Before we get into the heart of this post, you may be wondering why even consider running a PPC campaign at all.
Easy. Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns are a great way to quickly drive targeted traffic to your website, increase brand visibility, or generate leads or sales. With a PPC campaign, you have tight control over your budget, ad targeting, and performance metrics, and this lets you reach your ideal customers based on specific keywords, demographics, or locations. Unlike organic marketing, PPC delivers immediate results, making it ideal for time-sensitive promotions or competitive industries. Best of all, you only pay when someone clicks on the ad, ensuring cost efficiency and a clear return on investment (ROI).
There’s the “why.” Now for the “how.”
Running a successful pay-per-click (PPC) campaign is like piloting a ship. You need to know where you’re going, understand the tools you’re using, and continuously adjust your course. And while PPC can provide near-instant results, without the right strategy, you can easily spend lots of money without seeing any return on investment (ROI). Here are 10 tips to help you run a winning PPC campaign that brings in leads, sales, and brand awareness while making every dollar count.
1. Know Where You’re Headed Before You Take Off
Before you launch your PPC campaign, it’s essential to know exactly what you’re trying to achieve. Do you want more website traffic? Lead generation? Product sales? Or maybe brand awareness? The clearer your goals, the easier it is to structure your campaign and measure success. A goal of “Get rich quick!” while attractive, is nearly impossible to execute on. But a goal of “increasing sales by 15%” gives you something specific to aim for and track.
2. Choose Your (Key)words Properly
Thorough keyword research is the foundation of any successful PPC campaign. The right keywords will connect your ads with users who are actively searching for specific products or services like yours. Tools like Google’s Keyword Planner will help you find relevant keywords with good search volume and manageable competition. Also remember that it’s important to balance high-traffic keywords with long-tail ones (specific phrases with lower search volume), as these can lead to more targeted, qualified clicks.
3. Make Your Words Work
You only have a few lines to grab attention in a PPC ad, so make every word count. Your future customer should be able to tell what you’re offering and why it’s valuable within moments of seeing your ad. Include a strong call to action (CTA) like “Shop Now,” “Learn More,” or “Get a Free Quote” to let them know they can and should take action now. And a clear value proposition, like a special discount or free shipping, can also set your ad apart from competitors. Don’t forget to optimize! Test different versions of your copy to see what resonates best with your audience. Keep what works. Lose what doesn’t.
4. When Negative Keywords Can Be a Positive
Negative keywords are your secret weapon in PPC campaigns. These are words that you don’t want your ads to appear for. For example, if you’re selling high-end luxury watches, you might want to exclude search terms like “cheap watches” or “free watches.” This helps prevent your ads from getting in front of people who are less likely to convert, which saves you money and improves your ROI.
5. Optimize Landing Pages
You’d think that once someone clicks on your ad, the work of your PPC campaign is done. But that’s just the beginning. The landing page you’re sending them is just as crucial. Make sure your landing page is optimized for conversions, with a clear message that matches your ad, a simple layout, fast load times, and an easy-to-use form if needed. The landing page should reinforce the value you promised in the ad and make it easy for users to take the next step. It should also resemble the ad users have just clicked. A difference in appearance can be distracting. And a distracted customer won’t be a customer for very long.
6. Add On the Ad Extensions
Ad extensions are additional pieces of information that expand your ad and make it more clickable. They can include extra links, phone numbers, addresses, reviews, and more. An ad extension will give your ad more real estate on the search results page and offer more ways for users to engage with your business. For example, a call extension allows mobile users to directly dial your business without visiting your site.
7. Your Budget Should Make Cents
While PPC can deliver quick results, it’s important to set a budget that aligns with your business goals. Start small and scale up as you begin to see what works. A good practice is to set a daily budget cap that you’re comfortable with, then monitor the performance to adjust as necessary. Don’t forget that PPC is an auction system, so bids for certain keywords can vary depending on the competition.
8. Make Sure Your Ads Are A/B Tested
If you don’t test your ads, you’ll never know what works best, what’s dragging you down, and how you can improve on things. A/B testing involves running two variations of an ad, landing page, or even CTA to see which performs better. For example, you might run two different headlines or two different offers. Use the data from these tests to optimize your campaigns continuously. Small changes can lead to big improvements in click-through rates (CTR) and conversions. Once you have a winner, create a new contender and start the process over again.
