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August and September are among the busiest months of the year for many businesses across the Highlands. Hotels are full, restaurants are busy, visitor attractions are welcoming customers and trades and service businesses can find themselves with more work than they...

If your LinkedIn posts aren't getting the reach they used to, don't panic. You may not be doing anything wrong. A new report looking at LinkedIn in 2026 suggests that the rules of the game have changed - and there are some useful lessons for businesses using the...

THE END OF PERFECT MARKETING? For many years, businesses believed successful marketing had to look polished, professional and perfectly produced. Every image needed to be flawless, every video carefully edited and every social media post meticulously planned. Today,...

For years, businesses have focused on climbing the Google rankings. Keywords, backlinks and search engine optimisation (SEO) have dominated digital marketing strategies, but the way people search for information is changing rapidly, and businesses need to adapt....

For many business owners, being busy feels like a sign of success. A full diary, a constant stream of emails and a never-ending to-do list can create the impression that everything is moving in the right direction. But what happens when being busy starts getting in...

There has never been a time when creating content was easier. With the rise of AI tools, businesses across Scotland can now produce websites, social posts and marketing campaigns in a fraction of the time it once took. But while this has made marketing more...

For years, businesses across Inverness and the Highlands have relied on one simple principle: if you rank well on Google, customers will find you. But that landscape is changing - and rapidly. Search engines are evolving, with AI-driven summaries and ‘instant answers’...

Inverness has long been seen as the pretty gateway to the Highlands, but increasingly, it’s becoming something else: a genuinely attractive base for ambitious, growing businesses. Across sectors - from construction and infrastructure to energy, tourism and...

It’s hard to escape the conversation about AI right now, yet most businesses have accepted it’s here to stay and, doomsday scenarios aside, it’s becoming a valuable tool. It is rapidly changing how people search for information and discover products and services and...

We are living in uncertain times and there’s a familiar instinct when uncertainty creeps into the economy: Pause. Hold back. Wait and see. It feels cautious. It seems to make sense. But history - and experience – tells us a different story. The businesses that grow...

Every so often, a business decides it’s time to ‘do marketing properly’. “Let’s get a new campaign. A refreshed logo. A burst of advertising. A push on social media”. For a few weeks, there’s energy and activity and noise. And then… silence. It’s a pattern we see...

Every marketer knows attention spans are shrinking- but that idea oversimplifies what’s actually happening. People still have plenty of attention. What they don’t have is patience for content that doesn’t matter to them. Audiences today are scrolling faster than ever...

For years, marketers have repeated the same mantra: Content is king. But a new reality has emerged - content alone is no longer enough. Your customers are filtering harder, scrolling faster, and trusting less. And in a world saturated with polished videos,...

With social media moving at lightning speed, it’s easy for businesses to fall into the trap of posting for the sake of posting. A photo here, a quick update there, something to fill the feed. But while activity may keep your pages alive, it doesn’t necessarily build...

For many Highland businesses, the digital world can feel impossibly vast. Competing with national brands, standing out online, and keeping up with fast-moving trends often feels like a never-ending challenge. But in reality, your greatest advantage may be much closer...

Marketing can sometimes feel overwhelming, especially for small businesses across the Highlands juggling day-to-day operations with limited time and limited budgets. But improving your marketing doesn’t always require a big campaign, a full rebrand, or hours spent on...

As 2026 approaches (we know, ‘where has 2025 gone?’), most businesses are asking the same question: How do we keep growing without overspending?   The good news is effective marketing in 2026 isn’t about throwing more money at campaigns; it’s about using insight,...

Your website is often the first impression customers have of your business. But here’s the big question: is it really pulling its weight? Too many businesses in the Highlands (and beyond) have websites that look fine on the surface, but don’t actually deliver results....

This year, Adder Business celebrates its 10th anniversary - a really proud milestone for us and a moment to reflect on a decade of growth, innovation, and partnership. A Journey of Change When we first opened our doors in 2015, the marketing world was on the cusp of...

For decades, Highland businesses focused on their immediate community: neighbours, regulars, local contracts. But today, whether you realise it or not, your brand is already part of a global stage. A B&B in Beauly can be discovered by a traveller in Tokyo. A...

Why authenticity still beats algorithms, and what local businesses can teach global marketers Across the global marketing landscape, there’s a growing panic: audiences are tuning out. From AI-generated content to influencer fatigue, consumers are increasingly...

In a world where every brand has a platform - and every post has consequences - the boundary between free speech and business impact is blurrier than ever. From small independents to global corporations, speaking up on social or political issues can build fierce...

Starting a business in the Highlands is exciting - but when it comes to marketing, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. You know you need to promote your services, but you’re also juggling suppliers, invoices, and everything in between. The good news? Effective marketing...

When potential customers search ‘best hairdresser near me’ or ‘plumber Inverness’, Google decides whose phone rings first. That decision is heavily weighted toward local SEO and in a compact market like Inverness, small tweaks can yield oversized gains. Here’s how you...

If you’ve noticed your social media posts aren’t reaching as many people as they used to - you’re not imagining it. Organic reach is shrinking, and for most businesses, it’s become one of the most frustrating challenges in modern marketing. So why is this happening?...

