Steve Sipress, director of Chicagoland's Sharpest Entrepreneurs, gives some sage advice on Crain's Chicago Business. He said he was taught that small business marketing professionals need to enter "the conversation already going on inside your customer's mind."

"Did you capitalize on these opportunities to connect with your audience by creating marketing messages and special offers involving one or more of these topics, such as 'Our special will run six more weeks because the groundhog saw his shadow' or 'Here's a special offer because we love our customers'?" he asks, referring to Groundhog Day and Valentine's day offers companies could have taken advantage of.

For businesses that didn't happen to take advantage of any of the latest hot topics, he said there are always more. President's Day and other holidays are coming up, which small businesses can use to help cater to their customers and keep them coming back.

Optify suggests changing content keywords during the holidays and creating a calendar to help remember when these key days are coming up. Marketing automation and CRM software can also be helpful for implementing and evaluating this of a marketing strategy.

Rhonda Abrams said most entrepreneurs have to-do lists, and, while these lists can help a small business stay organized and focused, some actions can be more harmful than beneficial. One thing small business marketers and leaders need to add to their 'not to-do' lists is being indecisive.

"Being wishy-washy costs money and time," Abrams said.This doesn't mean marketers should rush into decisions, but rather they should make quick ones that are based on sound reasoning. "Your small company needs leadership, and face it, you're the leader. Yes, you may have a collaborative work culture, but the business still needs someone at the head, making final decisions and making sure they are executed consistently."

Businesses should also not get distracted by too many ideas, criticize employees or put too much faith in social media or new media marketing.

Fisher Business Management said small business marketing professionals should avoid saying yes to everything that comes their way, and should not ignore what the competition is doing. The website said companies that don't check out what the competition is up to, risk missing out on a great opportunity.

While the economy isn't back at full force quite yet, Business Day Online said there are ways that small businesses can gain more sales, saying that the power of technology needs to be more fully utilized. CRM software and marketing automation and some examples of ways businesses can go to get more in-line with current marketing technology.

"Some small businesses owners can’t yet measure a return on investment for social media," the website said. "While it does take time to hone your online voice, social media gives you greater reach with customers and is an affordable tool."

Business Day Online also said businesses should further utilize the cloud and technology based off of the cloud, such as CRM. This can be used to help companies gather more data on customers and get a better idea of whom they are trying to appeal to on the market.

Another way to get into technology, according to Mandira Srivastava on SmallBizTechnology, is mobile technology. Small business marketing professionals can use text messaging, mobile web analytics and other apps to help keep in better touch with customers and get better results from any given campaign.

Marketing automation and CRM software can be very useful for any small business marketing operation, and Stephanie Miller writes on ClickZ that CRM should be considered "the new black" as far as online marketing is concerned. She said this tool allows segmentation to be driven by a good analysis of data.

"Predictive modeling is great – as it helps to improve content placement inside of various messaging and to time the content when the customer is 'in market'," Miller said. "Don't stop there. Use predictive models and the learnings from your early tests to develop scoring models that improve segments and personas. This should lead you to placing more relevant offers, but also to identifying your best customers, prospects, and upsell opportunities."

Miller said small businesses should also look to optimize cross channels and remember that "more" is not always better when it comes to giving insights. Instead, companies should focus on giving quality information to subscribers that will keep them coming back.

Small Business Computing said small business marketing professionals shouldn't be discouraged about adopting new technology like the latest CRM software solutions, because there are a number of providers that specialize in helping small businesses integrate the tools into their operations.

Marketing emails that stand on their own may no longer be as effective as they once were. Dave Lewis of Message Systems tells BtoB Online that the only way to get real engagement and put leads in the sales pipeline efficiently is message convergence.

“Message convergence is an engagement strategy that accommodates the changes in [user] behavior relative to the different channels so you can speak to the [user] in the most relevant place with the most relevant message,” Lewis said to the news source.

In this method, marketers would integrate multiple channels and data sources so they can be quickly acted on. This will help speed up the sales and marketing process, bring in better leads and help make sales.

Lewis said the big benefits of converging messaging together are generating more revenue for the company, having less splintering within the organization, making customers happier and having the data be more secure than it normally would be.

Ryan Deutsch writes on ClickZ that convergence should be more than a buzzword for small business marketing professionals and said it can help make customer experience better. He said by engaging with customers, email marketing should become a more powerful tool and yield a higher return.

Small business marketing professionals who invested in CRM software should keep an eye out on the market, as there looks to be some interesting moves forward this year, according to Jennifer Lonoff Schiff on CIO.com.

Schiff said cloud computing-based CRM software will continue to move ahead, there will be more advanced interfaces and programs will look to further put all of the data together. The article said systems will play a bigger role in building customer relationships by having data centralized from many different mediums.

In the same vein, Schiff said CRM software will continue to move into social media. With a significant amount of customer information and data to gain by looking at websites like Facebook and Twitter, companies can use CRM to help marketing teams better communicate with customers and give better data to sales teams to help drive new leads into the sales pipeline.

TechNewsWorld said CRM software companies that figure out how to better integrate social media will be able to move to the top of the industry. Small business marketing professionals should be on the look out for systems that are able to gain good information from these social media websites.

With the large amount of big data that is out there, some marketing professionals may feel overwhelmed. Chrsitine Crandell writes on Forbes that CRM software and other types of marketing automation can be extremely useful to help marketers feel more organized and generate more leads.

Jim Burleigh, CEO of Cloud9, said CRM systems may not help customers figure out what to buy, but they can help businesses figure out who their customers are and what they want to see. He said a big piece of this is the social aspect and he believes social CRM is needed for a complete view of the customer

“Traditional CRM systems are of little help in executing better on pipelines,” Burleigh told the news source. “Social technologies can give Sales richer information and better access to enterprise buyers.” 

Crandell said sales and marketing tools like this have helped businesses learn more about sales patterns on multiple levels, such as when the customer is about to disengage to help bring them back. This can be an essential tool for businesses that use it correctly.

Small Business Computing said leveraging social media with CRM software can be a great way to absorb the information found on social media sites. This can help nurture relationships and bring back repeat business.