You’ve probably heard of Pokémon Go -- it would be hard to miss news of this popular new social app. In fact, you’ve probably noticed a strange trend recently of people walking with a sense of purpose all around you while glued to their smartphones. I have seen this in my own neighborhood, where suddenly neighbors I’ve never even seen before are out walking and staring at their phones, almost like they're in a trance.

If you’re not familiar with Pokémon Go, it's basically an app for your smartphone that allows you to “see” Pokémon in the real world (your local streets based on your location), capture them, and train them to battle against other people’s Pokémon.

Pokémon Go and Your Marketing

So how does this relate to small business marketing? Clearly this game is the craze of the moment, but in my opinion it is always good to watch trends and see what people are interested in, especially with the rapid speed of technological change.

In a recent Adweek article, Tod Loofbourrow and Eva Barbier give us 5 things to learn from the success of Pokémon go:

You've probably heard of Snapchat -- that all of the "young kids" are using it. If you haven't heard of it, in simple terms it's a photo and video sharing service where the pictures and videos disappear within seconds of being viewed. You can also message friends with a text message type of format, although the platform is much more photo and video focused. What you may not know is that some consider Snapchat to be an important up and coming marketing platform. 

Ever heard of Dos Equis beer? You probably have, and there’s a good chance that it is due to the wildly successful commercials featuring the “most interesting man in the world”. This character, played by actor Jonathan Goldsmith will officially be retired soon. The popularity of these commercials, and the ensuing brand awareness of Dos Equis have made this campaign one of the most successful of recent advertising memory. With famous lines such as “When in Rome, they do as he does” and “If opportunity knocks, and he’s not home, opportunity waits” it was hard to miss the humor of these commercials.

Updated: February 15, 2016

Inbound marketing is, simply put, quite popular these days. If you have any doubt about that just look at HubSpot, a leader in inbound marketing. Founded in 2006, it went public last year, is valued at over 1 billion dollars and has over 15,000 customers. That goes to show the popularity of this approach to marketing. If you are unfamiliar with the definition, read about inbound marketing on our blog. You don’t want to miss out on this massive internet marketing shift.

While all of this is fascinating, we know you really clicked to see our recommendations on blogs, so here are the top 7 inbound marketing blogs we recommend you keep up with:

Buying traffic for your website is more common today than it's ever been. There's also better targeting than ever, along with more and more ways to reach people. While organic search (showing up naturally for free in search engines) may still be ideal, it may not be the only strategy you want to use, since there are limited spots and it can be very competitive. A good way to diversify your traffic sources is to include paid traffic in the mix. Here is a breakdown of 3 ways to buy website traffic for your site.

If you're running a business, you know that there are always more details than you imagined with every step along the way. How much traffic your business gets is one of those details. If you were running a brick and mortar store, you would be very aware of traffic levels and how many potential customers were coming through the door.

If you're running a website (let’s assume you are since you are reading this article), then your concern should be the internet traffic that comes to your site.

We’re all familiar with email marketing, aren’t we? Most of us probably have an inbox that is a little fuller than we would like, and some of you may have given up on cleaning out your inbox entirely because of the sheer amount of emails you get. If you have a negative perception of email marketing and are thinking it isn’t for your business, you may want to think again. You may be surprised by the benefits of email marketing.

If you run a non-profit that relies on donations, getting those donations has recently gotten easier. In November, Facebook announced new tools to help non-profits raise money online. The improvements come primarily in the form of a dedicated place called Fundraisers to collect donations from your non-profit Facebook page, and an improved “Donate” button that doesn’t require users to leave Facebook and allows them to give right from the news feed.

If you’re the creative type, you probably like the idea of coming up with a content strategy and creating content to promote your business. Maybe the strategy part appeals to you or you just love to come up with new ideas and you enjoy writing, creating videos and other content in general. It’s also quite possible that those things sound taxing and are things you would move to the bottom of your to-do list, and leave them there forever if possible. Either way, if you're a marketing manager or business owner who understands the value of content marketing, you know you only have so much time, ability and energy. That being the case, you may be considering hiring an agency to do the content marketing services for your business. The following are some common parts of content marketing to consider when deciding what your life will be like with and without content marketing services:

Do you have a small business that is just getting started and needs to find a good source of customers? Or maybe you work for an established company, and are trying to increase conversions on your website and reduce the cost per lead. Either way, you have probably been told to buy SEO services at some point along the way. Today’s post is to help inform you of what exactly SEO services are and are not, so that you can be more informed as you consider paying for this form of marketing.