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An essential part of retaining customers and finding new ones is creating a brand reputation that inspires word-of-mouth marketing. If your customers have a great experience with your company, they’ll be eager to tell their friends and colleagues about their good luck. Organic social media marketing encourages your customers to write reviews and share their customer experience with their friends.

Build Customer Trust

The customers that you earn through organic word-of-mouth marketing will be entering into a relationship with you that is already built on trust. They trust the friend or family member who referred them to you, and that person trusted your company enough to make the referral. This means that the customers you’re earning are already predisposed to have a happy, fulfilling relationship with your brand.

Create a Strong Customer Community

You can create a strong customer community by encouraging your customers to engage in word-of-mouth marketing techniques like online reviews, sharing social media posts, forwarding emails to friends and family, and recommending your business services to others. Word-of-mouth marketing allows you to engage your customer base in such a way that they are not only doing your advertising for you, but they are more likely to use your services in the future because they have spent time praising you to others.

Spend Less on Advertising

Businesses that have loyal customers and an ever-expanding customer base will end up spending less on advertising costs overall. Effective word-of-mouth marketing can be powerful enough that you won’t have to rely on as many costly and gimmicky advertising techniques as your competitors. Using word-of-mouth marketing can increase your business’ fanbase and customer loyalty; in turn, giving you the freedom to spend the money you’ve saved elsewhere.

Smargasy can help your business develop a comprehensive digital marketing strategy that includes tools to encourage word-of-mouth marketing and organic social media marketing. Contact Smargasy today to start utilizing smarter, more effective digital marketing and advertising tools.

The easiest, most cost-effective ways to manage the online reputation of your business are developing and maintaining a loyal customer base. If your business has negative online reviews, you risk losing the customers you do have, and ensuring you don’t get any new ones. More and more customers are engaging with businesses online, for better or worse. Tapping into the potential for positive online reviews and a stellar online reputation using these helpful steps will help you keep a loyal customer base.

1. Encourage Reviews Right After Purchase

Sending out an email to a customer shortly after they have made a purchase can be a quick, easy way to elicit a positive online review. Customer follow-up creates a positive impression of your brand, and providing a link at which the customer can write an online review, while they still have that positive interaction in mind, will result in greater success.

2. Offer Discounts in Exchange for Reviews

A great way to keep your customers engaged and encourage a positive impression of your brand is by offering a discount to customers who post an online review. Not only are you more likely to get a positive review, but you’re also making it likely for a customer to visit again in order to use their discount code!

3. Make It Easy for Customers to Share Their Experience

While digital marking, social media, and word-of-mouth advertising make it much easier for customers to engage with brands on a large scale, people still have very short attention spans. Leaving an online review should be as easy as possible so that the customer doesn’t forget or forgo the process entirely. Make it easy for the customer to leave an online review by creating a one-step form that can be completed directly from a targeted email.

Let the experts at Smargasy take the guesswork out of digital marketing and maintaining a positive online reputation for your business. We offer extensive marketing tools for businesses of all sizes, including reputation management. Contact Smargasy today for a free strategy session for your business.  

As a local business competing with huge companies, especially in the digital marketplace, it helps to have a leg up in the business. Here are 10 common mistakes that local businesses make when trying to promote themselves.

1. Not Having a Digital Marketing Plan

A strong, comprehensive digital marketing plan can make a world of difference for a small local business. Hiring a company to help you develop a digital marketing plan that includes targeted advertising, social media, email campaigns, and more can make you stand out from the crowd and grow your brand.

2. Ignoring Reputation Marketing

A business’ online reviews and reputation can make or break them. A small local business just starting out really needs to attend to its online reputation. Using a company that specializes in reputation management and reputation marketing can ensure that you’re aware of what customers are saying about your services online.

3. Not Cultivating Positive Online Reviews

Positive online reviews of your company will go a long way towards getting you new clients. In fact, it doesn’t cost a business anything to encourage customers to leave positive reviews, which will in turn attract the attention of new clients looking for your services.

