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Posted by Shannon Goodell

Why Small Businesses Should Have A Mobile App

Business, Business Tips, Mobile, Web Design 0

If you think that only the giant retailers bother to create their own business apps, there are a few facts which you should consider that might affect your thinking. For instance, approximately 85% of the time that users spend on their mobile phones is dedicated to operating a mobile app. That fact alone should make you reconsider, but there are other compelling reasons listed below. Don’t dismiss the idea simply because you lack the expertise in-house – a great San Diego web design agency like MySMN can provide you with the perfect app for your business.

You can be constantly visible to your customers

When your app is downloaded to users’ phones, it’s always there on the screen, even if the individual doesn’t intend to use it right at that moment. The fact of its presence on-screen causes it to be etched into the memory of the person for later recall and usage.

Availability of useful information

Any information posted on your mobile website is instantly available to users who have your app on their phones. Whatever information that you’d like your customers to know is right at their fingertips, ready for immediate retrieval. You’ll have a constant line of communication open to your customers and potential customers.

Convenience breeds loyalty

The more convenient you make it for your customers to interact with your business, the more loyal they will become. One example is in collecting and redeeming rewards or discounts that you offer. By providing customers with more reasons to do business with you, their loyalty should increase toward your company.

Building your brand is easier

Your own mobile app provides the perfect vehicle for conveying the kind of image and message that you want your company to project. You basically have a blank palette which you can populate with the core values and philosophy important to your business.

Increase brand recognition

Building on the ease of branding, you can increase the recognition factor of your brand by getting more users engaged with your brand, and on a more frequent basis. And of course, along with that frequency of engagement, you can expect increased sales and customer loyalty.

Better overall customer engagement

Since most customers would rather text a company than talk to a representative, having some kind of messaging platform will give them a method of contacting you which most of them prefer. It can improve your customer service, and defuse any issues before they develop into a negative.

Get a leg up on the competition

Since most small businesses don’t yet have their own apps, this would be one very beneficial way for you to get ahead of the game, by providing users with your own app. It will lend credibility to your company, and make you look more professional and modern.

Increasing customer loyalty

Probably the most critical reason to build your own app is to establish and improve on customer loyalty. There is such a flood of new marketing and advertising being used these days, that maintaining contact with your customer base has become a real challenge. That makes it more important than ever to make a real connection with customers, and mobile apps will help you do that by keeping your business right at your customers’ fingertips.

Want to learn more? Contact mobile app specialists, like MySMN, that will create a mobile app which fully embodies visual appeal, relevant content, rock-solid functionality, and your company’s critical branding message. Contact us today, and start increasing your mobile presence through a customized business app!

Posted by Shannon Goodell

10 Social Media Marketing Tips For Your Small Business

B2B Social Media, Business, Social Media, Social Media Marketing 0

There is no question that the power of social media marketing is one of the most important single areas which every entrepreneur should be focusing on, in terms of reaching an intended audience. The sheer numbers of users involved should point that out clearly, but when you consider the potential for sharing among all those users, reachability can grow exponentially. Here are 10 recommendations for making good use of social media marketing to reach your target audience and grow your business.

Focus on your business objectives first

Your strategy with regard to the social media should be careful to avoid putting the cart (social media) before the horse (your business). Instead, consider what your top three business objectives are, and use the social media to drive those objectives, rather than the other way around. Don’t just try to achieve a presence on social media – use the specific platform frequented by your target audience to help you acquire 25% more leads this year, for instance.

Be authentic

People relate to other people more so than to a faceless business entity. That means you need to give your business a ‘face’, a personality. Emphasize the human aspect of your business by telling your story, and the story of your employees. By showing that your company personnel are involved in the community, or perhaps that you support a local worthy cause, you will connect much better with consumers you’re trying to reach.

Think Visual

It’s worth remembering that people’s attention spans tend to be very limited on the Internet, so if you don’t capture their interest immediately, they’ll probably move on to the next website. More than 50% of all people who visit Facebook watch at least one video every day, and that’s just one social media platform. Live Facebook videos are exploding in popularity because they’re such a great way to launch new products, provide background on your company, demonstrate ‘how-to’ use products, and make important announcements.

