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Staying in touch with your local customers during a crisis

Staying in touch with your local customers during a crisis For most small businesses across America right now, your day-to-day operations are anything but business as usual. While these are unprecedented times, they’re also an opportunity to work on a crisis...

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How to Better MDF & Co-op Programs

Nearly $10 billion is spent each year in Channel MDF (Market Development Funds) and Co-op Marketing Funds. However, MDF and Co-op programs continue to struggle to generate measurable ROI, leaving channel executives feeling as though they are throwing money away. Five...

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Benefits of Cooperative Advertising

Author: Sarah Nasir Cooperative advertising is when a manufacturer and retailer share advertising costs. Cooperative advertising programs are usually offered by manufacturers to retailers or distributors. These programs are beneficial for both of the aforementioned...

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Types of Anchor Text

By: Sarah Nasir Anchor text is the hyperlinked text that you click on. Anchor texts are significant for both external and internal links. There is not much that you can do about the anchor texts from inbound links as you have no control over how others link to your...

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Anchor Text: Best Practices

By: Sarah Nasir  Anchor text is the clickable part of the hyperlink. It usually serves as an indication of what the link is about. Anchor text should be a significant part of your SEO strategy – it can increase the validity of your efforts to rank higher on the SERP...

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DISTRIKT MARKETING SOLUTIONS AGENCY

DISTRIKT is a marketing solutions agency specializing in digital marketing to help companies acquire new customers and achieve growth. DISTRIKT is a new member of  the Localogy.com (The Local Search Association (LSA)) and were pleased to say a new contributor to the...

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Coupons: An SEO Tactic

Author: Sarah Nasir Concurrently acquiring customers, making sales and driving traffic to your website is not impossible – with the help of SEO. With SEO’s prominence in digital advertising showing no signs of slowing down any time soon, it is crucial for companies to...

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4 Steps that will help you Win Customers in 2020

By: Krrish Thanvi Digital trends never sleep—and neither do your customers! That’s why it’s crucial to stay on top of the ever-changing digital advertising landscape, especially as you move into 2020. Customers expect a seamless, integrated experience from start to...

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How to ask your customers for reviews

There’s so much that goes into a transaction with a customer today. First, you need to advertise to reach them, then turn them into a lead, then nurture that opportunity into a sale. Even then you’re not finished — you still need to make sure they have an excellent...

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Tools to Plan your Social Media Content

Social media plays a crucial role in reaching target audiences and if done correctly can be very effective to a business. In today's digital age businesses have access to a variety of social media platforms to establish presence on. With so many social networks to...

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6 Things Marketers are Focusing on in 2020

1. The MQL's Irrelevance A marketing qualified lead (MQL) is a lead who has been deemed more likely to become a customer compared to other leads. Gartner predicted in 2017 the MQL will become irrelevant as a result of marketing teams aligning with sales and service to...

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How to Choose the Best Facebook Ad

Facebook being a social media giant with over 1.8 billion active users each month is an ideal place to reach new audiences as people are spending a significant amount of time there. Facebook's business platform has grown to give advertisers a variety of tools and...

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Host Your Own Webinar!

Webinars are online events that combine video, audio, and polls to engage audiences from anywhere. Online webinars are very useful to any business as they make communication with prospects, employees, partners, and customers easy and efficient and can be done from...

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Case Study – B2B Small Business Leads

cover image from: https://info.themezzaninegroup.com/blog/what-does-b2b-mean Echo Partners is a B2B financial company that was started to give community banks access to the tools and resources traditionally available only to large institutions. Echo Partners has...

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Effective Email Marketing and Segmentation

cover image from: http://www.mergedesignblog.com/email-marketing-and-why-you-should-be-doing-it/ How to capture emails Sending good emails is important, however it is more important to send good emails to the right people. Your email list should consist of an audience...

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Make Your Content Appeal to Gen Z-ers

Over the last few years, talk has gradually shifted away from Millenials to Gen Z-ers, the cohort born roughly between 1995 and 2010. Now that Gen Z-ers are estimated to make up a third of the world’s population, ignoring them would be a risky strategy. This is...

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Lighthouse Digital Results – A Case Study

The Local U Blog is dedicated to helping local businesses build and grow their companies and tackle any challenges they may face. We have interviewed Lighthouse Digital Results, a new digital marketing agency based in Washington, DC, to understand how the founder...

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USA Guided Tours Case Study

The Local U Blog is dedicated to helping local businesses face the many challenges they may come across during the process of starting their business and facing obstacles along the way. The Local U is run by a group of university students and recent grads supporting...

