2017: The Year of Online Marketing for SMB’s

Yeah, yeah – we all know the saying “You gotta spend money to make money.” Unfortunately, for many, this is a tough motto to follow for many smaller companies when they’re considering their annual budgets.

This is when it’s time for them to take a good hard look at their financial status and figure out how they can spend less and profit more, and online marketing for SMB’s (small to medium-sized businesses) often gets wrongly ignored.

The question is: Where will SMB’s invest their marketing budget in 2017, given all their budget priorities?

I own a small business myself, and I know very well how vital it is create an accurate plan that can strictly regulate my business’s finances.

In my years of owning and operating an online marketing business, I’ve realized that building a practice for budgeting concerns is the absolute most effective way to keep your company’s finances in check.

It’s so important to remember, even when times are rough, how imperative the marketing portion of your budget is for your company’s guaranteed survival.

The key is to never ever stop promoting your business, even if your finances turn out to be much more limited than you expected.

If your marketing budget is minuscule, you have to make intelligent choices when it comes to your priorities in determining how much of your budget should be allocated to marketing; not just in general, but focused on the critical factors of marketing online.

To achieve success in the competitive and cramped markets of today, we have assembled three reasons why online marketing should be a priority for SMBs in 2017.

1. Competition in online marketing is rapidly increasing.

While more and more businesses allot their cash for marketing online, radio and television, the competition online is growing and getting more and more fiery.

A recent Survery Report from CMO revealed the fact that spending on traditional advertising is on the decline, while spending on digital marketing is on a rapid increase.

Additionally, a survey by StrongView and Selligent on marketing trends was done late 2015 and discovered that even though marketing budgets were raised overall by business leaders for 2016, online marketing channels were higher on the spectrum compared to traditional.

Under 14% of the companies that were surveyed had a plan to increase their marketing spending for print, radio and television advertisements, meanwhile the better part of companies surveyed had a plan to increase their budgets in the four key areas: social media, email marketing, mobile marketing, and online display advertising.

A staggering 42% of those surveyed had plans to budget a larger amount to marketing search (PPC and SEO).

The budgets for social media marketing are on the incline as well. Social Media Examine released their 2016 SMMIndustry Report, and if deciphered that more than 63% of companies and marketers alike had a plan to increase spending on Facebook and YouTube marketing.

If you own a SMB and plan to compete with the big boys, you need to take a long hard look at your budget and see just how far you can stretch your online marketing money, while maintaining a special focus on creating customized content for your clientele.

While businesses go on designating more and more spending towards digital channels, these areas will be rendered that much more competitive.

2. The bountiful benefits of online marketing for SMB’s.

Compared to traditional advertising, online marketing can open up worlds of advantage for your business.

It can offer a high return on investment, much higher than traditional approaches because of its generally low cost of channels online like socials, and also the capability to adapt based on the data collected from social platforms and Google. Additionally, compared to traditional marketing, online marketing reaches a much larger number of consumers at a much lower cost to you.

Let’s think about other perks to online marketing as well. Specific metrics can be easily tracked on each of your campaigns, to grant very valuable and specific feedback.

However, no matter what size, any business can prove to be a solid competition with a strong marketing plan. This is again because of the low cost of online channels, and also the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing on search and socials.

You can gain quick advances to your SMB’s business through these, compared to the long down out waits that usually come along with traditional.

We should also never undervalue the viral aspect that comes along with the internet. With traditional marketing one must wait around to pass out their flyers, for their ads to be made public on tv and in the newspapers, etc.

In the case of social media, you have things like share buttons, that can instantly connect you and your business to potential consumers in mere seconds. 

3. Online marketing a huge draw for SMB’s.

Some SMB’s are still abstaining completely from marketing online, why is this? In a recent survey of 300 SMB’s done by LSA, it was discovered that the main reason is simple; a measly budget.

When they were asked how they’d carry out marketing given a higher allowance, the preference towards digital marketing was top in the priorities list, with SEO and PPC (paid search) the biggest focuses.

This survey also concluded that half of SMB’s would sink their budget into SEO if they had twice their budget, while about 40% of them would have sunk it into PPC.

Out of the leftover channels, 37% of SMB’s claimed they would devote more to websites, 29% said they would invest in social media, and 28% said they would lean towards CRM tools.

These results actually mirror the behaviours of consumers, since search engines and websites are considered the driving forces for potential consumers searching locally.

Final Remarks

Finally, as all the SMB’s are settling on their budgets for 2017, they will most likely discover the numerous advantages to investing more of their advertising budget in marketing, as opposed to more short-term benefits that apply from reducing it.

As more and more SMB’s move their money over to online marketing, they will surely see more devoted customers visiting their websites, reading and rating their services and products, purchase them, and also provide them with feedback that is beneficial to the market.

