative reviews. Those 3 minuses take nothing away from your reputation – on the contrary – they signal to potential customers that the other 20 positive ones are genuine. And if you can turn them around into pluses, you are doing a favor to your business in the long run. Negative reviews are an extremely valuable resource to SMBs because they provide you with information about the way your business is perceived by the customer, a picture about some downsides of your product you might not have been aware of before or the way you can improve your services. If you address them and act on them by resolving the issue at hand in the best possible way, it must be noticed and appreciated by both your current and potential customers. That’s how you build excellent customer relationships AND build your business at the same time.
A lot of small businesses take care of their marketing by themselves (often just 1 guy) if they haven’t got the budget to outsource this to an agency, and aren’t big enough to have a dedicated marketing team. This is not a problem, however when it comes to social media marketing, a lot of businesses are missing out on some low hanging fruits. Make sure to have your Facebook Pixel proper setup for your website (also with UTM tags, conversion goals etc) so you can let your pixel run and gather som data. A few quick tips to increase your ROAS when having a good pixel setup 1. Use campaign budget optimisation2. Split test minimum 1 creative each week3. Start using broad targeting -> Test into interest groups -> Test into LLA audience based on conversion/watch time etc4. Scale up profitable campaigns5. Repeat
My best advice for small businesses today is this: – Try to analyze your operations daily and see where most of your time goes. – Make notes and analyse if doing that thing brings in revenue or not. Is it a core activity or a supporting activity. – If it’s a core activity, come up with creatives ways to optimize this process so that you’ll have more time. This can be starting to use a new tool, outsourcing something a new company or just doing differently altogether. – If it’s a supporting activity try to outsource or hire an employee to handle this tasks as soon as possible. Your time should only be wasted on driving the core activities. – Make quarterly plans and break them down into weekly sprints. This will keep you engaged and moving towards the goal. Remember only plan things that you feel that you can achieve within a quarter. If the tasks is too long then break it down and divide between multiple quarters. – Join online communities such as Facebook groups and spend roughly 30 minutes per day talking with peers and other business owners. Tell them what about your goals, struggles and also provide helpful advice from your experience. Don’t make it any more difficult than this!
Social media in 2019! Make content, schedule it, engage with the audience, and then you hope and wait for some magic — And then…there’s, the rest of your business to run. Emails to respond to. Problems to solve. A life to live with your friends and loved ones. So here I can give you a tip to manage your multiple social media profiles for your business. In order to reduce time spent on recurring projects, consider investing in a social media management tools like Social Champ, to streamline processes like social media publishing and reporting. This kind of platforms will help you stay better organized and leaving you time for what matters most, your business! – Social Champ
51) Bhavesh Nardani, Anova
Digital Leadership
Competent Digital leadership is needed to transform an organisation to be ready for the Internet-age, through a process of building new capabilities, plans and ways of operating.
52) Peter Boyle, Chief Copywriter/Head of Content of Jumper
Today’s customers are looking for the shortest, most streamlined, logical purchase journey possible. Optimising your processes to create a better customer experience is the key differentiator today. When you’re looking at establishing your next marketing campaign look at how you can make it as easy to complete as possible for the customer. In particular, look at the channels they use, the devices they favour, and the points of highest friction that cause the largest drop off. Then experiment with solutions that serve your customers the experience they want thought he devices and channels they prefer. If you don’t have the resources to fully analyse this, start with a conversational marketing solution. The intuitive experience generates much higher engagement and conversion rates.
53) Lindsey Winsemius, Vice President of Communications, ApogeeINVENT
Succeeding online nowadays is all about being transparent and authentic. Don’t be afraid to get personal with your customers, tell your story as a business, and connect with them as a person and not just a brand as much as you can. You can do this by blogging as an individual (“I”, not “we”), building the personal brand of your executives, leveraging video and experiential marketing, and using social media to reveal the personality of your brand.