9. Monitor, Adjust, Tweak, and Mess Around With Your Bids
Your bidding strategy plays a critical role in how often your ads are shown and at what position. Regularly review the performance of your keywords and adjust your bids accordingly. If a keyword is driving lots of conversions, you might want to increase your bid so it will continue to show in a high position. At the same time, if a keyword isn’t performing well, reduce the bid or pause it entirely to focus your budget on better-performing terms.
10. Don’t Rest on Your Success!
You can’t improve what you don’t measure! Tools like Google Analytics and Google Ads can help you track the performance of your PPC campaigns. Keep an eye on key metrics like click-through rate, conversion rate, cost-per-click (CPC), and cost-per-acquisition (CPA). By regularly analyzing these metrics, you’ll have a clear view of what’s working and what isn’t. Use these insights to refine your campaigns over time. Plus, it’s a great way to present your victories to other stakeholders in your organization.
Wrapping It Up
Running a successful PPC campaign is both an art and a science. By following these 10 tips, you’ll be well on your way to maximizing your PPC investment. Remember to be patient. No campaign is perfect right out of the gate. Success comes from learning, tweaking, and optimizing along the way.
Now, get out there and make your PPC campaign the best it can be!
Businesses and consumers rely heavily on the internet for decision making when it comes to partnerships and purchases. At the same time, businesses use the internet to reach their target audience and promote their business. Google Ads help businesses digitally reach that desired target audience through their SERP advertising and gain measurable results from it.
Google Ads raises awareness by putting your brand in front of other consumers who are searching using keywords relevant to your business.
A feature that Google Ads has that can help your SEO strategy is testing keywords in order to see if conversions derive from them. After that, you can use that data to improve your SEO strategy and make sure you’re using keywords that will produce results once your website is optimized.
Using Google Ads remarketing ads process consists of categorizing audiences based off of what source they went through to get to your site and targeting them through the Google Display Network.
With an Ads share report, you’ll see how many times your competitor outranks you on Google. By choosing “Target Outrank,” you can adjust your bid in order to outrank the competition.
The Enhanced Cost Per Click strategy on Ads adjusts your bid based on the previous conversion data and other insights such as location, device, browser, time of day and week that potential consumers engage with your ads.
Google Ads provides many PPC metrics that allow you to measure what strategy has been working and what does not. From here, you can determine which campaigns to proceed with and which to turn off. Google Ads is also pretty scalable, considering the fact that it does not require excess effort to get leads. If you create a campaign that’s converting at a good rate, you can increase your budget, which can result in increased leads and profits.
Google Ads has the flexibility of hyper-targeting the audience you want to reach. For instance, you can specify keyword match types, use ad extensions, access non-search users with Youtube and Gmail Ads, leverage the display network, and narrow down the audience by location, time of day, language, browser or device.
A perk of Google Ads is not having to wait long to see results. Putting resources into your Google Ad campaign will bring you impressions and clicks instantaneously. Since it’s so fast, you can test certain keywords or audiences to see if they’re worth pursuing in your SEO strategy.
Google seamlessly combines your advertising needs into one platform. Google also suggests how to adjust your spending on ads based on Google’s observations of their performance.
Taking over SERPS: Google prioritizes Google Ads over organic results since they fall under the same umbrella. Once you start your PPC campaign, you will be able to get your ads high up on SERP, where they have a higher chance of getting clicked.
Many small businesses operate with a restrictive budget, so they want to make sure they’re investing their money into something that will produce results. Adopting Google Ads into your digital marketing strategy will allow you to allocate your spending as you please with no minimum investment or monthly ad spend.
They call it “pay-per-click” because that’s exactly what you’re doing. Google Ads also tracks who has been clicking your ads but not converting, to see how you can adjust your ads.
Google is everyone’s go-to for just about everything. If someone takes their time out to search for something, chances are they are ready to buy, which is a perfect time to place your ad in front of their face.
Global paid search spending has been increasing exponentially and much online revenue is made based off search ad impressions that your competitors are using. If the competition is using Google Ads, it’s definitely something worth looking into.
Google has such a massive reach and pretty much provides the answer to everything online, so why wouldn’t you want your business advertised on their platform?
If you’re ready to set up Google Ads for your business, feel free to contact us and we’d be happy to assist you!
Social media marketing may seem simple: Create relevant content, post relevant content, and await business growth. However, this is just the logistical part of it. Most people don’t think about what really matters: the research and strategy usually done beforehand.
In order to get the most out of social media marketing, we must identify our client’s target audience and create a strategy outlining the social tactics that will attract this target and keep their attention. This consists of research that continues while searching for content that will appeal to them.
Fast forward to a month from now. We’ve implemented our social media strategy, but how do we know our strategy is actually working?