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Small Business Challenges – Let’s Combat Them

 When starting a small business companies face a number of challenges. Not knowing how to combat these challenges and work towards a solution can create a lack of motivation and passion in business efforts. Below are the top 6 challenges that small businesses face and a solution to combat these challenges.

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Persona Development: A Free and Useful Tool

A useful tool that all small and medium businesses should take advantage of is the development of user personas. It is impossible to differentiate and recognize everyone who engages with your brand, but it is very important to understand all your customers. A persona is a fictional representation of an actual user that represents a group of people and is utilized in the early stages of developing a product or redesigning a product. Personas are a vital tool and contribute to the success of a product, as they are the driving force behind design decisions.

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3 Ways to Improve Your Google Rankings

Consumers are turning to the Internet more often than ever before when seeking out information. Google, specifically, is where the majority of those searches take place. In fact, Google receives over 63,000 searches per second on any given day. When a user conducts a...

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How To Make Your Small Business Voice Search Ready

You’re never more than a few meters away from a voice-search profit. Someone who proclaims the oncoming and absolute reign of screenless searches in the very-much not distant future. And while research suggests their predictions are a little overblown, the number of...

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Part 2: Local SEO is About Much More Than Just Your Website

In Part I of Hibu’s Local SEO series, you saw some of the many parts that make up modern (or local) SEO – what it takes to optimize your website for both your customers and search engine crawlers, and why SEO isn’t just about optimizing your site anymore. Now let’s...

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How to Add SEO to Your Website for Maximum Impact

Many people think of SEO as content to improve rankings and, more specifically, the keywords you add to this content. This is only partially correct. Whereas content and keywords are a major part of SEO, there is much more to optimization. For the best results, you...

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4 Common Social Media Marketing Questions

As a small business owner, your primary focus is operating your business. You spend your days thinking of ways to make your customers happy and keep them coming back. You might not be an expert in social media marketing, and that’s okay, but it’s vital that you...

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Part 1: Local SEO is About Much More Than Just Your Website

Let’s face it, it’s a complicated and fragmented world out there when it comes to marketing your business online — and it’s not getting any easier. Today, we’re going to try to simplify at least one part of that landscape and explain some of the key things you can do...

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6 Local SEO Trends for 2019

You’ve probably heard the old saying that all politics is local. Well, you could almost say the same thing about SEO. The days of brands competing to be on top of the generic Google SERPs (search engine results pages) are behind us. Today, companies mostly care about...

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3 Ways to Optimize Your Google My Business Profile

Your Google My Business profile is an important part of your online presence and findability on Google. Google My Business (GMB) is the secret weapon to your online success—making sure it is accurate, updated, and complete is key to driving more customers and sales to...

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Advertising a Local Business on Facebook and Instagram

If you have a local business, dependent upon local customers, advertising on social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram may not sound worthwhile. Why advertise to billions of people when your customer base is probably in the tens of thousands (or less) in your...

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An Effective Local Funnel That Uses Facebook

Digital marketing has changed the way we think about the sales funnel—yet many of the lessons we’ve learned from the digital space are easily applicable to brick and mortar retailers. Indeed, a good digital sales funnel can actually bring in some foot traffic and...

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Making the Switch Over from Google+

While discussing popular social networking platforms, sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn dominate our conversations. But a close runner up to the big four is Google+. The feature Google+ was first launched in 2011, and while it never saw the...

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The Importance of Branding for SEO Strategy

Branding is so much more than a memorable logo. Consumers love their favorite brands far more than most marketing departments realize. Brand Loyalty With an internet full of similar products to choose from at a mere touch, consumers build an emotional connection to a...

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How to Set Up A PPC Campaign from Scratch

Paid search or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns can help your business quickly receive more convertible website traffic, leads and ultimately boost sales. Both Bing and Google Ads PPC platforms are great marketing investments that help brick and mortar shops...

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What Small Business Owners Must Do Online in 2019

Over the years, you’ve probably heard the following phrase more times than you can count: to give your company’s website high visibility, content is king. That’s been a pretty useful phrase, really, because it quickly allows small business owners to know what to...

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The Importance of a Google My Business Listing

The two most popular resources consumers use today when making purchasing decisions are customer reviews and Google. We inherently trust what other customers have to say about a business, and if we want to know anything at all, we Google it. It should be no surprise,...

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Digital Marketing Tips for the Holiday Season

It’s that time of year again, the holiday season is upon us. Arguably the most profitable time of year for many small businesses, the holidays bring about tremendous opportunities for gaining new customers, building brand awareness and increasing sales. In fact,...

