When it comes to auto dealer marketing, these days, the first rule is not to talk about the dealership. According to a new study from Google, a customer can make as many as 900 digital interactions in the lead-up to purchase. By comparison, the same customer will only visit two dealers in the process.

This doesn't represent an entirely new way of doing business. Dealerships have long known that customers can take months to process a car-buying decision. But with the ease of information readily available on mobile, consumers are now researching while standing in line at the grocery store, waiting to pick up their kids or over lunch. Getting those customers in the door is a matter of how you interact with them in the micro-moments during the path to purchase.

Seasonal advertising is a necessary strategy for many local businesses. It makes sense for plumbers to advertise heavily in the winter when pipes are apt to freeze and burst, and for air-conditioning repairmen to switch up their marketing during the busy summer months.

However, a simplistic approach to seasonal advertising may not be the best option, nor is marketing your business only during high-interest periods. Here's what you need to know to successfully execute seasonal marketing for your local business.

Marketers today have so much on their plate when it comes to marketing technology, regardless of whether they work at a multinational corporation or a small mom-and-pop shop. At big companies, where you would often have an entire marketing department working with you, it's still easy to feel overwhelmed — but when you work at a small or medium business, where you might be the only marketer in the company, where do you even begin? A digital marketing partner may be the best decision you can make for your business.

The retail store is no longer the one-stop shop it was in the past. Consumers have no shortage of options when it comes to shopping, and it's not just brick-and-mortar stores versus online: Smartphones, tablets, and desktop computers all offer their own advantages when it comes to shopping.

Consequently, few consumers stick to just one channel for conducting their shopping business, even when considering a single product. In fact, a Marketing Land survey shows that 90 percent of shoppers actually use smartphones for shopping in stores. This behavior has cultivated a consumer buying process that is hard to track and even tougher to predict — but marketers are finding tech solutions that enable effective tracking from one channel to the next, and even provide options for leveraging this multichannel utility as an asset.

To succeed in 2016, brands can't ignore the ever-shifting presence of consumer activities. Instead, it's critical to anticipate this sort of behavior and build a marketing strategy that accommodates this new approach.

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.

If you think seasonal advertising is all about the holiday shopper, think again. The summer season can actually help you promote your business, especially if you're in a field related to the changing temperatures, like a garden center or an HVAC company. No matter what your business, if you experience seasonal highs and lows, here are some tips to help you capitalize on the season's trends.

Sponsor the Weather

Whether you're advertising on TV or online, running an ad around a forecast means you've got the attention of an audience interested in what's happening outside. As the temperatures rise, so will interest in products like frozen yogurt shops, tanning beds and air conditioners. A recent article in Marketing Land shows that some 50 percent of consumers research purchases on computers, while a majority (67 percent), still buy in-store. In other words, the path to purchase is complex. Linking your brand with a consumer who is already interested in a core aspect of your business gets you over the hurdle of distraction.

There are certain marketing words that have the power to improve response and increase conversion rates, but there's a catch. For these words to be effective, you need to use them in the right place at the right time. Take, for instance, what the team at Zillow discovered about home sales: Listings that include the word "captivating" sell 6.5 percent above what's expected — but you wouldn't use that word to describe a fixer-upper in need of a total remodel. The same applies with all the words listed here — don't use them if you can't back them up. Here's a list of seven powerful marketing words and phrases to keep in your arsenal.

Local digital advertising makes it easier than ever for SMBs to match the presence of national brands. Even companies that have never advertised before are taking advantage of its ability to deliver prime customers at point-of-purchase.

Just one slice of this market — location-targeted mobile ads — is expected to grow from $8.5 billion last year to $26.7 billion in 2020, at which point local digital advertising spending is expected to capture 43% of mobile ad spend in the U.S., according to MarketingCharts.

But before you jump in, here are a few things you'll want to know.

Analytics aren't just for enterprise businesses looking for high-level data insights. In today's business world, the importance of data analysis extends all the way down to small mom-and-pop shops serving their local communities. Part of this trend is due to the broad availability of analytics tools. Google Analytics offers free insights to any company or user, and other, low-cost tools make it easy to reveal simple but influential insights about how your company does business. But it's also a matter of staying competitive.

There are a lot of ways performance can be measured, and the metrics can get confusing and misleading fast. For small businesses focused on building a presence within a region, the importance of data analysis can be distilled down to a few keys data points that shed light on how well you're reaching an audience.

In a Search Engine Journal interview, marketing expert Peter Shankman notes that neglecting the customer's point of view is a mistake, insisting, "It's ridiculously important to let the customer drive your business." If you don't know your customer perspective in 2016, you're missing a big opportunity for organic growth in your business. In today's business world, getting to know your audience can be sophisticated and high-tech, or downright old-fashioned. The good news for SMBs? This is your distinct advantage over the big guys — it's almost impossible for a large company to establish the same kind of personal connection with customers or make rapid adjustments to their marketing strategy.