Ideally, you’ll want to show the outcome of your strategy in a way that your client will easily comprehend. A concise report that shows key performance indicators with references to specific information. It really doesn’t matter if it’s a spreadsheet, presentation, or Word doc. There are different formats for just about every client.
Creating a comprehensive yet concise social media report is a difficult task that consists of making sense of data from a variety of different sources, such as reach, engagements, leads and conversions. It’s not easy to create a flawless report right from the get-go, but creating a solid one that your client will understand is definitely possible. These reports will also evolve over time; some of the information that once seemed critical may not be, while data that was once considered unimportant is now crucial to your success.
Design and usability: Keep the client in mind when designing your report. If you’re uncertain about what particular data may mean,then your client will definitely have trouble understanding it. A clean design makes information easier to read, easier to find, and easier to understand.
Data gathering: Everyone has their own preference of how they want to collect data, and there are usually two methods for doing so. The first method is to manually gather data from the analytics dashboards within each social channel and import the data into your report – usually copying and pasting. The second method is to use a social media analytics tool such as Quintly or Social Studio that automatically pulls all of your data at once and provides an overview for it on a dashboard. This method usually takes the stress away from having to dig for data through each platform you use, however they do come with subscription fees that may not be affordable for everyone.
First and foremost, the two key questions that every client will inevitably ask is “how much does this cost?” and “how much will we make?” This is where return on investment (ROI) comes into conversation. It is essential to set these objectives using the S.M.A.R.T. framework (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely).
For example, if gaining conversions is an objective of the client, a goal would be a specific number of leads you want to drive via social media for that month. Another objective could be that you want to increase engagement and awareness, on social media. It would be ideal to set a number and a deadline such as: ‘We will increase engagement and awareness by five percent by the end of the month.’
Make sure to keep your S.M.A.R.T. goals in mind when highlighting certain data points in your report!
When explaining the findings to the client, keep things simple. Establish a general logic that conveys the importance behind each metric. This should reduce any confusion and give them a better understanding of the data and why they should continue to invest in your strategy.
Following this guide will not only reduce stress, but will also give you the opportunity to focus on new ideas and strategies to improve performance in the future.
If you are seeking help on creating a social media report, feel free to contact us and we would be happy to work with you!
Online reviews can make or break your business. Companies are relying on social media and online review outlets to inform the public on their services, connect with current and prospective consumers and spread the good word about their business.
Unfortunately, people tend to post reviews if they’ve had a really bad experience or a really good one. The consumers who have had an okay experience don’t usually take the time to leave a review. This audience is the largest and needs some extra encouragement to leave an organic and positive review. So how do we tap into this group? Here are our recommendations:
Offer a discount or monetary reward based on referrals. Word-of-mouth is an incredibly powerful method of communication. With a referral program, people tend to speak more favorably about your company in order to get that referral – and the reward that’s attached to it.
It’s important to keep your audience up-to-date with new innovations being made, new products or services being offered, and promotions and specials. Newsletters let consumers know you care about your relationship with them and want to keep them in the loop. It is best practice to send these out, at a minimum, on a quarterly basis. Sending out too many emails will categorize you as spammy and will wind up costing you business.
Generally, the most popular sites for reviews are Facebook, Google and Yelp. Depending on the nature of your business, other review sites may be more relevant. Create a CTA to request reviews with a link to each outlet noted on the footer of any digital correspondence you have with you customers, such as emails or online receipts, so your customers can easily take the next step.
It’s important to keep up with reviews and respond in a timely manner. Make sure to thank customers for taking the time to leave a review. And never ignore the negative. Failure to respond to negative reviews only makes your company appear dismissive. Not sure how to respond to a negative review? Here’s a simple guide:
Read. Make sure you have a solid understanding of the customer’s problem. You’ll only make matters worse by missing the point your customer is trying to make.
Resolve. Find a solution for their problem, and if you don’t have one, let them know you’re working hard to solve it.
Record. Jot down these details to help improve your business practices and prevent this type of problem in the future.
Many times, bad reviews are the result of the customer not having the right information. Creating a FAQ page customers can easily access on your website will help prevent common minor issues people may encounter with your product and or service. If there is a solution already presented at their fingertips, they won’t need to leave a review about what happened. Also, if they have any doubts about your products or services, your FAQ page will answer those questions.
Reputation management software takes control and monitors your online reputation. For example, if a negative comment is posted, you’ll quickly receive an alert, so you can go nip it in the bud, helping you to be responsive in a timely manner. It’s hard to keep up with every review posted, but reputation management software will help address them quickly and effectively. Podium is a great software that we recommend for you to use in order to manage reviews.
