South Florida Web Design, Brand Management, SEO and Digital Marketing Agency

Blogs are a tool businesses can use to offer their customers something of value they can use in their everyday lives. New blogs delivered according to a regular schedule help remind customers that you exist and reinforce positive feelings about your business.

Once you get people to opt into receiving your blog, you can slip into their inbox as frequently as you want, offering helpful content and offering genuine value. It’s a proven, effective marketing strategy that results in loyalty, positive reviews, and sales.

Blog Library

Another benefit is that blogs are eternal. Once you create and distribute a blog, it will live forever in a blog library that can be accessed from your website according to the topic. When customers find something they like in one of the blogs you sent them, they can dive into more content to continue to satisfy their need to know more.

Blogs are also fast, simple, and affordable to create and curate. You can write them yourself of hire a writer to create fresh, intriguing content for you regularly. Once people start appreciating the quality of the content you offer them, they will start looking forward to getting emails from your business.

Lytron Strategic

Blogs are one of the many elements of successful online marketing for small businesses. They help strengthen loyalty bonds between businesses and their customers by offering helpful and useful content according to a reliable and predictable schedule.

When the people you target with your business enjoy your blogs, they are more likely to continue to do business with your company rather than your competitors. While you are offering “something for nothing” in the short run, it leads to higher customer loyalty, retention, and bottom-line sales in the long run, making blogs one of the most cost-effective elements in your digital marketing strategies.

Competitive research has always been an important part of business marketing. You have to know what other businesses like yours within your geographic area are doing in order to compete. And when you see a good idea on a rival’s website, it’s okay to adopt it as your own.

Not only that, but it’s also a good idea to reach out to your competitors and build relationships with them so you can learn from their experience and share your own within your common industry. Business isn’t war and your competitors aren’t your enemy. There’s plenty of business to go around and having a relationship with people who work in the same field as you is always rewarding.

Good Business

It’s a good idea to allocate at least part of your work week to competitive analysis. This includes networking with owners of competing businesses.

Start by going online and doing a simple search for businesses like yours within your community. Then visit their websites and see what they do similar to you, what they do differently, and what “works” and what doesn’t.

But competitive research isn’t all done online. When you have time, get in your car and drive over to your competitor’s physical location. Look around. Talk to their employees. Then introduce yourself to the owner. Don’t hide the fact that you own a competing business. Using subterfuge and deception will only cause hard feelings. Instead, offer your friendship and show a genuine interest in their lives. It’s possible to be both friends and competitors.

Best Practices

When you find something your competitors are doing better than you, take it and make it your own. It’s perfectly ethical to use other people’s good ideas to make your business better. Remember, the goal isn’t to reinvent the wheel. It’s simply to be better.

Competitive research is a great way to improve your understanding of your market and build your business bigger, stronger, and better.

Local businesses work locally. In other words, the pool of prospective customers typically is limited to those living or working within just a few miles of your physical location.

This is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because it means you don’t have to create costly global marketing campaigns aimed at a lot of different kinds of people located in a wide variety of places. Instead, you can focus only on those people living close by who are most likely to use what your business is offering.

It’s a curse because much of the success or failure of your local business depends on your personal reputation. If people don’t know you or have negative perceptions about you personally, it’s going to impact your small, local business.

Reputation  Building

Boosting your local reputation is a two-fold process. First, you need to make sure people know who are. Second, they need to like what they see. Both objectives are achievable with a few simple actions.

First, you need to make yourself known within your community. Advertising is fast and effective, but it’s also expensive. A more affordable and successful way for new business owners just starting out is to physically get out there and introduce themselves to their neighbors, especially influential ones such as the local Chamber of Commerce or social groups like the Lions or Rotary clubs.

Set up appointments with local leaders, like mayors and councilmen. Send emails to your US Representative and Senators. Start making connections with people who can help your business, even your competitors. The more people you know, the more likely word about your business will spread.

Getting People to Like You

In small towns, everybody knows everybody else’s business. This is also true of small communities within larger ones, such as where your business operates. So the best way to enhance your reputation is to treat people well, show genuine interest in what they have to say, and be persistent in introducing yourself to new people every day.

