Grow your website from a sleepy rest stop into a key destination

The Internet opens your business and your brand to hundreds of millions of people worldwide. With just a simple website, you have the potential to reach more consumers today than at any time in human history. The world is at your virtual doorstep, waiting to see what you have to offer.
If they can find you.

The Internet can connect you and your business with anyone in the world, but that also means you’re now competing with businesses of all kinds, also all over the world. With so many potential customers on the Internet, it’s all but certain that you provide exactly what someone is looking for at this very moment.

But will they be able to find you?

The key to connecting with customers and potential customers is to increase traffic on your website among people most likely to be your customers. That’s one of the key goals of digital marketing, and there are many tactics available to help make that happen.

Most people will not type your website directly into a web browser and head straight there. Most people find brands or companies on the Internet through searches. So your job is to be where your customers are, make it easier for them to find you.

All traffic is good, but some traffic is better than others. The best visitors to your site are the people who already are interested in what you have to offer and are looking to buy or find out more.
That’s one of the key goals of digital marketing: connecting people with the brands and businesses they’re looking for.

Here are 9 steps to help get your message in front of potential customers and increase the traffic on your website.

1. Measure first. The first step in boosting your Internet traffic is knowing how much traffic you have now. Use Google Analytics or another analytics platform to see how many people are visiting your site now. A good analytics program also will show you how long people are spending on your site, what they’re looking at and how they ended up on your site in the first place. Knowing this information can help you target your effort to increase traffic, and it also helps you know what efforts work and what don’t.

2. Be mobile. Most web surfing now is completed on cell phones and other mobile devices. It’s likely consumers will continue to use mobile devices even more often in the future. Make sure your website and posts are designed to look good on mobile browsers.

3. Be fast. Make sure your site loads quickly. Too many large images can slow the page.

4. Search Engine Optimization. Research the keywords that attract people to your site. What are your customers and potential customers looking for? What words are your competitors using? Sprinkle those keywords throughout your website, and be sure to use them in blogs and social media posts.

5. Be an expert. You know your business, your industry and your customers. Find out what your customers and potential customers want to know about, and become an expert on that topic. Create blog posts, social media posts or videos that answer common questions and provide your viewers with information that is useful and helpful to them. That will give them a reason to visit your website regularly.

6. Be social. Post regularly to social media, and direct people back to your website for more information. Different social media platforms have different audiences. Be on several platforms to attract a broader audience. But be sure to tailor your messages to those channels and their readers, using the proper writing style and tone for each platform.

7. Be interactive. Ask questions, and answer questions that are posed to you. Reply to other people’s social media and blog posts about topics you and your customers are interested in. Answer questions on sites like Quora.

8. Use strong headlines. Consumers often will see only the headline of your blog or the first few words of your social media posts before deciding whether to click and see the rest of the information. Make sure those first few words catch people’s attention and draws them in for more.

9. Advertise. The above suggestions are organic. They can be slower to develop, but they are less expensive. And their results tend to last longer. Paid advertising can compliment or boost an organic strategy by providing a quick jump in the number of people who see your message. Pay-Per-Click advertising can move your listing to the top of a search engine results page. Banner advertisements can help people see your message and have the opportunity to click for more information. Paid boosts to social media posts can make sure many more people see what you’re sharing. Paid advertising also allows you to target specific locations and demographics, allowing you to better reach customers and potential customers.

If you would like help developing a plan to boost your website traffic or you’re looking for an evaluation of your existing efforts, we’d love to help. Contact us for a free consultation, which includes a free digital marketing health checkup. We’ll help you see what’s working and how it could be working better. You can reach AdEdge at info@adedgemarketing.com or at (203) 682-4585.

What digital marketing tactics work best?

There is no silver bullet or magic easy button with digital marketing. Not all businesses are alike, and not all digital marketing strategies work the same. The most effective plans are customized to your industry, your business and your customers. It takes takes research, testing and time to fully understand your customers’ shopping and buying behaviors and learning the most effective ways of reaching them, communicating with them and converting prospects into customers.
Still, there are several broad tactics that can help you chart a course for a successful digital marketing effort.

1. Know your customers. Who are they? Why are they interested in your products or services?
Answering these questions can give you insights about how to target your digital marketing campaign to your most likely customers. Think about how your product or service appeals to their needs and how you offer a unique or better solution than your competitors.
If you don’t already know who your best potential customers are, find out. Send out surveys. Talk to them. Find out who they are and why and how they found you.