It won’t take long at all for digital marketing to create great publicity and have a positive impact on the future of your blossoming business, as well as give you an impressive return on investment.

Recently, a survey of 200 retail marketing exec’s in charge of budget decisions proved to prefer online marketing. More than three-quarters logged a higher ROI through online advertising compared to the traditional.

If your SMB budget grants you the opportunity to invest in a few things, keep in mind that quality content on your websites, blogs and social media, ranks highest.

Content Marketing Tools: 5 Resources, Platforms & Softwares to Know in 2016

content marketing in order to drive new customers

Too many people fall into the trap of thinking that a content marketing tool is all about driving sales now now now, so before we get down to the nitty gritty of the best tools out there, we need to establish what a content marketing tool is there for in the first place.

Content Marketing Tools Serve to Develop Relationships & Trust

Yes of course they are there to help us all make more money, and of course sales are a fundamental part of this, but measuring the success of content marketing on whether sales have gone up during a campaign is the wrong way to look at it.

It’s that short-term approach that gives us all of the click-bait crap that we see cropping up on our feeds.

The desperation for short-term sales can actually be damaging to a brand. Each time we click that cross to close an ad we reinforce our decision to say “no”. We would be far more likely to say “yes” if we were engaged properly by a brand as opposed to being constantly battered by the hard sell.

Engaging an audience in the long term is the Holy Grail here, so how do you do it? Well, good content. That’s obvious. But once you’ve got that, you need to find a way to get your message out to as many of the right people as possible, and that’s where the tools come in.

Read on for our 5 best content marketing tools and why we think they’re the best, and take your content to the next level in 2016!

1). CodeFuel

CodeFuel offers some great monetization options for publishers, and it’s no slouch when it comes to users discovering your content. It’s also great for analyzing user retention and delivering relevant content via targeted searches and native placement of ads.

2). ClearVoice

ClearVoice’s built-in marketplace encapsulates content creation, online publishing communities and branding all under one roof. ClearVoice has a checking process for marketplace creators and enables the best-rated writers and brands to connect and deliver quality content. ClearVoice’s content studio has all the tools in place to analyze competitors and to ultimately produce relevant and engaging copy.

3). BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is your eyes and ears to help you understand which influencers are gaining traction in your marketplace. You can drill down to the amount of shares that competitors have had on all the main social channels and you can even drill down further and distinguish between different content types, i.e. interviews, videos, infographics etc.

4). Outbrain

Distribution. Distribution. Distribution. That’s the name of the game with Outbrain. It can quickly ramp-up your audience for any kind of content you can think of, but you have to pay for the privilege.

5). Curata

Curata is a neat little tool that can effectively create your content for you, and then get it out there too. It has a self-learning engine that can help organize the content, and then publish it in just a few clicks. Data-driven insights are easily available to help you craft the kind of content that your audience has already been proven to engage with.

Content Marketing Requires a Strategy

Now this is a great starting place for a few tools and resources that can help your brand build visibility and relationships with prospects online. Of course content marketing includes a much more developed strategy.

The actual content itself is extremely important to effectively engaging your audience. We recommend analyzing your competition, market trends, and going thru our 5 point content marketing checklist to ensure you are on the right track to producing something that will is share worthy online.

Furthermore content marketing can ultimately be a massive waste of resources without proper onsite SEO. Your business website needs to be mobile responsive, fast loading, and search engine friendly in order for your content to be easily consumed online, shared, and rank high in search engines.

Content Marketing doesn’t work without proper onsite SEO! Give our automated system 60 seconds to tell you what to fix!

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As always our SEO company is here to help you if you decide these tasks are too daunting to handle on your own.

SEO and Social Media Automation in 2016

SEO Automation in 2016

Search engine optimization cannot and will never be 100% automated. There are hundreds of factors that go into Google’s ranking algorithm and the foundation of great SEO work is a customized strategy and plan to fit your particular website, industry, marketing goals, services, and average value per customer or client.

However, every now and then opportunities do arise to help automate portions of your marketing which will work to save your business time, energy, and resources.

Post Content Once and Reach Your Target Audience Everywhere

Recently our team at Dynamik Internet Marketing Inc. has been testing the use of an application called, If This Then That, which helps to streamline your social media marketing and content syndication efforts.

We have found that using If This Then That (IFTTT) can be used strategically to help you reach a much larger online audience, build relevant backlinks, and increase website traffic with the use of automation.

Introducing If This Then That, An Automation Application That Will Syndicate Your Content Online Everywhere

IFTTT works by connecting various social media networks, blogging platforms, and video sites together so that content posted on one network can be automatically posted on multiple other social media platforms.

For example, IFTTT allows you to update only your Facebook business page and then have that same status update posted automatically to your Twitter, LinkedIn, and WordPress blog. It is an incredible strategy that will maximize any content production to reach a much larger online audience.

