Marketing your business on a tight budget.

If you’re a small business or a new company starting out, chances are you have a pretty limited budget for marketing your brand, products, and services. Yet, the fact that you’ve at least thought about doing marketing to promote your business, means you understand the importance and value of using marketing services and tools to help boost your company - so congratulations on taking that first key step!

Now that you understand the need to market your company, it’s time to decide how to spend your money in the most efficient and strategic way to increase your odds of attracting new leads and clients. In today’s complex Internet marketing world, there are hundreds of different ways to promote your company and solutions, thousands of tools to help you do it yourself, and thousands of marketing agencies to help you along the way.

Yet, the question of where to start and how to allocate your money still remains. To help you, we’ll share with you what our marketing strategy team shares with our existing clients when faced with this question.

Things to consider before following our tips:

Before we jump into exactly what services you should consider, it’s important to note that not every business will need the same services as every business is different, has different goals, different target markets, budgets, etc. Thus, the following list of services is not meant to help every company, but only those who’d benefit from marketing their products or services to a target audience that can be defined through online marketing services with a wide range of people.

Top 5 marketing services to consider when promoting your business online:

Note: Items are listed in order of importance, with number one being the most important. Depending on your exact marketing budget, you may or may not have enough money to invest in all five services listed. When that is the case, we suggest that you invest in the most important ones first.

1. A Business Website
2. Online Advertising
3. Social Media Presence
4. E-mail Marketing
5. Content Marketing, Blogs, and SEO

Related post: How to take your business online - 5 must have digital tools

Make 2015 Count for Your Small Business

Can you believe the end of 2014 is here?!

Many people treat the dawning of a new year as an opportunity to reflect on the previous year, identify goals for the months ahead, and create action steps they can use to make things happen.

With that in mind, here’s 5 ways to make 2015 a year that counts for your small business…

1. Review your end-of-year monthly and quarterly performance.

How did performance compare to where you were when you started the year? Were you able to increase your business’ bottom line as 2014 came to a close? Do you have a larger social media following or more leads on your email list?

If you aren’t ending the year where you wanted to be, see if you can identify one to three actions, derived directly from your performance numbers, that you can put into practice to make sure you see growth in 2015.

Example: If your website lost sessions and unique visitors as you moved from August to December, and you know it’s because a certain referrer wasn’t performing well, your action step could be to improve referral performance or even invest that time in an alternate referrer.

2. Identify weak areas.

Even if 2014 was a booming year for your small business, there are always areas that can be improved. Use a critical - but not harsh! - eye to look at all aspects of your business. There might be something that can be better optimized.

Example: Is it easy for you to drive traffic to your website but difficult for you to convert those visitors into leads? Take some time in 2015 to assess your landing pages and optimize.

3. Assess your 2014 goals and create new ones for 2015.

What is Online Marketing Automation?

Throughout the history of mankind and our existence, humans have constantly been in the pursuit of making life easier. In most cases, this has been achieved by developing new tools and technologies that help achieve things faster, easier and more efficiently.

Today’s modern online marketing tools are no different, as they allow the modern digital marketer to achieve many tasks faster, with less effort and more efficiently overall. Let’s explore what Internet marketing automation is all about.

Intro to Internet Marketing Automation

In today’s digital marketing world, marketing automation refers to the ability to program, schedule, or automate one or more tasks to make a marketer’s work more effective.

Marketing automation comes in various shapes and sizes. It can range from a task as small as scheduling a social media post, to a very complex automated marketing and sales funnel that includes web user tracking, e-mail sign-up forms, lead scoring, e-mail open & click rates that help trigger specific emails, printed mail pieces, scheduling a rep to call a lead, and much more.

Types of Marketing Automation Tools

As the Internet continues to evolve, there’s a constant flow of innovation that bring to life new, better and different types of online marketing automation tools. Some of these tools are stand-alone applications and work independent of other software, some work only as add-ons or extensions to other applications and some as a combination of both.

Within the various automation tools, some solutions target specific online marketing niches - such as E-mail or online ADs only, others offer a complete solution of various pre-integrated marketing tools, while others offer the ability to easily connect independent web-based tools with each other to add automation capabilities without the need of complex custom-made programming.

