May 2016 Small Business Marketing Update
In an effort to keep my business contacts up to date on the latest developments in the world of small business marketing, I send out a newsletter every month featuring tips, news stories, and updates about my business. This is the online version of the newsletter for May of 2016.
2016 Small Business Marketing Trends Report
A collaborative study by Infusionsoft (maker of popular CRM software) and Lead Pages (maker of software for landing pages) recently conducted a survey of 1,000 small businesses across America about their use of digital marketing. Some of the eye-opening findings include:
- Nearly half of all small business owners handle marketing on their own.
- Nearly 20% of survey respondents did not plan to use digital marketing at all in 2016.
- Twenty-one percent of small business owners do not store customer contact information anywhere, and 45% do not maintain an email list to which customers can opt in.
- Fifty percent of small business owners plan to invest more in their websites in 2016.
You can read more about the study on the Small Business Trends website, or download the complete study from Lead Pages.
Facebook Advertising Offers More Targeting Options than Ever
Never before in the history of marketing have advertisers (that’s you) had as many options as they do now for targeting their ads directly to their ideal customer, and no other advertising medium has more targeting options than Facebook. Among the ways you can target ads on Facebook:
- Re-targeting ads aimed at people who visited your website while logged in to Facebook.
- Creating “look-alike” audiences based on data you provide Facebook about your existing customers.
- Uploading your email list and targeting those on the list with Facebook ads (providing they used the same email to register their Facebook account).
Of course this doesn’t even include the dozens of demographic targeting options including gender, race, location, income, marital status, interests, job, behavior, etc. To learn more about how Facebook advertising works, read this comprehensive post on Wordstream.com.
Five Tips for Growing Your Business with Local Networking Groups
Just in case trying to learn about Facebook advertising makes your head spin, I’ve got a few tips for you about how to more effectively use the oldest marketing tactic in the books: networking. Click here to read my article on the Duct Tape Marketing blog.
Other Headlines
Here’s a few other useful or interesting articles you might want to check out: