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9 Non-PPC Questions Your PPC Clients Will Ask (& How to Answer Them)

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9 Non-PPC Questions Your PPC Clients Will Ask (& How to Answer Them)

A couple of months ago I wrote a post about things I wish I had known when I started my career in PPC. There was….quite a lot and one of the areas I covered was that of being a surprise business consultant in addition to a PPC consultant.

When a client asks you a question that has nothing to do with PPC…

It seemed like an area that other PPCers have experienced as well. So I thought it might be a good idea to dive deeper into this topic, discuss some of the most common (and sometimes most difficult) questions I’m asked by clients about their business and then also provide insights on how I go about answering them.

9 non-PPC questions your clients will ask (+ answers)

Here’s a list of nine common questions I’m asked as a PPC pro that I wanted to share my typical answers to.

Note: None of these answers are perfect. They’re simply what I’ve found works best for the clients I work with over time and keep us moving forward.

1. What should our budget be?

This is a topic that’s becoming more prevalent as my time goes on. It used to be that only small businesses would ask me what they should be spending on their ads, but more and more, I’m hearing larger companies ask similar questions. Luckily, this one is a little easier to answer with the help of some of the platform planning tools.

google keyword planner

The Google Keyword Planner, for example, is a keyword research tool with built-in functionality for you to estimate overall costs of your potential keywords and geographic area. And when you create audiences on LinkedIn, there are size estimates and CPCs estimated based on your parameters that give you a range of what you could spend. There’s also a budget report in Google Ads that can help you see your current and projected spend based on your daily budget.

These tools are best used as guideposts. Typically, I use these numbers as a suggested range to get the conversation moving, but they’re just starting points. I have never taken the suggested spend from these tools and told my clients that’s what the budget HAS to be. That’s simply not practical. Sometimes the estimated spend is too small, other times it’s too large.

The other consideration aside from potential is realistic performance expectations. Often, clients will have a target number of leads or amount of revenue they would like their campaigns to produce. I work with them to create realistic CPA or ROAS goals, then reverse engineer the appropriate budget from there.

For example, if you want to generate 100 leads per month and your realistic CPL target is $200, you’ll need to have at least a budget of $20k per month to hit those goals. Anything short of that simply isn’t realistic.

2. Who should we be targeting?

I always tell my clients that you know your business, we know the ad channels. When someone asks me who they should be targeting, I turn the question back on them.

Who is your target audience?

Give me a persona. How old are they? Where do they live? What types of companies do they work in? What do they do on the weekends?

Maybe not all of these types of questions will feed into every business type, but the more information we have, the better off we are.

No matter what they tell me, I take those characteristics and conduct targeting research on the ad channels. Can I find any of these characteristics on LinkedIn? Snapchat? Google? Facebook?

facebook ad targeting settings

Depending on what I find, my response to them is usually a rundown of targeting options on a number of channels that we then use as the starting point to develop a multi-channel or cross-channel approach to customer generation.

3. Who are our competitors and how can we differentiate from them?

Competitors in PPC are not always the same as regular market competition. Typically when my clients ask me this question, they’re asking for their market competitors. But that’s not where my value lies.

Instead, I discuss what makes a PPC competitor. These are companies that you’re directly bidding against for the attention and clicks of your target customer.

On search, this could be a number of brands that sell the same products/services that you do, or they could be folks who are in the wrong place. Depending on who you find in these areas, you need to craft your advertising accordingly. I use a couple of tools to help identify these competitors.

First, if there are already search campaigns running, I use the Auction Insights tool. The domains that show up here are bidding against you on a regular basis. In some cases, this can give you a good list of folks to do further research on and in some cases, it can also cause you to revisit your keyword list if you find that many of the brands listed aren’t relevant to your company.

spyfu competitor analysis example

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Second, I use the competitor keyword tools like SpyFu, SEMRush, and iSpionage. While they’re not perfect, these tools can help identify the keywords certain brands are bidding on and give you more ideas of keywords to target and stay away from based on competition.