2. Make a plan, but keep it flexible. Define your brand and your goals, and develop a digital marketing strategy to meet those goals. The strategy provides a map and a plan of action.
Create goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely — SMART goals. Set a budget, build your campaign and launch your effort. And don’t forget to track the results.

3. Make adjustments. Digital marketing is ever changing – ever improving. Good planning can help you design an effective digital marketing campaign but once you start, consider that it’s just a start. Some companies and agencies think the difficult part in building a digital marketing campaign is in the building. But it’s not. The more important effort happens after the start. This work involves analyzing performance of each platform and attributes within. Take paid search for example. Optimizing a paid search effort involved reviewing keyword performance, searched terms, negative terms, match type, click-through rate (CTR), quality score, ads (test and control) and many other campaign attributes including geographic and demographic targeting. By testing and taking the time to evaluate and adjust how each campaign attribute is performing, you can create a campaign that delivers excellent performance over time.

Taking it a step further, make sure to use Google Analytics to evaluate post-click performance. This involves looking not just at how each campaign attribute is performing on the various platforms (Google Ads, Facebook, Bing, etc.) but evaluating what happens after the clicks. Identify what visitors did after the click. Did they stay on the website, navigate to product or service pages, engage with content on the site, visit a contact us page, become a lead or take steps to buy. Each action a visitor takes can be assigned a little value so that over the course of each visit, you can “grade” visitors. With this level of data in play, it’s much easier to evaluate which platforms, ads, placements and keywords are delivering truly valuable visits to your website. With that, you can then optimize accordingly. By continuing with cycles of testing, analysis and optimization (and of course, adapting quickly to the frequent changes pushed out by advertisers like Google) your digital marketing efforts will continue to improve over time.

4. Focus on mobile. A study by Statistica projects that almost 4.8 billion people will be using mobile phones by 2020. According to Convince & Convert, about 40% of shoppers check at least one social or search channel while they shop and four in five shoppers use smartphones as part of their regular consuming habits. In fact, mobile now makes up over 70% of all internet traffic. If you would like to reach potential customers where they are spending most of their time online, It’s become critical for you company to have exposure on mobile sites. If your digital marketing and website isn’t focused on and built for mobile, you’re missing the boat.

Optimize your website for both desktops and smartphones. Use clickable phone numbers, addresses and calls to action so consumers can access that information easily on their phones. And make sure your images aren’t too big so your site loads quickly. And of course Always Be Testing. Some mobile placements (website) place ads in tricky places that tend to generate accidental clicks. The less ethical websites do this on purpose to monetize website traffic. Rely on an agency that maintains website ad click performance tricksters to generate good valuable clicks to your website, not accidental clicks.

5. Promote information more than your company. Consumers want to learn, but they don’t want a sales pitch. Give them useful and relevant information. You are an expert on your industry. Your consumer want to know that, too. Share that information without becoming an infomercial.
So, what are the best tactics to use when building a digital marketing campaign? While it varies between industry and depends on your goals and budget, here are a few tips. For brand building or to market a new product or service, long-sales-cycle products or those that are obscure rather than mainstream, banner advertising on Google’s display network and on Facebook work well. A form of outbound marketing, banner advertising gets your company name and brand in front of prospective customers who don’t know you and might not otherwise have learned about your company. Add calls to action to generate clicks and visits to your website from those who have an immediate need. With Google Display, you can target based on demographics, geographic, and all importantly, search history or website visit history. On Facebook, you can target by lifestyle, life stage, hobbies, career information and other data found in users’ Facebook profiles which lends itself well to consumer products and other specific industries. If you’re marketing a more mainstream product or service, Search Engine Marketing is an inbound marketing tactic that works well. Included here is SEO, paid search (Google Ads) and online directory marketing which affects your exposure on sites like Google Maps, Yelp, YP.com and hundreds of other directories that aggregate company information.

If you would like some help in figuring out which digital marketing platforms may be best for your organization and how to do it, please don’t hesitate to contact us for a free consultation. We’ll include a free digital marketing health checkup which will include an evaluation of your online exposure including what’s good, what’s bad and what’s downright ugly. For more information, you can reach AdEdge at info@adedgemarketing.com or at (203) 682-4585.

How do we determine the price of our services?

