Online Reviews: Your Small Business Needs Them!
Online Reviews: Your Small Business Needs Them!
Imagine you just moved to a new city. You’d love for someone to recommend the best restaurant, the most dependable babysitter or the most reliable mechanic – but you don’t know a single soul here. Where do you turn? Google, of course, or whatever your preferred search engine may be. You’ll patronize the restaurant, book the babysitter and hire the mechanic to fix your brakes...
11 Classic Fails in Social Media Marketing
Social media: Done correctly, it’s a fantastic marketing tool for your small business. However, when done the wrong way, you can sully your brand and send customers packing. That’s why it’s important to have a very clear idea of what “doing it wrong” looks like. The following 11 brands clearly did not do social media correctly. Check out these cringe-worthy, real-life posts, and you’ll gain...
Can Customer Referrals Boost Your Bottom Line? Yes!
Pop quiz: Which of the following two options will bring in more customers? A killer marketing campaign A current customer boasting to their friends and family about how awesome your small business is, how well they were treated and how much money they saved If you said B, you passed with flying colors. Yes, customer referrals hold more weight than even the best marketing campaigns...
Will YouTube Work for Your Small Business Marketing?
YouTube. To some, it’s a video sharing site that your kids use to watch videos of other kids playing games, making slime or “unboxing” their recent Amazon deliveries. But does it have a place in small business marketing? Is it a useful addition to your overall strategy? In short, is the time and effort you put in to making a video and sharing it with...
How to Become an Award-Winning Small Business
Any small business can hang a framed, cheaply printed certificate from Kinko’s on their wall, proclaiming themselves “Best [whatever] in [wherever].” Fake small business awards might fool some of your customers, but even if no one ever comes asking questions, at heart, you’llknow you’re a fraud. And if someone does ask questions … It’s true that there aren’t a ton of small business awards out there...
Brand Yourself: Designing Your Small Business Website
What does your website say about your small business? We’re not talking about the obvious stuff, such as hours, contact information and locations. (You should include those things; otherwise, what’s the point of your website?) But we’re talking about the story your website has to tell. Everything on your small business website, from your logo to the colors and fonts you choose, says something about...
5 SEO Myths (And the Truths You Should Know)
Google is a secretive beast. No one is ever quite sure how and why they prioritize one site and shove another to the bottom of the barrel. And because Google’s algorithms are so mysterious, people love to speculate. Unsurprisingly, the speculation is often way off base. Ask 10 people a question about SEO and you’ll likely get 10 different answers. Everyone is an “expert,” but...
4 Red-Hot Tips for “Cold” Direct Mailing
It’s starting to look and feel a lot like summer. As the mercury rises, Mischa Communications has spent the last couple of weeks keeping you cool with tips for cold calling and cold emailing -- but we’re not done quite yet. Before we return to regularly scheduled sweltering heat, we’ve got one more medium to light a fire under your marketing strategy: cold direct mailing. Direct mail can...
How Cold Emailing Sets Your Marketing Strategy on Fire
We recently showed you how cold calling can generate hot leads. But picking up the phone and calling a stranger isn’t for everyone. Fortunately, there’s another option: cold emailing. The concept is the same. You’re reaching out to someone who doesn’t know you from Adam or Abby, hoping to establish a connection that will (eventually) lead them to your customer corral. But cold emailing differs...
Cold Calling Can Generate Hot Leads
We’ve all been there. The phone rings just as we’re sitting down to dinner. There’s a stranger on the other end of the line, trying their best to sell us something we don’t want or need, and being pretty darn pushy about it, too. They keep talking while our mashed potatoes get cold and our temper gets hot, until we finally hang up on them...