To build a strong brand, focus on how your customers see you and why you’re different from other businesses. Brand positioning is a process of sharing your product/service and establishing it as something worth thinking about.

Here are reasons why and tips on how to position your business:

You may have noticed Google My Business (GMB) changed its name to Google Business Profile (GBP). Many local businesses manage their business information through this listing, as it provides easy access for new or existing customers to directly connect with small businesses. But what does this change mean for you?

Here at Growth Spark Media, our team of professionals has been monitoring the recent changes Google made. While we have adapted your business listings to these changes already, we’d like to summarize the changes and how it could affect your business:

NEW CHANGES FOR BUSINESSES:

1. Claim & Manage GBP Directly in “Google Search & Maps”:
   • Google now allows businesses to claim and verify a listing through Search or Maps.
   • This makes it easier to gain access to the most integral information for your business.

2. Managing Multiple Locations through “Business Profile Manager”:
   • Google is tailoring their Profile Manager to help both small and larger businesses manage their listings in one place.
   • This makes it easier for GSM to take care of your business information and adapt as your business grows.

NEW FEATURES FOR BUSINESSES:

1. Call History Tracker:
   • You can now manage your calls from Search or Maps through your Google Business Profile and stay engaged with customers.
   • The feature allows you to manage all your calls in one place, respond to missed calls and have a short message alerting you to the fact that a customer is calling directly from your GBP.

2. Customer Messaging:
   • Customers can message you directly so you can answer questions, tell your story and attract new customers.
   • Enabling the Chat feature through your GBP will allow customers to contact you at any time, driving further customer engagement.

WHY DOES THIS MATTER FOR YOU?

Google Business Profiles are the first thing a customer or potential customer will see when searching for you on Google. They look to the information listed there as a trusted source, and often times use it as a guideline when choosing when and how they will reach out to you. This update helps to bridge the gap between you and your online customers.

Growth Spark Media recognizes how important these updates are for you and your business. We’re here to make sure you stay informed. If you have any questions about this update, or would like to work directly on one of these new features offered, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your GSM representative!

Source:  SearchEngineLand, reported by Barry Schwartz

Both U.S. and global Out-of-Home (OOH) ad growth are expected to rise at a fast pace through 2025, fueled mostly by Digital-Out-of-Home (DOOH).

Global Out-of-Home Ad Growth:

• Out-of-Home’s compound annual growth rate (CAGR)* between 2021 and 2025 is expected to be 7.3%, fueled mostly by Digital Out-of-Home’s 12.2% CAGR.
• Digital Out-of-Home will account for 34.2% of all Out-of-Home ad spend in 2025.

U.S. Digital Out-of-Home Ad Growth:

• DOOH (ex. billboard, DMV, elevator, gas station) in the U.S. will accelerate sharply in 2022 with an 8.9% CAGR through 2025.
• In 2025, Digital Out-of-Home will have a 37.1% share of total Out-of-Home ad revenue in the U.S.

Consumer Exposure:

• Global: Digital Out-of-Home exposure time will increase at a 7.3% CAGR in 2025, grabbing a 40.4% share of total consumer time spent with OOH media.
• U.S.: Continuing an ongoing trend, total time spent with OOH among Americans expanded 0.5% to 2.86 hours weekly in 2020.

*The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is the proportional growth rate from year to year, used to calculate growth over a time period.

Source:  Digiday, reported by Michael Burgi; PRWeb, reported by PQ Media’s Patrick Quinn (CEO/Founder) and Leo Kivijarv;  Media Daily News, reported by Joe Mandese

Digital marketing is crucial for growing your business:  according to a recent study¹, companies are diversifying their spend across paid and owned media and customers are spending more time and resources on owned-media channels such as websites, mobile apps, and customer-service channels.

Digital marketing has the ability to drive an increase of 5 to 8 percent in revenues over 12 months by capturing more online traffic and engaging with consumers more effectively.