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Social Media Mistakes You Need to Avoid

Social media can be a tremendously valuable asset to connecting with your customers and building your brand. However, it’s important to know and understand how to execute a strategy. That means staying updated and informed, learning best practices and educating...

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Why Online Reviews Aren’t Out of Your Control

Reviews. We’ve all read them. We’ve all given one. Whether by word-of-mouth, phone survey or sharing our experience online, as consumers we’re constantly giving feedback. It’s so commonplace, that now, not only are we sharing our feedback, we’re actively seeking the...

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Organic SEO vs. Local SEO: Which Do I Need?

Each of these digital marketing disciplines — organic SEO and local SEO — involves boosting online visibility for businesses and their websites. In other words, both strategies focus on making websites easy to find when potential customers search for relevant products...

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5 Unique Ways to Repurpose Old Blog Content

If you’re operating a unique niche business, and your website is packed with relevant articles relating to said business, then you should definitely be recycling your old content. A good content marketing plan consists of not only creating new content, but of...

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4 Reasons Why Your Small Business Needs SEO

Consumers are utilizing digital channels more often than not to conduct research about businesses prior to making a purchase or visiting a store. Mobile phones, in particular, have become an invaluable resource for consumers in their moments of need. A Google study...

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How to Get 5-Star Reviews for Your Small Business

In the not-so-distant past, if you wanted to find out which local business was reliable, and which wasn’t, you just walked up to your neighbor by the backyard fence and asked for a recommendation. Today, the internet has taken the place of the backyard fence and...

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Should Your Small Business be Using Twitter?

Although Facebook is overwhelmingly the most popular social media channel, Twitter is also an incredibly useful channel to implement into your small business’s social media plan. If you’re not utilizing it, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to engage with your...

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Search Marketing 101: Plan a Winning Strategy

Is your paid search strategy all about click-through rates? If so, you could be missing the boat. While your search campaign also depends upon your goals, business model, and budget, understanding the customer decision journey (CDJ) will help you maximize the impact...

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10 Easy Ways to Grow Your Email List

Losing subscribers from your email list is inevitable. People’s email addresses change, they abandon old accounts, or they opt out for unknown reasons. In fact, email marketing databases naturally degrade by around 22.5% each year. This decline can impact your...

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SEO Vs SEM — What’s the Difference?

If you’re a small business owner with little digital marketing experience trying to figure out the ins and outs of search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO), you’re not alone. It can be very confusing, especially given that the two terms are...

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How to Optimize Your Google My Business Page

If you’re a small business owner looking to improve your local SEO strategy, the first step on your list should be claiming and verifying your Google My Business (GMB) listing. In claiming this listing, you’ll increase your chances of being found in Search Engine...

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Is it Time to Optimize for Voice Searches?

As the Internet of Things continues to grow and change, voice technology is becoming more important. With all the internet-connected devices out there, people are typing less and talking more, whether they’re in their car, walking with a cell phone in hand or sitting...

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Four Ways to Adapt to the New Customer Journey

Once upon a time, the customer journey used to have a clear beginning, middle and end and most customers followed a similar path. Times have changed, however, and the “traditional customer journey” no longer exists. Today, the path a customer takes to get to your...

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5 Common Digital Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Businesses need to be more focused and determined on their digital marketing strategies. This is the only way to generate substantial gains in growth and profit and boost the reputation of your website to your target audience. Otherwise, chances are, you might never...

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The Risk of DIY Marketing Is Doing It Wrong

Most small businesses choose to approach online marketing with a do-it-yourself (DIY) mentality. From managing social media, website updates, listing management (Google My Business, Yelp, etc.) and more, DIY is the cost-effective approach. However, new research shows...

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How Online Reviews Are Impacting Your SEO

You work tirelessly to create an image for your business through authoritative, insightful content. Unfortunately, this is rarely enough. Customers are more likely to believe others who say a business offers a great service than the company itself. This is why reviews...

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Effective Ways to Conquer Local SEO

Local SEO is a highly effective form of online marketing, which enables businesses of all sizes to promote their products and services to local customers. While mastering the local aspects of your SEO campaign may sound daunting, it’s one of the best ways to help your...

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The Power of Crossposting on Social Media

For small businesses, starting to use social media to market their business is a process: First, start using social media (you’d be surprised how many small businesses don’t!) Second, set up business pages and profiles — not just personal ones Third, make sure you...

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Tools and Tricks of the Video Marketing Trade

For the past two weeks, we’ve covered a lot of info about how and why to use video marketing to grow your business in 2018. Most likely you’re excited to capitalize on this hot trend. But you’re likely also feeling a bit overwhelmed and wondering where to start, and...

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The Many Faces of Video Marketing

In the early years of video marketing, we were talking primarily about video advertisements distributed online. It was pretty straightforward—create an ad, much the same as you would for television, but distribute it across video ad networks as a “commercial” before...

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Why 2018 is the Year of Video

Spend any time researching trends in digital marketing, and you’ll soon notice that video is taking over. In fact, some experts are calling 2018 the year of video. And that’s no exaggeration. In fact, video is pegged to comprise 80% of consumer online traffic by 2019....

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Short Tail vs Long Tail Keywords in Voice Search

Despite innovations in images, videos, locations and social content, keywords are still the foundation of getting found in a search engine. Understanding which keywords are right for you doesn’t take too long and will help you organize your content. So what is the...

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How to Evaluate & Select a Marketing Partner

Is marketing your business not high on your priority list? Maybe you’ve tried doing it yourself and you simply don’t have the time to manage these activities on top of running your business. Or maybe you want to work with an expert that has the expertise to drive...

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Top 10 MarketingBitz Blogs of 2017

A lot can change in one year, and MarketingBitz.com is no exception. From 2017 to 2018, we have grown and adapted to the ever-changing digital marketing industry. But before we move into the new year, let’s take a look back at the most popular MarketingBitz blogs of...

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2018: The Year of Writing Long-Form Content

Our prediction is that companies creating well-written, appropriately optimized and strategically targeted long-form content will benefit in 2018, more so than ever before. Long-form content typically consist of 1,500-3,000 words, and presents a fairly comprehensive...

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What Is Seasonal SEO — and Is It Worth It?

As SEO is mainly about improving your website for the long run, it may seem like seasonal SEO should be illogical. After all, seasonal SEO only plays a role during a certain time of year. However, many businesses have particular dates when they can expect a higher...

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Managing the Different Types of Calls to Your Business

Not all calls you receive from prospective customers to your business may be of equal value. But, it’s still important that you treat each caller as though they may turn into a customer in the future, or will spread the word about your business to others. At Goodzer,...

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Local SEO: Where Do You Begin?

“Siri, find a Chinese restaurant near me.” Have you ever said something like this to Siri before, whether on the road or otherwise? No doubt, many of us have. Consumers are searching for businesses and shops “near them” more and more often. Google has stated that...

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The Secret to Tracking Social Media Impact

For small business owners, it can be difficult to see a clear return on investment, or ROI, when it comes to all the time, energy, and dollars you’ve spent on social media and review sites trying to get new customers. But, having a compelling online presence is...

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6 Steps to Turning Traffic Into Conversions

Bringing visitors to your website is only half the battle. For visits to have any value, you need to turn them into conversions. The tactics you will use to encourage conversions are completely different from those you use to drive traffic to your site. For local...

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Tips for Maintaining a Strong Visual Brand

Creating a solid visual brand helps tie together all of your visual content across all marketing channels. Using imagery to draw in viewers is an incredibly effective way for brands to get noticed, and it’s a skill that should be practiced for best results. You’ll...

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How to Get Your Business Website Started

In this highly competitive digital world, it is vital for businesses of all sizes to invest in a reliable, user-friendly, and search-engine-optimized website. Without a professional, comprehensive website, it can almost be impossible for new businesses to gain any...

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Why You Should Claim Your Online Listings

There are several websites that allow users to create and manage listings for their businesses. Google, Yelp, and Bing are just a few that you’ve probably used to search for yourself. Why is it important for businesses to take the time to claim their listings? Here’s...

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5 Important B2B Advertising Lessons

“Don’t tell me what your priorities are. Show me where you spend your money and I’ll tell you what your priorities are.” James W. Frick This quote has underlying truth when it comes to spending your marketing dollars. All too often we can look back on our paid...

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Top 5 Reasons to Advertise on YouTube

According to Google, "Every month, more than 1 billion people watch more than 6 billion hours of YouTube video." With such a large audience spending so much time on one platform, it's no wonder that YouTube is becoming the preferred place to advertise for many...

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Identifying High- and Low-Quality Content Pages

Since the Panda update back in 2011, quality has been a key factor in how Google ranks websites. If your website has been active since before 2011, it may have old content that no longer meets quality standards, and this content will continue to bring down your...