No matter what the list of competitors, I usually try and provide a report that includes insights on keywords, ad copy, calls to action, and landing page insights for the main 5-10 competitors to give my clients a good idea what they’re realistically up against in the SERPs.

4. Should we focus on growing our customer base or servicing the customers we already have?

There’s not really a right or wrong answer here, but I usually ask about customer churn. If you’re losing customers faster than you can make them, you should likely work on retaining the customers you have before you go find more. Otherwise, you’re just going to lose them down the line.

leading causes of customer churn

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That said, it can be very short-sighted to only look at existing customers when running a business. If you’re not influencing new users, you’re not building a pipeline for future customers.

Even if you need to work on retention, I’ll have a hard time saying you shouldn’t do ANY prospecting. If you don’t, you likely won’t have a place to go for users once that retention strategy is in place.

5. Should we expand into new geographic markets?

I love when companies want to expand, but you need to make sure it’s worth it.

The first place I usually look is demand: is there search volume or high enough target audiences to support expanded coverage for their services? Ideally, I can find some benchmark stats for performance, but typically that information is pretty scarce.

The next thing to do is check the business fundamentals.

  • Do your shipping costs go up?
  • Can you keep your service timing promises?
  • Can you support a dispersed customer base and maintain your level of service?
  • Could you keep up with increased production needs?
  • Are there other considerations that come into play with expanded coverage?

If all of these things align with green lights for the expanded coverage, I’ll suggest a controlled test. Target the audiences that have the highest performance from the current locations or are the best fit in the new ones and run a time and budget-restricted campaign.

The time and budget restrictions are important. You want to ensure your test has enough time for some optimizations and enough budget was spent to give this new area an honest chance to perform. Getting signoff on those pieces will be important to prove if this area is worthy of ongoing expansion.

ansoff matrix

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6. Does it make sense to extend our product or service offerings?

Similar to geographic expansion, we PPC pros can help with this in a couple of ways:

Would there be existing demand for these new products/services or would we have to create it?

Are there other companies doing this already? How would we stack up against them, cost and quality-wise?

In some instances, I’ve found huge demand for a product or service, but my client wasn’t able to deliver at a level that beat the competition on either quality or cost. To unseat an existing company, you’ll likely have to beat them on one of these two. If you can’t do that, it might not be in your best interest to expand.

 

b2b vs b2c marketing - swot analysis template

Our SWOT analysis template could come in handy here.

7. Should we have a holiday sale this year or hold off?

Based on the brands I’ve worked with, holiday sales are usually designed to do a couple of things: meet annual revenue targets or acquire new customers at a lower cost with the expectation that they’ll come back later on. Typically, holiday sales are NOT meant to be the time of year when people rake in the highest ROAS performance.

happy socks black friday sale

When I’m asked this question, I usually ask what the main goals of having a sale would be. What are they trying to achieve? Work on coming up with estimates of performance during the holiday period to see if the goals they have are realistically achievable.

This can be done through some of the planning tools, but the best is to use historical performance if you have it. Take a look at the last couple of years during the holiday. How did things shift? How did they stay the same? Based on these trends, do you think their goals for this holiday season are achievable with a holiday sale or will they be undermining the campaigns?

8. What areas of our company do you think are resonating well and what could be done to improve?

In my experience, this question is nearly impossible to answer other than from a campaign perspective.

Likely, you don’t know how customers are liking their products or services, but you can get insights about which ad copy messages, calls to action, or keyword groups are receiving the most attention in the account, either volume or engagement wise to help give some guidance.

Take a look at the different components of your account. What campaigns/products/services are getting the most volume? Which have the highest CTR? Which have the highest conversion rate? What has the highest ROAS or the lowest CPA?

search ad benchmark data

View our latest online advertising benchmark data here.

Depending on what you find in the performance, you might be highlighting an area of their business that your client didn’t realize is a strong performer for them and give them a place to focus on expansion.

9. What are some brands you engage with regularly and what do you like about them? How could those same practices apply to our company?

Honestly, this one is a little tougher, because it’s pretty much all opinion based. For this question, I try to be on the lookout regularly to find brands that I like and are doing a good job achieving specific goals.

That said, it’s always a good idea to check out the ad libraries to see what types of ads high-spend brands are running and see if you can find some takeaways for your clients.

I personally like to look at the Facebook Ad Library and the TikTok Ads Inspiration section. Others like MOAT can help you find display ads companies are running.

tik tok ads inspiration center

No matter where you get the info, it’s always good to show actual examples of the ads rather than just talk about them. Clients love to see visuals to make a point and then they’re much easier to share with their own creative departments as direction for future campaigns.

Conclusion

Almost every PPC pro I’ve talked to over the years agrees: In some ways, we end up being an additional business consultant to our clients outside of our usual PPC duties. Hopefully, highlighting some of my answers to these questions, which you’ll find are usually research or process-based more than anything, will give you the confidence to take this extra role head-on and continue providing additional benefits to your clients.

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PPC Campaign Testing: The Dos & Don’ts to Turn Risks into Rewards

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PPC Campaign Testing: The Dos & Don’ts to Turn Risks into Rewards

There are certain facets of marketing that have always seemed to capture more attention than others in regards to growing your business online. One of these is testing.

This adherence (and some might conclude, obsession) with data is not confined solely to the marketing world, as it seems most aspects of society have transformed into “data-driven” models.

Data-driven decision-making in marketing is incredibly valuable, but there is a time and place for everything, and marketing itself is a lot more than just numbers.

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The data that drives successful marketing campaigns can’t materialize prior to creating said campaigns. The chicken that lays the egg that makes testing possible is the creativity that drives results fuels the data that informs decisions.

In this post I’ll walk you through what A/B testing is from a paid media perspective, when it’s necessary, and when human abilities like creativity, intuition, and common sense lay the groundwork.

What exactly do we mean by “testing”?

There are many forms of testing within marketing including multivariate testing, usability testing, and content testing, but for the sake of simplicity within paid advertising we will mostly be referring to A/B testing.

With an A/B test, you create two variants of an ad or landing page, and everything is identical except for one element so you can see which variation leads to more conversions. You can test ad copy, button colors, creative elements, the length of the landing page, and more.

example of a google ads a/b test

The variant that performs better needs to reach statistical significance, which Investopedia defines as “the claim that a result from data generated by testing or experimentation is likely to be attributable to a specific cause. A high degree of statistical significance indicates that an observed relationship is unlikely to be due to chance.”

You generally want a confidence of 95% to consider that a change or variant is statistically significant.

statistical significance definition

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When is it appropriate to begin testing?

Many folks take an extremely “scientific” approach right out of the gate, analyzing every impression and click with a magnifying glass and conducting micro experiment upon micro experiment with slight alterations in ad copy and creative.

The problem with this is that they are limiting themselves by hyper-focusing on small details too early on. Successful paid media is not always an immediate victory in regards to the quality of feedback or results that you may experience when you get started.

With a channel like Google Ads, for example, patience and observation is key to learning which levers to pull and where to make strategic adjustments. You may create an ad or make and adjustment and wait a week or two to observe the impact. Plus, there’s the algorithmic learning period to consider.

Why Arent My Google Ads Converting 10 Reasons Solutions

So the question is, when should you begin testing?

Every business is different—their stage of growth, the number of creative resources available, and the industry they are competing in. When it comes to paid media channels, everyone starts with a blank slate at some point. The promotions and strategy that you choose from the start often influence the evolution of your paid advertising accounts for better or worse.

From my experience, testing should begin after you start to get some traction with the results you are looking for. So for example, if you are looking to generate conversions from a lead form submit, then you should begin testing after you begin to see some results. So you might now be thinking, “What if I’m not driving any results and therefore need to test in order to do so?” My answer to that question is to separate testing from experimentation.

Testing vs experimentation

From a paid marketing perspective, testing is comparing a control to an alteration. You are “testing” a new variant against a pre-existing one to see if the changes you have made are statistically significant or not.

Experimentation, on the other hand, is pushing your creative juices to produce a variety of different ads or promotions against your target audience to see what appears to gain the most traction.

google ads experiments

Experimentation is not to be confused with Google Ads experiments, a feature within the platform.

Some may call this testing but in my opinion, it is less scientific and restrictive. Once you begin to accumulate meaningful data and feedback you can then identify and zero in on what works and test within that framework.

How to do experimentation the right way

When you are in the experimentation and exploration phase, there is a strategy to apply as well. On paid social networks, I like to create the target persona as best as I can manually, then create 3-4 ads targeting that persona.

Given the objective of the client, these ads will be in alignment from a conversion or web traffic perspective. I will also typically create a retargeting audience to test against visitors who are already familiar with the brand. From there, we may incorporate more variations of ads, play around with copy or creative, and allow the campaign to run and collect data.

examples of ad variants

This stage allows us to gauge the audience’s receptiveness to different messages and ultimately the data will inform us on a direction to explore further. For one client of mine, we were able to increase lead-to-sales opportunity ratios by over 15% by simply identifying that certain language and creative elements resonated much better with our audiences than others. We arrived at that conclusion, however by not being too stringent on testing early on, rather, letting the ads play out then assessing the findings.

Bottom line? The purpose of the experimentation or exploration phase is to create baselines—which allow you to set expectations as well as goals for improvement. This will move you beyond the experimental phase into the testing phase. From there on you can create a model for testing that allows marginal improvements to performance without all the risk of trying an entirely new promotional set.

How (and when) to move from experimentation to testing

To simplify my process for experimentation and testing I will outline from my experience, the stages of growth within a paid advertising account and what you should be doing:

Early stage: Experimentation only

If you’re starting your Google Ads campaign or account from scratch, you should be focused primarily on setting up proper tracking, pixel implementation, etc. first. The most important part of this early phase is that you know your general goal for advertising and ensuring your website and CRM are tracking these results properly, whether they are website visits or conversions.

google ads enhanced conversions setup - google ads conversion tracking tag

From there you should take that overall goal and begin to construct campaigns in which to enter the experimentation phase.

If it is paid search, create campaigns for your branded search terms and through keyword research, some of your most relevant terms. Try to start with something that has the highest probability of producing the result that you want, then expand from there once baselines are established. You can learn how to set up conversion tracking in Google Ads here.

In paid social, you should do the same but with website remarketing and a carefully constructed target persona. In paid social you should establish the goal you are looking for and try numerous promotions that align with that goal.

You can learn how to set up your Facebook Pixel here.

facebook pixel setup - meta pixel only option

You may also want to set up the Facebook Conversions API for the most complete tracking.

Middle stage: Start testing

What I refer to as the middle stage is where you have experimented with different offers and have figured out what appears to work. You have baseline costs for these promotions and are ready to start testing variations of this offer in a more scientific way. This is where you can begin to A/B test.

facebook ab testing toggled on

Growth stage: Refine your testing

This is where you are certain of what drives business within the account. When an account is in this stage you want to find ways to grow but do so within the framework that has proven to be successful. At this stage in the game, you want to test very stringently with fairly smaller changes to variations to mitigate risk of decreasing performance. Larger riskier experiments should be isolated to their own testing campaigns, separate from the ones that are currently driving business for you.

Patience is key with campaign testing

The main takeaways you should have from this advice is to treat new and early paid advertising much looser than what some others might tell you. Although everyone wants to score a touchdown right out of the gate, it is much more beneficial to your paid accounts and development as a marketer to be patient.

