Your audience is on social media, and if you do not utilize it, you're leaving money on the table. You may be reluctant to adopt social media for various reasons such as a lack of time or available resources, but you can, and should, still use social media to expand your business despite the perceived limitations.

You've got the branding, you've got a campaign strategy, and you have a great product. So why is your small business not attracting and retaining its audience?

A buyer’s journey can be a long and twisted one, with plenty of distractions offering an opportunity to detour from the road to making a purchase. Our world is a fast-paced one and attention spans are shortening. To top that off, your competition is constantly vying for your audience’s already limited attention.

You design marketing campaigns to increase brand awareness and boost sales. But you are still struggling to convert consumers to loyal buyers and brand advocates.

The problem is, your audience is overwhelmed by choices. When all their options begin to look the same, they struggle to decide which product is best for them. They become paralyzed by their options and frustrated with the buying process.

So how does your brand rise above the noise to make its voice heard? With a content powerhouse.

Content marketing is a key component to any brand strategy. It is next to impossible your audience to connect to your brand or product unless they first connect to your brand story. To break through all the noise and enhance audience engagement, small businesses, in fact all businesses, must carefully plan their content strategies.

Not only does this allow small businesses to establish themselves as a credible industry voice, it cultivates lasting relationships with their consumer base.

When organizations use honest and meaningful content to tell their brand story, they facilitate a profound connection between their audience and product.

• Brand Story – Take advantage of content marketing, but ensure the story is authentic and true to your brand.
• Engagement Strategy – Hone a message that evokes an emotional response and sparks curiosity about your product and brand.
• Data & Insights – Translate the raw data you gain from qualitative and quantitative analysis into actionable audience insights.
• Digital Integration – A little bit of digital technology can go a long way if the content is strong and the digital channel is purposeful.
• Immersive Design – Captivate your audience. The quality of your content is important, but without strategic and creative design, your audience may never read that first line.

​If you employ this approach and invest in rich content, you’ll build a strong foundation for customer relationships that will last year after year.

The J Design can help you create an effective strategy as well as implement it efficiently, and you can request your free quote today! ​Your business has something worth sharing, let the rest of the world know this!

The American retail industry has been taking some hits recently which has been forcing stores from large and not-so-large companies to close their doors.

The well known shoe chain Payless filed for bankruptcy and announced it would be closing hundreds of locations, while Ralph Lauren said it will be closing its well-known Fifth Avenue location. Analysts estimate there could be over 8,000 stores closing in 2017, and majority of these are chain-stores.

Many stores are trying to re-emerge as e-commerce brands in an effort to move in to the obvious new retail space of the internet. Kenneth Cole and Bebe are both planning to close almost all of their locations in an effort to join the e-commerce party, but even with the massive efforts taking place, the current e-market leader is still Amazon.com, which accounted for 53 percent of e-commerce sales growth  in 2016.