The online marketing landscape is changing, especially for small businesses.  The rise of “the millennials” is forcing businesses of all sizes to inspect their marketing efforts and realign them with the tendencies and beliefs of this generation.  As a website developer, social media marketing specialist AND a millennial, I would like to shed some light on this unique group, their tendencies and what this means for your local small business’ online presence.

My parents are Late Boomers/Generation X (depending on your resources), and I am a millennial.  Just the word itself annoys me, because of the negative stigma associated with it.  I have a degree in linguistics from U of T, and the fact holds true is that a word can convey prejudice meanings just by its sound.  Millennials are individuals born between 1980-2000.  Although not as catchy as “millennials”, they can also referred to as “Generation Y” or “Echo Boomers”. Read more

Online Marketing for Small Business in Newmarket, Aurora, Georgina, Keswick, Uxbridge, Markham, York Region, Web Designer

How to Get Found Online: Putting It All Together

It’s time for the final segment in my three part blog mini-series “How to Get Found Online”.  Now that you’ve established your target market and created an online presence on social media, it’s time to wait.  Once your online presence is established, it may take upwards of 6 months to start seeing results.  I know, it sounds like a lot of time to wait for something that you’ve invested time, effort and money in, but there is not much in the way of short cuts around this issue and I will explain why below.  During this time, many people can get discouraged that their efforts were wasted, however I URGE YOU to be patient.  If it were quick and easy to obtain these results instantly, everyone would have done it, and than we’d be back at square one with the problem of an overload of companies and posts on Google fighting for the front page. Read more

Online Presence word cloud concept

How to Get Found Online: Creating an Effective Online Presence

In the second part of my three-part series, How to Get Found Online, we’ll explore how to create an effective online presence.  If you missed my first blog on selecting your target market, you can find it here, as this will be critical to effectively marketing online.  Now that you’ve carefully selected your target market, it’s time to narrow down where to spend your marketing efforts (and budget).  In an ideal world where money is not an issue, you can simply push out your marketing to every single online directory, social media stream, building website upon website and hoping that a member of your target market stumbles upon you.  But, this is not that world, and unfortunately, money is always an issue, especially for small businesses and entrepreneurs.  That is why they need a plan to have their online strategies budget work in the most effective way possible. Read more