Not relying too heavily on data to make decisions early on allows you to be more creative and push the envelope with your marketing abilities. If you are more open to new ideas early on, it will inevitably reduce the amount of time you otherwise would have been testing micro changes to one idea. For long-term success in advertising, you need to take some risks to set a better baseline for the future.

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How to Get Found Online: Our Top 9 Tips for Local Service Businesses

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How to Get Found Online: Our Top 9 Tips for Local Service Businesses

In today’s digital landscape, having a robust online presence is essential for businesses of all sizes, but especially those in the local service industry. With more people relying on search engines to find what they are looking for, businesses that are easily found online and have a solid online reputation will have a major advantage over their competitors.

So in this post, I’m going to show you how you can improve the local online presence of your service-based business using two fundamental marketing strategies: SEO and PPC

9 best ways for local service businesses to get found online

As a digital marketing instructor and consultatnt, I have had the privilege of not only teaching my students about the importance of combining search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising for businesses, but also experiencing the positive impact of this combination firsthand. Here’s how to leverage these two strategies to drive traffic, generate leads, and maximize a limited budget.

1. Pick the right company and domain name

Naming your business should be a thoughtful process. You want something that reflects your brand personality and is not easily copyable.

As a local business, it can be extra helpful to pick something that aligns with your target audience’s search intent, but don’t force it. I once came across a dentist that named itself “Dentist Near Me” and secured the domain dentistnearme.com. Taking this approach to an extreme certainly has its SEO benefits but it may not always be the best idea as others may follow suit and adopt similar names, potentially rendering the strategy ineffective.

Image source

A helpful tactic is to include your city, town, or service area name in your business name but it isn’t essential.

2. Get your listings in order

Having an up-to-date Google Business Profile is also a great way to improve your local business’s online presence. Regularly update your business information, add photos, and create posts with deals and helpful articles to build trust and credibility with potential customers. You should follow suit for the rest of your online listings as well to increase your chances of ranking in local searches.

directory listing logos

This will make it easy for them to find and connect with you.

3. Target keywords with blog posts

Publish keyword-rich blog posts that answer common questions from potential customers—not just about your business specifically but about things related to the products and services you provide.

This will not only improve your website’s search engine ranking, but it will also build trust and credibility with potential customers.

seo trends 2023 - on page seo checklist

You can use our SEO-optimized blog post templates to get started!

4. Put your highest value CTA at the top right of your homepage

Make sure your website is user-friendly and provides a great user experience. We have plenty of website examples you can browse through here. Implement prominent call-to-action buttons, such as a clickable a phone number in the top right-hand corner and footer, and a large contact form in the footer. These buttons are easily accessible, intuitive, and make it simple for customers to get in touch with you, book a lesson, start a free trial, etc.

Your highest value CTA should go in that right-hand section.

healthcare website design examples - synergy private practice

5. Track your SEO performance

In addition to reporting on your PPC performance, you should also keep track of your organic/SEO performance. Use Google Tag Manager and GA4 to analyze SEO metrics and customer behavior against your goals, as well as Google Search Console. You can also use Google Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) to monitor organic performance.

google data/looker studio - traffic source report

6. Reduce your PPC spend with location targeting

This is a key home service business marketing tip. One challenge many small businesses face with advertising is a limited budget. One client I worked with had only $10 a day to spend. To overcome this challenge, I used location targeting to reach a 5km radius around the business’s location. This approach helped them save their advertising budget while also reaching the right audience.

how to save money in google ads - location targeting options

7. Bid on commercial intent keywords

When running Google Ads, you have to tell Google which keyword(s) you’re bidding on. While there are tons of keywords relevant to your business, the ones to bid on with your PPC campaigns should have high commercial intent.

Do extensive keyword research to identify the keywords that potential customers would be searching for when looking for what you have to offer. Informational intent keywords should be used for SEO. For PPC, use commercial or transactional intent so that your ads won’t just appear for those searches, but so that they’ll get clicked on by people, and those most likely to convert.

the four types of keyword intent

8. Maintain a negative keyword list

In addition to targeting high commercial intent keywords, be sure to use negative keywords—which are keywords that you do not want your ad to appear for. This will prevent your ads from showing up for and getting clicked on by people for whom your product or service is not a good fit.

