When was the last time you checked to see if you were actually reaching your target audience? Many SMBs have only a vague idea of who their customers are and even less understanding of how to connect with them. At the very least, a failure to reach your intended audience means missed sales. Luckily, today there are free digital tools to help you define, reach and convert your audience.

Too many leads is a good problem to have. But when businesses start generating leads faster than they process them, they need a game plan for managing and prioritizing those opportunities. In other words, it's necessary to have a method of lead scoring to identify the prospects that will most likely turn into conversions.

Most small businesses can employ a lead scoring method to direct their sales teams, even on a limited budget and resources. Just understand where your most valuable audience lies, what data can predict a sale and how much you can invest into the analytics side of this strategy.

We all know that attracting customers through social media is more complex than just setting up a profile, but is it worth the effort and expense? According to a recent Marketingland report, the answer is an emphatic yes. In the article, marketers report that social media is the third-largest source of new customers for SMBs. If you're not already using social media, now is a good time to start.

Visual content is good for business. In fact, imagery is so powerful that just seconds of watching a video will increase purchase intent in 44 percent of viewers, according to a Facebook study. Additionally, Facebook posts with photos get 120 percent more engagement than text-only social media posts, a report from Ragan explained. Why are these things true? And, more importantly, how can you use this information to your advantage?

First, the (Neuro) Science

Estimates dating the origin of spoken language vary, but according to a report from the University of California, Berkeley, the process began with visual demonstration approximately 1.8 million years ago. In fact, our brains are hard-wired for visual information, and visual senses are meant to be powerful.

Phone call tracking isn't the inefficient headache it was years ago. Thanks to smartphones and built-in click-to-call buttons available through mobile apps and mobile search, the pipeline that funnels referrals to a business phone is easy to observe and analyze.

Many companies recognize how the benefits of call tracking can do wonders for a local establishment, or for any business that relies on person-to-person communication to drive conversions. When implemented correctly, phone call tracking can increase conversion rates while shedding light on the effectiveness of other components of your digital marketing strategy. Here are three key benefits of call tracking any company can enjoy.

Weather-based marketing is a powerful tool when it comes to capitalizing on consumer behavior that changes with the weather.

The days of only being able to get the weather forecast on the TV, radio, or in the newspaper before heading to work are long gone. Now consumers have a variety of ways to check the weather, including weather sites online, real-time weather apps or local news apps.

Mobile now accounts for nearly one-third of all e-commerce sales, as InternetRetailer notes — and recent reports state that consumers check the weather on their mobile phones multiple times a day. Real-time mobile engagement gives you a great opportunity to capitalize on hyper-local geotargeted ads that can be changed as often as the weather.

Digital advertising changes, but concerns around brand safety remain at the top of ad buyers' minds. According to eMarketer, 26 percent of brands purchasing digital ad space cited brand safety as their top concern when choosing where and how to advertise, underscoring the need to provide assurances to those consumers.

Those companies are fortunate that brand safety solutions on digital ad exchanges make it possible to avoid much of the online advertising space that might be a poor fit for their campaign. But don't take an ad network's word for it — every company should know what features can ensure brand safety and protect ad content from potentially damaging associations.

Among the many reasons consumers seek out ad blocking software is the drag that slow-loading ads place on browsers. However, according to a report in Digiday, Google could be exploring the idea of creating an acceptable ads policy that would cut back on how much data ads require and how long they take to load. But could an acceptable ads policy really change consumer behavior?

It All Began With a L.E.A.N.

While this new initiative has impressive scope, this isn't the first time such a policy has been created in response to ad blocking. As Marketing Land notes, last year, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) announced its L.E.A.N. (light, encrypted, ad choice supported, noninvasive ads) program, which was intended to address some of the tech concerns that had been fueling the growth of ad blocking — such as autoplay and flashing ads. But, as Digiday points out, the IAB's program is not enforceable, so it only works if many advertisers and publishers subscribe to its standards.

Traditional advertising placed brand recognition at a premium. Digital marketing has expanded the possible goals of ads in today's commercial landscape, building direct channels for conversions and offering a myriad of other benefits that can be used to build a case for ROI.

But the value of brand awareness itself is just as important as ever — it's why a company like Apple doesn't even have to put its name on its billboards to effectively advertise a product. Consumers see the ad content and understand where it's coming from. Not every company can have such influential awareness at their disposal, but any brand can use consumer recognition as a measure of their success within a specific market.

The first step is testing that brand awareness, and there are several effective ways to figure that out.

When you're crafting a local digital marketing campaign, you may find yourself working mostly on specific elements like key phrases, search engine optimization or search engine marketing. There are certainly benefits to committing your time to improving a single part of your strategy, but when you focus too closely on one digital component, you could be missing an opportunity to use the power of traditional media to boost your digital marketing campaign.

While traditional and digital media might seem to be diametrically opposed, these two marketing strategies can actually work together in an interesting and effective way.