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I remember 10 years ago ranting to new clients how they need to get a website. Then I moved on to tell everyone to get on Facebook followed by Twitter. Having a website and building your social presence are all givens now in marketing plans.

Daily I work with clients to increase their leads and conversions. I have noticed three marketing trends that have become the new standard among successful businesses.

  1. SEO is a must: You have to get found, and basic SEO is required to get your web page indexed at least and showing the titles and descriptions you set. Open graph needs to be set correctly so that your content can be effectively shared on social channels. Many companies whose competitors are employing SEO strategies will have to invest some time building their organic rankings. Knowing SEO principles is critical for your content strategy. There are now good SEO plugins for your CMS that make SEO easy to learn and implement. Check out our SEO Coaching Package if you want to get started quickly.
  1. You need to have a mobile friendly experience. Responsive websites are now the norm to accommodate both desktop and mobile users. The growing number of mobile users will soon surpass the desktop users. Google now includes mobile friendly in its ranking factors. Not having a mobile friendly website is no longer an option. Responsive websites by far are easier  to maintain than having both a desktop and a mobile website. If you website is built right it is easy to convert it to being responsive. On the other hand, it may be cheaper to build a new responsive web-site if you current website is built on older standards. Regardless, this is much easier to do than it used to be.
  1. Marketing is becoming a technology game. Affordable and relatively simple tools are now available to automate work flows, provide behavioral based email marketing, track campaigns and analyze results. This allows smaller companies to control and optimize their marketing efforts to optimize their results. Canadian companies also need proper marketing automation in place to confirm to CASL guidelines.

Small business can take advantage of these affordable technologies and build feature-rich digital experiences that market your company, target the right clients and get you more sales. It is very exciting!