54) Steve Eveleigh, Founder, Gripped
A decade ago, your website was there to support salespeople. Your target buyers would look through the site and get a basic understanding of your brand, business and product; then they would jump on a phone call with a salesperson and get into the detail. That’s not the case any more. Today, your salespeople support your website. Buyers want a self-service experience, backed by human interaction when they are ready to buy, not the other way around. Very few buyers want to speak to a salesperson at the start of their buying journey. And today most websites won’t cut it. Your potential customers have been training by their consumer experiences to expect slick, personalised, self-services experiences. If your website is discoverable via search engines, filled with rich content that guides a buyer and has helpful customer success folks waiting ready to support your buyer you’ll succeed. If it doesn’t, they’ll go straight to your competitors who have to grips with this brave new world.
In an evolving tech ecosystem, customers are looking for solution providers that consider innovation as an end to end process. Start-ups and founders today not only need direction on building their tech platform, but also on cloud strategy and digital marketing to expand product outreach.
Ideating Start-ups need to deploy agile strategies that help build applications that scale starting with an MVP. Providing a seamless end to end User Experience to customers has to be the key differentiating factor. We need to always look at the end user who is at the bottom of the pyramid when creating applications.
56) James Isles Founder and Managing Director of Nebulas Website Design
Be honest and transparent to your clients always demonstrating you have their best interests at heart not fleecing them for as much money as possible, clients are buying into you as well as your brand. Manage their expectations and in doing so your relationship will be long and fruitful for both of you.
Focus on sales and marketing – fast! Get systems in place to nurture prospects and customers through the buying cycle and to keep salespeople focused on your top opportunities.
Know your audience. Too many people try to focus on an audience that’s far too broad, which can end up hurting more than helping. Really hone-in on who your target audience is, and then fine-tune your messaging accordingly. This in and of itself can improve the stickiness of your content, not to mention, make your brand much more memorable.
If you’re a small business or entrepreneur investing in digital marketing of any kind, consistency, personalisation and human connection are what is required to achieve greater marketing reach and sales conversions – not a fancy automated funnel. Yes there are aspects like niche targeting, promoting/advertising on the right platforms, all the usual marketing stuff, is still valid. However, the businesses that have seen the most successful launches and continual business growth are commonly those who excel at consistency in showing up, consistency in branding, consistency in strategy, and creating and sharing content that is relevant, real and personalised.
Choose the right team, because the greatest asset of any small business is its employees. Equally as important, know your customers and clients – this is imperative to any small business.
Content is really the key to small businesses being able to compete against larger, more established competitors. Research the needs of your target audience and the answers they seek (related to your products or services, of course). Then dig into where the gaps are in the answers provided by your larger competitors. Fill those gaps with high-quality content that answers the questions to which your audience isn’t getting answers. And don’t be afraid to go big. A great piece of content beats 10 poor-quality pieces any day. The goal is to gain the eyes of your target audience and bring them into your bigger community of content to start building relationships that lead to sales. A thoroughly developed, very authoritative piece of content can end up helping you with SEO as well. People will share on social media, other websites may link to your content, and Google will ultimately deem your piece of content the authoritative voice on the matter and start ranking it in search.
62) Farhan Ayub, WPBlog
Business now a days is all about listening to your customers. Feedback from one on one conversation with your customers can take you a long way and you can do that in a lot of ways. One of the best ways is to create a Facebook group to engage your customers. The group will include all your customers and your job is to encourage them to post their feedback and ask questions there so that you can talk to them personally and get to know them and their problems better. This way you will drastically improve relationships with your customers.
63) Taylor Miles, Webbroi
Build an Anti Fragile Business, to weather the economic storm & maintain positive cash flow.
- Keep your financial burn, and overhead to a minimum.
- Maintain diversity of client base, different industries and geo.
- Be flexible with your customers – Offer pause of service, or reductions.
- Find new services and products to address new challenges
- Shift resources from sales to support, easier to keep revenue than generate new.
- Use Freelancers, and low cost labor abroad to supplement a reduced workforce.
Steven on February 5, 2019 