In the wild west of digital marketing, pricing digital marketing services has not standardized yet and it’s all over the map. Unfortunately, the pool of digital marketing talent is all over the map too; some good, some bad and some just downright ugly. Since digital marketing is best measured as a combination of cost and performance, it’s best to evaluate digital marketing agencies in the same way in order to arrive at value. Look at their qualifications, awards and longevity in the business. Find out who you will be working with on a daily basis and how frequently the account will be optimized and reported. An agency with all their ducks in a row is worth more because they are more likely to deliver better performance than a less capable firm.

Here are three pricing factors to consider when evaluating digital marketing agencies like AdEdge and here’s how we fit in to this.

1) How much does it cost in general to work with an agency? An ethical digital marketing agency like AdEdge Digital Marketing will charge according to the amount of time they expect to spend on an account multiplied by an hourly rate that generates a reasonable profit after all expenses are covered. Some agencies charge as much as they can, and others charge as much as they can while doing as little as they can. In a competitive environment like digital marketing, the AdEdge philosophy on pricing is to provide as much value as possible. That means providing both reasonable prices and expertise that delivers high performance. Why not just charge as much as possible? That strategy may make for a temporary win but it’s not a good long-term, win-win strategy. Charging lean fees gives our clients the best possible return on their investment, it insulates us from competition, and it makes it more likely that our clients will stick with us for the long haul.

2) How much does a digital marketing campaign cost? Most people don’t like hearing responses like “it depends,” but sometimes it really does depend. Being in its infancy, no standard model has evolved yet on pricing digital marketing campaigns, except at the very high end with annual budgets in the seven-figure range, where clients can expect to pay agencies between 12% and 17% of ad spend. At lower investment levels, these numbers are higher and many firms have minimum monthly fees of $250 to $500, or more, in addition to ad spend. Or you could be so unlucky as to work with an agency that gives you one lump number, ad spend and agency fee included. You should never do this because with a single-fee structure, you generally don’t know how much of your budget is being spent on media (advertising) vs. the agency fee. Taking over accounts from other agencies, we sometimes see this and are often astonished to find fees that far exceed media spend. At AdEdge, we don’t charge minimum monthly fees because every case is different. Some campaigns (single-product or service campaigns, for example) are quite simple to manage and therefore, require a lower build fee. Others are more complex and involved. Our fees are calculated based on a combination of campaign complexity and ad spend. Many agencies like AdEdge charge an initial fee to research, build, test and launch a campaign. While these build fees vary, ours is a minimum of $500 per platform, a platform being Google Paid Search, Google Banner, Facebook, etc. Discounts come into play when we build multiple platforms simultaneously.

3) How much should I spend on my digital marketing effort? This is one of the most common questions we get, and it’s one of the hardest to answer. In a 2017 article, entrepreneur.com recommended small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) spend between 10% and 12% of their gross revenue on marketing. Of that marketing budget, they recommended 35% to be allocated towards digital marketing. Being 2019 and based on client performance, we are currently recommending an allocation of at least 60% of marketing budget on digital marketing. These, of course, are just guidelines. A brand new digital marketing effort can (and sometimes should) start with a lighter level of spend, or even a “soft launch” until campaigns are performing at an optimal level. Many small-business owners make decisions about advertising more subjectively, and that’s fine. It often comes down to what level of investment you are comfortable with, especially if digital marketing is a new channel for you that you are treating as a test.

Here at AdEdge, we work with a wide range of companies, some with small, simple campaigns and others with very large, complex campaigns. If you would like a digital marketing evaluation and a recommended plan, feel free to schedule some time to talk, email info@adedgemarketing.com or call 203-682-4585.

Does digital marketing work?

The short answer: yes.

But you’re probably looking for more of an answer than than. And you’re in luck. There’s much more to share.

Not only does digital marking work, it’s become a critical component of any successful marketing effort.

Consumers already spend more time online than on any other form of media, and this is likely only to increase in the future. Faster Internet connections and a ballooning number of devices that connect to and rely on the Internet make it a space where brands and companies must have a presence.
Your customers are online. Your competitors are online. If you’re not there, you’re missing out.
What is digital marketing?

Before we dig too deep into how and why digital marketing works, let’s define what it is. Simply put, digital marketing is marketing on the Internet or devices connected to the Internet. In some ways, digital marketing is the digital version of traditional marketing. But digital marking offers much, much more.

Digital marketing is interactive. Unlike traditional media, it can instantly direct consumers to your website, social media channel or an opportunity to sign up for a newsletter.