In my view, even with broad match, this is especially important when your daily budget is low.

google ads - add as negative keyword

9. Set up conversion tracking

Another important aspect of running a Google Ads campaign is measuring your success with conversion tracking. With this visibility, you can harness the campaigns, offers, settings, and strategies that are working and eliminate what’s not and improve your ROAS (Return On Ad Spend).

google ads conversion tracking - conversion value

Check out our list of conversion tracking mistakes to make sure you’re getting the most accurate data possible.

Improve your local businesses’s online presence with SEO & PPC

The best way to improve your online presence for your local service-based business is to use SEO and PPC together. Both will help to improve your presence on the SERP for a wide range of keywords, and with the tips I provide, you’ll be able to reach your target audience and build trust and credibility with potential customers.

Here are the tips I mentioned in this post:

  1. Pick the right company and domain name
  2. Get your listings in order
  3. Target keywords with blog posts
  4. Put your highest value CTA at the top right of your homepage
  5. Track your SEO performance
  6. Reduce your PPC spend with location targeting
  7. Bid on commercial intent keywords
  8. Maintain a negative keyword list
  9. Set up conversion tracking

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50+ Free & Creative April Marketing Ideas (With Examples!)

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50+ Free & Creative April Marketing Ideas to Freshen Up Your Content Calendar

It’s April and we’re about to make it rain on your business with creative marketing ideas for the whole month.  There’s National Grilled Cheese Day, Take Your Child to Work Day, Autism Awareness Month, Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and more. These observances and themes provide opportunities for you to connect with your customers, express your voice and values, and creatively engage your audience—especially on social media.

Read on to learn all April themes, holidays, and awareness causes you can leverage for promoting your business and see well as real examples from businesses across various industries to give you some creative inspiration.

And for ideas for the whole year, check out this awesome marketing calendar by our friends at LOCALiQ.

Table of contents

April national month awareness

April presents us with plenty of options for socially aware marketing. Here are some of the many themes and causes recognized in April:

april marketing ideas - diversity month

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April diversity, equity, and inclusion

We like to highlight the diversity, equity, and inclusion-friendly observances for each month anyway, but it’s especially important during Diversity Month! Here are the holidays that can help you celebrate diversity:

  • World Autism Awareness Day (April 2)
  • Palm Sunday (Christian) (varies)
  • Passover/Pesach (varies)
  • Maundy/Holy Thursday (Christian) (varies)
  • Theravada New Year (Buddhist) (varies)
  • Good Friday (Christian) (varies)
  • Day to Remember Rwanda Genocide Victims (April 7)
  • Easter Sunday (Christian) (varies)
  • Day of Silence (Students take a day-long vow of silence to protest the actual silencing of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students and their straight allies due to bias and harassment) (April 14)
  • Orthodox Good Friday (April 14)
  • Vaisakhi (Sikh) (April 13 or 14)
  • Yom Hashoah (Jewish) (Sunset April 17 to Sunset April 18)
  • Laila Al-Qadr (Islamic) (Sunset April 17)
  • Eid Al-Fitr (Islamic) (Sundown April 21 to Sundown April 22)
  • Festival of Ridvan (Baha’i) (April 21 to May 2)
  • Armenian Martyrs’ Day
  • Yom HaAtzmaut (Jewish) (Sundown April 25 to Nightfall April 26)

We have lots of DEI resources here to help you out!

april marketing ideas- day of silence

Image source

April holidays

Here is a list of the many holidays and national days celebrated in April that can make for creative marketing for your local business:

  • April Fool’s Day
  • Easter Sunday
  • World Party Day
  • Walk to Work Day
  • World Health Day
  • Siblings Day
  • National Grilled Cheese Day
  • Tax Day
  • High Five Day
  • Get to Know Your Customers Day
  • Earth Day
  • Picnic Day
  • Denim Day
  • Administrative Professionals’ Day
  • Take Your Child to Work Day
  • Arbor Day
  • Email Debt Forgiveness Day

Creative April marketing ideas and examples

Between your website, blog, social media accounts, and Google Business Profile, there are plenty of channels by which you can share your April content and promotions. Below you’ll find a plethora of creative April-themed ideas from real businesses just like yours.

