Experts tell us what is important this year, but with limited resources, budgets and time, small businesses struggle to identify which marketing trends are worth pursuing and which are fads. Often, the unfortunate result is marketing gets pushed to the back burner. To save you time, we won’t give predictions for what could be important next year; instead, here are 5 marketing trends that are important now and why they should be your focus at the end of this year.

“You should really try content marketing.” — someone you know. As a small business owner, how often have you heard that advice?

How do you know which marketing strategies and tactics perform well with little investment? How do you know which marketing campaigns will perform better as you fund them further??

As a marketer, small business owner or enterprise CMO,  understanding which campaigns will scale is a constant struggle. Anyone who’s tried to make an idea, product or service catch fire knows marketing and sales are often the toughest puzzles. You need all the pieces to come together with little wasted time or money — even more so as a small business owner or startup marketer.

The truth: Having tools at your fingertips is just the first step toward mastery.

For startup companies, mastery is a matter of experience, experimentation and staying true to your ultimate business goals–focusing on tools that actually move your KPIs forward.

At Facet, we utilize a number of tools and strive to understand how we can pull meaningful data from each one. Our hands have been busy at work, come take a look in our tool shed.

When it come to sales, the name of the game is communication. The better you are at communicating value with potential customers, the more likely they are to buy.

It is important to remember three things: