Author: Jeremy Harrison

Ten or fifteen years ago, a good advertisement would make your phone ring. And an effective salesperson could turn those ringing phones into sales. Today, you need a plan to make the most of every advertising dollar you spend.

Would you like more sales? There are 3 hidden "leaks" that kill sales on most websites and marketing campaigns. Fix the leaks and you'll multiply the sales you get from your website, without increasing costs.

"So, what does your company do?" Have you ever felt like people are falling asleep when you try to answer that question? Me too. Your success in attracting new customers is dependent on your ability to boil your complex business down to an extremely simple brand story.

When you attract traffic to your website, you should find ways to immediately engage your visitors. And the only way to get them engaged is with content that focuses on the REAL NEEDS of your customer.

Is your marketing too self-centered? Odds are, yes. If so, it's costing you traffic, leads and sales. "Self-centered" marketing talks too much about the business and the product for sale, and not enough about the customer who's buying it.

I sometimes meet entrepreneurs who are successful, but absolutely miserable. For most, they just aren't passionate about the thing they are doing. Here are three ways that I see entrepreneurs get off course:

A group of local business and community leaders are leading a major grassroots effort to help transform downtown Ashland, Ohio. The group of leaders include Scott Donley

If the success of your small business depends on driving visitors through your door, you should try Facebook's "Local Awareness" ads. Local Awareness is a fairly new type of ad that targets visitors based on their location when they are online.

It's official. Google is cracking down on websites that aren't mobile-friendly. For the first time that I can recall, they named the date.

Your website. It should be your greatest marketing asset. But for most small business owners, it's just a big headache. There are five areas of focus that need attention

The City Garden Café is located in the Mansfield Municipal Building on 30 N. Diamond St. in Mansfield. The upscale café has a contemporary design with a diverse menu featuring deli sandwiches, soups, bagels, salads, desserts, made-from-scratch smoothies and espressos.

A marketing funnel is a way of thinking about how your prospects move through the customer lifecycle, from the first point of contact as new traffic all the way to the point of nurturing existing customers—and all the points in between.

Find out how your advertising DNA will inform the types of advertising, including traditional forms, that work for your business.

A form of direct marketing, email marketing techniques range from blasting a customer list with one strategic email to dripping targeted messages one at a time to targeted prospects.

An effective marketing campaign in 2014 must include a combination approach to increasing traffic. In past blogs, we’ve already focused on using SEO and social media.

Content campaigns are a cost-effective way to promote your business and drive more traffic to your website.

Businesses can boost SEO in multiple ways, such as through blogging, conducting a paid search campaign and using social media. But there are specific components on each website page speak the language of SEO. Read more to see the specific components.

Email marketing is a form of marketing that targets customers where they are spending their time: online and in their email inboxes.

A free report can’t “live” in the virtual world by itself. To generate leads from any kind of offer (which includes content like a webinar, white paper, ebook, research report, etc.), you need to lay out a foundation for the offer, which is strategically designed to guide consumers down a specific path—a path to buying.

Building a website without taking advantage of what analytics can tell you is like sending out a direct-mail campaign to everyone in town.

Writing blogs for your website takes time and effort that you feel you can't afford to lose. My argument is that you can't afford NOT to blog.

The buzz around social media is undeniable, but how do you know if social media will work for your business? And which social media platform is best suited for your business?

There is just one reason why businesses use duplicate content: It’s cheap. But there’s a big downside: It burns your SEO results.

Most businesses know that content marketing should comprise at least a portion of their strategy to market their business.

You're in good shape if your website features static pages that describe your company, and give an overview of your products and services.

Find out if Pinterest marketing is a good fit for your small business, and learn the perks it offers over other social media like Facebook and Twitter.

Internet marketing isn’t like having the confused shopper experience, where you’re holding an organic and non-organic apple in your hand, wondering which one is truly better.

Creating a Google+ business page doesn’t require that you hold professional certification in social media. In fact, Google has made creating a business account a fairly simple process. Here’s a primer on setting up a Google+ page for your business.

In the typical marketing funnel, only 3 percent of the people that visit your site are ready to buy. So, what are the rest of your website visitors doing there?

With these five website features, your website will promote a high level of engagement.

What if you could learn about one that had the potential to reach almost 10,000 people every second? Would you be interested?