In an era of constant communication and digital connection, it’s ironic that consumer trust in marketing is at an all-time low. But the signs are clear: audiences are more sceptical, more guarded, and far less responsive to traditional advertising and corporate...

It’s a severely overused phrase, but it is safe to say that there is a current issue that is unequivocally ‘what everybody is talking about’ - Trump’s Tariffs. No man, woman, child or uninhabited country has escaped his beady eye – or perhaps ‘AI’ if reports are true...

In a digital landscape brimming with options - from paid search ads to social media promotions - it’s easy to get caught up in the flashier forms of marketing. But when it comes to return on investment (ROI) for driving website traffic, the clear winner remains the...

There’s a significant shift underway in the world of marketing strategy: brands are narrowing their focus almost entirely to Gen Z and Millennials, leaving older generations increasingly overlooked. According to recent survey data, while the proportion of marketers...

For years, ‘Google it’ has been the go-to phrase for finding information online. It’s more than just a brand name - it’s become a verb, a cultural shorthand for looking something up. But rumours emanating in the US - from of course the White House -suggest that Google...

Who could have failed to notice the impact of the Chinese AI model DeepSeek last month after it well and truly picked the market up and shook it down unlike anything before? AI is no longer just ChatGPT and as technology progresses the only certainty is there will be...

In marketing circles, particularly at the start of each year, the talk invariably is: “What’s the biggest marketing shift that’s going to happen this year? And what’s the thing that’s going to take the industry by storm?”. There is also usually a death knell...

Social media continues to be an essential tool for businesses looking to grow their presence, engage with audiences, and drive sales. Here are the top eight platforms you should consider for your brand strategy in 2025: LinkedIn Dubbed the ‘world’s largest...

Is it enough being the world’s richest man, owner of the one of the major social media platforms and an advisor (at least for a time) to the incoming president of the USA? Clearly not. Elon Musk has decided (actually for quite a few months now) to interfere in British...

In case you haven’t heard the name, Bluesky is a decentralised microblogging platform that emphasises user autonomy and control over content. Depending on who you believe it is a sanitised version of X (formerly Twitter) or a platform that is free from anti-hate...

The 2024 U.S. presidential election marked a significant shift in campaign strategies, with podcasts playing a pivotal role in shaping voter perceptions and engagement. Both major candidates, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, leveraged the reach of popular podcasts to...

With 2025 looming you don’t have to have a crystal ball to recognise what will be the major marketing trend of 2025. It will involve people. Employees. In fact, it’s you. Despite some employee horror stories to the contrary, companies are realising that their greatest...

With all the distractions around today, when you write a blog post you want your readers to stay with you at all costs and while you wrack your brains thinking about the secret sauce that will be irresistible to them to dollop on your offering…take a step back. The...

Marketing campaigns often experience varying degrees of success or failure and understanding the root causes can significantly improve future efforts. By recognising the common reasons why marketing strategies fail, marketers can make adjustments to avoid these...

There is a myth that modern human attention spans are less than those of goldfish, and young people in particular are singled out – largely because of the daily social media bombardment that comes their way.  Logically then, marketers have turned a negative into a...

If you want to sell a product or service online, and reach the maximum number of people you will naturally gravitate to the largest app. And that, unsurprisingly is Facebook. Despite rumours of its decline, it is alive and kicking, constantly promoting high year on...

If you want to use (ideally powerful) words to attract prospective customers to your business or product, inevitably you will go down the copywriting or content marketing route. But what is the difference between copywriting and content marketing? Quite simply...

Whisper it. Or better still, use video to illustrate your point: We're in the age of the Post-Verbal Consumer. It’s all about brevity, and brevity means fewer words. Talk is getting cheaper, and videos are getting shorter. The YouTube explosive growth area is in views...

‘A picture paints a thousand words’ is a phrase that most assume has its origins in the mist of time, but we know it’s intended to portray the power of the visual image - be it painting or photographic - over written messages. The reality is however it dates to 1921...

Blogging has been around since the mid-1990s, but things changed exponentially in 2006 when Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey sent out the world’s first micro-blog or - as we know it today – Tweet. In a trice everyone became a blogger, and everyone who actively...

About 40% of Business to Business marketers say that LinkedIn is the most effective channel for driving high-quality leads. And double that percentage pay for content on the channel. Virtually everyone says it. If you have a business – ‘You’ve got to be on LinkedIn....

Marketers are finding increasingly that they must focus on aligning marketing strategies with environmental sustainability and social responsibility. Companies are recognising the importance of addressing global challenges such as climate change, social inequality,...

The great US writer Mark Twain remarked – on reading his own obituary in his local newspaper – ‘reports of my death are greatly exaggerated’. Actually, this is slightly apocryphal, but you’ll get the gist I’m sure of his disquiet disguised in humour at that time. We...

Tik Tok is often dismissed by businesses as a frivolous platform for young people, but they could be missing a trick. It has actually emerged as a powerful platform for companies large and small and here’s why. With over a billion active users worldwide, TikTok...

You heard it here first; the future is Meta. Metaverse. The next biggest predicted marketing trend is expected to be Metaverse Marketing. It may mean nothing to you now, but in time… So, what is the metaverse? Simple really. It is a collective virtual shared space...