Running a small business means making many decisions that may make or break your chances of success. Of all the choices you might make, one of the most important can be how much to spend on your company's marketing campaign. While Forrester Research reveals that most companies plan to spend about thirty percent of their budget on internet marketing in 2017, you may be working with limited resources. If so, there are a few ways you can stretch your marketing dollar as you strive to reach a wider audience.

1.     Teach Instead of Selling

Today’s web users are savvy and know how to avoid ads, so if you plan to make video content, you may want to consider making one that teaches your viewers something related to your product instead of trying to sell it to them directly. For example, USC offers their readers valuable resources related to the graduate programs they offer instead of straightforward advertising, and you can do the same. You can find out more about their communications classes and other business related programs online.

If you want to use this technique, start out with a simple video that runs anywhere from one to three minutes in length. Next, choose an informational topic your customers might be interested in. For instance, if your company produces organic peanut butter, offer a recipe that includes your product and then include the company’s URL and social media information at the end of the video. Your prospective customers may be much more curious about what you have to offer if they learn instead of being pandered to.

2.     Offer Data

Offering customers and those who comes across your company’s blog data relevant to your business may peak their interest in your business. This is a clever tactic because as a general rule, people are more interested in facts than they are advertising. Create infographics and charts for your blog and use them to interact with your audience. Ask them to weigh in on the data you have presented, and once you get a conversation started, engagement may lead to conversion.

3.     Seek Out Volunteers

Maryville University reports that college students are more tech-savvy than ever, and this may work to your advantage when it comes to saving money on marketing. Many college students are seeking volunteer or intern work to add to their growing resume and may be willing to work with your company to gain experience. You can use your company’s social media accounts to seek out volunteers who may be willing to create infographics, videos, and Facebook posts for you.

4.     Create a Variety of Content for Your Site

Your company’s blog should include a variety of information and not be limited to product descriptions or ads. To keep your readers interested and subscribed, you should offer them content that includes lists, articles that measure the pros and cons of a product or service relatable to your business, and photos. This may help you coax your readers back to your blog time and time again.

Finding affordable marketing solutions for your small business can be a challenge. However, creating quality content and using free online resources can help you get the word out like never before.

Strategic branding is a great method to build brand equity, giving a strong advantage to a company. It also boosts the value of the product. But how exactly is strategic branding achieved? To fully understand strategic branding, we have to first examine its key elements.

Vision

Your company's vision pertains to your goal for your business and why you do what you do. Before running a business, an entrepreneur has to set his or her goals. These goals will serve as motivation for what the company wants to achieve. Without a specific goal, it would be futile to pursue a business.

Mission

This is where you define how you are going to meet your business goals. Traditional mission statement that are filled with difficult and vague terms will only confuse your consumers. Avoid this so-called cliché. For an excellent brand strategy, an entrepreneur should come up with a simple statement which covers the important content. The main questions you must answer within your mission are: What actions do you take? Why do you take these actions? How do you do you do what you do?

Instead of adding to the burden of consumers, the entrepreneur must promote comprehension. It is very necessary for the crowd to understand what you are trying to convey. Once the audience had fully understood these concepts, they will have a strong understanding of how your company operates.

Brand Positioning

Brand positioning is concerned with the accurate description of what a company does in its given industry. In addition, it identifies the group of people who are the main beneficiaries of the products. A company must be able to emphasize its unique value and its edge over the competitors.

A worthy brand strategy will bring a business ahead of their competition. Businesspeople must understand that positioning is mainly influencing the mind of the target customers. They must think of effective ways on how to make their brand far different from what other companies offer. If a company succeeds in doing so, then they can set their company apart from their competitors and stand out.

Brand Values

Values are anchored with observed behaviors. The proposition of value must come along with tangible benefits to be received by customers. In other words, brand values must convey the self-expressive, rational, and emotional aspects of the brand. The combination of the three will give a sense of how a brand sees itself to the public.

Base Create believes that you should be promoting your brand values not only through words, but also by actually reaching out to connect to target consumers emotionally. This assures that the company will earn credibility and resonate with its target audience. In the same way, the brand will become attractive to them. When the values of a brand are evident, it's easier to convince consumers.

Final Thoughts

Successful strategic branding is a manifestation of the company’s efficiency in planning and executing details. The most important thing you should remember is that you have to stay true to the promoted brand. When an organization is positively talked about by the majority of its target customers, it means that branding is successful.