At Dynamik Internet Marketing Inc. we believe the use of such automation will be extremely beneficial to our clients and as such we are offering a new service called, IFTTT SEO, for which we will go ahead and setup a custom IFTTT automation recipe to work hand in hand with your business and in particular your content marketing strategy in 2016.

Top 5 Cutting Edge Blogging Tips That Drive Leads

top 5 blogging tips for leads

Do you hate writing blog posts?

We certainly do. At least we did about three years ago.

But over time we have come to learn the expert tactics, tools, and resources that go into writing a killer blog post.

Now we gained an understanding and an appreciation for the art form that is blogging.

It’s similar to when you gain an appreciation for taking good care of your car with consistent oil changes and car washes.

Blogging is a thing of beauty and can become your biggest lead generation source when done correctly.

Top 5 Blogging Tips to Drive New Business Leads [Video]

Blogging Tip #1 – Scout Your Competition

Don’t you dare reinvent the wheel young sir or miss.

Unless you are a rocket scientist releasing new findings regarding your travels to outer space or are truly the #1 industry leader; we recommend you scout your competition and re-write the best blog posts on the web.

Of course we advise our clients to make new additions, insights, or add take-aways to any content they rewrite but it’s always best to rewrite content that is already proven to be popular, interesting, and share worthy on the web.

Be sure to use http://buzzsumo.com/ to find out what blog post topics are trending in your industry.

Updated: We now highly recommend using, Ninja OutReach, as the best prospecting and automated outreach tool; to help you connect with industry influencers, gain digital PR, social shares, build links, and more!

Blogging Tip #2 – Write a Killer Title

Spend an extra five minutes before you begin writing to make sure you have the absolute best title possible for your blog post.

Do a Google search for a similar topic and take note of the titles of blog posts that are on page 1 of Google.

These are the titles that have performed the best, warranted the most social shares, and natural links. (hint hint… You may want to have a similar title. )

Finally ask yourself, would I want to read this article if I just read the title alone?

Here’s an example blog post we wrote for an international fitness model client.

Now if you were a mom, would this interest you?

Blogging Tip #3 – Add A YouTube Video

One of the absolute best ways to differentiate your brand online is with video. People love people and absolutely love video. Thus a video is the perfect combination.

Whatever it is you’re discussing or showcasing within your blog post content can be turned into a video.

Use http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/ if you need to do any type of screen recording and have a professional video intro done online at fiverr for 5 bucks.

Finally make sure to give your YouTube video a keyword rich title that is similar to your blog post title and embed it within your blog post! You’ll instantly enjoy an organic search engine ranking boost from this trick.

As a bonus tip add Youtube cards to drive leads directly from your YouTube channel!

Blogging Tip #4 – Include Inspiring Photos

Adding the right photos to your blog post can make a major difference in terms of the traffic, social shares, and links that your post receives.

Start by going to canva.com to create an incredible looking and free blog post cover image for your post. Include the title of your post and use relevant imagery.

This cover image will become the image people see on Facebook and Pinterest so be sure it is attractive and also warrants interest in reading your article.

Here’s an example of a few graphics we made on Canva in a matter of minutes. 

You can click on them too!*

Blogging Tip #5 – Include A Relevant Offer

Before you ever write a new blog post you should have a marketing or sales goal in mind. Ask yourself what do you want to accomplish with this post?

Then be sure that you include a call to action, relevant offer, or introduction to the product or service you are ultimately looking to promote.

It is often times most strategic to provide a lead capture, free download, or other complimentary information in exchange for a lead towards the bottom of your blog post.

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The Top 5 Blog Post Ideas For Business Owners To Drive New Sales

tony Robbins Speaking - blog post ideas


It’s funny but sometimes as business owners we get caught up in doing things and forget why we are doing them in the first place. And the problem is that once you forget why you are doing something, you often do a poor job doing it.

For instance, lets consider blogging. Most business owners neglect blogging. The ones that do blog, forget that they are writing a blog post for their target customer.

Instead the blog post is written for some other audience and has vague relation to the product or service you are actually offering. Writing an off topic blog post does not drive sales, engagement, or brand awareness. So today we wanted to help you as a business owner, refocus on why and how to blog with our top 5 blog post ideas!

We are Giving Away Our Top 5 Blog Post Ideas!

The following is a list of 5 different blog post ideas and topics that will help you write engaging content for your ideal customer or client. It will position you as an authority on the subject matter which subtly is helping you to sell your product or service.

Auch wenn Sie eine unermüdliche Praxis sind und mit der Frau interagieren, sozusagen, natürlich Das und täglich, sowieso, weiter wetten, Sie werden etwas Neues von diesem Artikel wissen. Ja, was ist da, auch wenn Frauen selbst viele interessante Dinge lernen können.

