Be In The Know Blog

Small businesses face a razor-thin margin for error when it comes to generating leads and increasing their customer base. With a new year underway, businesses already have their resolutions in place to grow in 2017.

Increasing leads is almost always among these goals. If you're unclear on how to generate leads but know you've got to find a way, consider these 10 steps to create more opportunity for your company:

1. Send Personalized Emails

Personalization goes a long way via email. Simple efforts at personalization can increase open rates by more than 50 percent, and they have higher click-through rates as well. Start with adding personal names at the tops of emails and then experiment with other personal touches.

The new year is well underway and with it comes the chance to take a fresh look at your marketing practices and make changes in preparation for the year ahead. Marketers need to adapt to this evolving landscape. Though it's true that old habits die hard, here are some practices that are definitely worth getting rid of in the new year.

Say Goodbye to Sales-Only Social Media

When social media rose to prominence in the early 2010s, wise marketers capitalized early on this trend by seizing the opportunity to market directly to their audience with what many saw as free advertising. However, in 2017, more consumers want to have conversations with brands and crave interactions over the same old sales pitches.

E-commerce depends on clicks, and these call to action examples (CTAs) have successfully generated not only clicks but conversions. If you're not sure how well your CTAs are converting, you can check your average bounce rate. Bounce happens when visitors leave your website without taking any action or, put another way, without responding to your site's CTAs. According to the research firm Compass, e-commerce businesses average a 57-percent bounce rate, while the best companies perform at 35 percent.

The higher your bounce rate, the more likely it is that your visitor didn't find what they were looking for when they got there. To achieve the hallowed conversion, your site's main function should be to help them find it. In addition to being obvious, however, effective CTAs are enticing. Check out how the following companies made their calls to action irresistible.

If you can't answer these content marketing questions before you post about your company, you're probably wasting time and money. The idea that great content alone will drive traffic and customers to your business is a myth, which isn't to say that content marketing is dead — far from it. According to the Content Marketing Institute, some 200 million consumers have installed ad-blocking software on their computers. That means in many cases, if you're not taking advantage of content marketing, your message isn't reaching your audience. As this Marketing Land article shows, however, eyeballs alone don't drive results: Content alone isn't king, but content that drives engagement still reigns supreme.

So do yourself — and the internet — a favor. Before you publish another article, ask yourself these three content marketing questions:

The end of one year brings the start of another and an opportunity to make resolutions for the upcoming calendar. The same goes for businesses. This is a great time for organizations and businesses to reflect on lessons learned from the past while planning for a better new year.

For marketers, much anticipation is built around the 2017 digital marketing trends expected to dominate their industry. In such a fast-moving industry, these trends can change dramatically from one year to the next. Brands that don't stay on top of these changes risk falling far behind their competition in the coming year.

Save yourself the trouble and get familiar with these six trends that are likely to dominate 2017.

Brand engagement is vital for gaining and retaining customers, and a strategy can be a tricky thing to craft. However, a look at how the sports world has successfully used social media to engage and energize fans can give you a few ideas about how to drive engagement in a way that will truly grow your online presence.

Make Fans a Part of the Conversation

Being a part of the online conversation is essential for today's brands, as more and more consumers expect to have instant access to companies via Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. However, it's not enough just to post the occasional update or response to a comment or message. Marketing Land columnist Sanjay Dholakia has observed how thoughtful, deliberate interaction has helped sports teams develop brand loyalty and increase fan attention. You can emulate this by posting regular updates, as well as links to content and interactivity invitations (for polls and contests) that will help followers feel like a part of the community.

New Year's can be overlooked as a holiday, but with this list of New Year marketing ideas, you won't make that mistake. While it's true that consumer spending drops in January — as shown in this chart from Gallup polls — it doesn't disappear altogether. Let's count down six ways to take advantage of this sometimes neglected holiday before the ball drops in 2016:

6. Continue a Campaign

If you offered a prize for pictures of a holiday meal, follow up by asking what fans did with their leftovers. You can offer a prize for the Best Use of Cranberry Sauce or even Best Neighborhood Service (for followers who donated time or food). It doesn't need to tie directly to your brand — this is more about building relationships.

Emerging digital channels — the rise of social media, the influence of online reviews, the importance of running a blog and publishing content — all seem to demand more than most marketers can afford to give. What's sometimes lost in the shuffle is the enduring value of a good business website.

While you need a variety of digital strategies in place to increase visibility and traffic to that website, there's a lot that simple digital property can do to improve its own value. Website performance metrics aren't only a gauge of your overall digital strategy — they also illustrate the efficacy of your website's offerings and design.

While the mobile revolution of the 21st century has changed the face of modern business in nearly every industry, the medical industry has been particularly affected by the rise of smartphones in the U.S. More than half of all smartphone owners have used their phones to look up a medical condition in the past year, and two out of three seeking immediate treatment (at an urgent care facility, emergency room, etc.) check their devices to find the locations closest to them. With mobile healthcare searches on the rise, providers may be wondering how they can connect with new patients and take advantage of this growing trend. Fortunately, the solution starts with two little words:

Yes, it's time to start your 2017 advertising plan. You know that ads can draw huge traffic to your site and generate business, but without a plan in place, you can quickly overspend without getting much in the way of results. If you're already a forward-thinking person, you might be asking, "But what about products that will be coming onto the market that we don't even know about yet?" This is exactly why you really need to plan.

One of the essential elements of an advertising plan is establishing goals. The path becomes clearer once you know where you're going. Determining your best response to various market trends is more doable when you have an advertising plan, which is not the same thing as a buy.