In order to have a perpetually successful business, it’s necessary to engage in many efforts meant to directly increase profits. You might run internet advertisements on YouTube about your company’s products or rent booth space at a trade show to promote what your company does while simultaneously reaching out to new customers.

However, there’s something you can do to indirectly increase your company’s profits while helping others: Pursue charitable giving outlets. That way, you’re doing something that directly assists people outside your business, but your company still reaps some benefits.

It Shows You Are Not Afraid to Take Stands for Shared Company Beliefs

One major benefit of associating your business with particular charities is it allows you to show support for meaningful causes. Maybe the mother of your company’s CEO is bravely fighting breast cancer, or your human resources manager feels especially passionate about charities that support women who are fleeing domestic violence because she escaped it herself.

When you take stands by choosing to support particular charities, some of the beliefs that are present with your company’s makeup get put on full display. More than likely, customers will look favorably upon your decisions, even if they don’t personally feel passionate about the causes you’ve chosen. If people get the impression your company hoards money and doesn’t do worthwhile things with it unless they directly relate to corporate gains, they may decide to do business elsewhere.

Giving Back Could Boost Employee Morale

Does it seem like your employees are increasingly disgruntled and causing you to feel worried about an increasingly high turnover rate? Encouraging your workers to get involved with ways to give back could improve their morale.

People want to feel they are using their life for things that may have positive impacts immediately, as well as far into the future. When you make it obvious your company is committed to getting aligned with certain charities, employees will realize they’re working in a place that cares about others. Once they get involved in your efforts, they’ll be more likely to believe they’re engaged in things that truly matter, rather than just coming to work, punching a time clock, and going home.

When employees are happier, they should also be more productive. That means your company should be well equipped to achieve profit goals and make other gains that increase its competitiveness in the marketplace.

You can also connect charitable giving to activities that could encourage employees to work more smoothly together as part of a larger team. If a small group of your workers decides to participate in a run that benefits mental illness research, they could gain first-hand understanding of how it’s often more possible to reach targeted goals when working together instead of alone.

Charitable Giving Offers New Branding Opportunities

Once you begin giving support towards specific charities, it may quickly become evident that there are numerous ways to showcase your company’s branding through those charitable efforts, and thereby boost your profits.

Perhaps you’ll decide to redesign your company’s packaging so it mentions how your brand gives a certain percentage of profits to a particular cause. Alternatively, maybe there is a charity golf tournament happening soon in the area and your company has been asked to serve as one of the main sponsors. In that instance, your logo may be displayed on banners, billboards, and within printed programs about the event.

Suddenly, there are many ways to promote your brand that didn’t exist before you decided to get involved with the charity. Those outlets ensure your company enjoys a greater degree of visibility.

It Suggests Where Customers Should Spend Their Money

When people start to feel overwhelmed by wondering what they can do to make major differences in their communities and the world, they often start purposefully doing business with certain companies over others. If customers realize the causes your company supports mirror the things that are important to them, they may choose to give you their patronage, knowing you’re at least using portions of your profits towards things they, too, support.

Eventually, your business could become so successful that you decide to focus your charitable efforts by setting up a foundation. The Donald Burns Foundation is one example that came about after its founder, Donald Burns, found success through many corporate activities, such as serving of the chairman of the Board of Directors for magicJack, a leading VoIP company.

The foundation’s website proudly announces various ways money has been used, and which organizations get support. Then, it’s simple for people to browse the website, know it’s associated with magicJack products, and choose to buy those items because they want to support the foundation that’s indirectly associated with such merchandise.

By now it should be clear how charitable giving opportunities could indirectly cause your profits to grow. After choosing at least one charity to support, you may realize the resultant benefits are greater than you envisioned they’d be.

As the marketing and entertainment world continues to grow, animation is one of the fields that are ripe for growth. Brands are looking for ways they can leverage new audiences and gain competitive advantage in the market. Advertisers agree to the fact that the events in animation increase the buying power and attraction of customers towards a product.
 

There are high chances that animation will take over advertisement in 2017. However, the trend will move from traditional slides to incorporate story telling. These presentations will be entertaining but also geared towards selling a product. In fact, content developers have already begun to introduce this idea while marketing for their clients.
 