Digital marketing also allows you to target a highly specific audience. With digital, you can target by the same basics offered by traditional media including geographic and demographics. But what digital offers that traditional media cannot is a deeper level of consumer behaviors including search history, website visit history and activity on your website. And it provides significant feedback, letting you know how many people have seen your message, how many have clicked through to your website and all-importantly, what they do on your website. How visitors engage with your website – whether they take a quick look, drill into the product or service pages, visit your Contact Us page, become a lead or make a purchase is where the rubber meets the road. Being able to track this activity from each channel of marketing gives you the ability to shift investments between channels based on performance, ultimately improving your ROI.

Does it work?

So how do we know digital marketing works? Experience, for one thing. At AdEdge, we’ve been helping companies take advantage of all that digital marketing has to offer since 2007. We’ve seen the benefit, and so have our clients.

But you don’t have to take our word for it.

According to Google, companies using digital marketing have 2.8 times better revenue growth expectancy. A recent survey by Forbes found that 82% of consumers conduct research online, and Tech Crunch found that 79% of people shop online. These numbers are only going to increase.

Another survey found that 91% of adults in the United States always have their phones or other digital devices within reaching distance. Over the next few years, the introduction of 5G cellular speeds and more use of the “Internet of Things” likely will increase the demand for digital marketing. The Internet of Things refers to the increased use of the Internet on everyday devices, ranging from tools that make industry more efficient to things like Internet-based refrigerators and toasters. It’s coming. You can already buy a toothbrush that’s connected to the Internet and it can detect whether you’re brushing correctly. Wow.

Because of the high level of interaction digital marketing provides between companies and consumers, digital marketing results in higher customer satisfaction, increased retention, lower marketing costs and overall improved value.

If you’d like more information on how to build or improve upon your current digital marketing effort, we’d love to chat or meet with you in person to share some ideas specific to your industry. Feel free to give us a call at (203) 682-4585, shoot us an email at info@adedgemarketing.com or Contact Us and let us know how we can help.

In an Increasingly Digital World, is Traditional Marketing headed for the Recycle Bin?

The world is increasingly digital. You probably check your email, social media, news or apps first thing in the morning and last thing before you go to bed, with many, many checks throughout the day. You can search for song lyrics and movie times and restaurant recommendations. As the “Internet of Things” continues to expand, we’re likely only to spend more and more of our time online.

Our expanding digital life is creating new opportunities for marketers. As consumers spend more time online, there is a greater opportunity to reach them through digital images and messaging. And as the Internet of Things transforms, nearly every industry (especially marketing) is transforming.

The most obvious transformation in marketing has been the development of digital marketing. The question is, does traditional marketing such as TV, Radio and Print (including newspapers, magazines and direct mail) still play a role? If so, when should you use one verses the other?

If you look at the history of marketing, as new technologies develop, new marketing tactics emerge.

These new tactics don’t replace old tactics, they take a “slice of the pie”. When radio emerged for example, newspaper advertising decreased but was still very much in play. When TV emerged, radio and print was still effective, just to a lesser extent. Today, digital marketing has emerged as a strong, new channel. But it’s not the only game in town. Some marketers have kicked non-digital channels to the curb but others recognize the benefits of reaching a targeted audience across multiple media, creating an impact that multiplies marketing effectiveness. Our mailboxes have become less crowded, giving those who mail, more time and attention from prospective clients. And let’s not forget the physical appeal and shelf life of an attractive and study print piece.

With print, you can target your message to certain audiences, demographics and locations based on a publication’s content. Direct mail can utilize overlay data to identify a very wide range of lifestyle, life stage and demographic information that even Google can’t provide. But of course, traditional media is not without it’s perils. For example, print is expensive and magazines and newspapers can reach only a very broad audience. Traditional media is also much harder to measure than digital making it more effective for brand building than direct response.

Benefits to using traditional marketing

• Traditional marketing best practices are well established and understood.
• Printed collateral has a long shelf life – it can be kept and viewed multiple times.
• Marketers can easily reach a highly targeted local audience with direct mail.
• Traditional marketing can reach people who are not online regularly or who are not online at certain times, such as on an airplane (but even that, is changing).

The deeper benefits of digital marketing

In some cases, digital marketing is simply the digital expression of traditional marketing. For example, a billboard or magazine ad can easily be transformed into a digital banner ad. But that is where the similarity ends. Digital banner ads are highly target able by placement, search history, website visit history, look-alike audience, exact location, certain demographics and many other attributes. Banner ads are also interactive. Unlike a print ads that are a form of one-way mirror (for lack of a better analogy) banner ads are like a window in that they allow for immediate interaction between the prospect and advertiser. They can achieve both brand building and direct response by attracting visitors who click.