Here are several ways how digital marketing campaigns can help grow your business:

Wider reach:

• Reach people without having to step outside of your physical bounds, with campaigns that can be set up easily and with a small budget to cover the cost of advertising.

• Consumers can be geo-targeted, delivering content or advertisements based on their geographic location.²

Brand awareness:

• Create an online presence that fuels your reputation and helps make your business easy to find via search results.

• Build trust by updating social media pages with new products/services, posts about different business trends and ads that boast optimized content and design, which are engaging and attractive.

Cost-effectiveness:

• Digital marketing can save money in the long run because it is relatively inexpensive compared to other forms of advertising.

• Provide a new stream of income: for example, if your site does not have banner ads on the homepage or sidebar, place ad space in those places to drive traffic back to the part of your website where people are most likely going to make a purchase.

Better revenues:

• An effective digital marketing results in high conversion rates and a high number of website visitors.

• Turn those website visits into customers with an effective email marketing or social media strategy.

Improved ROI (Return On Investment):

• The more traffic your website gets, the higher the chances that someone will make a purchase and invest in what your company has to offer.

• Measure the results for the impact digital marketing has on your business – the key is to produce a continuous flow of traffic to your website.

Digital marketing is an effective way to reach new customers and also maintain the ones you already have. Whether you are a small business offering local goods and services, or looking for a way to reach consumers on a limited budget, digital marketing can help meet your business objectives.

Source:  Stefanini Group; ¹McKinsey & Company; ²wordstream.com

Customer loyalty is a gauge of how devoted customers are to a business, and is the result of a consistently positive customer experience. Following are tips on how to effectively measure, increase and maintain customer loyalty.

1. Measuring Customer Loyalty

 Understand your current customer loyalty status:

• Determine your repurchase rate: consumers who continue to buy your products/services.

• Examine the likelihood that consumers will recommend your business to colleagues, friends and family.

• Evaluate the number of customers who have purchased other products/services offered by your business.

• Measure the percentage of customers retained over a given period.

2. Increasing Customer Loyalty

Employ these tried and tested strategies to increase loyalty:

• Recognize and value regular customers and give them special attention.

• Reward your customers — two-thirds say they enjoy a customer rewards program.

• Always provide what the customer expects; respond to negative feedback

• Go beyond transactional: three-quarters of consumers are more likely to purchase from a business that knows their name, purchase history and makes recommendations based on their preferences.

 3. Sustaining Customer Loyalty

Identify any changes in customer expectations and how they feel about your business:

• Routine conversations and customer surveys can help pinpoint concerns before they become issues.

• Take an objective view of your business as experienced by customers.

• Keep tabs on competitors’ products/services, promotional campaigns, and development programs.

• Manage the impact competitors may have on your customers.

Customer loyalty is important to all businesses — it costs more to acquire new customers than to retain existing ones.  As you build customer relationships, focus on strategies to increase and sustain loyalty.

Source:  CustomerThermometer, reported by Lindsay Willott

Statistics are important to look at when planning your social media marketing strategy, and can be used to benchmark performances within your industry.  The following information can help businesses set expectations when entering the social media market.

Social media usage stats¹

Social media continues to grow in popularity, as people keep track of family, friends and brands:

• Globally, over 3.6 billion people use social media.
• This number is projected to increase to 4.4 billion in 2025.
• The top networks ranked by active users are Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger.
• Internet users spend an average of 144 minutes on social media per day.

Facebook stats²

Facebook continues to be vital, regularly adding new features for businesses to easily interact with their customer base:

• Facebook is the most used social network with over 2.7 billion monthly active users in Q3 2020.
• The all-industry median benchmark for Facebook engagement rate per post is 0.09%.
• Facebook has 10 million active advertisers in Q3 2020 and mobile accounts for 92% of its total ad revenue.
• Links are the most commonly used content type, claiming 44% of all brand posts.

