Amplify Online Blog

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Marketing, are you doing it?

The number one mistake small businesses make is cutting costs by eliminating their marketing funds. A business owner cutting their marketing budget is like a farmer who stops watering their plants to save money on their water bills. If your business is struggling the reason may be because you have been neglecting your marketing. Start off small but smart. Small companies should start with lean marketing. Make sure you are doing the things that are free and pick inexpensive marketing options that can be tracked or measured to see if they are successful activities. If you find a marketing venue that works make sure you repeat what works for you. Set aside a marketing budget that you can draw from to make your marketing more professional and reach more people. Marketing pays off in the long run, and you may not see a return right away. Remember that marketing is like farming, you need to plant the seeds and wait and nurture it until you can bring in the harvest. It takes patience a

Five tips to make social media work for your business.

1. Understand your brand. It doesn't matter which way you go if you don't care where you end up. Before you start making social media posts, make sure you understand your brand, and where you want your social media posts to take your business. Make a plan about the content you plan on posting, how often you plan on posting and if you are going to be actively creating content or outsourcing it to a company that specializes in social media posts and marketing. 2. Keep your sales pitches to a minimum. Your social media should be engaging to your followers. Your posts should invite your followers to your site from time to time, so your websites can make the sale pitches. Your posts should funnel traffic to your website. 3. Quality photos and videos are a must. We live in a digital world, and you need to grab people's attention with images and videos to have a successful social media campaign. Wow, your followers with quality videos and photos. 4. Have a soc

What kind of online marketing is right for you?

“When in doubt about the direction your company is going, advertise. If you want success, make sure you are promoting your business.” These are words you might hear from any marketing professor. It's wise advice, but how do you go about implementing an effective marketing campaign? Do you hire an in-house team of marketers or request services from an independent contractor or go all in with a bonafide marketing agency? Let’s talk about the pros and cons of each one. In-House Marketing Pros: Hiring an in-house marketing team can be very useful, especially if your company is a large business over 150 employees. If you can afford to have an onsite marketing team, they can be 100 % dedicated to your business. They know the company’s culture, products and SOP’s. Cons: Having an in-house marketing team is an expensive investment. Hiring and training take money and time. Also, your company will need to take care of benefit packages, payroll taxes, and other HR/employee issues

Five Reasons Your Small Business Should Outsource Your SEO and Online Marketing

Your company deserves its best chance to thrive online. Whether you’re considering outsourcing your online marketing or taking the DIY route, the goal is always the same: seeing company growth from improving your online reach and search engine ranking. Here are five reasons why outsourcing could be the right step to promote your business's growth: Saving money. This might sound crazy at first, but doing your SEO and online marketing in-house means either hiring an SEO specialist to work on-site or taking it all on personally. An on-location specialist can run you thousands of dollars each month; outsourcing is typically a fraction of that. “Well, then, I’ll do it myself! That’s free, right?” That can be true, but that all depends on how much an hour of your work is worth. When you run your own business, your time is money, and an hour spent on one task is an hour lost towards another. It’s more efficient. Unless you have the time, resources and SEO experience to do it pers

Thinking Your Way to Success: Mindset Can Make All The Difference in Business

If success in business were a recipe, there’d be a lot of ingredients. In a good cookie recipe, some ingredients are necessary (e.g., flour, sugar, baking soda) and some are nice to have but not crucial (e.g., chocolate chips, frosting, sprinkles). In a business situation, there are some must-have ingredients in the recipe for success. One of these success staples is how we think about things and look at situations. American philosopher, Wayne Dyer, once said: “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” The way you look at day to day tasks, your brand, your business goals, and your strategies can change the entire course your business takes. Because your thought process is so crucial to business performance, it is often important to take a step back and think about your mindset. The following is a self-evaluation that will help you analyze your business mindset. Personal Mindset Evaluation Read each item below. Decide how true that statem

PPC Strategies That Lead to Success

Many advertisers have found pay-per-click (PPC) to be one of the more profitable marketing options for producing a higher ROI for their business. When applied correctly, a PPC campaign can reap some impressive marketing rewards. On the other hand, a mismanaged pay per click account lives far below its earning potential. Through our years of managing pay per click for a variety of businesses, we’ve been able to hone in on techniques that work and ones that don’t. Here are 5 of the many PPC strategies that can contribute to your online marketing success: Filter out irrelevant clicks through negative keywords Occasionally, when people are searching for keywords your business is targeting, they may not really be looking for your business products or services. They may be looking for general information, a definition, etc. By adding negative keywords to your PPC campaign, you can filter out searches that are not actionable or likely to convert. Some common negative keywords