When it comes down to it, boosting your business’s reputation is just like getting people to like you in high school, college, at a new workplace, or anywhere else. Simply be a nice person who is engaged positively with their community and the rest will take care of itself.

Sometimes your competition does such a good job that it’s practically impossible to overtake them. If that’s the case, don’t spin your wheels trying to come up with original ideas. Just figure out what they do better than you and make those ideas yours.

There’s no trademark or patent on good business ideas. So there’s nothing stopping you from mimicking other people’s successful strategies. In fact, the best businesses continually monitor their competitors to see what they are doing better. Then they apply those same concepts to their business to realize the same successes.

‘Nihil Nove Sub Sole”

There’s a very old expression in Latin, “Nihil nove sub sole” which translates to “There is nothing new under the sun.” What it means is that all the great ideas your business and your competitors have applied already have been used hundreds of times before by other businesses you’ve probably never heard about. Sure, technology can change the platform and offer new ways to reach more customers more easily, but the basic tenets of business have remained consistent for generations.

Give customers what they want. Remove obstacles to their choosing your products or services. Build loyalty bonds to encourage repeat business. All of these business practices were just as important 100 years ago as they are today. And they will continue to provide the framework for successful strategies for future generations of entrepreneurs.

Just Do It

Appropriating somebody else’s good idea to your business isn’t stealing. It’s just good business. So when you find things your competitors do better than you, don’t get caught up in regret and recriminations. Take them and make them your own.,

Great ideas don’t even need to come from your competitors or even your industry. Great business owners constantly are on the lookout for successful strategies and continually think about ways of incorporating them into their own business plans.

When the first person discovered fire, it was a miracle that changed the course of human history. But when the second person saw them do it, they simply repeated the steps and kept themselves and their family warm.

When it comes to online marketing strategies, you don’t have to watch in awe at another business’s success. You can simply repurpose what works for them and apply it to your own business. Everybody wins!

Be the Fire

Customers don’t generally care who came up with a marketing strategy first. They simply want to find the best possible product or service at the lowest possible price with the quickest possible delivery.

Once you find a way to get people to visit your page and take action — whether it’s to buy a product or service, subscribe, or simply promote your business on their social media — the critical next step is to get them to keep coming back again and again. And the best way to find great ideas for your business is to look at what works for other successful websites … then take it and make it your own in a unique way.

In other words, you don’t have to invent fire. You just need to convince customers that your business IS the fire!

Lytron Strategic

Have you seen a digital marketing strategy that works that you would like to use to promote your own business? The experienced professionals at Lytron Strategic probably already are using it. They may even have invented it. In any case, we can put it to work for your business quickly and effectively so you can reap the rewards your business deserves.

Our teams of innovative, collaborative web strategists know all the tricks to convert first-time visitors to long-term repeat customers and we can’t wait to put them to work for your business. Call us today to get started.

There are lots of ways Lytron Strategic can help build your reputation online. But there also are many things you can do in the real world to make yourself and your business more well known in your community.

Building your real-world reputation is just as important as promoting your brand online. While a lot of business today is done through the internet, people still value genuine face-to-face connections with real people — especially in service industries like medicine, dentistry, construction, and cleaning.

Raising Your Profile

People will trust you more if you are a respected member of your community. And you are judged by the company you keep. Introduce yourself to civic leaders and join community organizations like your local Chamber of Commerce or Rotary Club.

If practical, join the local country club or other private clubs where the most influential people in your local area congregate. Develop relationships with important people, especially those within your industry. They may be able to offer practical advice or even send business your way.

Getting to Know You

You have expertise in your industry so make the most of it by promoting it to local media. Send out introductions to local newspaper editors, radio station managers, and television news producers offering your services in stories or segments related to your field. The more you can put your voice and face out in the public eye, the more your customers and clients will trust you. Plus, being well known is good for business.

Consider writing a regular newspaper column or blog related to your field. Introduce yourself to the dean of your local college or university and offer your services as a guest lecturer.

Finally, keep track of all the public appearances, publications, and other achievements you collect so that you can promote them on your social media.