This should be the year to embrace the power of targeted advertising and segmented ad campaigns. Although these strategies have existed for a while now, the powerful combination isn’t widespread.

Segment your targets into leads, current customers, and previous customers. Create Lookalike Audiences (Facebook/LinkedIn/AdWords, etc) off of the combined list for a fourth segment. Now, create four different ad campaigns (complete with their own headlines, graphics, and landing pages) speaking directly to each of those segments.

SMB’s today are a little leery of the recent explosions in market share Amazon has eaten up. Big Box stores are also concerned, because they are more likely to lose customer share to Amazon than an SMB is. So, they had to adapt their approach and are meeting some success by pivoting.

Our Managing Director, Louis Tanguay, recently wrote an article for the California Business Journal about how to increase your business by 30% or more. Here’s a link to that original article.

Below, we’re written a little lead-in explanation, and an additional tip for you which expands on the initial concept Jay Abraham created.

Circle Marketing’s Managing Director, Louis Tanguay, was approached by the Small Business Digital Marketing Summit to be a panelist at their 3-Day National Summit in San Diego, CA. Honored to be asked to participate, Louis and our trusty side-kick Palu the Bulldog drove down to San Diego while the rest of us continued to work hard on our clients’ projects.

You own a small business, and know that over one billion people are using social media. How can you run your business, and find time to use social media to connect with potential and current customers, all while still trying to find the time to have a semblance of a personal life? We can help you with your social media marketing strategy by breaking down some best practices for you here.

NOT ALL SOCIAL NETWORKS ARE CREATED EQUAL
Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Google Plus, and LinkedIn are all social networks, but that’s pretty much where the similarity ends. Most small businesses don’t have the time to invest in varying their messages to effectively communicate with each very different social network audience. So, some small business owners resort to using programs which duplicate the same content across all the networks to save time and effort, but that is not an effective strategy.

Have you ever been baffled by the wide range of quotes for what it costs the design and build a website? How can one person on Fiverr or CraigsList only charge $350, while this other company is charging $10,000? Why do you need a $10,000 website if you can get one for $350, or, better yet…have your nephew build one for free or just design it yourself on a DIY website like Wix? Here, we’ll break down why websites costs different prices, and give you some guidelines on what to expect to pay, and what results to expect depending on what you pay (Retun-On-Investment, or, ROI).

Everyone knows they need marketing, but many small business owners have different ideas on what that is, or how much it should cost, or how to gauge if it’s working or not. How great would it be to have a clear understanding of what marketing can do for your small business, and how to track and gauge it’s success? Well, that’s easy…just keep reading!

Trends show that working from home, or working from “virtual offices” are a growing trend. It makes sense, because with modern technology allows those with office jobs and the like the ability to connect to the office from the comfort of home.

The problem with working from home is

Every small business needs a little extra promotion now and then. Promotions are just another form of marketing. Actually, anything you do to create attention and awareness for your business is all technically marketing. Let’s explore some easy, cost-efficient, and

In our earlier article, “Top 5 Website Mistakes You Shouldn’t Be Making” published a little earlier, we went through the Top 5 Mistakes most websites make. This goes for Small, Medium, and Big Businesses. Having a bigger business still doesn’t mean that a company is hiring the right people who are lead generation and search engine optimization minded. You’re not them, though. Well, not after reading both of these articles, right? Here are 5 more mistakes that we see all the time, and they don’t need to be made. These mistakes are hurting your ability to increase your

Designer and brand expert (and Google Analytics addict) Susan Newman started doing interviews about branding and positioning on her Branding You Better website. There’s a new one every few weeks or so, and they are incredibly insightful. Anyone interested in learning how to brand your business for strategic growth should read through a few of her brand interviews, and see how others who have been successful have done it.

You’ve seen the new DSLR cameras at every children’s party, and you’ve probably seen the vast amount of untrained (and mostly untalented) newbie “pro” photographers cropping up all over Facebook and on Wix websites. Everyone with a $900+ camera is a photographer, right? Well I’m here to tell you that while, yes, technology has improved our collective abilities to capture those special moments in our lives, there is a charm to the horrible family photos hiding away in your (or your parents’) old photo albums.

Check out the two photos here. Neither one is going to win this forgotten family photographer the World Press Photo of the Year award, but there is a certain something that’s been captured which the family will treasure and value forever. That treasure is