Creative Marketing, Small business marketing, Website design
Regardless of where you do your work, initiating or resuming in-person work can pose a significant challenge. Your business may need additional marketing support to remain visible to current and potential customers. Arizona State University and Virginia Commonwealth...
Small business marketing, Website design, WEBSITE DESIGN / DEVELOPMENT
The COVID-19 pandemic has touched virtually every small business. As we begin to emerge from it, many small business owners are finding that they must rebuild their businesses. The right small business web design can help your business grow. Approaching small business...
Creative Marketing, Integrated branding, promotional products, Small business marketing, Social media
Re-opening your business after weeks of COVID-19 closure isn’t as simple as unlocking the doors. Depending upon the nature of your business, many customers may be wary of venturing out. Still others may have been economically impacted by job losses or reductions...
Branding Services, Branding You, Business blogging, Business presentations, Creative Marketing, Creative retainer, Email marketing, Graphic designer, Integrated branding, Logo design, Newsletters, Search Engine Optimization, Small business marketing, Social media, Website design, WEBSITE DESIGN / DEVELOPMENT
For small business owners, one of the most agonizing decisions is hiring. “Should I hire a degreed professional to handle my design and marketing work?” Do I have enough work to keep a new hire busy? For larger businesses, the question may be whether or...
Branding You
If you own your own business, chances are pretty good that one of your top challenges is marketing your small business. You’re not alone. About two-thirds of small business owners in a recent Capital One/Spark Business survey said that marketing is their top...
Creative Marketing, Mobile website development, Small business marketing, Website design
If your users actively use your website, you should rightly ask yourself how often you should refresh your website design? Up front, we’ll say that there’s no hard-and-fast rule about how frequently you should refresh your design. However, if your website...
Mobile graphics video, Mobile website development, Small business marketing, Website design
The World Wide Web arrived almost 30 years ago. If you couldn’t look past its rudimentary text-centric nature, you might have concluded that it would never amount to much. Fast forward to 2017, and the world is all about the World Wide Web. The Web has advanced...
Mobile website development, Website design
Today is a good day for your business website. In fact, your website is more important to your business today than it was yesterday. Tomorrow, your website will be more important than it was today. The reality is that your business website is the center of your...
Graphic designer, Mobile website development, Website design
When you leave your house and lock the door, you expect things to remain just as you left them. For most people, “security” involves easily understandable steps. Lock the doors and windows, leave the lights on, close the shades, and so on. Website security...
Mobile website development, Search Engine Optimization, Website design
With more than a billion active websites, security is (or should be) a top priority for anyone who operates a website. The price of insecurity is malware, hacking, theft of digital assets, defacement and more. So, is your website secure? Probably not. Less than...
Branding Services, Website design
Chances are good that you spend time on the Internet without spending much time thinking about the Internet. Here are a few interesting facts to think about. They underscore the reason you want to work with an experienced web design firm. • Today, more than 40% of the...
Creative Marketing, Mobile website development, Website design
A new survey of British consumers reveals a surprising fact about online shopping. While a growing number of consumers access websites with mobile devices, 7 out of 10 buyers pull the trigger on a purchase using a desktop or laptop device. 2 out of 3 consumers...
Creative Marketing, Graphic designer, Mobile website development, Small business marketing, Website design
Simplicity can be beautiful, and nowhere is that more evident than in website design. A 2012 Google study of website design showed that people were more attracted to simple website designs. Simpler designs consistently rated higher than “visually complex”...
Creative Marketing, Mobile website development, Website design
Setting a strategy and establishing goals are only two of the standard approaches to building a small business. Your business website can be an extraordinary source of information, but you need to be prepared to collect and analyze the information your website...
Creative Marketing, Small business marketing, Social media
Not quite 6 weeks old, Pokemon GO is one of the most popular mobile games on the market, having been downloaded more than 100,000,000 times. If you’re not familiar with Pokemon GO, you’re not alone. That doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage of...
Branding Services, Branding You, Creative Marketing, promotional products
Promotional products resonate with consumers Looking for a quick but effective way to engage your target consumers? Try promotional products. Consumers love freebies, and you should, too! Here’s why. Promotional Productions Association International conducted a...
Branding You, Creative Marketing, Website design
If you’re contemplating a website redesign, you may want to spend some time thinking about what consumers want from a business website. Answers to a recent survey of consumers about their business website preferences may come as a surprise. Which parts of the...
Mobile website development, Website design
The Internet consists of about a billion websites. That’s not a figure of speech; it’s the actual count of websites you can visit in 2016. Among those billion websites are probably just as many website design mistakes that make websites harder to use,...
Creative Marketing, Small business marketing
What does it take to improve your products or services? If you’re not sure if (or where) your products or services are falling down, one of the easiest and fastest ways to get an answer is to collect customer feedback. Customer feedback is the quickest, surest...
Email marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Small business marketing, Website design
A business website is a natural source of data, and provides an excellent opportunity for business owners to learn more about their customers. What’s the best way to go about collecting website data, and what can it help you do? Web analytics can do more than...
Business blogging
Marketing your business takes a lot of time and energy, and many people wonder whether business blogging can really benefit a marketing plan. The short answer (and the long one) is yes! Business blogging can generate immediate and long-term benefits for your company....
Branding Services, Business presentations, Creative Marketing, promotional products, Small business marketing
Trade shows are a staple in certain industries, and it can be tough to measure the effectiveness of your booth. How do you know that you’re getting a good return on your investments in trade shows, and what can you to do ensure that you make the most of your...
Creative Marketing, Email marketing
Email newsletters are a mixed bag. Some of them are solid gold. Others… not so much. How can you be sure that your email newsletter is getting high marks from your readers? Taking the time to make your newsletter welcome can pay big dividends for your marketing...
Branding Services, Creative Marketing, Reputation management, Small business marketing
There’s always been a lot involved in managing a business, and while the Internet has made some things much easier, it’s also introduced new business management concerns. Online reputation management is a major concern for some businesses – especially...
Branding Services, Branding You, Small business marketing
Small business owners have a zillion things to do at any given time, so outsourcing your small business marketing seems like it would be a no-brainer. Except that it’s not. Most small business owners choose to do their own marketing, and more often than not, the...
Branding Services, Creative Marketing, Integrated branding, Mobile website development, Small business marketing
Think about your website for a moment. Of all of the pages on the site, which is the most important one? It’s not an easy question, because all of the pages on your website are important. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be on your site. So which one...
Graphic designer, Mobile website development, Small business marketing, Website design
Mobile website design is one of the most important considerations for businesses today. Users are migrating to mobile devices – either exclusively or predominantly – by the millions. The small device size and limited bandwidth options don’t deter users – who...
Branding Services, Branding You, Reputation management
Recent surveys show that 9 out of 10 consumers read online reviews of products and services as part of their pre-purchase research. Nearly as many consumers – 88% – say Internet reviews influence their purchasing decisions. In fact, Internet reviews have become...
Creative Marketing, Newsletters, Social media, Website design
In my last post, I discussed customer testimonials and the rules that govern their use. In this post, I look at what works best in a testimonial. A customer testimonial attempts to take advantage of a quirk of human behavior, which is that people tend to be more...
Branding You, Creative Marketing
You’ve undoubtedly seen hundreds of customer testimonials on websites. They’re usually short statements endorsing the business, product or service you’re considering, and they may or may not be attributed to the person who said them. Are customer...
Creative Marketing, Mobile application development, Mobile website development, Website design
Contemporary businesses don’t really question the value of their websites, but often, they don’t take advantage of the real power of this powerful tool. Whether your website is new, or has been around for awhile, there are things you can do to make your...
Branding Services, Creative Marketing, Email marketing, Integrated branding, Mobile website development, Search Engine Optimization, Small business marketing, Website design
As the owner of a local business, you might be tempted to forego online marketing for your business. After all, your customers are local and they know who you are, right? What can online marketing do for you that traditional marketing strategies can’t? Having an...
Creative Marketing, Email marketing, promotional products, Small business marketing
As you consider your marketing strategy for 2016, you may encounter conflicting information about email marketing. Some marketers think that email marketing has overplayed its hand, while others are gung-ho about the potential of the technique. I’m in the latter...
Creative Marketing, Graphic designer, Logo design, Search Engine Optimization, Website design
If you’ve had a business website for a while, you may not realize that changes in technology and consumer preferences could reduce your site’s overall effectiveness. If you’re not careful, you could miss some telltale signs that it’s time for a...
Branding Services, Creative Marketing, Creative retainer, Graphic designer, Integrated branding, Logo design, Mobile website development, Social media, Website design
If you’re looking for a full-service creative agency, look no farther than Grantstreet Creative. Whether you’re just starting up, or have been in business for awhile, Grantstreet Creative offers comprehensive branding and marketing services that can help...
Branding Services, Branding You, Creative Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Website design
If you operate a website, you’ve probably heard the term “Search Engine Optimization” (SEO), but what does it mean for your business? SEO has become an important player in the marketing strategies of many businesses, so if you haven’t come to...
Branding You, Creative Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Small business marketing, Website design
In my last post, I discussed why search engine optimization (SEO) reporting is an important information tool for your business. I didn’t address why SEO itself is important. As a marketing strategy, SEO has been around for nearly as long as search engines...
Branding You, Business blogging, Search Engine Optimization, Small business marketing, Website design
The Web has changed dramatically in the last 20 years. For one thing, it’s a lot more crowded than it once was. Finding valuable information on the Web can be tricky, but search engine optimization (SEO) works tirelessly to ensure that searchers can find what...
Creative Marketing, Newsletters, Small business marketing
In my last post, I discussed business marketing research, and how you can use it to help spot opportunities, customer preferences and market trends. Today, I’ll look at ways to take advantage of the information that your business marketing research uncovers....
Creative Marketing, Small business marketing
Promoting your business is a challenge, no matter how big (or small) your budget is. Everyone agrees that business marketing should be done, but there’s virtually no agreement on the best approach to take. That’s because the “best” business...
Branding You
A recent study conducted in the UK sheds some light on how online shoppers use online shopping carts. Not surprisingly, buyers see an online shopping cart slightly differently than online retailers do. Knowing how shoppers view the online shopping cart can help...
Small business marketing, Website design
Last week, Google announced a new twist to its time-honored “Google ad campaign.” The twist might be just too tempting for local advertisers to pass up. Google has just introduced its new Customer Match service for advertisers, and the results could be...
Branding Services, Creative Marketing, Small business marketing
Not too long ago, I was reading an article on small business marketing, and one piece of advice stood out: “stick to what you know and outsource what you don’t.” Running a small business (or a business of any size, really) is tough, but when you have...
Creative Marketing, Small business marketing, Social media, Website design
When someone says the words “seasonal business,” we tend to think about businesses that operate for only part of the year. That’s a fair assessment, but even year-round businesses can benefit from a seasonal marketing strategy. Not every business is...
Branding You, Creative Marketing, Creative retainer, Graphic designer, Small business marketing
While high expectations often go hand-in-hand with employment, a high-stress environment can be hard on employees and employers alike. One great way to relieve stress and still ensure that critical tasks are completed is to turn to freelancers and outsourcing to fill...
Branding Services, Website design
Last month, Facebook announced that there were more than 40 million active business pages on its site. Given the worldwide popularity of Facebook, one might start to wonder whether or not it’s even necessary to have a business website. Can Facebook alone provide...
Branding You, Creative Marketing, Logo design, promotional products, Small business marketing, Website design
Small business promotion takes a lot of time – unless you have a plan! Promoting your business isn’t really a discrete event – it’s something you do all the time, whenever and wherever you can. Here are a few ideas to help you promote your small business....
Branding Services, Business presentations, Creative Marketing, Mobile website development, Website design
There’s something about being your own boss that’s appealing, but the reality of small business survival is something different. Analysts say that small businesses are key to the economy because they’re responsible for the majority of job creation....
Branding Services, Creative Marketing, Graphic designer, Small business marketing
Every Fortune 100 company started out as a small business. While many of today’s top performers have the benefit of time, they once faced the same challenges your business faces today. Where do I find customers? How do I promote my business? How can I make the...
Branding Services, Creative Marketing, Graphic designer, Small business marketing, Website design
Marketing comes in many forms, and there have never been more options for marketing your small business as there are right now. Which marketing trends should you focus on, and which ones can wait? One type of marketing you should investigate (and employ) is digital...
Branding Services, Business presentations, Graphic designer, Mobile website development, Website design
In the last couple of months, Google has changed the way it ranks search results for mobile devices. The changes impact only those searches done from mobile devices, but about two-thirds of Americans own a smartphone today, so transforming your business website to a...
Branding You, Mobile website development, Small business marketing, Website design
Static websites – the sites where information doesn’t ever change – generally aren’t helpful to a visitor more than once or twice, so fresh, adding new content is critical. Content aside, there is also the issue of website design. How often should...
Creative Marketing, Mobile website development, Small business marketing, Website design
If you don’t have a SEO maintenance strategy in place today, you may want to consider developing one! You won’t find many people who dispute the value of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The rise of SEO – barely even recognizable as “a thing”...
Branding Services, Business presentations, Graphic designer, Mobile website development, Website design
Last week, Google shifted the rules it plays by when producing search results. Not every search will see the change – only those searches that were conducted on a mobile device will be affected. Google changed the way in which it lists search results for mobile...
Branding You, Graphic designer, Mobile application development, Mobile website development, Small business marketing, Website design
…than it was yesterday. Literally. Google, the premiere search engine, released a new search algorithm on Tuesday that favors an optimized mobile website for mobile searches. That could spell trouble for popular websites that aren’t doing a good job of welcoming...
Branding Services, Business presentations, Creative Marketing, Website design
“Optimize your website” is the new charge that small business owners are faced with when refining their marketing strategy. But what does “optimize your website” actually mean? For who? Or what? You can interpret the phrase in many different...
Branding Services, Business blogging, Graphic designer, Integrated branding, Small business marketing, Website design
Google can help you find thousands of ways to make your website work, but many website owners don’t take advantage of this good, simple advice. Just as there are ways to make your website more attractive, you can also do things to reduce traffic and make your...
Branding You, Business blogging, Creative Marketing, Small business marketing, Social media
In an effort to reach out to the masses, businesses are beginning to invest in – and see returns from – content marketing. If you haven’t heard the term, or don’t know what it means, you’re not alone, but you might be putting yourself behind the...
Branding Services, Branding You, Creative Marketing, Graphic designer, Integrated branding, Small business marketing
Marketing your business correctly is a big part of succeeding. Most business owners know a lot about their particular business. After all, that’s why they’re in business. Experience has also given them a keen understanding of what works and what...
Branding You, Creative retainer, Graphic designer, Small business marketing
If there’s one concern that comes up over and over with graphic design work, it’s the budget. Setting a budget for graphic design work isn’t as simple as buying something from the store, because graphic design is a creative discipline. More often...
Branding Services, Branding You, Creative Marketing, Graphic designer, Integrated branding, Mobile website development, Small business marketing, Website design
Home-based businesses are not remarkably different than other businesses. As such, they need the same kind of marketing support that businesses housed in commercial spaces do. All businesses – home-based or otherwise – require marketing support to survive. Making...
Branding Services, Business blogging, Creative Marketing, Small business marketing, Social media, Website design
How can something that was virtually non-existent 10 years ago become so important to business? The answer depends upon the “something” you’re talking about, but blogging definitely fits the question. Blogging has become an important element in...
Branding Services, Branding You, Business blogging, Graphic designer, Website design
How popular is WordPress? The number of worldwide WordPress installations grows daily, but right now, more than 75 million sites use WordPress, or are built entirely on the WordPress blogging platform. WordPress is a free, open-source content management system, used...
Branding You
Security is a broad consideration for website operators. If you have a comprehensive website that includes a WordPress blog or operates entirely on the WordPress platform, you should consider adding the VaultPress plug-in to provide essential services, like backups,...
Branding Services, Branding You, Creative Marketing, Graphic designer, Small business marketing, Website design
Small business owners love creative service providers like graphic artists and writers. They offer the ability to get work done with out having to hire a part-time or full-time staff person, or without having to assign the task to a staff person who may already be...
Branding You, Creative Marketing, Graphic designer, Mobile website development, Small business marketing, Website design
In my last two posts, I’ve talked about marketing trends that will affect the way you promote your business in 2015. Each of these marketing trends represents an opportunity to improve your customer connections, deliver better service and position your business...
Branding Services, Branding You, Creative Marketing, Mobile application development, Mobile website development, Social media
In my last post, I discussed two emerging marketing trends that will take center stage in 2015 – mobile marketing and content marketing. If you haven’t already included these two rising stars in your marketing plan, now is the time to consider how you can fit...
