Your agency must be able to answer this online ad spend question
In the United States, digital marketers are spending more than $60 billion per year on online ad spend campaigns. Our team of Orlando marketing agency experts know those are your precious marketing dollars at work, which is why we encourage all of our clients to ask those tough questions when they work with us and with other agency partners. If your agency can’t answer the following questions, you’re probably wasting money on your online ad spend. QUESTION 1: HOW IS MOBILE TECHNOLOGY DRIVING ONLINE AD SPEND GROWTH? Online ad spend across mobile channels increased 66% year over year when compared to last year’s ad spend. There are many reasons for this growth, including an increased emphasis on app usage and discovery (just click here to read why Apple is releasing new paid app advertising for more on that); more secure and streamlined mobile shopping experiences that drive 80% of digital consumers to indicate they will purchase something on their mobile device or tablet this year; and the ever increasing overlap between social media and our personal and professional lives. There is absolutely no doubt that mobile technology is one of the biggest drivers for online ad spend. When you ask the team at your local, Orlando marketing agency which trends are most important, or where you should invest now to support future mobile growth, we recommend: Responsive design: Despite the fact that mobile technology has been exponentially improving over the past decade, many company sites are still not mobile-friendly. Before you do anything else, update your site with responsive design technology that seamlessly adapts your site to any device and any size. Social ads: The prized millennial customer uses social media to find new brands, celebrate brands they love, and complain when brands let them down. Aside from search engine marketing, social media advertising is one of the most powerful ways to reach out to your target demographic. Social mobile apps such as Facebook, SnapChat, and Instagram lure users to their mobile devices hundreds of times per day, making this platform one of the most ubiquitous ways to reach your audience where they are already spending time. Paid app spends: If you have an app, it’s time to explore how paid advertising in Google Play or Apple’s App Store can deepen your customers’ engagement with your mobile app. Whether you want to encourage discovery for a new app, or drive use in your existing customer base, a paid online ad spend can bring much needed attention to your mobile app, putting you in a prime position to take advantage of the mobile boom. QUESTION 2: HOW IS PROGRAMMATIC ADVERTISING IMPACTING YOUR ONLINE AD SPEND? Don’t let anyone fool you. Programmatic advertising is impacting the online ad spend world in a big way. In fact, close to two thirds of US online ad spends will come from programmatic purchases this year, with mobile accounting for 60% of that spend. The trend is already here. This breakthrough allows robots and crawlers to do highly labor-intensive work that once led to human error and lag time between insights and actions. Instead of relying on media buyers to tag ads, comb through insertion orders, and tweak your spend, programmatic ad buying frees your agency to focus on driving your marketing strategy and fine-tuning your spend based on a wealth of hard, up-to-the-minute data. One of the most popular forms of programmatic ad buying is real-time bidding, which automates the term purchasing process by balancing ad inventory against audience data, and your resources and business goals. Let our team introduce you to the power of programmatic advertising and how it can make your customer targeting sharper and generate interest in truly engaged, valuable customers. Give us a call for a deep dive into this revolutionary breakthrough and how it will change the way you think about your online ad spend.
The future of SEO: It’s Google’s world, we’re just living in it
Google’s done it again – changed their effing SEO rules. If you were a digital marketer just three years ago, you’ll likely remember the Google Pirate released the first of many algorithm changes that impacted how web bots crawl, index, and rank every site on the web. Just as marketers were getting comfortable with Pirate, the Hummingbird update hit. And then there was the Panda and Penguin updates. Don’t forget about the Pigeon update. And that’s only to name a few. This February, Google launched a unique (but happily less disruptive) update targeting how they treat AdWords paid displays within search results. Despite its seemingly innocuous impact, this small update may have a huge influence on the future of search engine optimization. Here’s the low down: What changed: Google changed their paid advertising display on desktop search results to remove right-rail advertisements completely and only allow for four paid search results to populate before organic rankings take over. This may seem like a relatively small change (and a good one for the customer and small business owner who doesn’t have a massive media budget), but the impact is critical. This update dramatically decreases the clutter people see when searching and allows customers to focus on the top earned – rather than paid – results. It goes without saying that this limits the amount of skew that occurs from paid advertisers. We know it’s great when you have excess marketing budget, but the internet – and search engine optimization – has never been about the pay-to-play model. That’s why this update helps keep search results pure. But, that also means your SEO game needs to be on point. If you’re in the PPC (pay-per-click) business, your life just got a lot more difficult. If you’re in the SEO game, now’s the time to make your mark. What does that mean for SEO? Reducing the amount of ads and streamlining the results means that securing a top organic search ranking is even more important than ever. All eyes will now be laser focused on a consolidated list of results, with more opportunity for organically ranked companies to appear above the fold. As a search marketer, front and center has always been important, but now there is more clean real estate in this space, which means competition is about to get fierce. So, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Digital marketers who haven’t invested as much time or energy into SEO efforts (favoring the easier, direct PPC route) will have to start getting serious about their search engine optimization strategy. In a few months, many of these companies will have started diverting resources into their organic search campaigns. This means that companies who already have a strong search foundation should get ready to take their efforts to the next level. While other companies scramble to catch up, savvy SEO marketers will have begun optimizing their sites even further in an effort to get ahead of the curve. How to get ahead: At this point, you’re probably asking yourself: WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?! Content marketing: Take time to understand the keywords you want to focus on. Get specific and remember that being the number one spot with a critical few is better than falling just below the fold on 20 general terms. Once you’ve narrowed down your terms, start generating content. Get the blog posts fired up, get your internal links ready to go, and refresh your site content. Just know that any changes you make today will take a few months to be indexed, so don’t wait too long before moving. Non-branded keyword landing pages: Another great way to bolster SEO ranking is to create landing pages that target non-branded keywords. Apply the same principle you did when narrowing down your content marketing keywords. Then, hone in on how to build mini-pages that can link back to your main site while promoting these niche words. The specificity will help boost your ranking on key phrases, while the tailored content will help drive user engagement as an added bonus. A win-win situation. Spread the word: Now more than ever before, it’s important that other websites are linking to your content. Blog or write about topics relevant to your brand to help drive this inactive forward and then reach out to other industry influencers and tastemakers in hopes of getting an endorsement. Of course, it helps when you have something to exchange, so don’t be afraid to spotlight partners on your site or via social media. The only things certain in life are death, taxes, and change … so you should expect plenty more changes to how search engine optimization continues to evolve. Staying on top of the trends makes each subsequent update a little easier to digest than scrambling to catch up after three or four have passed. It’s an investment that ensures your content is seen by the right audience and that the work you put into your website and brand is put to good use. After all, if no one can find your content, they won’t be able to convert, and they’ll never become your customers. For more information on how we help elevate brands like yours through digital marketing, click here.