4. Being Unaware of the Power of Word-of-Mouth Marketing

Your clients will do a lot of advertising for you if you build good relationships with them from the beginning. Word-of-mouth marketing is a very powerful tool – and the best part is, it’s free!

5. Trying to Do It All Yourself

You can do it all – almost. Don’t try to handle all of your social media advertising, email and content marketing, managing your brand’s online reviews, and building word-of-mouth marketing all by yourself. Consult an expert and remember that you have to budget for advertising and marketing in order to grow your client base.

6. Ignoring Your Existing Clients

A happy customer will stay loyal to your company and continue to use your services for years to come, assuming that you continue to cultivate your relationship with them! Don’t forget to include existing customers in your digital marketing campaign, and follow up with each new customer after a sale to begin building a trusting relationship.

7. Not Using Social Media

Social media marketing is an inexpensive yet powerful tool for any small local business. Don’t ignore your business’ social media accounts – customers want to interact with you online, and they may forget you exist if you never update your social media pages.

8. Not Maintaining Your Website

Many customers will turn to your website first to learn about what services you offer, where you’re located, and what your hours are. If this information is out of date or hard to find, you’re going to lose customers very quickly.

9. Not Promoting Your Success

Don’t forget to do a little bragging in your advertising! Your email campaigns and social media marketing should include your recent successes and achievements in order to set you apart from other local businesses.

10. Not Listening to the Experts

At Smargasy, we can help your local business succeed by developing a digital marketing campaign that works for you. We offer an array of services for local businesses, including search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, social media advertising, email marketing, and reputation marketing. Contact us today for a free strategy session.

Owning your own business is exciting and fulfilling in many ways, but growing your business can be challenging. This is especially true in 2022, as business owners adapt to all the changes the pandemic brought about in the workplace. If you want to learn how to grow as a business in 2022, read our five helpful tips!

Set Goals for Your Business

No matter how long you’ve been in business, setting goals is important. Remember to set business goals that feel challenging, yet attainable, so they motivate you to keep moving forward. It’s also helpful to put a timeline on your business goals so they don’t fall by the wayside.

Identify Your Core Customers and Keep Them Happy

There are billions of people in the world, but when it comes to growing as a business, all you need to worry about is keeping your core customers happy. First, identify who your core customers are, then market specifically to them. This will allow you to strengthen your relationship with your target audience and increase your chances of selling them products or services.

Learn from Your Customers

Listening to what your customers have to say can help your business grow. Both positive and negative feedback can be helpful, so try your best to pay attention to your customers’ feedback, and then make changes to your business strategy as you see fit.

Have a Great Online Presence

The pandemic has made it even more important for your business to have an online presence. Make sure your business has a website, blog, and social media profiles, so that a wide audience can find your business online.

Provide Great Customer Service

Even if you’re busy, make it a priority to provide outstanding customer service to every single customer. If you put in extra effort to make your customers happy, it will likely pay off.

Do you want some help to grow as a business in 2022? The experienced digital marketers at Smargasy can help you out! Contact our team to get started today.

If you own a small business, you may be wondering if it’s worth investing in Facebook ads. The short answer is yes, it’s absolutely worth it! If done correctly, Facebook ads are a cost-effective way to give your small business a boost. Keep reading to learn five reasons why you should be using Facebook ads for your small business.

Billions of People Use Facebook

First of all, Facebook has billions of users. Many of those users check Facebook multiple times a day and make purchases after seeing ads there. If you aren’t using Facebook ads, you’re missing out on a huge marketing opportunity.

You Can Advertise Directly to Your Target Audience

Facebook uses certain algorithms to put your ads directly in front of your target audience. This means they will be more likely to visit your website and make a purchase.

It Increases Brand Awareness

Facebook ads can build your brand awareness, so more people are familiar with what your business has to offer. The more people are aware of your brand, the more likely you are to gain new customers.