Tools by Service Type - Full details below

1. E-mail Marketing
2. Social Media Management
3. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) 
4. All-in-one Sales & Marketing Software
5. Online Advertising
6. Integration and Syncing 
   
   

How Does it Help Increase Sales? 

Have you ever wondered why you don’t see every single post from your Facebook Friends or the Pages you’ve Liked? Or why your company’s posts aren’t seen by everyone who’s liked the page?

Social networks, by the numbers…

The average 18–49-year-old Facebook user has at least 200 Facebook friends. And, as a whole, the average Facebook user creates 90 posts per month, which works out to an average of 3 posts per day.

Facebook doesn’t use a chronological timeline, in which you see every single post from every Friend. If they did, though, perhaps we could conclude that the average user would have to sift through 600 posts per day!

In comparison, the majority of Twitter users are following less than 50 people. However, the Twitter user creates an average of 4.422 tweets per day or 132.66 tweets per month.

Twitter does use a chronological timeline. However, the math works out to be an average maximum of 221.1 posts per day, fewer than the average daily Facebook feed.

What is Facebook’s algorithm, anyway?

Facebook uses a proprietary algorithm to determine what posts show up in your News Feed. This is intended to provide a better experience for the user; after all, 600 posts per day is a lot!

The algorithm is constantly being updated; fortunately for us, Buffer is keeping track of all of the relevant changes!

What does Facebook’s algorithm love?

First, here are four key factors that make it more likely for the algorithm to show you a post: 

Everyday we should be thankful for everything that life provides us, but today is Thanksgiving so it's an opportunity to take a moment to stop, meditate and consciously be thankful for what we have.

Thanks to all of you who've helped Bloominari grow!

At Bloominari we're very thankful to everyone around us who's helped make a reality the dream we had set not long ago. We want to take the opportunity on this special day to thank our families, friends, partners, collaborators, team, and clients for everything each of them has done to help our company get to where we are today.

Although we're a young company (less than a year old), our team of young marketers, designers, strategists, and videographers have years of experience in the fields of Internet marketing, graphic design, web design and small business strategy; All of which have helped build a company that can offer the San Diego community affordable and professional marketing services to help companies grow, promote their products/services online and increase their overall sales.

We love our name, do you?

Today is exactly 7 months since we changed our company name from MyeDesigner to Bloominari, and we couldn't have been happier!

Smartphones are everywhere, and as time goes by the number of new mobile phone apps grows exponentially. As new and more useful mobile apps appear on the market, businesses and individuals are now using their smartphones more than ever before.

There are now more tasks that people can complete today with their phone than ever before - such as E-mail, banking, editing documents, creating invoices, etc. People can now take their work wherever they are without having to sit down on full-size computer.

If you’re a small business owner, you might ask yourself the question: “Should I build a regular website and/or build a mobile app”?

The answer to this important business and marketing question depends on the type of business you have, what your online goals are, and of course your time frame and budget.

Developing Websites vs. Mobile Apps

Definitions and Background Details

In order to decide what’s the best option for your business, let’s first explore what the differences are.

Websites:

A website is a portal on the world wide web (www) that can be accessed from anywhere around the world through a web browser. Today, both computers and smartphones have web browsers, Any device that's connected to the Internet can access the site.

Today’s modern website may be developed in order to be “Responsive”, which means that the layout, size and content of a web page will adapt and change based on the size of the screen it is being viewed at. Visitors will have the best possible user experience on your website regardless of where he/she is accessing it.

Example: Let’s say a person sees a responsive website in full screen and it contains 3 columns of content, which looks good on a normal screen. When the same site is accessed on a mobile phone, those 3 columns will show up stacked on top of each other (instead of next to each other as columns), so that the user can clearly read the contents of each column. Yet, if that same website was “non-responsive” and the user accessed it through a smartphone, the user would see 3 tiny columns on the screen (same layout as the normal screen), which he probably wouldn’t be able to read in his tiny phone screen. In that case, the user would have to zoom-in (pinch the screen) to see each column in detail - which diminishers a positive user experience on the site.

To some degree, today’s responsive websites actually look very similar to mobile apps - when accessed on smartphone - without actually being one. This is a key point to consider when evaluating this as an option.

Mobile Apps

Mobile apps (or Applications) are basically software developed for your mobile phone, including smartphones - which today are more like mini-computers with calling capabilities using one of the built-in Apps used to make phone calls.