Digital marketing also includes advertisements on social media channels …even entire social media channels themselves. Digital marketing allows brands and influencers to interact with consumers directly, receiving feedback and broadcasting a response to questions or comments. It allows a brand to respond quickly and stay current. And with digital marketing, you can measure engagement immediately and exactly.

Benefits to using digital marketing

• Customer engagement — interact directly with the customer and let the customer spread your message through social media.
• Digital marketing typically is less expensive than traditional marketing.
• Easily measure results in real time, allowing you to keep what works and adjust what’s not working as well.
• Digital marketing provides access to a much larger audience.
• Level playing field — You can reach a large audience without being a multi-million-dollar enterprise.

Our principal, Anthony LoFrisco, Jr. is a career marketing professional with significant experience in traditional marketing at companies like Time, Inc., T. Rowe Price and Cendant. His last 15 years have been spent in digital marketing, 12 of which have been leading AdEdge Digital Marketing, an award-winning digital agency. If you’d like to learn more about how digital marketing can improve your business or how to integrate it with your traditional marketing effort, feel free to give us a call at (203) 682-4585, email us at info@adedgemarketing.com or Contact Us.

7 tips to grow your online marketing presence

An online presence is critical for the success of almost any business today, especially for new or smaller businesses looking to gain customers. The Internet lets those small businesses access customers and partners anywhere in the world. It creates the potential for any message to go viral, attracting the attention of influencers and potential customers everywhere.

The Internet is also a vast ocean of competing brands and messages.

How can you wade through the noise and reach the people interested in what your business has to offer?
A strong online presence can be the flare to direct potential customers to your business, allowing them to clearly see your message and what you have to offer. The following seven tips can help you make the most of your online marketing presence.

1. Make a plan. Start by clearly defining your goals, and build a plan to get there. Make your goals clear, specific and measurable. Write them down, and check your progress often.

2. Build your base. In most cases, a website is the online strategy to start with and build around. Your website is your home base, the center of your operations. All other digital strategies build on the website by directing viewers to specific pages or elements. Consumers are increasingly mobile. Make sure your website is optimized for phones and tablets. That means the site should be designed to look good and be easy to read on smaller screens. Size images appropriately so they are big enough to look good but small enough to load quickly. Make sure the website contains essential information such as how to contact you, how to get more information, how to subscribe to your blog and social media and how to buy.

3. Become an authority. You already know your business and where you are positioned competitively within your industry. Find helpful, interesting, insightful ways to share that information with your viewers. Give them information they want, and they’ll seek you out. Share this information regularly and often through social media, blogs and emails to reach your audience. Don’t forget to point everything back to your website, your base. Each social media channel has its own audience and voice. Pay attention to the tone other people use on each platform.

4. Be social. Interact with other people, websites and brands. Follow other people in your industry, and comment and share their posts. Build online relationships with partners, customers and influencers.

5. Reconnaissance. The Internet’s an open place. There’s nothing wrong with checking out the competition. Take a look at their websites and social media channels. What looks good and what doesn’t? What can you emulate, and what can you do better?

6. Digital Marketing. Build and maintain your online brand with banner advertising and social media advertising. And “be there” when prospects are searching for the products or services you sell. How are you showing up in Google and Bing? If you want a chance to earn attention, clicks and business, you’ve got to show up to the party. Paid Search and SEO are the two top tools to achieve this. Start with Paid Search. It’s the quickest, easiest way to build a presence in the search engines for searches involving your products and services. Once you’ve been running paid search for a couple months and have figured out which are your top-performing keywords, move to SEO and incorporate those keywords into your website, social accounts and via inbound links. (Looks for more info on Paid Search and SEO in our past and future blogs.)

7. Evaluation and analyze. Constantly measure your efforts. See what is working and what can be improved. One effort might work for a while, just to stall later. The Internet is fluid, constantly changing with the ebb and flow of consumers and technology. The best tool for this is Google Analytics. It measures performance of all marketing channels side-by-side so you can make intelligent decisions about where to invest marketing dollars for the highest Return On Investment.

If you’d like to learn more about growing your online marketing presence to attract and retain clients and customers, we’d love to share some insights and ideas about effective digital marketing channels within your industry. Feel free to give us a call at (203) 682-4585, shoot us an email at info@adedgemarketing.com or Contact Us and let us know how we can help.

