This week we'll be looking at the foundations of a successful digital marketing plan, and five fundamental Digital Marketing programs you need to be successful and grow your business online:

* Customer Reviews
* Citation Listings
* Google Ads
* Facebook & Instagram Ads
* Social Media Content Creation & Publishing

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What's New?
With so many changes happening in 2020, and the sudden need to shift to digital, we figured now would be a great time to put together a guide for small businesses to get set up online and so they can start leveraging the many benefits of advertising on social media.

A website is always a smart place to start, but there's so much more you can do for your company online beyond just slapping a website together and leaving it to get lost in the mountains of content fighting for the same attention.

It may sound intimidating, but don't give up and run to the hills just yet. We have good news. It's not as hard as it may seem, and we're going to show you how to get started with strategies that work for small businesses and large corporate companies alike.

Let's get started.
What's Working?
As mentioned above, we're going to take a look at the five fundamental Digital Marketing programs you need to be successful and grow your business online.

So, let's break them down one by one.
Customer Reviews
One of the best ways to connect with your audience is through customer reviews. Word of mouth is almost always more effective and powerful than any form of traditional advertising.

Most of us generally look for reviews before making a purchase and quite often base our buying decision on those reviews left by previous customers.

Reviews offer social confirmation from customers that have used the product or service, help new customers learn more about the product they are buying, reduce the possibility of making a bad purchase, and give customers a better sense of the product’s benefits and limitations.

With the rising global trends in e-commerce and social media, it's more important than ever to be considering online reviews as a marketing tool.

Thanks to social media, blogs, and free online customer review sites like Facebook, Amazon, Yelp, Google, and Yellow Pages, consumers can share their opinions about your brand, product or service quickly and easily.

Here are some interesting statistics to consider about reviews:

* 90% of consumers read reviews before visiting a business.
* 93% of consumers say online reviews impact their purchasing decisions.
* 72% of consumers say that positive reviews make them trust a local business more.
* 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation.
* Visitors to a product page that have read reviews convert at a 58% higher rate.

So, how do you get online reviews, you might be asking?

* Ask for them - This might seem too simple because it really is. People love to share their opinion on social media, and getting them to be an ambassador for your brand is generally as simple as just asking them.
* Make it as easy as possible for people to leave reviews - Social media and review sites are a great way to get started, so make sure your business is set up on all major platforms, including Google My Business, Yelp, Facebook,