Content Is King

While blogs are valuable, your content shouldn’t stop there. You want to create content that’s tailored to the three stages of the funnel – awareness, evaluation, and conversion. Blogs and social media posts are great for awareness. However, you’ll want to craft effective content that work best for evaluation and conversion. This includes content such as case studies, customer/client testimonials, a coupon, webinar, software download, and more.

Visual content is super powerful, as well. If you can create an Infographic that has genuine value and appeal to your target audience, there’s no telling how much it might be shared around the globe. It’s imperative to determine your target audience and what type of content will be valuable to them.

Build Your LinkedIn

Almost all business owners would benefit by increasing their LinkedIn marketing. By promoting greater engagement of LinkedIn users with your company, you will undoubtedly see a boost in conversion rates and sales. Become an authority in your field, and reach out to potential customers with messages tailored to their specific needs. You can use Sales Navigator to build your target audience list, and then reach out to decision-makers with personalized messages.

Dominate the most appropriate platforms

It’s alright to have a presence on many of the social media platforms, but you really need to focus your attention on the one or two platforms where most of your target audience spends time, and where your business can fit right in. Twitter for instance, caters to an audience interested in breaking news and technology announcements, so if that fits your company, that’s where you should try to dominate.

Match your content type to the social media channel

When you’re crafting social media content, make sure it’s of the type which is well-suited to the platform you’re using, even if you have to create separate kinds of content for each platform. Tools like Stencil and Canva can help you produce content ideally suited to the platform.

Be Social

Starting a conversation in social media can be a terrific way to get people engaged and interacting with you. You should also be sharing content, re-tweeting posts that are interesting, and ask questions of your own which elicit responses from other users. You should also jump into conversations around your expertise, as well as nurture conversations you have started. By showing that you’re actively engaged yourself, your business can be seen as an involved, caring entity.

Have a Clear Goal When Advertising on Facebook

If Facebook is your platform of choice,  or at least one of them, you’ll need to create some ads which fit well with it. The tremendous ability of Facebook to target a specific audience can lead you to the success you crave, but only if you’ve pre-determined what you’re trying to achieve, and have crafted your ads accordingly.

Don’t try to do it yourself

As an entrepreneur or small business owner, your focus is on launching and scaling your business. If you don’t have the in-house personnel to execute your social media marketing strategies, hire a San Diego marketing firm to ensure that your objectives are achieved. Social media marketing is often more effective when left up to the experts who work in that arena on a daily basis. Contact us to learn more about how we can help grow your small business!

Posted by Shannon Goodell

It May Be Time For Your Business Website To Be Updated

Business, Business Tips, Web Design 0

Your website does something that no single employee or any group of employees could possibly do – it promotes your business 24 hours a day to all Internet users. Business website design in San Diego needs to reflect the changing attitudes and needs of users, rather than remaining static for long periods of time. Below are some reasons why you might want to avail yourself of the skills and knowledge provided by a San Diego website design company, to keep your site fresh and relevant. After reading why it’s highly beneficial to keep your site current, you’ll have no trouble finding a good firm for outstanding web design in San Diego.

Your site has become outdated

The tools, themes, and technology used to build website change every few months, and users’ tastes change right along with them. A site that’s even two years old probably can’t match up well with more current ones, in terms of loading speed, functionality, and aesthetic appeal. You may also be missing out on some of the newest factors being evaluated by search engines for site ranking.

Your site no longer reflects your brand adequately

If your company has undergone any kind of shift in philosophy recently, and your branding message has been changed, this should be reflected on your website. For your customers and potential customers, your branding message is whatever is conveyed through your website, so your site should be synchronized with the new company outlook.

The right clients are not attracted to your site

Over time, it can easily happen that your site no longer attracts the kind of target audience you’re looking for, i.e. those who are most likely to purchase from you. There are a number of reasons why this might happen, but the first places to look for specific customer appeal are the content on your site, and any galleries or images shown.