Branding Services, Branding You, Creative Marketing, Mobile website development, Small business marketing, Website design
In the 1985 movie “Back to the Future,” Doc Brown famously brushes off Marty McFly’s dire warning about Doc’s impending doom by telling him, “No man should know too much about his own future, Marty.” Well, 30 years later, that...
Creative Marketing, Graphic designer, Mobile website development
December is a great time to take stock of your current marketing efforts and set new marketing goals for 2015. Marketing is a planned effort, and if you’re not planning your next marketing moves, you’re probably not doing an effective job of marketing your business....
Branding Services, Creative Marketing, Graphic designer, Newsletters, Small business marketing
In my last post, I discussed the basic rules of effective email marketing. While you may be tempted to look at email marketing as another word for spam, many of your customers will truly appreciate informative, creative content delivered by email. What goes into...
Branding You, Creative Marketing, Newsletters, Small business marketing, Social media
When you hear the term, “email marketing,” you might be tempted to think “spam.” For businesses that know how to use email marketing, nothing could be further from the truth. While it’s true that unsolicited commercial email definitely...
Creative retainer, Graphic designer, Small business marketing, Website design
Having a designer on staff is a luxury for many small businesses, but that doesn’t mean small businesses need to forgo design services. With a creative retainer agreement, your business can have a designer on call whenever you need creative services. Why a...
Branding Services, Branding You, Business presentations, Creative Marketing, Integrated branding, Logo design, Small business marketing
Digital marketing has a lot to offer a business. Besides being cost-effective, you can directly target interested audiences and make your business stand out online. Here is one quick way to jumpstart your digital marketing strategy: blogging. Digital marketing and its...
Branding Services, Creative Marketing, Small business marketing, Website design
There’s a big difference between thinking that your customers are happy and knowing that they are. But what is customer satisfaction, and how can you measure it in your own business? Further, how can you use the information about customer satisfaction to promote...
Branding Services, Branding You, Business presentations, Creative Marketing, Graphic designer, Newsletters, promotional products, Small business marketing
Contrary to popular belief, direct mail is anything but dead. In fact, it turns out to be a great way for small businesses to reach out to consumers. Direct mail offers some distinct advantages over email and other electronic marketing techniques. What’s so...
Branding Services, Creative Marketing, promotional products, Small business marketing, Website design
There are no shortages of small business marketing ideas, but when you’re in the middle of running your business, marketing can seem like a secondary task. Here are 3 cost-effective small business marketing ideas that you can start working on today. Small...
Branding You
Social media is an excellent way to reach out to new customers and maintain contacts with existing ones. While it is one of the best, most cost-effective small business marketing tools available today, it also poses some risks for small business. As part of your...
Creative Marketing, Graphic designer, Small business marketing
If you operate a restaurant, one key piece of corporate communication is your menu. Restaurateurs typically spend a lot of time and effort determining what goes on the menu, but making choices about menu design can have a surprising impact on your sales. Here are a...
Branding Services, Branding You, Creative Marketing, Integrated branding, Logo design, Press releases, promotional products, Small business marketing
Small business promotion can be a big question for business owners who are new to the market or who are looking to expand their markets. Cost can be a big consideration in small business promotion, but here are five tips you can use to get the word about your business...
Branding Services, Creative Marketing, Logo design, promotional products, Small business marketing
Small businesses are always looking for effective ways to reach their target audiences. Sponsorship is often overlooked as a means to this end. Small business sponsorship can provide an excellent, cost-effective way to engage prospects and build your brand at the same...
Branding Services, Branding You, Business blogging, Creative Marketing, Graphic designer, Logo design, Mobile website development, Small business marketing, Website design
Starting a business sounds like a daunting task, but it’s an activity that happens about 66 million times each year in the United States. According to the statistics kept by the Small Business Administration, about half of all startup businesses ultimately fail,...
Creative Marketing, Creative retainer, Graphic designer
For some businesses, the amount of creative work may vary significantly during the course of an average month. For these businesses, a creative retainer agreement may provide both the creative services you need and the cost-certainty that you want. If you’ve...