Return to Stop Motion

The drive for honest and authentic communication between consumers and brands signaled a significant return to stop-frame animation in the past years. The hand-crafted feel and look of animation ads precisely communicate this agenda. Most people have been creating ‘mock motion’ for several decades, but there appears to be the emergence of a renewed desire to use animation for business advertisement.

I understand that you can create nearly everything in a computer. However, there is something about inherent limitations in the discipline of handmade sets and puppets and capturing your performance in the camera that gives it a real feeling. We have also seen what I refer to stuff moving around animation in the recent past. In this case, there has been a move in real objects frame by frame as they cross over with pixilation to generate the same natural feeling.

Investment in Virtual Reality

Technologically, virtual reality took its fast significant steps in animated story telling in the past one year. The implication is that 2017 will see such stories play a significant role in business advertisement. Animation is strategically suited for VR as you precisely control the interaction between the viewer and the subject he is looking at. The movement of the headset can trigger a specific action in the animated character which brings an intimacy and immediacy to the interaction. These new developments will make animation take over advertisement in 2017.

As we speak, Aardman has already delivered two big VR projects for the BBC and Google and we still have more in the pipeline. The Google spot light stories made use of the Google project story development kit and Google Advanced Technology with the aim of achieving better creative results. 2017 may see an extension of this approach in the advertisement process of most firms.

The 2016 BBC connected studio project dubbed ‘we wait’ was a good experimentation in the immersive news and making use of VR to create a robust emotional connection between the subject and the viewer. It was exploring the crisis of Syrian migration as they tried to get to Europe by crossing the Mediterranean. The story had an intrinsically engaging subject matter. The story made use of the unity pipeline but the main drivers of the story was to get an emotional impact of the script. The spiel studio is a good website for creating such video that has emotional attachment to the viewers. The only way to create loyal customers is by making use of a communication media that touches to their instincts.

Given the amazing results from both Google and BBC, businesses in 2017 will begin to impress this tool in their animated ads. Most brands strive to get an emotional attachment with the customer. If animated stories can achieve this goal, then animation will definitely take over in 2017. The old methods of advertisement are no longer attractive to the customer. Brands are seeking for platforms that can provide a broad range of innovation and creativity.

Growth and Virtual Reality

VR will enter an important stage in 2017 as technical companies strive to come up with the best devices and develop enough content to build the market share. One of the platforms will be story telling in animated VR that will make customers to review the presentation more often. It may happen slowly but the idea has a great future even beyond 2017 especially when it comes to the short-form series of content.

Most users may prefer the short-form instead of features binge able or snack able on your own. There will be a lot of research on how this idea can be incorporated in animated adverts in 2017. Such experiences are what most brands would like to see in their customers. The trend will shift from using traditional animation slides to contemporary ones that deliver a new look.

Stand out Animation Advertisement Application in 2016

The uses of animation in 2016 reflect how the channel will be used in 2017. There has been some amazing works that come out of the industry of late. One of the most amazing is the man and dog spot from coca cola by Kylie Matulik and Todd Mueller at Psyop. This presentation captures the dog’s eye view of the world in a brilliant manner as it tries to visualize smell in a creative manner. 2017 brands may want to create a state in which customers will follow their products in a similar manner.

Another perfect example is the Nautalis: “France A. Cordova” from Colin Hesterly at the Not to Scale. It presents a beautiful 2 D piece with a very strong and clean graphic in a color palette that is limited. It marries the idea of artistic representation and science in a perfect and inspirational manner. Businesses are using the same approach to present their brands in an artistic manner.

The other great application of animated advertisement in 2016 was the high concept of stylized cCGli campaign that was created by passion picture for the BBC Rio Olympics. The interplay between the human and animal characters captures the primal instincts of any viewer to fight and win. This experience is presented in a beautiful and elegant framework. Advertisers are still looking for ways in which they can create a strong desire to consume a product. Animation will be at the center stage when it comes to creating brand awareness in 2017.

Maximize financial and operational performance through creating, executing, and analyzing contracts.

When you do business with another company, you need to use a contract to specify the activities that both of you will perform and the terms that need to be fulfilled. Sadly, companies put a lot of stress and pressure on themselves when creating a valid contract that will reduce costs and improve performance.

