Our past two Tuesday business tips columns have been about the good and evil of mobile for independent wine shop owners. Here’s a bit more on how small businesses are using mobile to their advantage. [level-members]
On top of the list of ways small businesses are using mobile (according to a recent study by Constant Contact) are two marketing tools: social media and email.
Now, you don’t have to use social media and email marketing if you don’t want to, but you should at least recognize that you’re out of step with retail reality and you’re a dinosaur headed for extinction.
Why? Because more than 70% of businesses use social media and a similar number use email marketing. Only about 4 in 10 advertise on social media platforms, though that number is rising.
As a hyper-local business, online advertising is probably not something you need to pay attention to at this point in its evolution – though as we discussed yesterday, geo-location is making digital advertising more appealing – but you certainly need to have good email marketing and social media plans in place.
We’ll provide an introduction to those over the next few weeks to help get you started and, if you’ve already gotten started, help you see more of a return on your efforts.
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