Going digital is “kind of a life-or-death situation for small businesses”
A group of students led out of the University of Alberta School of Business is helping small businesses get ahead of the pandemic-induced warp-speed retail overhaul that is pushing customers online in droves. The students are at the heart of the new Digital Economy Program (DEP), a free initiative that sees a team of U of…
Businesses are looking for skilled workers as they quickly shift to the digital landscape
The University of Alberta is offering three new continuing education programs to meet a fast-growing need for digital job skills, opening the door for people with little or no technological experience to build new careers. The trio of programs, delivered through the Faculty of Extension beginning in July, will provide the skills needed to fill some of the…
Map out your strategy, use a scheduling platform to post content and build an ideal customer avatar
Most business people I meet stall out with their social media efforts about six months in if they haven’t seen the results they were hoping for. It feels like you’re posting to no one and it’s not working. You don’t have as much engagement as you had hoped and now you wonder if you should…
As an online marketer, I spend a lot of my working day (you guessed it!) online. And I try to organize my time so I can be as efficient as possible for my clients and my business. About six months ago, I switched from using the Firefox browser to the Chrome browser as much as…
How to make your DIY photo shoot a success and, most importantly, give you some amazing images to use to grow your business
Photos are an important part of any social media feed. And along with stock photos, you need to incorporate some photos of you, your team, your product, your office, etc. If you aren’t in a position to hire a photographer every quarter, you are going to have to do the photo shoot yourself. That means…
We went from in-person meetings to chaos-driven online meetings. And we didn’t stop to learn how to run these meetings
For the past six months, business meetings have definitely looked a little different. People are utilizing Zoom calls, Google Meet or Microsoft Teams to replace the in-person meeting. Some don’t like mask protocol, some have their kids at home with them and some just see the advantage of having an online meeting (with one person…
SEO is incredibly important to the success of any online news outlet
You have a great online newspaper, but aren’t getting as much traffic as you'd hope. Ensuring that your website has complete visibility to customers should be your number one priority. This is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in. SEO is incredibly important to the success of any online business. Although Google makes dozens of…
Offer them amazing discounts and perks to make sure they know how important they are to your business, then let them spread the word
Our online customer buying journey is about to come full circle. We’ve gone from someone first hearing about you all the way to a regular customer becoming a raving fan and helping you grow your business. Let’s recap what we’ve talked about in the past few weeks: We started with interest and awareness. Someone already…
Always keep in mind these goals: easy to deliver, easy to implement. That gets purchased over and over
We’ve been working on making sure we understand the entire customer buying experience online. Today, we’re moving onto conversion. We started with interest and awareness and how your customer might hear about you – and what to do once they do. Then we moved to findability and reputation – both online and really important in…
You really need to control what’s said about you online and you need to show how you respond to all types of situations
Your marketing efforts should make an impact along each step of your customer’s online journey. From when they first see an advertisement or a post shared by one of their friends on Facebook, you’ve tweaked their interest. They’re interested in your product or service, and now they’re aware of your business. After becoming aware of…