Autism Awareness Month

Autism affects one in 59 children in the United States. If you or someone you love is affected by autism, this is a great opportunity to raise awareness by getting involved in activities to give back to the community or raising money to donate to an organization dedicated to autism. Here’s a link to get involved in an event near you. Or you can show your support with applicable products, as with the example below:

april marketing ideas autism awareness

National Child Abuse Prevention Month

Show your support for National Child Abuse Prevention Month with a blue pinwheel, which is the national symbol for the cause.

april marketing ideas pinwheels

Or plant a pinwheel garden at your place of business and share it with your followers in hopes of raising awareness.

April marketing ideas pinwheel garden

Financial Literacy Month

In honor of Financial Literacy Month, publish a blog post on a finance-related topic. Or, encourage followers to start a conversation about how they’d choose to spend extra cash if it fell into their laps. These comments could get pretty creative! This is a great way to increase Instagram engagement and spark a conversation.

April marketing ideas financial literacy month

Prom season

Many types of businesses can figure out a post to tap into the prom season frenzy. This restaurant is cashing in on the popularity of “promposals.”

April marketing ideas promposal

Think about posting something useful for parents who may be concerned about the goings-on of prom night…providing helpful information is appreciated by your followers – no one wants to be sold to 24/7.

April marketing ideas prom education

If you happen to have an offering that is right in line with prom season, don’t be shy about promoting yourself either.

April marketing ideas prom special

April Fool’s Day

Have some fun with your marketing on April 1. April Fools Day is the perfect excuse to play a practical joke on your customers—just be sure to keep things light and fun. Fitness centers can offer calorie-free cheeseburgers, preschools can offer a class for teaching ABCs to dogs, and massage studios can offer touch-free massages. These are all obvious jokes related to your business. Another way to market your business for April Fools Day is to run a competition for the best prank, or to share photos of your employees partaking in the fun.

april marketing ideas april fools

National Siblings Day

If you run a family business don’t forget about National Sibling Day. Celebrate your togetherness while promoting your business. Or simply provide ideas on ways to honor the day.

April marketing ideas siblings day

If applicable, run promotions specific to siblings with two-for-one deals. Or you can celebrate by simply snapping pics of all the siblings that come to your location and posting to social media.

April marketing ideas siblings day 2

📣 Speaking of promoting your business…

The Boston Marathon

WordStream is based in Boston so we’re huge supporters of the marathon, but you don’t have to be local to support it. Show your support for local athletes who are running or traveling with family members running in the marathon. Fitness centers should show their support across the country for the marathoners. Local restaurants can offer “carb loading” pre-marathon meals and massage studios can offer discounts to runners.

Administrative Professionals Day

Make sure to thank your support staff on Administrative Professionals Day. This is a good way to make your business and brand personal on social media and on your blog. Highlight what your support staff does for your business and interview them on your blog or on a video. Customers who interact with support staff will love seeing them in the spotlight!

april marketing ideas administrative professionals day

Get more April social media holidays and ideas to fill your calendar here!

National Grilled Cheese Day

Everyone loves grilled cheese sandwiches so you should absolutely find a way to incorporate a National Grilled Cheese Day post into your feed—whether you own a restaurant or not! See how these non-food related businesses made it work:

April marketing ideas national grilled cheese day 1

 

April marketing ideas national grilled cheese day 2

National High Five Day

On National High Five Day, drum up some customer engagement and ask them to pose for a #highfive and tag them. They’ll likely repost on their own feeds and get you some more visibility.

