Four States Small Business Blog

As a small business owner, there’s a lot to juggle and even more hats to wear. You know that a website is an important investment for your business, but that doesn’t mean you know what you need to design one. To maximize your advertising dollars and website efficacy, you need to start by knowing what makes a good website. In today’s post, we’ll discuss the elements your website needs to be successful.

During the summer, when temperatures soar, it’s likely that consumers will already have HVAC companies on their minds as they rely on their air conditioners to keep them cool. Here are some ideas for HVAC company marketing in the summer that will help ensure a steady flow of business in the winter.

Many homeowners think of seasonal plumbing maintenance as winterizing — insulating pipes and sealing up cracks. However, plumbers know that spring and summer brings its own risks for plumbing issues. We’ve put together some tips to market your plumbing company during spring and summer.

For businesses that may be located a bit “off the beaten path” — meaning those that are not in a highly visible, highly trafficked brick-and-mortar location — effective marketing and advertising takes on added importance. To make up for a lack of visibility, and the likely lack of traffic, companies must step up their marketing efforts to create visibility in other ways.

It’s easy to underestimate the power of audio in the way we feel, think, and even make decisions. Understanding this impact in radio can be traced back to the mid-1950s when the burgeoning television industry first posed a serious challenge. While it was uttered with regard to radio dramas, the phrase that best sums up this power is “Theater of the Mind.” Essentially, the reason why audio is powerful is because of all the mental images, associations, and emotions that it can evoke, especially through radio.

It’s not hard to recognize that we live in an instant gratification world. From fast food to movies on demand, we’ve become accustomed to rapid response. Kissmetrics, an internet data company, reports that 47% of consumers expect a website to load in under 2 seconds and 40% will abandon a website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. For some consumers, two-day shipping for online orders is too long; they desire click-and-collect services that allow them to order online and pick up their items the same day.

As the market space becomes increasingly mobile-focused and reliant on multi-screen marketing, it becomes more and more important to know your customer's journey and the touchpoints your brand needs to capture in order to influence it. Customer Journey mapping is the key to truly understanding it in a visual way; it allows you to see the story behind the process from initial contact to consideration and purchase from the customer's perspective. This blog post will inform you on how to map your customer's journey along with insights for the customer journey mapping process.