Consumer behavior stats³

Consumer use of social media is growing:  50% increased their usage in the last six months:

• Consumers follow businesses to learn about products/services (57%) and company news (47%).
• After following, consumers continue to engage: 91% visit websites/apps, 89% make a purchase, 85% recommend a brand to family/friends.
• Consumers preferred content includes: images (68%), videos (50%), text-based posts (30%).
• The top reasons consumers unfollow are poor quality of product/support (49%), poor customer service (49%), irrelevant content (45%), too many ads (45%).

Social marketers juggle challenges in an ever-changing landscape. These can include identifying/reaching a target audience, measuring ROI, or supporting business goals³. Being aware of social media marketing statistics can help you decide where to put your advertising dollars and how to make the most of them.

Your team at Growth Spark Media is here to help you navigate the industry and offer support. If you’re interested in trying social media advertising, we encourage you to reach out to our experts!

 

Source:  Sproutsocial.com, written by Jenn Chen; ¹We are Social, Hootsuite; ²Facebook, Socialinsider; ³Sprout Social Index; ⁴11^th Annual Content Marketing Survey: Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs

Google will be adding a Page Experience metric to its ranking factors, which will measure a site’s overall responsiveness and reward pages that offer a better user experience. 

While quality of content remains the most essential aspect from an SEO* perspective, this metric will affect ranking results, so it’s important to be well informed.  Following is how to prepare, with steps we continue to provide at Growth Spark Media to ensure the most optimal results in Google search.

1) Get an excellent web hosting service

• Ensure your site is fast and responsive – performance is already a key ranking factor.

• Analyze your site’s responsiveness with a website performance monitoring tool.

• Check out sites that gather and share performance data on web hosting providers.

2) Keep your page’s size light

• Avoid overstuffing web pages with visual content that slows down your site.

• Optimize images and make them weigh less by using image compressor tools.

• If your page is content-heavy, spread the largest items to multiple pages within your site.

3) Optimize your site for mobile

• Google only wants to display mobile-friendly sites: there are an estimated 3.5 billion smartphone users, growing to 3.8 billion**.

• Ensure that your site adjusts to small screens – it’s what users expect when accessing info on smartphones.

• Test if your site is mobile-responsive.

4) Install security measures

• Weed out any deceptive content, such as spyware, social engineering scams, false information, etc.

• Scan your website to see if any issues pop up.

• Add a firewall (network security device) to protect your site from malware and other hacking attempts.

5) HTTPS

• Google prefers sites with a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate in the website’s URL — http://https://— the latter is SSL secured.

• The SSL certificate encrypts any data that travels between users and servers.

• A “not secure warning” is mainly due to the site missing an SSL certificate.

6) Tone down or remove large pop-up banners

• Google aims to penalize sites that aggressively keep users from quickly accessing content.

• Avoid giant banners and pop-ups that cover the screen, are difficult to dismiss or keep popping up.

• Disclaimers, cookie info, age policies, login dialogs and reasonably sized banners are exceptions.

It’s important to plan ahead and implement best practices to prepare for Google Page Experiences’ metrics. Through testing your site’s performance, security, and mobile friendliness, Growth Spark Media continues to be on top of these strategies and will tweak or add to your site based on the results.

*SEO (Search Engine Optimization):  the practice of improving your online visibility in organic search results to increase the quantity and quality of your website traffic (webfx.com)
Source:  Searchenginewatch.com, Gert Svaiko; **Research from Statista

To earn consumer trust, it’s important that businesses review and evaluate their brand design, perception and values.  Following are three steps to help stay creatively connected with consumers:

1) Re-evaluate your foundation:

• Identify the brand story, images and logos associated with your business.

• Ensure your message is positive, sensitive and meaningful.

• Pinpoint areas of growth to create an identity that promotes authenticity, transparency and a personal connection with consumers.

2) Anticipate the meaning of symbols:

• Symbol design helps foster relationships and perception with your audience, conveying different meanings and emotional responses.

• It’s critical to anticipate what a symbol might mean to others — establish a logo that aligns with your audience and its values.