14 Tips for Leveraging Social Media for Your Business

Social media is a great tool for connecting with friends and family, sharing everything from pictures of your kid’s soccer games to checking in at your favorite restaurant. For businesses and marketers, social media can be even more significant: it’s an opportunity to reach and connect with customers and clients.

Social media is a key way to develop your existing customer base and expand your network by gaining new “fans”, “friends” and “followers”. It’s a relatively low-cost tool that can greatly extend your network and complement your paid digital marketing strategy. As prospects see your company and it’s products or services on multiple marketing platforms, the performance of each multiplies. Get seen everywhere and your brand will bubble up to the top and take a leading position among competing companies.

Here are 15 tips to help up your game in social media marketing.

1. Keep in touch. Social media is a great way to keep your brand in front of current and potential customers. Marketing’s “Seven Times Factor” states that potential customers need to see an ad seven times before the marketing effort begins to register with them. Social media can greatly enhance that effort. An effective social media strategy will include regularly scheduled posts, usually several times a week. Hopefully some of your followers will spread the message further by forwarding or commenting on your posts. Each interaction is an additional opportunity for you to reach your customer base.
2. Know your audience, and cater to their likes and wants but don’t try to be everything to everyone. When planning for a post, always put yourself in your customer’s shoes and talk about your products or services from their perspective – things that benefit them, not you. Connect with your customers in a strong, clear way, and do it regularly and often.
3. Create value. Use social media to provide a service to your customers and potential customers. Share information that is valuable to them. It can be tips, trivia, quizzes, coupons or anything else they find valuable.
4. Build trust. You can become a service provider for your consumers by giving them helpful, accurate information. Don’t sell, exaggerate or mislead.
5. It’s not about you. Yes, you want to build your brand and eventually sell something. Social media is a good tool for that. But don’t put the cart before the horse. Your social media feed shouldn’t be just a long infomercial about you. Give your audience useful, helpful information that they want. They will keep reading and eventually, they will trust you.
6. Make it easy to buy or find more information. While your feed shouldn’t be all about you, you also want to make it easy for people to connect to you and buy from you when they want to. If they find you and your social media feel helpful, educational or entertaining, they’ll probably want more. Design your websites and social media feeds in a way that allows them to quickly and easily find more information, connect to your other platforms and buy when they’re ready.
7. Network. Comment on other people’s posts. Collaborate with other users. Find ways to take advantage of the social aspects of social media.
8. Follow influencers. Follow and interact with the high-profile social media users in your area. Such efforts can help build visibility for you and your brand, and it also helps your audience by giving them access to information the influencers are providing.
9. Be strategic. Effective use of social media can complement and enhance your other digital strategies, including search engine optimization and paid advertising. In your social media efforts, write about topics and use keywords you’re promoting on other platforms.
10. Highlight charitable behaviors. While you don’t want your social media feeds to be only about your brand or organization, it’s important to show customers your civic side. Highlight charitable giving and other civic contributions.
11. Focus on customer service. Encourage both positive and negative comments. Ask for opinions and evaluation. Respond quickly and appropriately to both.
12. Address negative comments quickly and rationally. Addressing concerns can build loyalty and respect if it us handled properly and respectfully.
13. Know your media. Each social media platform has its own audience and style. Communicate accordingly.
14. Keep up. Social media and digital marketing trends move quickly. Try to keep up. Study, learn and pay attention to what others are doing.
15. Analyze and optimize. Study your results. See what works and what doesn’t, what times and days are best to reach your audience, what style or tone is most effective.

If you’d like to learn more about how to use social media to enhance your brand, naturally attract customers and build loyalty with your existing customers, we’d love to help. Feel free to drop us a line at (203) 682-4585, shoot us an email at info@adedgemarketing.com or Contact Us and let us know how we can help.

Google Ads Changes Coming This Fall

There are many changes coming to Google Ads this fall that will change the way we optimize our campaigns and how we report data to our clients.

No More Average Ad Position

Google just announced (again) that the average position metric will be removed from Google Ads starting the week of Sept. 30. The company first made the announcement in February, but there was no timetable. Google said the average position metric will be removed from saved column sets, saved reports that use the average position column and scorecards that use average position. With the average position metric removed, the following features also will be disabled:

• Rules using average position
• Custom columns using average position
• Saved reports that filter on average position
• Saved filters with average position

It will be important to check your current campaigns to make sure any rules and filters will not be impacted by these changes.

