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You might be in awe of all the nice brand names out there. Google, Disney, Uber, FedEx... They all seem wonderful. How can you choose a name that will impress people like that? Use these tips to get closer to a killer brand name.

Apple... Samsung... Starbucks... Coca Cola...

What comes to your mind when you hear these words? The feelings, visuals, experience, perception, and concept that pops into your mind about these words is the brand they have built for themselves.

But make no mistake, branding is not just for the big companies. In fact, a business’s brand, however small and simple, is a crucial asset to any business.

To build your small business a strong brand, do the following:

✅ Analyze and research your target audience thoroughly.

✅ Analyze your competitors and their brand image.

✅ Decide on your brand’s personality and its tone of voice.

✅ Build your brand assets, including logo, colors, typography, style, and other visual elements.

✅ Document your brand’s story, mission, and vision.

✅ Apply the outcome to all your marketing efforts.

Website speed impacts your business in many ways. Here are 3 major ones that shouldn't be ignored:

🔻 Your website speed will definitely harm your SEO and cause lower ranks on Google and other search engines.

🔻 Data says that a slow website will reduce customer satisfaction by 16% which will also harm your business brand.

🔻 Slow websites can cause users to abandon your site. This will especially reduce sales if you have an e-Commerce website.

If you don’t want to be affected by such issues, make sure to:

✅ Check your hosting service performance.

✅ Optimize and compress images and videos before uploading them to your website.

✅ Setup and modify browser caching for your website.

That’s right! Only 4 seconds! Internet users have grown quite impatient throughout the years!

Check your website’s loading time through the link below:
🌐 https://tools.pingdom.com/

It will even give you a few recommendations for improving the speed.

Since mobile users are the majority of internet browsers, it’s especially important to optimize your website’s speed on mobile.

Having a nice and professional website is surely an important deal for any business. However, business owners usually tend to prioritize things like the appearance of the site. While the design itself is pretty important, there’s something else of enormous importance: your website’s loading speed. In fact, over a quarter of users will leave your site if a page takes longer than 3 seconds to load!

Here are the main reasons why you should optimize your web pages' speed:

✅ Faster websites decrease bounce rates, which basically means visitors won’t click back & leave your site to find another business with a faster site.

✅ Fast web pages highly impact SEO. Google likes sites optimized for delivering a higher user experience & serving users faster.

✅ Fast-loading websites impact your credibility. Slow websites create a bad first impression of your business to your visitors by forcing them to wait longer for accessing even the most basic information on your site.

When it comes to social media, people usually tend to underestimate LinkedIn. But that’s a huge mistake as it is one of the strongest platforms for marketing, especially if you are a B2B business.

Use the following tips for stronger LinkedIn marketing:

✅ 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘁𝗲 & 𝘂𝗽𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗶𝗹𝗲: Do not leave your profile incomplete! Spend time and complete every detail and aspect of your profile. Also, update it as soon as you have changes in your career.

✅ 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲: Each social media has its own culture. LinkedIn’s culture is especially much different than the others as it is more formal. So before you post anything, spend some time and get acquainted with LinkedIn’s norms.

✅ 𝗠𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘀𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗶𝘁𝘆: LinkedIn is known for its professional environment. So be very careful in all your social activities. Especially because your connections can see your comments & likes. The more professional your activity timeline is the higher your chance of finding clients or valuable business connections will be.

✅ 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗻𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸: LinkedIn is all about networking. Spend a lot of time to find people who’ll be valuable in your network. LinkedIn has a strong search system. Find the right people and don’t shy away from sending them connection requests. Try to add notes to your connection requests to explain why you want to connect.

✅ 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗲𝗱𝗜𝗻 𝗮𝗱𝘀: Don’t forget about the advertising option. You can use LinkedIn PPC ads to promote your business or posts at affordable prices.

LinkedIn is a must for all B2B businesses. In fact, if you only have the budget and time for one social media, definitely choose LinkedIn!

There are many things you can do on LinkedIn. You can find leads, you can find new employees, and you can educate your audience on your services or products.

You can either show your brand's worth by doing organic content marketing or you can use LinkedIn Ads to find new prospects.

With so many options on the digital marketing menu for small businesses, it only seems natural to be overwhelmed or confused. If you’re struggling to determine your first steps in digital marketing for your business, it’s best to start here:

✅ Assess the current pieces of your online identity.

