Social Media Is Addictive … and That’s Good for Your Business!

lytron fort lauderdale strategic agency 2

lytron fort lauderdale strategic agency

You may have noticed in recent years that you are spending more and more time on your smartphone. And it’s not texting with loved ones or checking the latest sports scores.

Social media platforms like Twitter, Snapchat, and especially TikTok have become more addictive. And that’s not an accident. The people that own these big platforms spend a lot of time and energy working to make them practically impossible to put down. And their success can be good for your business.

Advertising Platforms

One apps like TikTok and Instagram, people can scroll through hundreds of short videos every hour without ever putting down their smartphones. That’s because these videos are digitally engineered to provide exactly the type of content that most appeals to that specific viewer.

The algorithms that run these sites keep track of what content you like, which videos you spend the most time watching, and which ones you share with other people. This information is then collated, analyzed, and used to keep reinforcing your feed with more and more content that it “knows” you are going to enjoy. As a result, once you start, it’s practically impossible to stop watching.

While that may be bad for your eyeballs — not to mention your productivity — it actually can be great for your business. That’s because these platforms essentially are free for users but come stocked with lots and lots of advertising. And these ads are pinpoint-focused the same way the content is.

Your Ad Here

So when you focus your digital marketing budget on streaming apps like TikTok and Instagram, you can get more for your money because your ads will only go to people who already are predisposed to want the kind of products and services your business offers.

Social media is changing the way businesses reach customers. By getting onboard now, you can grow your business while harnessing one of the greatest marketing tools every built.

To Improve Your Website, Check Out Your Competitors

Competitive research has always been an important part of business marketing. You have to know what other businesses like yours within your geographic area are doing in order to compete. And when you see a good idea on a rival’s website, it’s okay to adopt it as your own.

Not only that, but it’s also a good idea to reach out to your competitors and build relationships with them so you can learn from their experience and share your own within your common industry. Business isn’t war and your competitors aren’t your enemy. There’s plenty of business to go around and having a relationship with people who work in the same field as you is always rewarding.

Good Business

It’s a good idea to allocate at least part of your work week to competitive analysis. This includes networking with owners of competing businesses.

Start by going online and doing a simple search for businesses like yours within your community. Then visit their websites and see what they do similar to you, what they do differently, and what “works” and what doesn’t.

But competitive research isn’t all done online. When you have time, get in your car and drive over to your competitor’s physical location. Look around. Talk to their employees. Then introduce yourself to the owner. Don’t hide the fact that you own a competing business. Using subterfuge and deception will only cause hard feelings. Instead, offer your friendship and show a genuine interest in their lives. It’s possible to be both friends and competitors.

Best Practices

When you find something your competitors are doing better than you, take it and make it your own. It’s perfectly ethical to use other people’s good ideas to make your business better. Remember, the goal isn’t to reinvent the wheel. It’s simply to be better.

Competitive research is a great way to improve your understanding of your market and build your business bigger, stronger, and better.

 

Be the Face of Your Business

One of the most powerful marketing tools is the power of personality. When customers can put a face with a business, it instantly creates a loyalty bond that can result in increased trust, more familiarity, and repeat visits to your business website.

Who better to represent your business online than you? Nobody knows better about what your customers want, what solutions your business has to offer, and how you can connect the two through your products and services. So why not make you the face of your business in your online branding?

Person to Person

Some of the most successful marketing campaigns of all time were centered on a single person. Dave Matthews single-handedly put his fast food franchise, Wendy’s, in the public consciousness by personally appearing in his own restaurant chain’s commercials. Frank Perdue did essentially the same thing with his family’s chicken business.

When you put yourself out there as the face of your business, it instantly gives prospective clients somebody with whom they can make meaningful connections. People are much more likely to trust a real person than they are a logo, a mascot, or a trademark.

Lytron Strategic

Lytron Strategic can craft an online campaign that puts you front and center. Your image can be featured on your web pages, in your marketing materials, and even in your direct messaging to customers old and new.

People want to put a face with a business. When they feel as if they know you, they are much more likely to trust you and buy the products and services you are offering. By making yourself the face of your business, you can attract new customers while reinforcing trust bonds with existing ones.

Let Lytron Strategic share your story to inspire people, create genuine trust connections with customers, and take your online marketing to the next level.

Keeping Your Websites Fresh

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Websites Fresh

Websites aren’t a “one and done” proposition. To keep visitors engaged, they need to be updated, refreshed, and even redesigned every couple of years.

Website fatigue can be a real challenge for commercial websites. When people return to your business’s pages again and again, they become overly familiar with your websites. And as the old saying goes, “Familiarity breeds contempt”. To keep customers coming back again and again, it’s critical that you keep your website fresh, engaging, and interesting over multiple visits.