It’s a Cost-Effective Form of Advertising

If done right, Facebook ads are much more cost-effective than traditional marketing techniques. For instance, investing in printed ads will market your business to a ton of people who aren’t interested in your products or services – plus a handful of people who are. By contrast, Facebook ads market your business to people who are actually in your target audience, making it a more cost-effective form of advertising.

The Results Are Measurable

With Facebook ads, you can track how much you’re spending, how many clicks the ads are getting, conversion rates, sales, and so on. All of this data can help you understand what is and isn’t working with your Facebook ad campaigns.

If you’d like some help setting up Facebook ads for your small business, Smargasy has got you covered. Contact us to start using Facebook ads to grow your business!

PPC, or pay-per-click advertising, can increase traffic to your business’s website and boost sales. While it might seem like a good idea to run PPC campaigns year-round, it could be more effective and budget-friendly to only run PPC campaigns during busy seasons. So what’s the best time of year for PPC? Keep reading to find out!

Winter and the Holidays

Most businesses make the most sales around wintertime. Conversely, summer is usually the slowest time of year for businesses. However, it’s worth noting that these busy/slow seasons don’t follow the official start and end times that the actual seasons follow. The official dates that the seasons change are starting points to collect data.

Sales tend to ramp up before Christmas, so make sure to prepare a PPC campaign well ahead of time to make the most of the busy holiday season. Try to set aside a budget so your marketing team can prepare brand new PPC ads for the holidays. You don’t want to keep using the same old ads you’ve been using all year long. Your competitors will likely be using new holiday-themed PPC ads that will grab people’s attention, so do your best to make your ads win customers over.

You also don’t want to reuse any holiday-themed PPC ads your business has used in previous years. Why? The same reason you don’t want to use the same PPC ads you’ve been using year-round: once a customer sees an ad, they become desensitized to it. The next time they see that same ad, they will be less likely to engage with it. Don’t risk that happening – make new holiday-themed PPC ads every year instead!

Each Business Has Different Busy Seasons

Every business is unique, which means they all have different busy seasons. Find out which times of the year would be best to run PPC campaigns by analyzing your business’s PPC stats. Take note of which months had the highest traffic, and then consider running PPC campaigns during those times.

Do you want to take your business’s PPC strategy to the next level? The digital marketing experts at Smargasy can help you out. Contact our team today!

In this day and age, it’s more important than ever to have a strong online presence. Customers often research products and services online to compare different options before they decide what to purchase. If you own a business, it’s essential to establish an online presence to set yourself up for success. Even if you don’t own a business, having an online presence can help you build your personal brand and progress in your career. Let’s go over exactly why it’s so important to have an online presence.

You Can Show Off Your Products or Services

Your website, blog, and social media pages are the perfect place to show everyone how great you and your business are. For instance, if you sell handmade clothing, you can put pictures of all the garments on your website, along with a detailed description of each item. Sharing some details online about your professional accomplishments is also a great way to market yourself and your business.

Potential Customers Can Find You Easily

How many times have you searched online for a product you wanted and then found a company that sells it? Chances are, you’ve done that quite often. It’s much more challenging to discover new companies that don’t have an online presence, so make sure people can find your business online!

It Helps You Build Relationships With Customers

Having a strong online presence helps customers feel more connected to you. This helps you build relationships with them, earn their trust, and potentially turn them into lifelong customers!

It Shows You What Is and Isn’t Working

Stats don’t lie. If you posted a picture on social media that got a ton of engagement, that gives you an idea of the type of content your audience likes to see. This will help you improve your marketing strategy and grow your business. Do you need some help building your online presence? Let the team of digital marketing experts at Smargasy help you out. Contact us to get the process started today!

About ¾ of U.S. adults use at least one social media platform. Therefore, if your business isn’t on social media, it should be! If you are already on Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms, the next step is to optimize your social media marketing to truly engage your customers and convert them into brand loyalists. Here’s a look at some useful strategies for social media optimization your business can start using today.