✅ Purchase a domain and get a website.

✅ Don’t forget to set up Google Analytics and Search Console (or ask for its setup).

✅ Put the necessary information on your website (contact info, product/service info & …).

✅ Choose 1 or 2 social media that work best for your business and create accounts.

✅ Prepare some basic content for your social accounts.

✅ Register your business in Google My Business.

These are the primary steps that are almost all must-do for every business. After these steps are carried out, you can either start with some online PPC ads for instant clients or SEO for long-term but stable visibility in Google.

While it seems irresistible and good to be active on every social media, it could actually be a huge mistake for many small businesses. It's time-consuming, needs money, needs different content for each media, and sometimes it’s just not right to be on a specific media for a specific business!

If you want to pick the right media, take some serious time and identify a couple of things about your business:

🔴 What is your goal of being present in social media? Each media is best for a certain goal, for instance, Facebook is perfect for connecting with your audience, while Twitter is mostly used for brand awareness.

🔴 Who is your target audience and what are their demographics? You could reach certain users on each platform. For instance, about 75% of Instagram users are under 25, while TikTok users are much younger.

🔴 Where are your competitors mostly present? If most of your competitors are working on LinkedIn, it could be a hint that you’re missing something by not being present there.

🔴 Do you have the resources for specific media? Don’t forget that you need quality content for all platforms and quality content needs resources, be it time or money. For instance, while YouTube is a popular platform, it might cost you more since it needs videos. So considering your resources might cross out a few options from your list.

This number is solid proof that you can mesmerize people with quality videos, even to the point of buying from you. Video marketing has been on the rise for a couple of years and will continue to spike in trends in the following years. So if you don't use videos as part of your marketing, it's time to reconsider. You can use videos for your website, social media, and even for ads. It doesn't have to be elaborate and fully professional videos. You can start with simple and short videos, as long as they have acceptable quality.

You have probably heard the word SEO a thousand times so far. Everybody keeps telling you that SEO matters and you need it for your business, yet you might not know exactly how it works. Well, there's no need to be intimidated by it. It's actually pretty simple.

SEO refers to "search engine optimization". It basically consists of steps needed to optimize your website and its content for ranking in search engines. (While it refers to all search engines, most people use it for talking about Google as it dominates other engines like Bing or Yahoo.)

SEO is all about organic results, meaning you don't pay for it like ads to show up. Of course, you have to spend on it, but it's not directly an ad. In other words, you spend for creating attractive, useful, fresh, and unique content, then you spend for optimizing it technically as a web page, then you spend for promoting it in other places, and ultimately if it's a good page that answers users' questions, Google will gradually rank it in its search results. Of course, there's more depth to this explanation. But it's pretty much the gist.

Watch this video to see Google's explanation on SEO as well:
https://youtu.be/stHBZGm_hMo

While a domain name is not the ultimate winning factor for your business, it is absolutely important to choose a good and catchy one. Keep these tips in mind before purchasing a domain:

✅ Keep it relatively short and easy to remember.

✅ Make sure it's not something that's regularly misspelled.

✅ Try to choose a predictable domain name so users can guess according to your brand.

✅ Try to avoid hyphens and numbers as they may look spammy.

✅ If possible, use your industry's keywords in the domain.

✅ Choose your domain extension wisely. If unsure, go with international domains like .com.

✅ Don't choose names too similar to other businesses.

Also, keep these tips in mind before you waste a lot of time and thought on a domain name:

1️⃣ Check to see if it's available first.

2️⃣ Check its price.

3️⃣ Check if it's available for social media account names.

So here's a little piece of stats to get you hopeful and motivated. We run into small business owners without any hope for their business all the time. They usually don't see much hope for their business because they believe they don't stand a chance against big or well-known corporations. But the numbers suggest something else. Actually, 84% of users say they would pay more just to support local small businesses! So if you provide valuable goods or services, have faith. With a little patience and some strategic marketing effort, your small business will be on its way to glory.