April marketing ideas high five day

You could also publish an engaging Facebook post inviting customers to tag people they’d like to give a virtual high five.

April marketing ideas virtual high five

Or give your own virtual high five as a thank you or special shout out to customers, vendors, or even a cause you support.

April marketing ideas high five AHA

If you’re up for it, think about running a promo that coincides with the number five…it doesn’t all have to be about a literal high five!

april marketing ideas high five day pizza

Take Your Child to Work Day

If you have kids, bring them to work on this day and tell your customers about it. This is a great way to teach your child about starting and running a business and inspire them to follow their dreams.

Take their picture and post it on social media, encouraging customers to come in and say hello. Make your child the “boss” of the day. Posting pictures or stories on social media is a great way to engage customers and to personalize your brand. Plus, you can show off your adorable children!

April marketing ideas take your child to work day 1
April marketing ideas take your child to work day 2

Earth Day

Earth Day and Arbor Day are all about nature and trees. Use these holidays as a marketing opportunity for some green marketing. Flower shops can host a class or write a blog about reusing dried flowers for decor, interior designers can provide tips about decorating with nature, and fitness centers can take classes outside for a hike or workout that appreciates nature.

Easter & Passover

Restaurants, of course, can host Easter brunch or advertise their Kosher for Passover menu items. Photographers can run Easter picture specials. Daycares can make a special day for children to take pictures with the Easter bunny. Fitness centers can have a family fun day with an Easter egg hunt. Bakeries can post their themed baked goods to increase their orders. Or, run a “peeps” special like this business did:

april marketing ideas peeps

Our friends at LOCALiQ have plenty more Easter marketing ideas for you to check out.

Tax Day

Tax Day is a day that people either love (because they’re getting a refund) or hate (because they owe money). This is prime time for accountants to market their business—if they haven’t already. But other types of businesses can benefit from Tax Day as well.

Restaurants and bars can host post Tax Day parties. Retail stores can have after-Tax Day promotions to help people looking to spend their refund. Filing taxes is stressful, so fitness centers or yoga studios can use this as an opportunity to have a boot camp class or a special yoga class. For a little extra fun, incorporate a playlist of money songs.

Or you can do something fun with numbers, like this restaurant did:

April marketing ideas tax day special

Spring cleaning

Spring cleaning is high time for cleaning services, organizers, and interior designers. Use this as an opportunity to give your customers and potential customers tips on how they can spruce up their house for the new season.

Cleaning Services should offer promotions or referrals for new or current customers to jump-start business for the warmer weather. Contractors or construction services should blog or post videos about common issues that arise in the spring. If you’re getting started on a blog, spring cleaning is a great topic for writing your first blog post.

Get to Know Your Customers Day

Get to Know Your Customer Day occurs on the third Thursday of the first month of each quarter, so January, April, July, and October—and is, of course, a great opportunity for interacting with your customers. Post questions on Facebook that engage them in a conversation. Ask for their opinions to help improve your services, what they like about your business, etc.

April marketing ideas get to know your customers 1

 

April marketing ideas get to know your customers 2

Denim Day

Denim Day is associated with Sexual Assault Awareness. Take a break from self-promotion and educate your followers on the history of the holiday.

April marketing ideas denim day

Or show your support for victims of sexual assault by asking employees to wear denim to work on this day.

Creatively market your business this April

From spring cleaning and mother Earth to grilled cheese sandwiches and high fives, there are plenty of opportunities to market your business this April. And if you’re looking for more monthly marketing ideas, we’ve got plenty of ’em:

And here’s our full series of monthly marketing ideas

And for a year’s worth of marketing ideas, check out this marketing calendar template from our friends at LOCALiQ.

As promised, here are all the observances and holidays celebrated in April, courtesy of HolidayInsights:

National Stress Awareness Day (first workday after U.S. taxes are due)

Administrative Professionals Day (Executive Admin’s Day, Secretary’s Day)(date varies)



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