Happy New Year! Here's what to expect this year from Google and others relative to local marketing trends.

It may have been a while since you've updated your website and you're looking for a new web design. While your site is probably due for a fresh look and feel, you may need to consider more than web design. Your business probably needs a fresh internet strategy. Consider this...

Many of my clients use Reach Magazine to generate leads through active discounts. It’s not a bad tactic and deal shopping, even of the paper variety, is far from dead! Online discount selling is also a major advertising tactic through the likes of Groupon, Living Social and even Google and Facebook pay per click ads. Without a strategy, this can very quickly turn into a lot of business that generates little or no profit. The “spaghetti at the wall” approach to discount selling is almost never the right strategy unless you’re just trying to unload inventory that is just otherwise taking up space. Here’s a list of key tactics that can help you turn a discount sales campaign into a long-term profitable and repeatable business strategy.

Perhaps because the small business owner is NOT a digital marketer, the necessary elements of effective internet marketing are not well utilized. The evolution of website maturity starts with "I need a good website". Then the realization sets in that a good website doesn't matter without traffic. Most businesses understand the need for ranking on the major search engines. That's the focus of most small businesses relative to their website today. It's not enough!

What happens when you've gone through these two stages? You've got a great website (by that I mean it represents your brand, is attractive and highlights your products and services). And let's say you're also pretty well positioned in the search engines. You're getting quite a number of hits to your website but you realize that those visitors aren't necessarily turning into customers. That realization is the difference between you and the digital marketer.