St. Patrick’s Day brings out the Irish superstitions and stories about both good and bad fortune…

Superstitions such as…

If you give a purse or bag as a gift, it must have some money or a coin in it to give the gift of wealth. 

If the palm of your left hand itches, you’ll give away or lose money. If the palm of the right hand itches, you’ll come into some money.

Whether you believe in superstitions or not, St Patrick’s Day is always a great time to share some business trends for improving your luck and growing your business wealth. Here are four tips from marketing experts who have analyzed studies and trends in an effort to make the “right palm of your hand itch.” These aren’t based on superstition though. What follows is sound advice and proven recommendations from marketing professionals. Starting with…

1) Do the basics first and hire help. Small Business Advisor, Gail Gardner had several tips regarding where small business owners should focus their marketing dollars in 2013.

She says that “most business owners should focus on the basics first” such as having a web presence. She also suggests that “you should let those who specialize in usability, content marketing, SEO and driving traffic…do the majority of the work.” Her reasoning: If you don’t have the time, desire or resources to maintain it, it will do you little good.

2) Target locally. As we’ve talked about in past emails, focusing locally can be very profitable. Gardner agrees. She says it’s important to implement local marketing strategies such as listing your business in local directories, getting local blogs to link to your business and targeting local audiences with your social media, pay-per-click and other advertising.

3) Collaborate and focus on quality. Gardner also suggests “collaborating with other small businesses to educate your community on the benefits of diverting consumer spending from corporations and big box stores to independent, local small businesses.”

She says that when businesses put competition aside and focus on quality rather than price, they create a stronger and larger demand.

One suggestion is to pool resources for some of your advertising. For instance, a community in Florida formed a partnership and invited all the local businesses to join. They created a website where all businesses in the partnership are featured and pool resources for advertising and events. This helps them do more advertising and bigger ads and has improved the quality of the events they offer.

BizBytes published in the Miami Herald also discussed the importance of quality in an article they published on marketing trends for 2013. Listing the trend of online product reviews by consumers as a strong trend, it said businesses will need to make sure their products and services are quality because if not, “consumer backlash will have a detrimental effect on the bottom line.”

4) Increase your ad budget. According to a survey by Marketing Sherpa, generating high-quality leads is a top challenge for businesses. The quickest and one of the easiest ways to grow your leads is through your Pay Per Click advertising. Search agency Covario’s Global Paid Search Analysis for 2012 confirms that spending more on paid-search ads pays off.

They found that higher budgets had better lead generation and return on investment as cost per click fell and conversion rates rose during 2012. In other words, sometimes you have to spend money to make money.

Covario’s director of performance media and the report’s author, Alex Funk recommends that “advertisers increase budgets between 18% and 20% for paid-search spending in America” in 2013.

Millionaire-maker, author, coach, consultant and marketing strategist Dan Kennedy also recommends spending money on leads. He says, “The business truth that most business people ignore is that most businesses are built by ‘buying customers.” He continues, “The marketer with the willingness and ability to invest in acquiring customers AND with an effective strategy for maximizing customer value has an enormous competitive advantage.”

I’ve read that superstitions can program your subconscious to get good results. Whether you believe that or not, one thing is for sure…if you program your business to be in line with strategies that are working, you’ll be one of the businesses that “get lucky” this year.

To your success,

John Pfeiffer