Google is removing average position after introducing two new metrics that provide us with an overview of where your ads appear based on the search results. The new metrics are “Absolute Top Impression” and “Top Impression.” Absolute Top refers to the very first position on the sponsored ads, while a Top Impression refers to any position within the top box of ads. Going forward, Google recommends using these new metrics as an alternative to the average position metric.

Accelerated Delivery

Google Ads announced that ad delivery options will change starting Sept. 17. The accelerated delivery option will be removed, and standard delivery will be the only option for Search and Shopping campaigns, as well as for campaigns with shared budgets. Any Search or Shopping campaigns and shared budgets using accelerated delivery automatically will be switched over to standard delivery by Oct. 1. The accelerated delivery option still will be available for Display and Video campaigns.

Google said the way accelerated delivery works can make it an inefficient option. If you do have a daily budget, choosing the accelerated option can mean your ads stop early in the day. Google also notes, “This method can increase CPCs due to increased competition early in the day or unintentionally spend most of your budget in earlier time zones.”

Google said standard delivery has been improved to be more predictive: “Standard delivery takes into account expected ad performance throughout the day and is better at maximizing performance within your daily budget.” With standard ad delivery, your budget is paced evenly throughout the day or blocks of time you’ve scheduled your ads to run. Google said it “optimizes your spend to be more reflective of targeted inventory user search (eg.user searches for your product/service),” as opposed to accelerated delivery, which Google said is “less optimized.”

Google recommends choosing the maximize conversions or maximize clicks bidding strategies to indicate your performance priority for campaigns that had been using accelerated delivery. It is also important to use ad scheduling to control when ads are served and adjust bids during certain times of day. (Though Google’s ad scheduling only takes your account’s time zone into account.) Keep in mind that it’s better to focus on contextual targeting than showing ads as often and early as possible.
If you would like to know how these changes are potentially impacting your Paid Search efforts within Google Ads, feel free to call us at 203-682-4585 or Contact Us for a free consultation or campaign evaluation.

Image Ads on Google Search

Google’s new gallery ads, first introduced this past May, are now rolling out to advertisers in beta form. Gallery ads were announced at the Google Marketing Live conference, with the company saying the ad units will be launching later this year.

Gallery ads are a swipe-able, image-based ad unit that appear at the top of search results. They’re designed to help businesses showcase their brand visually with the ability to include up to 8 images. Each image can have a unique caption, and advertisers can use a call-to-action button at the end of the gallery. Gallery ads are a new ad format that can be used in addition to text ads in search campaigns. There is no need to create a specific campaign for gallery ads.

What you need to do

While all of these changes may seem overwhelming, the good news is you have time to prepare for it all.
The image ads are in beta and most likely will not officially roll out until December at the earliest. We recommend you start putting together images you would like to use (at least 8 per campaign). For our clients in the beta program, we will be able to analyze the early results and use performance data as a basis to create a blueprint for moving forward. Once image ads start rolling out, we anticipate less ad space availability and possibly an impact on organic listings as well. When image ads come out for Google Search, it’s going to be a game-changer, so get ready now and beat your competition to the punch!

Accelerated Delivery and average ad position will have to be adjusted for campaign rules, columns or filters for any current campaign. We recommend reviewing all campaign settings to make sure there will be no disconnect for anything just mentioned.

If you have any questions about Image Ads on Google Search or need any help putting this together, keep in mind that your AdEdge Digital Marketing team is always here to help. Please Schedule a Call or Contact Us if you would like a complementary review of your campaign or some ideas to optimize your digital marketing performance.

11 Tips for Generating Website Traffic and Leads with Content Marketing

How can you best connect with your customers and prospects?

Consumers today often won’t tolerate a long sales pitch. They want to be informed and entertained. They might be interested in what you’re selling, but they’re much more likely to pay attention if they can get an immediate and free benefit.

One of the most effective ways to connect with today’s consumer is to get them to come to you. Known as Content Marketing or Inbound Marketing, the strategy involves being of service to consumers and creating a product or service they seek out. Don’t sell. Inform. Think first about what’s in it for your viewers.

The goal is to get traffic to your site. Effective Content Marketing helps with lead generation and customer retention. It’s much more expensive to attract new customers than to keep your existing customers happy.

Last week, we discussed why Content Marketing is important. This week, we’ll dig in and discuss some of the best practices to building an effective Content Marketing strategy.