Not mobile-friendly

Since there are now more mobile users than desktop users browsing the Internet, it’s an absolute must that your site is displayed clearly and intelligently on mobile devices. If a user has to scroll left, right, up, and down just to read a page of content, you’ll probably be losing out on a huge segment of your market.

Slow load speed

If the pages of your site load too slowly, it might well prompt a user to abandon and visit another site. Pages might load slowly because of numerous images or images that are too large, an outdated theme, or possibly inadequate powering from your host provider.

Inadequate calls-to-action

Without a doubt, your site needs one or more calls to action, but they have to be placed optimally, in locations right after you’ve gotten the user’s attention, and you’ve piqued their curiosity to find out more.

Your site needs more effective, updated content

While a good-looking site might initially attract visitors, it’s great content that keeps them there. Most users are looking for relevant and useful information from a site, not visual appeal. There are tools you can use to determine which kind of content holds user attention, and you should use this information to include more effective, updated content on your site.

New apps and integrations

New and useful apps emerge daily on the Internet, and users have come to expect having all that capability at their fingertips. Then too, your business could be helped significantly by including more back-end integrations with processes such as order fulfillment and tracking, and CRM. It’s worth the time and effort to include these capabilities both for users and for yourself.

This may all sound a little overwhelming, but you don’t have to go it alone. Take advantage of the expertise of the best website design company in the area, and contact MySMN for great San Diego web design. In addition to helping you with improved content, SEO, and functionality, MySMN also has the reputation for being a responsive website design company, so you’ll be sure to capture the mobile market. Contact us to learn how we can help your business!

Authentic Marketing
Posted by Patrick

Authentic Marketing Tactics for Small Businesses

Advertising, Business, Content Marketing, Local SEO, Marketing Campaigns, SEO, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Strategy, Technology, Trends 0

There are a great many ways that your small business can use authentic marketing to engage more fully with consumers these days, and to convince them that yours is a company worthy of their patronage. Strategies like those listed below are all designed to take consumers below the surface level of your business, and establish a deeper sense of familiarity or intimacy with them. If you can achieve that, you will likely have found the key which unlocks the door to customer loyalty.

Authentic Marketing

Share Who You Are 

Today’s more sophisticated consumers want more than just a run-down of your products, services, and features – they want to know who it is they’re doing business with. They want to know why your company is a better provider of their needs than other companies might be, and they want to know what your company stands for. By opening up to your audience, you can literally bring them inside your world, and give them reasons to choose you over your competitors. Tell them your personal story, introduce them to some of your employees, relate to your audience what your values and beliefs are – do all of these, and you’ll be marketing as authentically as your potential customers could hope for.

Have a Cause 

One of the things that most appeals to consumers about a company they might do business with – and which they consider to be the most authentic – is the fact that a business aligns itself with a cause greater than itself, and greater than the entire community. This shows that your company is one that cares about more than just profits, but that it cares about the human experience and about making the world a little bit better place. Yogurt manufacturer Yoplait has had a very successful ad running for nearly 20 years now which encourages consumers to return the lids from their products, in exchange for making a $.10 donation to a breast cancer charity for each returned lid.

Use Facebook Messenger 

Using Messenger carries a number of advantages that instantly overcome many of the difficulties with reaching your audience. First of all, people trust Messenger, and that trust automatically transfers to your business when you engage with them. You already have their identities in a session, and that allows for the most authentic kind of customer feedback. Perhaps best of all, Facebook will get you an open rate four times greater than email will, and a click-through rate which is ten times greater – no contest!

Create Unique Experiences 

If you can generate unique experiences with potential customers, it’s a great way to establish a bond, and it also stands a fair chance of being shared endlessly on the social media. One memorable such experience was recently devised by Ikea, which developed an ad that invited pregnant women to urinate on the ad paper to see how much of a discount they would get on a new baby crib. This kind of marketing causes direct participation of consumers and generates buzz-worthy interest. In fact, it was such a unique and funny way to advertise a discount that it was widely shared, and ended up achieving tremendous reach for Ikea.

