By John Eberhard

Recently I was talking to one of my clients who has had a great year, and who has hired us to do a major web re-design. I asked her what she attributed her great year to, and she said that the economy was going a lot better this year, and people were more willing to spend money.

This got me thinking and I did some research. I found that:

• The Dow’s highest closing record is 24,290.05 set on December 4, 2017.
• The Dow has set 80 new record closing highs since the 2016 presidential election
• U.S. consumer confidence rose more than expected in October, 2017 to the highest in almost 17 years as Americans grew more confident about the economy and job market, according to figures from the New York-based Conference Board
• Online shoppers spent $5 billion on Black Friday — 17% more than 2016
• Blue collar wages are up 4%
• Federal Reserve in New York projecting a 3.8% rise in GDP, which would be the best economic growth for the US economy in 3 years

So other than to cheer everyone up, why am I bringing up this information?

Simply put, it has been my observation that a lot of people in business have responded to the lousy economy that we’ve had over the last decade, by slowing or stopping their promotional efforts.

Less money for promotion. Dropping various promotions they were doing. Not bothering to update their website. The list goes on. But the common denominator has been less willingness to spend money on marketing and promotion.

I can understand that. I think during that time period we’ve seen a broad based decrease in the willingness of the public to spend their money.

But things are different now. Consumer confidence is up. The stock market is hitting record highs over and over. Shoppers spent 17% more this Black Friday than last year. It’s time for business owners and executives to wake up and snap into present time. Business is booming. But in order for you to take advantage of that, and for you to be part of that boom, you need to step up your game and ramp up your marketing and promotional efforts.

That means:

• If your website design is more than 3 years old, it’s time for a re-design
• Make sure your site is set up properly to get people to respond to you
• If you’ve never done search engine optimization on your site, you need to do it to increase your traffic to your site
• Make sure your website is mobile friendly, otherwise you risk losing over 50% of visitors, who visit the site on a mobile and won’t be able to read the text on your site
• Take that promotional idea you’ve been sitting on for the last 8 years and put it into action
• Take a look at your most recent affluent period, and put back in any promotional actions you were doing then, that have dropped out
• Analyze what your top competitors are doing for their promotion, and pilot doing those things
• Get an SSL certificate for your website so visitors will have confidence that the site is secure
• If it’s appropriate for your business, start doing Google AdWords
• If it’s appropriate for your business, start doing Facebook advertising

Let’s all take advantage of this economic boom, and that all starts with promotion.