Update Your Profile and Cover Photos

Many businesses never change their profile and cover photos on Facebook and other platforms. However, this is great real estate to tell a story about your brand. Changing your profile image seasonally is a good way to keep your page current and inviting. For platforms where you have the option to include a cover photo, such as Facebook, you can further enhance your branding with customized banners with text overlays, event images, or images of your business in action. Again, changing these photos every few months will help keep your profile fresh and interesting.

Create an Editorial Calendar

Social media posts don’t have much longevity. What’s trending today is likely to be gone tomorrow. So, you need to post to your preferred platforms regularly to be seen by your followers and generate the likes and shares that will expand your brand awareness. An editorial calendar can help you plan posts on a monthly or quarterly basis, which means you’ll always be ready with posts for different holidays, events, and promotions that are relevant to your business.

Interact with Your Followers

One advantage of social media is that it provides space for an ongoing conversation. You can (and should) speak to your followers via comments, polls, and messaging tools that let you interact for greater engagement.

Managing your organic social media marketing can be time-consuming, but it’s well worth the effort. If you need a helping hand with your social strategy, Smargasy is ready to help. Our digital marketing team can ramp up the number of followers you have, increase engagement, and grow your brand awareness. Get started with us today by calling (239) 214-8592 for a quick strategy session.

No matter what type of business you’re in, your online presence matters. There are many steps business owners can take to improve their digital presence. However, one thing you may find challenging is getting reviews of your business on sites like Google, Facebook, and Yelp. Fortunately, reputation management services can bring you more online reviews, which can have a strong impact on your customers. Continue reading to learn how to fill the review gap and get more feedback from your existing customers, so you can continue to see your business grow and thrive.

Customers are looking for reviews of your business online.

You probably utilize many digital marketing tools to get the word out about your business, but customers are always going to look for reviews from your previous customers. In fact, reviews may be what differentiates you from your competitors. Most people will read between one and 10 online reviews before making a purchase decision.

Online reviews may mean more to your customers than you think.

Many business owners underrate the importance of online reviews. While you might think that it’s enough to promote your business through advertising and organic search marketing, your potential customers will be suspicious of a lack of reviews about your business. Consumers tend to put as much weight into online reviews as they do into personal recommendations.

Recent reviews are important for prospective customers.

Let’s say you have a handful of glowing reviews of your business that were posted a year or two ago. That should be enough to convince customers, right? Not entirely. Reviews that are older than three months are viewed as less relevant, so you need a strategy that keeps reviews coming in from happy customers. Online reviews don’t have to be a burden for your business. With reputation marketing from Smargasy, you can boost the number of reviews on your preferred sites and drive up your average star rating. Find out how our Fort Myers digital marketing team can help you by calling (239) 214-8592.

While you might think a lot about how to acquire new customers, you may not have much of a digital marketing strategy for retaining customers and building brand loyalty. However, it’s returning customers that will truly help your business thrive. If you want to get clients coming back to you again and again, you’ll want to follow these tips on how to make a customer love you more than your competitors.

Create a Personality for Your Brand

Customers don’t just want to interact with a faceless business—they want to get to know the personality behind your brand. Developing a brand personality may happen in several ways. You might post to different social media channels, send out email newsletters, or host live events at your place of business. For any branding effort, keep your ideal customer persona in mind and think about what sets your brand apart. Maybe you’re a family-owned business, or maybe you take pride in creating a fun customer experience in an otherwise drab industry.

Reward Their Loyalty

One easy way to make customers favor your business is to offer discounts and rewards for their loyalty. You might send out exclusive coupons for returning customers, launch a loyalty points program, or even have a punch card to let customers earn freebies by purchasing different products and services on an ongoing basis.

Listen to Their Feedback

Businesses of all types are constantly chasing customer reviews, but those reviews won’t mean a lot to your customers unless you actually listen to their feedback. Publicly replying to online reviews and taking customer feedback into account as you grow your business will help you see greater customer loyalty, because you’ll be providing the type of service they want to see.

Create a well-rounded digital marketing strategy that speaks to both new and returning customers with Smargasy. Call (239) 214-8592 or fill out our contact form to get started.