As we get ready to wind down for a nice Christmas break, I wanted to give you this quick video message. Read More
Merry Christmas 2017
Discover What's Working Now For Local Business Marketing
We work with 100's of Local businesses across Canada and use this blog to share the best of what's working now for them and to answer frequently asked questions.
A few of our most popular articles to start off with are:
How A Website Review Resulted In A 620% Boost In Traffic
The results are in…
This January we launched a new and improved website. In June, we threw out our home page and redid it from scratch.
Sometimes, we get it wrong.
OK, maybe not “wrong” but not “good enough”. We regularly review the results from our website in our quest to keep improving web performance. In this article, I’m sharing with you our process for doing data-driven website reviews and a bit of a case study on how we used it to significantly increase results for us.Read More
Combine Print Ads with Your Website for Better Results
Is the print ad dead?
With all the talk about websites, Pay-Per-Click and social media marketing, it’s easy to think that the day of advertising in newspapers, magazines and the like has passed. Certainly, Online Marketing is a strong and worthy competitor for your advertising dollars and often squeezes out display advertising.
However, if print ads make sense for your business, then by combining your offline advertising with your online marketing, you can make your ads far more effective. Here’s how to use your website to turn regular display ads into powerful “direct response ads”.
Engineer Your Differentiation To Increase Magnetic Attraction
Why is it that some businesses seem to attract new Clients so much easier?
Without the benefit of reputation, referral or more clever ad, some businesses are able to attract their unfair portion of business. They have an “it” factor working for them. Show me one of these businesses and I’ll show you their “it”; they’ve put the Client-pulling power of Differentiation to work.
The Strategy of Differentiation is one of the load-bearing pillars of the Professional of Choice Strategy and is
one of the easiest and most profound marketing strategies you can deploy.Click To TweetRead MoreRIP Mr. Bob
A very good man, Mr. Bob, has passed away.
I just mentioned Mr. Bob in my article a couple of days ago and had a picture of our first trade show exhibit at one of his Mr. Bob’s Let’s Get Connected trade show.
For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure, Mr. Bob Cassells was a force of nature and a founding staple of Barrie’s small business community. He wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea and could come on a bit strong at times but I got to know his true heart of gold and his love for the small business entrepreneur first hand.
I have many stories of Mr. Bob but here’s my first…Read More
How We Survived the Enchanting But Deadly “Sirens of Success”
Looking back at the humble beginnings of Piggybank Marketing back in 2006, I feel a bit embarrassed. Not because of how “cheesy” and unpolished our image was back then but because it reminds me of an important business lesson we learned the hard way: “Beware the Sirens of Success”.
And, despite knowing better (at least intellectually), I fell into a common problem that faces many Professionals as they grow their practice and become successful. The good news is that I came to my senses before it was too late and doubled-down on correcting it.
Our Cheesy, Humble Beginnings
It was a local small business trade-show called “Mr. Bob’s Trade-show” where we publicly hung out our shingle for the first time.Read More
Why We Made the Switch From Joomla To WordPress
I’ve worked with both WordPress and Joomla since their very first releases (2003 and 2005 respectively and with Joomla’s predecessor Mambo since 2003). For a long time, WordPress was our go-to for simple blogging websites and Joomla was our bigger-brother solution for more complex sites.
Both remain solid Content Management Systems (CMS) however, as far as we’re concerned, WordPress has clearly won the race and we no longer actively develop in Joomla. We’ve made the switch from Joomla to WordPress.
Starting a few years ago, I noticed WordPress was really coming into its own. The little brother was growing up and giving its older Brother Joomla a run for its money. WordPress shed its reputation as being “just” a blogging platform and has become a very nice platform for creating powerful marketing websites.Read More
Piggybank Supports Furry Friends
Last year, the team at Piggybank Marketing wanted to do more than just “pass the turkey” at Thanksgiving; we wanted to #passthethanks.
We all got together and thought of a small thing we could do, because if everyone does something small, it all adds up to a lot! Last year we all picked up garbage in Queens Park, and we each did another #passthethanks for someone in need.
This year we are working together to collect donations for Furry Friends Cat Shelter in Barrie. They are a private shelter who relies entirely on donations to save hundreds of cats. We are requesting donations for these items most in need:
- paper towels
- white vinegar
- Mr. Clean
- liquid laundry soap
- clumping cat litter
- wet cat food
Donations can be dropped off at Piggybank Marketing for all of October.
How To Get Google Analytics To Reveal Your Local Traffic
A common mistake I see local businesses making when they look at their Google Analytics is that they look at their overall stats (number of visitors to their site, their bounce rate, how many pages were visited, etc.). While those numbers do have their place, the more relevant Analytic numbers to look at for a small business would be the stats for their local market.
Consider this actual example from a local business in Barrie, ON:
7 Steps to Get Your Phone to Ring With Inbound Marketing
(Here is a primer on the single most important marketing tactic available to local businesses today)
The topic of “Inbound marketing” is a big topic right now in the world of Internet Marketing. And for good reason. It’s a powerful strategy that can be a low-cost way to reliably and predictably bring your business new qualified leads and Customers.