Depending on what your business sells, you can keep existing clients engaged and win new clients by educating them. If you can determine what their most frequently discussed problems are, then you can get their attention by demonstrating your understanding of them. You can win new clients by providing solutions for those same problems. Educating clients keeps them inside of your marketing funnel until they are ready to make a purchase.

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One of the great things about educational marketing is that it does not rely fully on your sales message. It relies heavily on your research of your customers' problems and your ability to articulate your understanding to them. Once customers feel as if you "get" them, they will be much more open to hearing about the features of your product.

You've probably had a number of professionals call to share with you a major concern of other business owners with an online presence. In recent months, small businesses have become the target of angry customers, competitors and sometimes even marketing consulting agencies (working on behalf of their clients). These groups are sometimes actively working to make sure that competing businesses get negative results in the search engines in order to make others look good to those actively looking for products and services.

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This activity sometimes takes the form of negative customer reviews on sites such as Google Plus, Yelp or Angie's List. In other cases, it could also come in the form of negative blog posts and/or articles about the business. And because consumers are doing their buyer research on these sites, the results are often the difference between making a sale and/or having customers look elsewhere.

Because people are shopping on the Internet in increasing numbers, the way they make decisions about who they're going to buy from has changed. Throughout the 2000's thousands and early into the 2010's tends, consumers relied on the information that they had historically used. They relied on their personal experience, their knowledge of the brand and the recommendations of personal friends and associates.

Interestingly, another less talked about trend had come about: consumers had grown skeptical of the claims of advertisers when speaking about their own products.Even the old-style 'customer testimonial' was making less of an impact on consumers in early 2010 than it had been traditionally doing. While these trends were progressing in consumer goods and local services, Amazon.com was developing an interesting reputation in selling books and media...

Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn were supposed to bring to the forefront a new age when people that relied on the recommendations of their friends to make purchasing decisions. Businesses were advised that they needed to pay close attention to social media, because that is where individuals would be passing on their thoughts about the best products and services to buy in different categories.

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While this does occur, to some degree, it hasn't manifested as a bona fide trend. In fact, product recommendations are no more likely to occur on social media, than they are in face-to-face conversations. In surveys, consumers do not find the recommendations of their friends as the most reliable source for making product buying decisions. The clear choice that consumers are making is to trust in their buying decisions is online reviews...

In terms of number of website visitors on a daily basis, it's clear that Facebook far out distances other social networks. Consumers have made the site part of their everyday lives as they use it to keep tabs on friends, families and associates. In recent years, the company has become more aware of the need to bring in ad revenue.  As a result of this, Facebook has been giving companies an increasing amount of access to users in terms of marketing opportunities.

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Small businesses have options when it comes to promoting their business on the social network. Those choices seem to fall into two basic categories.  1) There is earned media where companies seek to build relationships with those that are socializing on the network. 2.) And then there is paid media where companies strategically place their content in areas where individuals will see it.

You've probably heard that you should be doing video marketing for your business. What may not be as clear to you is what you would actually be producing. In addition to that, it may also be a little less clear as to how you will actually benefit. Obviously, you will create videos and upload them to a site like YouTube.com. But what should your video's content be? What kind of videos will cause prospects to want to buy from you?

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Video marketing is as much copywriting as it is creation of camera footage to upload. When a buyer sees your video you will want them to feel that they want to buy from you. Just as is the case with any advertisement, you won't have long to tell them about how they would benefit from your product.  Once the viewer becomes disinterested, they will tune you out.

Because prospects and customers are using mobile devices to access the Internet with increasing frequency, you will need to meet them there. While that doesn't mean that PC users will no longer visit your site, it does mean that communication methods have changed. As a result of that, marketing and advertising must change also.

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One of the most important emphases of mobile marketing is convenience. Apart from the particular ways that you can reach a prospect on their mobile device, the principle to keep in mind is convenience.   Most users will opt for the easiest possible option.  The company that can make it easy to buy, will win when all things are even. Understanding this, you'll want to make sure that your site is as easy for them to navigate as it is when using their pc...

One of the best ways for a business to increase the number of people exposed to their products and services, is to make them available through search engines. As more companies begin to use sophisticated methods to remote their business, competition, and local search is increasing.

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In 2009, the companies that made themselves available in their local area, had virtually no competition. They typically hired local marketing consultants to optimize their websites and make them visible to people searching for related products and services. Those companies would routinely be the only ones in their category to have an optimized website and would acquire most of the traffic from search engines.