• Aligning symbols with cultural context will help your logo and brand remain timeless and impactful.

3) Leverage the power of color:

• Colors are quick and powerful tools that communicate what your product/service is and how it is perceived.

• The way colors mix, match and contrast influences consumers’ emotional responses, perception and trust.

• Color makes up to 90% of a consumer’s initial assessment and ultimate judgment for a brand* — choose colors that align with your identity, values, industry and what you want your audience to feel.

Businesses should consistently evaluate how they are perceived and take steps for any improvements.  Brands can create positive changes by focusing on core values, colors and logo design.

 

Source:  MediaPost-The Marketing Insider, reported by Beth Doane;
*Studies by CCICOLOR – Institute for Color Research.

As the year ends, it’s time for businesses to plan their marketing initiatives. Following is a checklist to help ensure your business is ready for the new year.

1) Look Back to Get Ahead

Review your progress during the past year for insight into which tactics to repeat or eliminate.  Ask yourself:

• What steps did you take to adjust to any obstacles?

• Where did you do well or miss the mark?

• What are the short and long-term effects of any challenges for your industry?

• Is there anything that needs to be done differently or adjusted moving forward?

2) Center Your Plan on Key Areas of Growth

Focus on areas with the most potential for growth, starting with these questions:

• Which parts of your business or campaigns generated the highest revenue?

• Do your customers have needs that haven’t been met?

• Are there changes in the marketplace that you need to adapt to?

• Have you conducted Search Engine Optimization (SEO)¹, social media and content audits to know where you stand?

3) Set S.M.A.R.T Goals

Set clear, reachable goals to measure your success using the S.M.A.R.T. method, which represents these five attributes:

• Specific: Help narrow your goals with the five “W” questions:

• • What do I want to accomplish?

  • Why is this goal important?

  • Who is involved?

  • Where is it located?

  • Which resources are needed?

• Measurable: Have something to measure against to monitor your progress toward achieving your objectives.

• Attainable: Keep your goals realistic, with the resources and budget necessary to reach your desired results.

• Relevant: Assure your plan supports accomplishing other business objectives.

• Timely: Keep to a schedule that is realistic and flexible, adjusting along the way as needed.

4) Strategize a Game Plan

Strategize a game plan for obtaining your goals with the following tactics:

• Search Engine Marketing (SEM)² and Optimization (SEO)

• Online Directories (ex. Google My Business, Yelp, etc.)

• Social Media

• Content Marketing

• Email Marketing

5) Analyze and Track Progress

Set up a way to quantify and track your progress, either by using a third-party or by implementing each of your channel’s reporting features.  Having good data keeps you accountable and provides a way to check your progress along the way.

By marking off each section on this list, you will be well on your way to implementing a robust digital marketing strategy.

SEO¹:  Optimizing your website for the purpose of getting free traffic from search engines.

²SEM:  Increasing visibility in search engines either by getting paid traffic through PPC (pay-per-click) advertising, when advertisers pay a cost per click, or through SEO.  — reliablesoft.net

Source:  Vivial.net

PwC’s Entertainment & Media Outlook Report contains projections for U.S. advertising growth through 2024.  Following are highlights for major media:

	Digital Out-of-Home Advertising Digital Out-of-Home (ex. billboard, DMV, elevator, gas station) remains strong with a +7.7% compound annual growth rate (CAGR)¹ through 2024. Out-of-home has the strongest forecast of traditional media with a +2.8% CAGR, buoyed almost entirely by digital out-of-home’s growth.
	Online Advertising Online is expected to have a +4.1% CAGR, below forecasts of past years. Mobile online will grow faster at a +6.2% CAGR, with wired forecast to decline at -1.5%.
	Radio Advertising Radio is expected to remain flat with a CAGR of +0.6%. Online radio will be the fastest-growing segment with a +7.1% CAGR.
	Television Advertising TV continues to grow slowly at a +0.4% CAGR, despite a rise in TV viewing. Online TV is also growing slowly at a +3.9% CAGR, below forecasts of past years.
	Cinema Advertising Cinema advertising revenue will decline with a CAGR of -2.2%. Cinema box office takings will not fare any better.
	Magazine Advertising Consumer magazines remain pessimistic with a -4.2% CAGR; digital’s +2.9% is not enough to offset print’s -11.1%. Trade magazines -0.7% CAGR expects digital’s +4.4% to make up for print’s -7.0%.
	Newspaper Advertising Newspapers continue to decline with a -6.3% CAGR. Digital’s CAGR of +1.9% is not growing quickly enough to offset print’s -12.4%.

