Cyber-attacks, especially on small businesses, have surged in recent years due to the heavy increase in online shopping, communication, and stored information. With 2022 marketing trends pointing towards all things virtual, now more than ever small businesses need to pay attention to how cyber-attackers can potentially use this information against them.

Limit Cybersecurity Threats in Your Business

The best way to defend your business is to protect yourself before the threat reaches you, and to take steps to prevent an attack. There are many easy ways to ensure the safety of your business’s information.

How many of your email subscribers use a Gmail address?

Today, with about 1.8 billion users, Google's free email platform remains the most popular one worldwide. Therefore, it's safe to say that at least a quarter of your subscribers get your marketing messages via Gmail.

In 2013, Google gave Gmail a total makeover with specific tabs for sorting messages. Instead of landing in one general inbox, each email is assigned to a tab (social, promotional, primary, etc.) based on an ever-changing algorithm. In order to make the most of your engagement with your Gmail subscribers, here's what you need to know about the promotions tab and what you should do to avoid it.

If you've considered ditching your email marketing campaign in favor of a more modern marketing method, think twice. Email marketing is still king in 2022. Its ROI is about 36 dollars for every dollar spent, and the average open rate across all industries is 21.6 percent.

With approximately 300 billion emails sent around the world each day, it's safe to say that though email is several decades old, it is still a stable and relevant form of communication today. Here's why you should be focusing on your email marketing campaigns and how you can restructure them to maximize your reach this year.

As a local business, at times it may seem overwhelming to navigate the shifting landscape of digital marketing.

Here are a few important local business digital marketing tips to remember:

Tip #1 -  Be Digitally Present

People respond to creative and valuable content, so entertain and educate them.
Create a unique style and voice for your Brand that makes you stand out from competitors.

Online marketing takes many forms – and Landing pages are one element businesses need to get right.

• Do you have your Landing page formula perfected?
• Do you sit and think for hours how best to layout Landing pages?
• Do you know what the purpose and goal of a Landing page is?

Email marketing is one of the best digital marketing strategies. An average return of 4,200% means you can expect a whopping $42 for every $1 spent! It’s a massive opportunity.

Unfortunately, email marketing isn’t as straightforward as most marketers imagine. As a result, several digital marketers rarely get anything from their campaigns. A particularly interesting case is the publishing company that spent $5.3 million on email marketing over nine years with not much to show for it.

So, how do you avoid similar losses? How can you make email marketing work for you? We’ve rounded up seven practical tips to get you on the right path.

Did you know?

LinkedIn is not just a social platform for hiring employees and networking with other business leaders. It is also a decent content marketing platform where you can establish your online presence and boost your level of influence. The easiest way to do this is to publish blog posts on LinkedIn. Use this guide to get started as an influential  LinkedIn blogger.

Why LinkedIn?

The web is teeming with blogging platforms, so you may be wondering: Why publish blog posts on LinkedIn?

Here's the truth: LinkedIn isn't the most refined or the most advanced platform available for blogging. In fact, its article formatting and publishing capabilities are really quite basic. that said, it is an established network with millions of users, and while your posts may not have a high potential of going viral, you can easily reach a niche audience. What's more, you can expect a high conversion rate if you play your digital marketing cards right when posting.

QR Codes - Quick Response Codes are what their name suggests. Just a simple scan and you get access to the intended information fast and in a secure way. They store lots of data, secured in a complex barcode, which digital devices can read and interpret. QR codes have been around since 1994, have successfully been utilized in multiple production stages in huge corporations, and their uptake and prevalence has ever been on the rise.

Almost all your potential customers have a smartphone equipped with a QR scanner, and they may have used the scanner for;

• Access to a secured Wi-Fi.
• Authenticate login credentials.
• Make payments.
• Mobile application downloads.

See? You are not stepping into untested waters. As a matter of fact, your client base will incorporate QR codes more convenient secure and improve their experience doing business with you.

Homepage optimization differs from optimizing inner webpages, and there are literally hundreds of thousands of websites where the homepage isn’t optimized correctly.

Is yours one of them?  

What a Website Homepage Is:

• The first impression of your business.
• The page that serves as an introduction to your Brand.
• The page to make clear what your business is about.
• The page to build trust between you and potential customers.
• An easy-to-understand entry point for visitors to easily navigate to the rest of your webpages.

Did You Know?

Facebook  (aka meta) boasts 2.91 billion monthly active users.
Resource: OmniCore Agency

With Facebook being one of the most used social media sites (on a global level), businesses need to recognize the potential Facebook can play into moving success levels forward.

Here, we'll touch on a few Facebook tips that WordPress site owners can use to grow their followers, increase website visits, easily track activity statistics, and more.