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5 Ways to Refresh Your Social Media Content

You know having a presence on social media, specifically Facebook, is important for your small business. You’ve heard it all before: 1.9 billion unique monthly users on Facebook, 2.8 billion active social media users worldwide, etc. If you are using social media for...

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How to Bring Customer Loyalty Back from the Dead

Analysts and various industry professionals have been quick to decree the death of customer loyalty. It’s easy to see why, in the wake of persisting volatility reverberating throughout the retail industry. Each week seems to surface new reports of layoffs or location...

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Big Advertising Ideas for a Small Budget

When advertising on a budget, seeing successful multi-million-dollar advertising campaigns can be a bit discouraging. Not all businesses can afford television commercials, radio, or billboard ads. Smaller businesses often rely on free advertising methods, like social...

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Your Business Might Be Online Without You Knowing It

Your small business may have a big footprint online Lots of small businesses still rely entirely on "traditional" advertising, using old-school marketing like print directory ads, direct mail, coupons – and yes, business cards and letterhead. Plenty of small...

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How to Develop a Mobile Strategy in 7 Steps

Quick question: how much time has passed since you last checked your phone? If you’re like me, it was probably a few minutes ago. Mobile devices are a norm and there’s nowhere you can go without seeing someone consumed by their cell phone – waiting in line, on the...

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Do Small Businesses Really Need a Blog?

I’m sure you keep hearing that you should start up a blog for your small business, right? Everyone’s doing it, including your competition, or so everyone says—but is it really worth the time and effort it takes to maintain a blog? Let’s find out. Time and Resources...

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6 Social Media Content Ideas to Save You Time

Is Social Media Worth Your Time? Today small businesses spend more time on social media marketing than they do on website optimization. Now you, a small business owner or marketer, might not need an actual website, as you can promote your brand and sell your...

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Making the Most of Your Incoming Calls

The only thing better for your service-based small business than receiving calls from interested prospective customers is selling them your service. How you handle these incoming calls can make or break your business, so it's very important to make a great first...

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Why Using Media Images Can Land You in Hot Water

Images and content can be found by the millions with just a quick Google search. The internet is so abundant with photos and other media content that using one may not seem like it’s that big of a deal. However, even if you don’t see a copyright on the photo, that...

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Why It is Important to Respond to Reviews

Exceptional customer service has been a pillar of business success for years, and brands such as Nordstrom, Amazon, and Marriott are among the few constantly praised for their above and beyond practices when it comes to customer satisfaction. One could argue that...

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6 Suggestions to More Effective Content Creation

As the results of a new survey from BrightEdge circulates online, it’s likely that increasing numbers of digital marketing agencies, content creators and anyone else vested in using content to attract attention to a site are discussing how to increase content...

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8 Tips to Improve Your Blog Traffic

So, you’re blogging. That’s great. Blogs have SEO value, and they can bring in more leads than other forms of marketing. But, how are you supposed to get people to your blog? I put this post together to help you increase your blog traffic and make the most of your...

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How to Ace Twitter Chats

If you’re on twitter, there’s a good chance you’ve seen something like this before: TL;DR — you’ve just stumbled upon a Twitter chat: What a Twitter chat is: A way to increase brand awareness, engage with your community, and learn from them. What a Twitter chat is...

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How to Give Your Brand Personality

When you break down the aspects of a brand, there are similarities between a brand and a person. A brand has a heart, a personality, morals. A brand can make mistakes, but it can also make things right. A brand can inspire, influence and ignite. Brands are powerful...

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How to Build an Email Marketing List

Even though social media platforms such as Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and others get a lot of headlines, humble email should be the first part of your digital marketing strategy (after setting up a website, of course). Why? Email that’s tied to your domain name is...

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5 Simple Tips for Ranking in Google Search Results

When users find your business through local search results, they’re already one step down the conversion funnel because they’re actively looking for your products or services. Indeed, ranking your business in local search results can often mean the difference between...

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3 Ways to Find Topics for Your Blog

Your blog is a powerful marketing tool—if you know how to use it right. Blog posts provide SEO value and can bring in lots of new leads. Blogging can also help you get more website traffic, and your blog can help turn a consumer into a customer. In fact, 81 percent of...

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5 Steps to Superior Agency Relations

There are a number of reasons a business might choose to work with an agency. Many times, it’s because they’re unable to achieve the magnitude of marketing efforts that they desire internally. Sometimes it’s because a business might not have the resources such as time...

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MarketingBitz was developed by the Local Search Association to educate, empower and help small businesses improve their digital marketing effectiveness. The site offers free digital marketing education and resources in the form of articles, webinars, reports and events.