Four States Small Business Blog

Halloween is a truly spooky time of year that features horror movies aplenty. Yet those monsters creeping in the dark aren’t half as terrifying as certain scary mistakes in marketing. They ought to send marketers running away screaming, but just like the teens in horror flicks, unsuspecting businesses will walk straight into the jaws of doom. In today’s post, we’ve collected a trio of advertising horrors along with the tips you need to survive and avoid marketing mistakes like them for a happier, more successful Halloween.

Budgeting can be very tough for Four State business owners. You calculate your monthly overhead including your lease and utilities, then get to work projecting product costs, labor costs, taxes, and now all of a sudden, you need an advertising budget.

You’re all geared up and excited to finally be putting together your new marketing campaign. You’re full of great ideas—words, phrases, and slogans that you’ve heard others use, so you know they’re attention-grabbers. But is using the tried and true the best choice? Or could it be getting a little (or a lot) tried and true…and tired?

You know something about marketing, but want to learn more—that’s why you’re visiting this site and reading tips shared by some of the best Joplin marketing pros. But when discussing marketing efforts, you definitely don’t want to leave the importance of branding out of the conversation.

Every region has its collective favorite local attractions and businesses. These might include diners, parks, landmarks, hotels, historical downtowns, or amusement parks. They could include restaurants; for example, when we know we have family and friends coming to visit us, we'll make reservations at our favorite local eateries so our friends can have a taste.

Branding is a term that was once reserved for business marketing, but it’s expanded far beyond that now. Celebrities and entrepreneurs have personal brands that are as valuable and powerful as the organizations and companies that fill our marketplace. Recently, however, political branding has taken center stage. Applying brand to a political campaign isn’t actually new, but adapting the corporate terminology that surrounds branding is new in the mainstream. (This is, perhaps, most clearly demonstrated by the film, Our Brand Is Crisis, which centers around two consultants who are, essentially, political marketers.)

Brand awareness plays a vital role in the success of your small business. But how do you know whether your brand awareness strategy is working? Like every other aspect of your marketing strategy, it’s important to track and measure brand awareness to understand if you’re getting the results you want and maximizing ROI. Tracking brand awareness can be challenging, so in this post, we’ve put together some tips for getting started.

There’s something fun and exhilarating about visiting a casino for Americans. In fact, Americans spend much more on casino visits than they do on movie visits, and an annual $59 billion dollars are spent at casinos across the country.

Every marketing campaign relies on effective advertising frequency, which is to say, the number of times that a consumer is exposed to an advertisement or brand message per week that’s best at effectively influencing them to respond. It may sound like a magic number, but we know what that number is: a frequency of 3. Hearing an advertisement three times builds recognition and trust while inspiring action without the risk of wearout. In today’s post, we’ll talk about three ways to make the most of the first three times consumers are exposed to your marketing in Joplin, Missouri.

It may be strange to think of an industry like home improvement having an “off season,” but it certainly does. Think about it: In spring, people take on projects like painting to help make their home look great for the summer, and in the summer, they take on bigger projects like additions and window replacement because the weather is amenable, the daylight hours are long, and they can go on vacation while the work is being done. In fall, people work hard to wrap up projects and prepare their home for winter. However, whether during the winter (especially snow and frigid temperatures), short daylight hours, a cluster of major holidays from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day, and the beginning of tax season all make homeowners shy away from home improvement projects.