Small businesses struggle with tight budgets all the time. If you're also struggling to get word of your business out for low prices, use these hacks:

1️⃣ 𝗗𝗼 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗴𝘂𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗮 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴. Guerilla marketing is meant to make businesses seen by many with low budgets. In fact, even big brands do it. You don't have to spend a lot, you just need to be creative. In guerilla marketing, anywhere is your advertising media, street walls, pedestrian crossing lines, metro stations, and ...

2️⃣ 𝗥𝘂𝗻 𝗚𝗼𝗼𝗴𝗹𝗲 𝗔𝗱𝘀. Google Ads is a pay-per-click advertising method. This means you will only pay when somebody clicks on your ad. Click costs are also usually fairly low, like $0.5. You can show your business to people who are actively searching and are ready to buy.

3️⃣ 𝗝𝗼𝗶𝗻 𝗻𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗽𝘀. There are always networking events in many cities that are free of charge or cost just a bit. Make sure to find them and attend. You can find some of them on platforms like LinkedIn and Meetup.

4️⃣ 𝗛𝗼𝗹𝗱 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝘀𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗺𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮. You can either run a contest on your own social media or sponsor others' contests. For instance, you could give special discounts to 5 users who have followed you or introduced you to others. Or you can find other pages with bigger audience bases and sponsor their contests with your products or services as prizes.

5️⃣ 𝗪𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝗴𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘁𝘀. Find a powerful content source in your business field and offer to write guest posts for them. This takes time and not money. And it will be a great place for you to be seen by many visitors.

A beautiful and professional website will be the face of your interior design brand. Use these tips to make it more useful and credible:

𝟭. 𝗜𝘁'𝘀 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘃𝗶𝘀𝘂𝗮𝗹𝘀. Use high-quality images and videos of your projects. Bright and high-resolution pictures of the spaces you've designed can make a significant impact on users.

𝟮. 𝗦𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗳𝘆 𝗻𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗴𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. Keep your website's navigation simple. Users that enter an interior designer's website, are mostly looking for designs. A navigation including these items seems clear: Home, Portfolio, About, Contact. If your portfolio is elaborate, make sure to clarify that in the form of sub-menus, for instance, residential, commercials, villas, and ...

𝟯. 𝗗𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗮𝗹𝘀. Testimonials show the true feelings of your previous clients. They can create even more trust for new users, compelling them to become new clients. Make sure to ask for testimonials from your old clients and include them on your website. It always helps to mention the full names and real images of the clients.

𝟰. 𝗛𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗮 𝗯𝗹𝗼𝗴. It always helps to add a blog to your website. You can publish posts or articles about interior design on this blog. This will help your SEO, establishes your authority on the subject, and also helps keep users longer on your website.

𝟱. 𝗠𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗶𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗶𝘃𝗲. It's super important to have a responsive interior designer website, as most users start their search on mobile these days. Don't forget to check your website on mobile. Websites might look different and a bit unattractive on mobiles compared to desktops. So you might need to make a few changes to the mobile version.

If you look at the search results for this phrase, you'll see multiple ads, local results, and organic searches pointing to interior design firms located in the UAE. This means that people searching for this phrase are not just searching for ideas. They're actually in need of an interior designer. And you have at least 3 ways of catching the attention of these potential clients:

1. Google search ads

2. Local results and ads

3. Organic results and SEO

Each method has its benefits. We suggest going with Google Ads if you're a new firm and especially if your website is launched only recently.

However, if you have already established a position for your brand, or if your website is not new and ranks on pages 2 or 3 of Google, we mostly recommend working on your SEO as it will bring you long-lasting results.

The days of looking through interior design magazines and catalogs are over. Today millions of ideas and resources are available at people's fingertips, right there on the internet. This makes the internet a great place to find clients for interior designers. If you're an interior designer managing your own business, take internet marketing seriously because it helps you:

✅ 𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗵𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗿𝗲𝗱𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘀 𝗼𝗻𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗵

✅ 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝗮𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗳𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿

✅ 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗱 𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗲𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗹𝘆 𝗼𝗻 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴

✅ 𝗠𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀

There are many ways to use the internet for showcasing your expertise in interior design. From starting an interior design blog to running online ads, the possibilities are nearly endless.

If your main target is other businesses and their decision-makers, you can gain some edge by running Google Ads:

𝟭. 𝗚𝗲𝘁 𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗵𝗶𝗴𝗵 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗲𝘁𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗸𝗲𝘆𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗱𝘀: Ranking on the first page of Google organically could be a long process, especially for high competition keywords. You can use Google Ads to show up on top of Google, even above your competitors for profiting keywords.