1. Blog Post Strategy 1: The YouTube Video Reaction 

This blog post is the easiest to do of the bunch & works magic on driving new traffic to your website. The concept is to go to YouTube and find a high quality video in your niche.

Then embed that video in your blog post towards the top and give your evaluation and reaction to the video.

For example if you are a motivational speaker, you should embed a short clip of a Tony Robbins speech.

You can rephrase what he is teaching in your own words, explain the layout of his speech, how he is engaging his audience, and so forth.

What’s so great about the YouTube Video Reaction strategy is that it almost associates your expertise with that of the individual in the video. In this example, Tony Robbins. It’s an instant credibility builder.

Here are the four steps to implement the YouTube Video Reaction Strategy:

  • Open YouTube.
  • Search for a relevant and high authority video that matches with your niche.
  • Embed it into your blog post.
  • And, below the video, write a reaction to the video.

You might start by saying, “Here’s my take on that video”.

2. The List Post Method

Often today’s most shared and appreciated blog posts are what we call “list posts”.

List posts are those blog posts that list the “Top 10” or “Top 25 SEO Tools to Use” as an example.

List posts are blog post that pull together or aggregate the most interesting stories, quotes, resources, products, GIFs, photos—and yes, infographics—from a wide variety of sources on the web.

Writing a list post related to your product or service is a great way to establish yourself as an expert in your industry. For example we wrote a list post titled, The Top 20 Questions to Ask and SEO Firm Before Hiring Them!

It has been shared over 521 times on social media networks, consistently drives new leads for our business, and demonstrates our knowledge of our service, SEO.

Everybody loves a top 10 list. Make this a blog post!

Best of all list posts are rather easy to put together. After all you are simply aggregating content from the web. Just make sure you give appropriate credit when due if you use images, quotes, or videos from other websites.

3. Interview an Expert in Your Niche

A post where you interview someone is a win-win all around.

You get content, the profile of the expert is raised and your readers get a fresh perspective.

Make sure that the expert you interview is relevant to your target market, as with all of your blog posts.

Remember: Any interview, if it’s going to increase your blog’s profile, must be of major interest to your niche, or you’ll be wasting your time and energy.

You can contact experts via e-mail, telephone, and so on to request their participation in an interview to be published on your blog.

Your whole interview depends on the number of questions you send. Avoid boring questions. No one has time to read boring content. You’d be surprised how experts will welcome the exposure your interview can bring them.

(This guys looks fairly familiar….Conan O’ Brian even uses Google Hangouts.)

Once you have responses, write a short introductory text, add the expert’s information, and you’re all done.

We highly recommend using a Google Hangout to record a video interview that you can then post on your blog and website.

4. The Quote Post

Quoting is again a great strategy to aggregate content from others so that you do the minimum amount of work. It also can build your expertise with association to other top experts.

The quote post is simply when you aggregate quotes from several authorities in your industry and then post them into one blog post.

These can be quotes from celebrities, industry leaders, speakers, and so forth.

If you are a financial advisor, quoting Warren Buffett makes sense!

Putting together a quote post is rather simple. Here are the steps:

1). Choose a Topic or Question to Ask

2). Outreach to Experts (via social media, their website, or LinkedIn)

3). Ask for Quote (Using Twitter to reach celebrities is your best chance to receive a quote)

4). Create a Quote blog post

5). Use Canva to turn each quote into an image

That’s it!

Bonus tip: The quote post also works great as an info-graphic. Once you have your infographic made, be sure to send the embed code to the experts whose quote you have included in the graphic.

All it would take is one of these experts or celebrities to share your infographic online with their quote included, for you to instantly have your blog post go viral!

5. Create an Engaging Crowdsourced Post

A quick and easy way to write a stylish and engaging blog post is to crowd source the content.

A crowdsourcing blog post is similar to a list post or a quote post except you ask fewer experts for their opinion on a subject matter and expect an answer that goes into greater depth. 

Many people think that a crowd-sourced post is nothing more than putting a question on Facebook and waiting for your friends to answer. However this would be the wrong way to do it.

The crowdsourced post works best if you can get higher authority figures in your industry to contribute their analysis and answer your question.

Here’s how to do it:

1). Ask industry experts a burning question that your customers might like to know the answer to.

For example, a gym owner or personal trainer may ask celebrities in the fitness space:  “What motivates you to workout and eat healthy every day?”

Most likely such a question will provoke a rather long answer.

2). Record or transcribe your crowdsourced answers into quotes to include in a blog post

3). Introduce your crowdsourced answers in your blog post, compare the experts responses, and related it back to your service or product.

Don’t forget to share your final blog post with any experts you quoted or crowdsourced their opinion from in hopes they will also share your post online!

Have another blog post strategy that you think we should add to this list? Please let us know in the comments below!

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