1. Know your audience. Don’t try to be everything to everyone. The Internet’s a big place. Become an expert in your specialty. Know what your audience wants, and appeal to their interests.
2. Provide value. If consumers don’t find your site valuable, they won’t visit. Give them what they want.
3. Pay attention to presentation. The information is important, but so is the presentation. Make the site readable and navigable. Make the text appealing to read by designing it with white space, varying text sizes, color, images, and anything else to break up the copy blocks.
4. Don’t overdo it. Split long posts into multiple posts if necessary. Don’t try to cram too much into a single entry.
5. Use content that is “evergreen” and has a long shelf life. The site should be appealing to readers if they want to search through your archives or if a search takes them to an older post.
6. Publish content regularly and often. Train your viewers to look for your content. One effective way to do this is to release new information or articles at the same time every week, like this blog!
7. Ask questions. Ask your viewers what they want to see. Interact with them about the content you provide and be ready to make changes based on their feedback.
8. Don’t forget your other SEO tactics. Include keywords in your copy organically without being too obvious for either the reader or search engine algorithms.
9. Be strategic in how and when you share and promote your content. Know what social media channel works best for your audience and your information. Different language and tones might be more effective on different social media channels.
10. Make your content worth sharing …and encourage readers to share it!
11. Check your analytics to see which posts and topics are best received. Analytics and testing also can help you see what headlines and social media channels are most successful in sharing your content and reaching your viewers.

If you’d like to learn more about how to use content marketing to enhance your brand, naturally attract customers and build loyalty with your existing customers, we’d love to help. Feel free to drop us a line at 203-682-4585, shoot us an email at info@adedgemarketing.com or Contact Us and let us know what your biggest marketing challenge is for this fall.

Content Marketing

In 2019, it’s not enough to try to sell something. In fact, by many measures, traditional “selling” no longer works. The Internet has empowered consumers with information and they now turn to information on the Internet (rather than salespeople or a sales effort) to make decisions. Consumers are consuming information on the Internet at a break-neck pace. But not just any information — they don’t want a sales pitch, they want honest information about your products and services, and answers to their questions. Marketers can boost their brand and sales if they focus content that their consumers want and need.

The Internet is filled with content.

One of the great things about the Internet is that you can find a community for whoever you are. Is your interest ‘80s movies and memorabilia? There are thousands of blogs, social media channels and apps dedicated to Back to the Future, Top Gun and The Matrix. Or maybe you’re into the 1969 Mets. A Google search turns up more than 7.8 million pages filled with statistics, rosters and video from Miracle Mets’ magical season.

The Internet creates many challenges and opportunities for content marketing. For marketers, the good news is there’s probably an audience for whatever your promoting. The old-school approach to marketing was to appeal to a broad audience and to attract as many quality customers to your product as possible. However, with so much specific information now available online, this broad-based approach no longer works. To attract today’s consumers, you need to set yourself apart with specific information about your products and services. How are your products and services truly different and how are you as a company different and better than the other available choices?

Content is king

Quality content has become an essential component of any digital marketing strategy. Content can include social media marketing, search engine optimization, public relations. pay-per-click marketing or inbound marketing. What you write should be helpful, entertaining and/or useful to those who read it.

If your content is strong, honest and helpful, consumers will naturally come to you.

Why did you click on the link to this article? Why do you sign up to get a newsletter? Why did you visit any webpage or social media post in the past week? Most likely, it’s because you found value in that site or the information the site promised to provide. Websites that answer questions and give customers what they need are “sticky” and encourage engagement in the form of page visits, newsletter signups, chat sessions, calls, leads and ultimately, sales.

Also called “Inbound Marketing”, content marketing is designed to lead the consumer to come to you, as opposed to outbound efforts like advertising, direct mail or email where you are pushing your message out to potential customers. Content marketing does a better job at connecting with customers and because of this, it drives higher response rates. Content marketing can create a stronger attachment between a consumer and a brand or product. Effective use of content marketing can drive increased sales at lower cost and improve customer loyalty and retention.

Content marketing can include infographics, web pages, blogs, podcasts and videos. It can include calls to action, such as subscribe or share.

If you’d like to learn more about how to use content marketing to enhance your brand, naturally attract customers, and build loyalty with your existing customers, we’d love to help. Feel free to drop us a line at 203-682-4585, shoot us an email at info@adedgemarketing.com or Contact Us and let us know what’s on your mind.