Branding Services, Creative Marketing, Creative retainer, Integrated branding, Logo design, promotional products, Website design
Most small businesses need a graphic designer at one point or another. Finding a graphic designer may be easy, but finding the right graphic designer will take some effort on your part. There are many different online marketplaces to locate graphic design services,...
Branding Services, Creative Marketing, Integrated branding, Social media
Every small business owner is faced with the task of promoting his or her business. Business promotion doesn’t have to be expensive or time-consuming. Consistency in business promotion often nets better results than making a big splash or trying to “go...
Branding You
If you have an e-commerce website, or are planning to implement one, there are a few things you can learn from a phenomenon known as “shopping cart abandonment.” Users on e-commerce sites tend to leave behind loaded shopping carts at an alarming rate. But...
Branding Services, Business presentations, Creative Marketing, Graphic designer, Mobile application development, Mobile website development, promotional products, Small business marketing, Social media, Website design
As a concept, digital marketing first came about nearly 25 years ago, as business owners began to realize the potential of electronic media. Since that time, billions of electronic devices have proliferated in the marketplace, and consumers have shown a willingness to...
Business presentations, Creative Marketing, Graphic designer, Integrated branding, Mobile website development, Website design
If your business already has a website, website maintenance takes on a new importance. Maintaining your website will help you improve your search engine rankings and ensure that your website content is up-to-date. It’s easy to forget how fast information can...
Branding Services, Creative Marketing, Graphic designer, Mobile website development, Small business marketing, Website design
The Internet opens up the prospect of increased website sales for many small businesses. Small businesses with well-designed, well-managed websites can compete effectively with businesses that traditionally outsell, outspend and outperform small competitors. But can...
Branding You
In my last post, I discussed two features of website design that can help improve website sales – that is, the sales that are generated exclusively by your website. Your website has a distinct advantage over your sales staff, if only because it can work 24 hours a...
Branding Services, Creative Marketing, Graphic designer, Mobile website development, Website design
Your website has to do more than provide a digital “presence.” To get the most from your website, it has to be well-versed at sales conversions. Why? Because sometimes your website is a prospective customer’s only link into your company. When...
Branding You
Branding You
When you think of branding, it’s natural to apply the concept to an entire business, but as businesses grow, branding can be used to promote different lines of business within a business. For example, if you run a plumbing business, but you also offer heating...
Branding Services, Branding You, Creative Marketing, Graphic designer, Integrated branding, Mobile website development, Small business marketing, Website design
If you’ve been paying attention to the last several posts here, you know that more than 550,000 new businesses start each month. While that sounds like a lot, an even greater number of businesses close their doors each month. That’s right. The US economy...
Branding You
Marketing is one of the biggest question marks a small business owner faces. Sometimes, you need to move quickly to take advantage of an opportunity, but having marketing and graphic design support on staff may be an expense that most small businesses can’t...
Branding Services, Creative Marketing, Integrated branding, Small business marketing
In my last couple of posts, I’ve written about the things you should consider when you’re starting a business. Nearly 7 million small businesses launch each year, and there are no guarantees of success, but there are a few things you can do to help ensure...
Branding Services, Creative Marketing, Integrated branding, Website design
In my last post, I discussed some basic steps you’ll want to take if you’re considering starting up a small business. Small business startups are in good company – more than one-half million new small businesses open each month, but keeping the doors open...
Branding Services, Creative Marketing, Small business marketing
While the unemployment rate is lower today than it was one year ago, many would-be workers are still looking for employment, and many currently employed workers are wondering whether now is a good time to start up their own businesses. According to the Small Business...
Branding Services, Branding You, Creative Marketing, promotional products, Small business marketing
My last post covered outsourcing as a strategy to reduce administrative costs for a small business, and improve the reliability of the service. Outsourcing can save both time and money, and enable small business owners to concentrate on running their business....
Small business marketing, Website design
Running a small business takes a lot of time, and as the old adage goes, “time is money.” When you’re running a small business, you’ve really got two full-time jobs. On one hand, you must take care of the business – that is, actually perform...
Small business marketing
Running a small business is no easy task, and small business bookkeeping can quickly turn into a high-risk adventure if you’re not careful. Good small business bookkeeping is essential, because mistakes and careless accounting procedures can pack an immediate...