Consumers, especially millennials, like to support companies with a mission—those who are partnering in some way with nonprofits. This could include doing a promotion and matching the donations, underwriting an event, donating a percentages of a day’s earnings to a cause. There are endless ways to make this work.
Let’s face it, even for the most creative among us, the well runs dry, so here’s some good news. Historical optimization is a great way to freshen old blogs so they’ll generate more traffic in their second life. Old means just that—blogs you’ve already written—content that just needs a few tucks and it’s ready for primetime again.
Covid-19 has disrupted daily American life in a way few emergencies have before. But it has also shaken things up, clearing the way for an economic boom and social revival. The New York Times’ David Brooks is calling it the “American Renaissance”. Millions of Americans endured grievous loss and anxiety during this pandemic. Many also used this time as a preparation period, allowing them to burst out of the gate when things opened up. The result? 4.4 million new businesses were started in 2020, by far a modern record.
A report from Udemy, an online course provider, says that 38 percent of workers took some additional training during 2020, up from only 14 percent in 2019.
In order to rank you, search engines look for title tags, keywords, image tags, internal link structure and inbound links. Also figuring in are navigation structure and site design–these are things we can easily execute ourselves.
This was the year of virtual. Without skipping a beat, we moved our lives online. Thinking back, we have to shake our heads at how completely seamless it was. Classes, support groups, fundraisers and even conferences moved online.
Google advertising, or paid search, has become a common component of many marketing programs. Google ads are structured as an auction where we bid on keywords. They’re free until someone clicks on our ads—thus, the term “pay-per-click advertising” (PPC). The cost of the keyword determines the cost of the click.
PPC is fairly complex. I’ve been working with a client for the last year doing YouTube and Google ads, and I continue to learn. A lot of marketers throw their money at this without properly understanding, monitoring and adjusting their campaigns, so it may not be the best use of their marketing dollars. Google rakes in something obscene like $100M/day on digital advertising. Like Las Vegas, the house wins.
Our Google ad campaigns have been successful, according to our conservative goals. I’m careful to watch my keywords because the associated costs can change. One week a word can be worth $4, then the price can climb to $8 or more. I’m okay with $4, but not $8+. I watch our billing summary, and if it’s starting to get too expensive, I sometimes pause one of our campaigns to manage overall costs.
The Google ad activity has translated to new business. We could do more, but ad campaign pricing can quickly start ballooning. Your impressions, clicks and calls may increase, but so do your costs. You decide how much you want to spend.
Are you considering adding digital advertising to your marketing plan? Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and digital marketing specialists.
Like it or not, our social media platforms are where we gather, and they’ve inherited the responsibility for both spreading and controlling the growing problem of misinformation.
Or how they remember the languages we speak, the items in our carts, and other key things that make our online experiences seamless? They’re using cookies to remember these details. I’m in Istanbul right now, and when I go to sites I use all the time, sometimes they’re in Turkish. My laptop auto-adjusts to Turkey time—not PDT. All the ads are in Turkish. A little bit creepy, but also amazing. It’s cookies, hard at work.
What’s a one-page website? All of your content is presented on one long, scrolling page. There’s no drilldown. It’s simple, clean and visual, with a limited amount of text. The long scrolling design means that you have full control over the order in which your content is viewed.
Google My Business (GMB) is a free tool for businesses to manage their Google presence–Search, Maps, Ads, etc. GMB can help your customers find you, increase your reach and drive traffic.
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