Refreshing Websites

Think back on your own experiences. The elements that you found exciting and inviting on your favorite websites quickly became tiresome and trite after repeated visits. The same images, colors, designs, and content quickly can become stale, unappealing, and even repellent.

Visitors to your web pages can have the same experience if you aren’t constantly refreshing, tweaking, and improving your business’s web pages. You want people to come back over and over again but you don’t want them to become bored or dismissive of your websites. The solution is to continually improve your online presence with the help of Lytron Web Design.

Lytron Web Design

At Lytron Web Design, our experienced professional web coders have the skills, tools, and knowledge to keep your web pages engaging for visitors regardless of how many times they click on your business websites. We continually monitor, update, and improve your online offering so that it is appealing and engaging to visitors old and new alike.

Don’t let an old, boring website turn customers away. To be successful in online marketing, you need to be innovative, proactive, and keenly aware of your page visitors’ expectations. With Lytron Web Design constantly updating and improving your web pages, you can instill the same delight and excitement visitors had the first time they clicked on your pages every time they visit your online business.

Branding Is More than a Logo

expert analysis 2

expert analysis 2

To people outside of marketing, a company’s “branding” simply means its logo or possibly its mascot. When you think of Frosted Flakes, you envision Tony the Tiger, right? So that must be the cereal’s branding.

In reality, a lot more goes into developing a branding strategy than simply a company mascot or a logo, such as Coca-Cola’s distinctive script. A branding strategy is actually as a holistic approach that determines how a business builds identification and favorability with existing and potential customers. The logo or mascot is the “face” of that strategy but there’s usually a lot more going on below the surface.

Branding Elements

So successful brands have a number of different things going on at the same time. These can include things like voice, storytelling, brand identity, brand values, and offering a new and original “vibe”. Marketing professionals spend a lot of time thinking “inside the box” when it comes to keeping their branding consistent, but also “outside the box” in order to offer new and creative takes on familiar feelings related to that brand.

Consistency is the key when developing a brand. For example, Starbucks has done an excellent job creating a linear vibe when it comes to developing its branding for its gourmet coffee chain. From the cups to the people making drinks to the in-store decor to the advertising, the Starbucks brand is familiar, comfortable, and inviting — and it keeps people coming back again and again.

Your Brand

At Lytron Strategic, our goal is to collaborate with you to define and develop your business’s specific brand and then come up with new and creative ways to reinforce it with your current and future customers so you can build your physical business and online reputation.

There’s so much more to the story than just your logo or company mascot. Let’s figure it out together.

Learn from Other People’s Mistakes …

20 years lytron 3

20 years lytron 3

Developing effective web traffic or online campaigns for your small business can be a case of trial and error: Other people’s trials and other business websites’ errors!

You likely are going to make plenty of as you go along. But you can minimize your blunders and maximize your success by learning from other people’s mistakes rather than tripping over your own feet all the time.

Look and Learn

Spending time developing and improving your business’s digital presence is an important element of your development. But you also should spend time looking at what your competitors are doing and learning from what they do poorly. It’s also fair game to see what they do well and take it for your own.

Every time you go online, it’s an opportunity to learn something that can improve your business’s website or campaigns. Keep a notebook nearby so you can keep track of what you learn. There’s always something you can find that can make your sites better — whether it’s poor choices your competitors made or something smart that you can steal and implement for your business.

Lytron Web Design

At Lytron Web  Design, we spend a lot of time and energy looking at other people’s websites. In fact, that’s where we get some of our best ideas for improving your business’s online campaigns and digital reputation. Constantly being aware of what other people are doing is the best way to learn new things, find exciting new ways to promote your products and services, and get to understand what customers truly want from your business.

Although it’s been around for a while, the web is still in its infancy. So every day holds new discoveries that business owners can use to improve their performance and reputation. Life is a learning experience and the closer you pay attention, the better you can make your website.

Tips for Boosting Your Small Business’s Reputation

Local businesses work locally. In other words, the pool of prospective customers typically is limited to those living or working within just a few miles of your physical location.

This is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because it means you don’t have to create costly global marketing campaigns aimed at a lot of different kinds of people located in a wide variety of places. Instead, you can focus only on those people living close by who are most likely to use what your business is offering.

It’s a curse because much of the success or failure of your local business depends on your personal reputation. If people don’t know you or have negative perceptions about you personally, it’s going to impact your small, local business.

Reputation  Building

Boosting your local reputation is a two-fold process. First, you need to make sure people know who are. Second, they need to like what they see. Both objectives are achievable with a few simple actions.

First, you need to make yourself known within your community. Advertising is fast and effective, but it’s also expensive. A more affordable and successful way for new business owners just starting out is to physically get out there and introduce themselves to their neighbors, especially influential ones such as the local Chamber of Commerce or social groups like the Lions or Rotary clubs.

Set up appointments with local leaders, like mayors and councilmen. Send emails to your US Representative and Senators. Start making connections with people who can help your business, even your competitors. The more people you know, the more likely word about your business will spread.

Getting People to Like You

In small towns, everybody knows everybody else’s business. This is also true of small communities within larger ones, such as where your business operates. So the best way to enhance your reputation is to treat people well, show genuine interest in what they have to say, and be persistent in introducing yourself to new people every day.

When it comes down to it, boosting your business’s reputation is just like getting people to like you in high school, college, at a new workplace, or anywhere else. Simply be a nice person who is engaged positively with their community and the rest will take care of itself.

Website Engineering Starts at the END and works BACKWARDS

web design software 1

web design software 1

Building a successful website begins with the end: What are the results you want to achieve? Identify your specific goals and the experienced and knowledgeable web design professionals at Lytron Web Design can build the site that gets you there.

Reverse-engineering your web page to deliver your unique and specific goals is the easiest and fastest way to get your business where it needs to be. Once we know what you want from your website, we can build it to suit your specific outcome.

Specific Goals

The operative word here is “specific”. If your goals are vague or generic — such as “I want to reach more customers” or “I want to make my business more well-known in my community” — it’s going to be hard to dial down and achieve these generic outcomes. To get optimal results, website creators need hard numbers: How many more customers do you want to reach in what specific timeframe? How will you measure how well-known your business is in your community and where do you want to set the goal base on this metric?

These kinds of questions help quantify the results you want by offering the ending point our web designers can use to start building your web pages. In web page creation, it’s always best to start at the end and work backward.

Planning and Development

So before you even begin to think about building a website for your business, it’s critical that you spend some time thinking about what exactly you want that website to do. Things like real numbers, hard deadlines, and specific outcomes offer our web designers the starting point from which they can reverse engineer your professional web pages to reach your specific goals.

At Lytron Web Design, we believe if you build it, they will come — but only if you know exactly what you want to achieve with your business’s web pages.

The Most Effective Social Posts Offer Something for Nothing

lytron fort lauderdale strategic agency 2

lytron fort lauderdale strategic agency 1

Today, every successful company has a high social media platform. Publishing content regularly on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and other popular platforms makes sense because that’s where most customers are today.

But publishing just any type of content isn’t a great idea. The posts you publish need to be relevant, on brand, and offer something of value to the people who see them. Random, unhelpful posts will turn people away from your brand. But if you can find a way to post interesting, entertaining, or useful things on your business’s social media platforms, people will actively look forward to your posts rather than tune them out.

In other words, you want to give people something for nothing on social media.

Inform and Entertain

People don’t pay for social media. With a few specialized exceptions, most social media platforms are free to sign up for and free to use as often as people want. Companies like Twitter and Meta (Facebook) make their money from advertising.

Buying ads on the most popular social media sites is a good way to boost your business’s name recognition. But for smaller, local companies it can be cost-prohibitive. So a better way to raise your profile is to create social media accounts for your business and then focus on providing followers with useful, entertaining, or informative posts that actively engage them with your brand.

Managing Social Media

The job of social media manager pretty much didn’t exist a decade ago. But today the biggest companies are hiring young people to manage their social media in order to engage with customers on the fastest-growing platforms in history.

For small businesses like yours, however, it often makes more sense to trust experienced professionals like those at Lytron Strategic. We can craft, launch, and manage your social media sites with posts that make genuine connections with both new and existing customers.

 

In Branding, Consistency Is King!

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To be memorable and effective, brands need to be consistent across all platforms: Print, broadcast, digital, and even signage and face-to-face messaging. Consistency is critical because it inspires familiarity in customers, making them feel comfortable with your and open to your marketing, making it more successful.

Elements like color schemes, fonts, and logo design should be consistent whether they are part of print advertising, websites, brochures, TV commercials, and even packaging. When your branding is always the same, your customers know what to expect from your business. But when it differs from platform to platform, it can be confusing and off-putting.

Amazon Marketing

One example of effective marketing is Amazon. The world’s largest online retailer has done a great job of keeping its branding consistent during every stage of the customer interaction. When you log onto their app or website, it always features the same familiar logo, the same color scheme that is anchored by package brown, and even the same simple, “regular folks” scripting style.

Then, when your package arrives, it comes in a box that features the same “Amazon smile” logo in a box that is the same color as the package brown featured on the website, digital ads, and elsewhere. Even the truck the package arrives in and the uniform worn by the delivery person is consistent in its branding.

Top to Bottom Branding

A lot of thought went into Amazon’s branding. But the results speak for themselves. In less than two decades, Amazon has gone from a niche online bookstore to one of the biggest companies on the planet. And much of that is due to its smart branding decisions.

Consistent branding continually reminds your customers of what your company is all about. Smart branding keeps everything the same on every platform and with every customer interaction.