𝟮. 𝗚𝗲𝘁 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗰: Even if you're just starting out and haven't had enough time to shape your website and content completely, you can get valuable traffic instantly to a specific landing page designed to capture leads.

𝟯. 𝗚𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮: Google Ads provides some very useful information in its dashboard, including exact search terms users type to find businesses like you. This gives you some insight into your audience's mind.

𝟰. 𝗧𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻-𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗿𝘀: With Google Ads, you get to target more specific audiences based on their occupation, job seniority, and more, making ads more effective.

𝟱. 𝗠𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗥𝗢𝗜 𝗲𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗹𝘆: With Google Ads, you can measure every click and every dollar you spend on it. You can also track the users' behavior and conversion, effectively measuring your return on investment.

Research shows that organic results are the main source of traffic for most websites. In fact, organic traffic is much more impacting than the other channels combined, such as paid and social. This is why every business must consider SEO as part of their digital marketing strategy to increase visibility among organic results. This doesn't mean that you should choose either paid traffic or organic, but rather means you should apply both of them as they compliment each other.

If you're recently focusing on digital marketing for your business, you might get confused about the term SEM from time to time, especially as it could be associated with SEO. It might help to know that these two aren't completely unrelated to each other.

SEM is short for search engine marketing. It refers to marketing your business through search engines like Google. For instance, if you own a small bakery, you can market your shop to those who search for terms like "order chocolate cupcakes". These users are a lot likely to buy from you if they see your website on Google when they search. To do this, you have to use an SEM method, which could be either showing up organically (SEO), or through paid ads (Google Ads). So as you can see, SEO is actually a part of SEM.

Now small businesses usually ask us which method they should use for SEM. Should they focus only on SEO or just on Google Ads? While there's no right or wrong answer, based on our experience (and many others), a solid SEM strategy for small businesses is to use both methods.

As a small business, you must work on your SEO especially to rank for easier keywords to generate relevant traffic (you can't compete with big names in the beginning) and you must have paid ads to show up instantly for lucrative keywords to create some cash flow for your small business.

Note: Today, many people use the word SEM only to refer to paid ads and SEO for organic results.

If you are in the construction industry, use the following tips to market your business:

𝟭. 𝗙𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝘂𝗽 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗽𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀. Keeping your existing clients is much easier and more cost-effective than finding new ones. So it makes good sense to check on your previous clients to see if they're ready for a new project. You can do this by email and even offer them promotions.

𝟮. 𝗨𝘀𝗲 𝗚𝗼𝗼𝗴𝗹𝗲 𝗠𝘆 𝗕𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀. GMB listings are free and super useful. This way, your business shows up on local searches and also on Google Maps searches. Claim your business on GMB and update your information, including contact info and website. Also, ask your clients for reviews on GMB.

𝟯. 𝗚𝗲𝘁 𝗮 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗽𝗳𝘂𝗹 & 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝘄𝗲𝗯𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲. Nothing shows your professionalism and credibility like a smart responsive website. There are many ways to get an affordable website, from web design companies to freelancers to website builders. The bottom line is: If you don't have a website, it's time to get one.

𝟰. 𝗥𝘂𝗻 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗲𝗱𝗜𝗻 𝗮𝗱𝘀. LinkedIn could be the best social media for construction companies as it's very effective in B2B marketing. Before you run LinkedIn ads, make sure to update your business's LinkedIn page and be active for a couple of weeks.

𝟱. 𝗣𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗵 𝗗𝗜𝗬 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘄𝗲𝗯𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲 & 𝘀𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗺𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮. People love Do It Yourself guides. Publish such posts on your website and social media to attract traffic, improve SEO, and raise brand awareness. Sooner or later, some of the readers will need a professional for their serious construction projects and they'll remember you.

𝟲. 𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘃𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗼𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀. Turn your DIY content into videos. Also, make videos of your construction projects. These videos don't have to be super professional, as long as they have acceptable quality and are edited cleanly. Publish them on your social media and especially on a YouTube channel.

𝟳. 𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗰𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘄𝗲𝗯𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲. Free calculators are great for attracting traffic and links to your website for improving SEO and visibility. Also, make sure to promote them through ads or social media.