At its core, content marketing is the creation and sharing of content with the ultimate purpose of attracting new customers, engaging with potential customers and nurturing current customers relationships.  By producing high-quality, relevant content, business owners stand to gain brand loyalty and potential business from prospects. When creating content, avoid making these simple mistakes to grow your potential customer base and gain respect from current customers. Having No Plan If content creation is not part of your current marketing plan, it needs to be.  Just like you plan out your marketing campaigns, content marketing has to be well planned.  A content schedule ...

Evaluating your website with a critical eye is one of the best things a small business owner can do. Your website is one of the most powerful assets you have so it’s important to make sure it’s working with you instead of against you. Take the time to look over your website, or better yet have an unbiased friend do so, and ask yourself these 10 questions. An honest answer will help evaluate your website and put you on the track to making it even better. 1. What do you see first? – The first impression is the most critical. Are you ...

E-newsletters have long replaced traditional print newsletters. Cost, ease of use, tracking capabilities and convenience are just a few of the reasons why business owners have turned to e-newsletters. Although there are many pros to using e-newsletters to stay connected with your customers and followers, your e-newsletters still need to be worthy enough to read.   Use the tips below to create an effective e-newsletter.   Think of Your Readers This may seem like a no-brainer, but we sometimes get too involved in what we want to say that we forget about what our readers want to hear. Understanding your readers means that you know ...

QR Codes Part 1 - What are QR Codes? QR Codes Part 2 – 4 Ways To Use QR Codes In Your Direct Mail Pieces In this final post on QR codes, here are 9 real life examples of QR codes being used by a variety of companies. QR codes are becoming more common marketing tool because of its ability to combine the best features of print marketing with the best features of online marketing. Ralph Lauren By leveraging QR code technology back in 2008, Ralph Lauren offered consumers the opportunity to shop via their smartphones by scanning the QR code appearing in print ...

Local businesses can easily gain eyes to their website by making sure their local search engine marketing is where it could be with a few simple steps. Claim your listing on major search engines. This is a simple step, but it is also very important. Claiming your business listing at Google, Yahoo, and Bing will give your company exposure and imrpove your rankings. Make sure you are listed in the correct categories. Having your business correctly listed is important in targeted searches. Making sure the mapping is correct and updating your listing can help with your searches. Keep your business information consistent. Having your information match ...

New Year’s Day – Friday, January 1st Birthday of Martin Luther King – Monday, January 18th George Washington’s Birthday (commonly known as President’s Day) – Monday, February 15th Memorial Day – Monday, May 31st Independence Day – Monday, July 5th Labor Day – Monday, September 6th Columbus Day – Monday, October 11th Veterans Day – Thursday, November 11th Thanksgiving Day – Thursday, November 25th Christmas Day – Friday, December 24th Are you planing your 2010 direct mail marketing calendar? Looking for new ways to improve the effectiveness of your direct mail marketing? OneIMS can assist you with creating a powerful and effective cross-media marketing campaign coupled with direct mail. We ...

Wish you all a prosperous 2010! Looking for new ways to improve your marketing strategy and increase sales? OneIMS can help. There are so many cost-effective strategic marketing and advertising options to fit your business need. If you are not sure if you are making the most of online marketing, other cross-media marketing solutions, let us help you do that. Contact us today at 1-888-ONE-IMS-1 or email us at sales@oneims.com. OneIMS is a Chicago Web Design Company. We specialize in integrated marketing solutions such as Search Engine Optimization, Pay-per-click advertisement and eMail Marketing. Some of the other cross-media marketing solutions that have proven to be effective for clients ...

"The lack of proper advertising and marketing is one of the top seven reasons cited by the SBA that lead businesses to failure."    - Alan Jackson, Global Cash Flow Network With the emergence of web and social media, mass advertising and marketing is no longer something only the fortune 500 companies can afford. With the power of online marketing, small and mid-size companies can reach to millions of people around the world cost-effectively. Not only can you reach them with powerful message and strategy, you also have the ability to track how people are responding to your marketing efforts and make ...

To many, the revolution in social media networks may seem like a fad that will fade out just as fast it appeared.  Yet, the truth is that social media is one of the fastest ways to reach out to prospective consumers. Between Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other similar social media platforms, everything that can be said about you, whether good or bad, is transmitted almost instantaneously across the globe. With over 300 million users, Facebook is by far one of the biggest social media networks out there.  While it may have begun as a tool to keep college students in touch, ...

Having a website and a presence on cyberspace doesn’t mean you’ll succeed, not in today’s competitive world of marketing.  While an online presence is key, you have to do more than just have a web address to keep your edge. Once you have a web address, you need to market yourself on all fronts.  This involves optimizing your website through either Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or by using Pay-Per-Click (PPC) technologies to drive more traffic to your site.  Yes, this is the equivalent of putting up a banner or awning outside your brick-and-mortar store telling a passerby who you are. SEO requires ...

By now, you’ve become accustomed to a variety of e-mail marketing tactics.  Small and large companies alike are using  e-mail marketing to engage their audience and to grow their sales.  The truth is that blasting an e-mail to everyone on your compiled client/prospect lists is not necessarily going to yield any results. The key to maximizing your conversions and improving the effectiveness of your e-mail campaigns is to have a strategic plan.  First, analyze the data you collected from previous campaigns.  By using behavior-based targeting, the likelihood of having better conversions is much greater.  Instead of sending your e-mail offers to ...

It seems that everyone’s talking about landing pages these days.  So you already have a website, why create a landing page?  Isn’t that just like having a one-page website in addition to your current website?  Not exactly. A landing page is a page that directly contains the content your visitor/customer is looking for.  This may mean that it’s a direct link to a promotion off your e-mail marketing campaign or newsletter, search engine advertisement or even a direct link from a directory or other related website.  The great advantage of landing pages is ...