Use the Power of Humor 

The climate on social media today is one of ironic humor, and users have developed a high degree of sales resistance to traditional advertising. But if your company can authentically market in a way that rides that same wave of pervasive humor, even at your own expense, it will bypass the sales resistance and include you as part of the culture. Take for instance, an ad recently run by the city of Los Angeles, which was seeking a new Graphics Designer. The ad was not a polished, professional-looking appeal though – far from it. Instead, it looked like something a child drew with a crayon, while having his elbow poked repeatedly during the effort. It went viral.

More than ever consumers are looking for an authentic connection to businesses on social media. Utilizing the strategies above can help small businesses break through the noise and create lasting relationships with their target audiences. Contact us today to learn more! 

2017 year in review
Posted by Patrick

2017: A Year in Review

Applications, Business, Marketing Campaigns, Mobile, SEO, Social Media Marketing, Strategy, Technology, Trends, Web Design

As 2017 ends, you may be looking at what’s working and not working for your marketing plan.

How engaged were you in social media efforts, and did they pay off? Where are your ad dollars being spent and where should they be spent in the future?

Ultimately, the question is: what should we keep and what should we let go?

To help you in this review of marketing effectiveness, here are some trends for 2017 along with some predictions for 2018.

Social Media Remains and Continues to Evolve

Third-party platforms are ones that you both have to keep up with but also be wary of due to their “here today, gone tomorrow” nature.

Either way, you should be considering what has been working for your company, but also new opportunities, such as using Instagram, which has a reported 800 million users per month. Their one-year-old addition, Instagram Stories, has now overtaken popularity from Snapchat.

LinkedIn may become a reliable B2B marketing tool as it continues to improve its platform.

And with influencers, 95 percent of marketers say they have found them effective for their marketing needs.

Facebook and Twitter, relatively old to the game of social media, are finding their challenges, so it may be Instagram’s time to shine in 2018.

Nearly Two Thirds of Digital Ad Spending Linked to Only Two Companies

Though Facebook may be looking at a decline, what’s interesting is how much digital ad spending they’re involved in. Along with Google, this duopoly owns a hefty 63 percent of that market. Google Shopping and Facebook’s Shop Section take gathered data and create a targeted ad experience.

Mobile Use Is Up and Will Remain So

An increasing number of people rely on their smartphones for so many tasks, so it’s telling that a sizable amount of Google and Facebook dominance in digital ads comes from mobile ads.

Magna reported that 55 percent of digital come from clicks and impressions on mobile devices used globally. As phones because more and more integral to our everyday lives, you can expect an increase in mobile use and ads targeting mobile users.

AI: Always Here to Help

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a notable tool in marketing, specifically with the use of chat bots on websites. These bots never tire and can be there for your prospects and clients, even when you’re asleep.

Other AI methods, such as Streak, can help with inbound marketing and sales funnels—specifically moving prospects down sales funnels, converting them into clients.

In 2018, you can expect to see more brands using AI and its algorithms to create customized experiences based on user data on social media platforms and web searches.

Video: Go Live

Probably one of the most popular tools in marketing lately has been video, where most marketers have reported that it has the best ROI. Successful videos seem to effortlessly blend entertainment with useful information, all within a small snippet of a video.

Live video, through platforms such as Facebook Live and Instagram Stories, is one key way to leverage video in 2018. If you have some events or announcements in the coming year, consider hopping on Facebook Live to make it. Embracing this even now will help you stay on the cutting edge of digital marketing.

Posted by Patrick

A Realistic Look at San Diego and Its Charming #8 Luster

Business, SEO

In a recent study done by WalletHub, San Diego was deemed the eighth best large city to live in across the nation. Not bad, but we all know that it’s a stretch to give us that number as the dream vacation destination of So-Cal. Whether you want to transport yourself back to the vibing ‘60s in Ocean Beach, dine like royalty in North County’s Encinitas over the ocean, or explore the authentically enchanting history of Balboa Park, we have it all. Ribbed with beautiful beaches, delicious food, fun activities and nightlife accommodations, and incredible hotels that inhabit our serene city, we are eternally lucky to call San Diego home. However, it is important to know that people that live here work as hard as they play.

Number 30?