¹The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is the proportional growth rate from year to year for a business, used to calculate growth over a time period.

Source:  PwC’s Entertainment & Media Outlook, reported by Marketingcharts.com

“Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two… basic functions: marketing and innovation.  It is the whole business seen from the point of view of its final result… from the customer’s point of view.” — Peter Drucker, leading expert on management theory 

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Successful businesses never stop marketing.  Marketing is the regular, sustained nourishment that gets your business where you want it and keeps it there. Following are four reasons why thriving businesses engage in vigorous, ongoing marketing efforts:

ONGOING MARKETING:

1. Protects your reputation:

• Your business is always improving, yet people’s perceptions tend to remain fixed and may be out of sync.
• It takes time to define/shape your reputation and you need to be doing it continuously, keeping customers up to date.

2. Shapes your customer base:

• As your business evolves, target different audiences: your focus may change only slightly or it may expand to a new customer base.
• Constantly evaluate your target and adjust your messaging, visuals, and strategy accordingly.

3. Gives you many options:

• Having “just enough” business isn’t enough; with active marketing, there should be more demand than you can meet.
• This allows you to properly select your customers, focusing on the most profitable ones, and have a waiting list ready for slower times.

4. Secures your business’s future:

• Marketing creates and strengthens business.
• Don’t leave your future up to chance — plant seeds now that will harvest next season.

Viability – lots of work, happy customers, a busy staff – is a key milestone in the life of a business.  This is the beginning, not the end, of your journey and marketing will be your constant companion every step of the way.

Source:  Posted by James Archer, crowdfavorite.com

 

 

A website is your online business card. It’s what customers see first when they look for your services. Trends are constantly shifting based on what customers want to see.

How do you know if your website in on-trend? Take a look at some of the most popular design elements for small business sites:

From Flat to 3-D (Again)

• Gradients, drop shadows, video, motion graphics, scrolling effects, etc., bring new life to a website.
• Add realism and depth to graphics, bridging the gap between the digital and the real world.

 Video Home Page Headers

• Videos replace standard sliding images to convey a message and grab visitors’ attention quickly.
• Videos can run on auto-play, or be prompted to play, and text could be added over the video for further description.

Large, Attention-Getting Text

• Large, eye-catching text has become front and center, with much smaller subtext as needed to direct users to additional information/actions.
• Pair a video background with bold or large text to get the attention of visitors instantly.

Large “Hero” Images

• Hero images are the main banners placed on a website*, on the home page and inner pages.
• High quality, relevant images are key for this design.

 Responsive Design

• Responsive websites are sites that are functional on any screen—no pinching and pulling required.
• Non-responsive sites turn off users, and get penalized by search engines for not being user-friendly.

Micro-Interactions

• Micro-interactions are touches which surprise and/or encourage users in an area of the website.
• Notifications, text pop-ups or a button turning another color, etc., can help foster engagement.

Great Written Content

• Quality content should focus on storytelling and communicating effectively with your audience.
• Promote knowledge, products and services while implementing SEO** keyword research into your text.

Website pages should be accurate, easy to read, and full of calls-to-action to draw readers into the next step of your marketing/sales funnel.

 

**SEO (Search Engine Optimization):  methods used to increase traffic to a website by increasing its search engine page rank (techopedia.com).

Source:  OpenVine.com, reported by Kelly Thomas Mango; *omniconvert.com