When a contract is created incorrectly, you might end up losing thousands of dollars. The foundation of good contract management includes setting the right expectations, focusing on the outcomes, and using a proactive approach. The steps to achieve this include the following:

1. Set expected goals.

Are you sure about what kind of contract you aim to deliver? If not, then you should have a meeting with all key stakeholders. This is essential in order to come up with a common understanding about your expected outcome with any given contract. Grasping in the dark in the middle of production will only lead to a lot of problems. Clarify everything before you seal the deal.

2. Build a strong working relationship.

The success of a project largely depends on how you and your business partner works. If you can’t see eye to eye, then you might always be in a middle of an argument and won’t have a productive relationship. When this happens, productivity is affected. Hence, always make an effort to build a good relationship culture with another.

If there are things that you can’t agree upon, make sure that you discuss it prior to or during the drafting of the contract. To help you with contract management, you can employ the services of ContractWorks.

3. Understand the risks and learn how to minimize them.

In every action, there is a risk. You and your business partner should be able to set clear measures to address the issue of late or non-delivery. When doing this, you’d want stakeholders to be present.

When dealing with a company for a long time, you might want to review your risk status. Issues that were not prevalent before may happen in the next month. Discuss with the stakeholders about what actions you’re willing to take in order to lessen the risk. Write them down on the contract.

4. Get updates from stakeholders.

Since you don’t handle all business processes, there’s no way for you to know how the contract is performing in all divisions. That is unless you ask the stakeholders. In fact, you might feel that the contract is performing well without considering that there are departments or individuals struggling to meet the expected goals outlined in the contract.

Since all stakeholders are involved in the contract, make sure that everyone has a voice. Ask for their concerns and try to address them within the language of the contract.

5. Review the contract.

It’s important that you know whether the contract is working well or not. To determine this, you should review the contract regularly. When you notice any discrepancies or unfulfilled terms, it’s best that you report this to the stakeholders.

Final Words

The success of a contract largely depends on the flexibility of both parties and their willingness to adapt to the stated terms. While you can't always avoid problems, you can at least minimize them through employing a  good contract management system.

Social marketing does not differ much from conventional marketing, as both of their goals is to sell products and increase ROI.

Social marketing uses commercial marketing strategies to promote a certain behavior. It is an awareness-raising tool to influence people’s behavior and choices. By applying social marketing principles, you can successfully influence behaviors of your target audience. You’ll know your social marketing is successful if your sales and web traffic increased.

With that in mind, here are four step-by-step procedures you can use to create the best possible social marketing plan for your business.

1.    You have to keep yourself updated.

You have to see and feel what is going on the industry so that you can respond to trends and news appropriately and immediately. When you have a hands-on attitude with your campaigns, you make smarter decisions. You can also plan and execute your campaigns with more success.

To have a successful social marketing strategy, you need to be fully involved. This way, you can personally gauge whether it is successful or not. If the campaign is not successful, then you have to immediately move on, make another plan, and execute it. If you aren’t prone to using the trial and error technique, you can always follow proven and tested marketing strategies.

2.    You must follow a fixed social plan.

Every social marketing activity must have thorough planning. Make sure that you know the value of your business first. Then, let other people see that value for themselves. Only then will you be able to convince them to purchase or avail your products or services.

Be it a big or small campaign, you have to follow that plan you've initially made.  However, like stated in this guide from Shopify, you have to be ready to make some adjustments in the middle if you see that your audience is responding differently than you initially anticipated.

3.    You have to enhance your content

More exposure means better online visibility. However, online visibility does not solely depend on the number of posts, updates or content that you create. It also depends on the quality of your content. Make sure that your content is engaging, informative, and most of all, original. Making  high-quality content consistently will give you the exposure you need.

4.    You have to benchmark competition.

Competition always exists in business. Your target audience always has the opportunity to choose from a variety of options. Thus, you must have something unique. To combat this, you can offer extra services, free coupons, new features, and more, The bottom line is that you have to convince the target audience that you have something nobody else can offer at either a better price point or a higher quality.

For your social marketing activity to be successful, you have to know where you are in comparison to your competitors. Knowing this can help you generate lots of great ideas to do to improve your campaigns.

Conclusion

The way we do business are bound to change. If we fail to keep up with these changes, our business will slowly die. Complacency has no room in business. You have to keep improving. You have let your audience see your continued value, and social marketing is a powerful tool that can easily allow for you to do this.