Recently ranked number 30 out of 62 national areas, San Diego’s current local economy and income taxes are something to consider when desiring to move here in a realistic sense. Granted we are no L.A (well behind us at number 38), or San Francisco at 17th. But we are climbing the ladder of difficulty to sustain a life here and fast. Sixth in health, 11th in education, and just shy of San Jose’s high point average, it is getting harder to make a life for yourself here. What is hurting us to sink so far down the list? Our wages. It is no secret that although economic prices are high in Northern California, the incomes match them creating an easier environment to afford. However, we seem to have lost the memo based on what we are paying to live here as our wages are significantly lower than our overall local pricing.

All locals know these facts as they are more than aware when trying to pay their rent or their mortgages; we really have no choice. But, according to WalletHub, this survey was “tied to a time of the year when families and individuals decide if it’s time to move for a better job and better life.” Due to the company’s always updated data compilation chart, people have become “obsessed” with understanding the best places to live within their means. Who could blame them?

Number 48?

Like we said, none of this is new information. But Bakersfield winning the number one spot for family activities and fun over San Diego kind of irks us, we won’t lie; especially with how a resident must endure the smell of manure 24/7. Come on. With one of the best Zoo’s in the nation and the incredible Hotel Del, one would think that San Diego would not rank 48th. But we have become small potatoes in this category.

Our fun beaches, awesome nightlife, lavish hotels, bay front views, and authentic restaurants unfortunately don’t match up what we would hope. But nonetheless, we still love our city for what it is. Despite the tough times, San Diego still is a magical place to sustain a life and raise a family.

Posted by Patrick

San Diego Might Be Open Until 4 A.M.

Blogging, Business, Local SEO

We are already known as the most liberal state out there, so now California is out to set the bar again for the states. This, a play on words as we are aiming to achieve the extension of bar time until 4 a.m. But this is no easy feat against public safety organizations scattered across the state that believe the lack of restriction will increase the crime rate. Local requirements, longer business hours, more law enforcement- will it be worth it?

Most argue the costs will not be, especially former chair of Pacific Beach Planning Group, Brian Curry, according to the San Diego Union Tribune. “Where’s the positive economic impact of our current law which allows drinking until 2 a.m.? Does it in any way come close to exceeding the negative impacts resulting from injury, death, and law enforcement, (on) city services, and anti-social behavior?” Yes, he has a point as our economy is already struggling. But we already know that the youthful piece of the population will be in favor of this motion, feeding their habits, social lives, and personality. As much as they are hungry for alcohol and adventure, local officials feel the same about the way the city is perceived; always wanting to be “the best.”

The silver lining? Those that want to partake in the communal uprising of socialites can choose to and those that want nothing to do with it can reject the extended bar hours. It’s a win-win. Co-author of the bill, Joel Anderson, says “this bill will allow tourist destinations an opportunity to apply to stay open later only with local support. Every scenario suggested by the naysayers would quickly fail to be approved in the process.” Although it will be fun for kids to stay out later, the real responsibility will rely on local officials that will be required to form task forces comprised of local police, Highway Patrol and more to oversee the aftermath of the extension.

It will also be interesting to see what this possible extension will do for those that drive drinkers for a living, aka Uber and Lyft. One of the major worries of the public safety organizations is that the differing closing hours in the community will increase chances of drunk driving. “Different bar hours between different cities would only encourage people to drive- oftentimes while drunk- in order to find a business that is open late and still serving alcohol.” Which we understand, but considering how prominent these driving companies are in this city, we feel that most will simply rely on the cheap form of transportation more. But then again, who knows?

Intended to increase the sources of entertainment that feed the economy, tourism, and marketing for the city, the bill is currently awaiting the approval of the local Assembly Appropriations Committee here in San Diego. If the Committee is in favor, the bill will become law and has potential to be issued as soon as January 1, 2020. Being in the Gaslamp community, lucky enough to be, we are often exposed to this rich, vivid nightlight culture. As long as our society does not risk their well-being, we are in favor of the extension and hope to partake in the festivities from time-to-time. How do you feel about the bill? Are you in favor of the nightlife or the security of safety?