Types of Mobile Apps

There are three types of apps: Native, Hybrid and HTML5/Javascript.

You can use social media marketing to connect with your customers, help new customers find your business, and build relationships! Since many small business owners and employees are familiar with at least one social media network, it can be easy to get started. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn all offer free accounts and Pages for businesses, too, so there’s no up-front monetary expense.

Managing social media, though, especially if your company has Pages on multiple networks, can be time-intensive. And when you’re running a small business, your time might be better spent serving customers, keeping track of finances, and managing employees.

Should you make the jump?

Five reasons to use social media tools

1. You can see feeds from all of your social media channels in one place. Jumping back and forth from site to site can be a big part of the social media time suck. If this sounds like a typical day for you online, consider trying out a tool that has this feature.
2. You can post to any combination of your social media channels. Similarly, many social media tools make the updating process faster. You don’t have to post to every channel every time, too - pick and choose which ones get updated each time. You’ll save time and effort.
3. It makes it easier for someone else to step in. Once you’ve set up a social media tool with all of your accounts, it’s easy to share access with a co-worker. If you’re sick or away, share just one login with your co-worker instead of five!
4. You can learn more about your social media performance. Many tools offer analytics and reporting. You won’t need to go to yet another site to see which links get clicked on, what content gets shared, and how often people are talking to or about you. This gives you instant feedback on what’s working, enabling you to do more of that! You can even share the report with co-workers, too.
5. You can check and update your social media channels anywhere. Switching from social media site to site is a pain on your computer, but it can be twice as annoying on a smartphone! While all of the major social media networks now have their own apps, you can save time by checking your social media tool’s single app while you’re on the go. This makes it easy to check in if something’s getting a lot of activity.

Five reasons to not use social media tools

This is one of the greatest questions small businesses ask themselves when they’re in need of building their online web presence. As most of you already know, building a website for a company is a crucial step in order to exist in today’s digital world.

Today, if your company doesn’t have a website, it’s is just as bad as if your office doesn’t have a phone number where they can reach you. In short, building a small business website or personal web page is crucial to the marketing and branding of you or your company.

Deciding whether to build your own website or hire a professional designer?

There’s a couple of things you should think about and consider before you jump to any conclusions. Let’s take a look:

1. Do you have the time to build your own website?
2. Do you have the technical knowledge and/or patience to learn how to build your own website using existing online tools?
3. Are you willing to sacrifice a website’s quality and features for your time and money?

Based on your answers to those three key questions, you should be quickly able to decide who should build your website. If you time is more valuable to grow your business and brand, for sure hire someone. If you’ve got time to spare and want to be adventurous and save some money try to build your own!

Let’s analyze a couple of scenarios:

How many social media posts do you really read word for word? What makes you stop your scrolling and take notice?

Make sure you include compelling social media copy in all of your posts - even if you’re posting to share a video, photo, or link. Even though Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ will make your post look appealing by providing a video, photo, or link embed, you’ll miss an opportunity to engage your reader if you don’t include a relevant caption.

Keep It Simple

Think again about how you browse social media. You probably skim posts, right? Make sure your copy is easy to understand even at a glance. Unless your social media audience is primarily made up of professionals who are well-versed in and expect high-level content, you probably want to write simple, easy-to-read copy, using a tone of voice that’s consistent with your branding, that includes clear headlines and calls-to-action.

You don’t know who makes up the majority of your audience and what they expect? Read on…

It’s easy and free to get your company started on social media. After just a few minutes’ worth of set-up, you’ll have your accounts up and running! But how do you know if your social media activity is actually helping out your business?

You should spend the majority of your time running your business — not worrying whether social media is a waste of time! Put your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to work with our tips. And if you’re in the San Diego, CA area, make sure to join us for our upcoming workshop on content and social media on November 19!. 

Social media should be the first step on your customer’s journey — NOT their final destination!

It’s exceptionally gratifying to see your follower counts go up as you spend time online. Are those followers converting into paying customers, though?

Keep in mind that social media is at its most valuable when it refers prospective customers to your eCommerce website or your brick-and-mortar location.

Provide thoughtful opportunities for customers to visit your website, learn about your services, and take the next step towards converting. But make sure that these opportunities are written with your audience’s motivators and needs in mind! They’ll be more likely to click through to your site if they believe you’ll be able to provide personal value to them.