This doesn’t mean just ask your customers for a review. You want to ask them at the right moment. If you ask at the wrong time, you may come off as pushy and get a negative review instead. After a customer enjoys a positive experience, you can have them fill out a survey/review form immediately. Leaving a positive post on social media is another good opportunity to ask. And if your service is subscription-based, you can insert a form to leave a review in your renewal letters. This also works for people who decide to re-purchase your products. When prompting your customer to leave a good review, make sure the language is casual, relaxed, and friendly.
Numbers are important
The ultimate goal is to get as many reviews as possible. For instance, if you have ten reviews with eight of them being good and two of them being not-so-good, you’re still in a good position.
Good reviews make for great shareable content. Share your positive testimonials people post on social media. Share positive reviews with your target audience, so your target audience doesn’t have to go looking for them.
Ultimately, the greatest advertising is a great product. If your company is constantly providing exceptional products and services, there really shouldn’t be a reason for anyone to leave a bad review. Make sure customer service is always available for consumers, ready to help and constantly remind them that you care about their experience.
Quick recap: Gaining positive online customer reviews are not only dependent on your services being good but the way you communicate and connect with your consumers to leave a good review in the first place. If there are any questions or professional assistance needed in forming a social remediation strategy, feel free to contact us!
When companies face the challenge of reaching new customers and markets, it’s best to consider a new branding position to drive growth. Brand positioning provides persuasive methods your business development team needs in order to cultivate and close out sales. Today you’ll learn how to create a brand positioning statement. First, though, we must understand the key aspects of it.
Account planners help make sure the brand is properly positioned. They must carve out a position that no other brand can occupy.
When creating your brand positioning, it must be something that the consumer wants, thinks is special, and the brand must live up to it and maintain that vision. It is also crucial to use brand positioning to turn a consumer’s wants into a need.
When finding your target market, you must think about who you want your brand to reach, business and consumer wise. Create a brand persona, where you create fictional characters based on real aspects of your customer base. With that being said, paint a picture of who you’re targeting, understand their mindset or motivation, and define them in a way that helps the brand position themselves differently than others. The more detailed your analysis can be, the better.
Key advice: Research is vital when identifying your target market. For instance, we might initially believe that Demo A is perfect for our new brand of widget, but after doing some market research, we learn it’s Demo B. The only way we’ll learn this, though, is by doing the research.
Another key aspect is to know where your brand stands category-wise and who the brand must compete against to win market share. These things may change over time, which is why it is best to stay updated with market trends.
Think about what the consumer takes away from your brand positioning. The big idea is to get the target market to see the brand the same way that the company sees the brand. Make sure your brand positioning is compelling and distinct – so unique you can’t substitute your brand name with another. What is something that you can confidently provide to consumers that no other brand can provide or replicate?
Explain the brand and product attributes that benefit the consumer and make sure it’s not only fact-based and compelling but also understandable and believable for consumers. Provide evidence for the claims made and show your process or share data and statistics to ensure legitimacy.
To (ie: Target Consumer)_________________. *Brand X* is the (Frame of Reference)_____________that (Rational/Emotional Benefit Promise) _______________.
That’s because *Brand X* is (Reason to Believe) ____________.
Now that you see how things are laid out, let’s look more in depth about how you can easily fill in those blanks!
To businesses looking to expand their growth and sales through digital advertising. Boxcar Creative is the full-service digital advertising agency that treats their client relationships like partnerships. That’s because Boxcar Creative is committed to providing top-notch services to their clients.
When editing, make sure that you are writing your statement correctly. A brand positioning statement should not sound like a slogan, tagline or pitch, but as a belief of who you are and what you want to be.
After answering all of these questions, I hope that you’ve revised your draft and now have a flawless brand positioning statement!
If you are interested in achieving the best brand positioning in the marketplace, it’s essential to do a full brand audit. We’d be happy to help you take your company to new heights! Feel free to drop us line on our contact page if you’re interested.
The year was 2013: The Snowden Leaks were the talk of the country, throngs of people lined up to buy the iPhone 5S, “Get Lucky” by Daft Punk played on a loop on every radio station, Facebook introduced the edit functionality, and a newcomer named Snapchat had users sending over 60 million snaps a day.
Think about it. Five years isn’t that long, but in digital marketing and advertising years, five years might as well have been decades ago. Suffice it to say, a lot has changed in the social media space since 2013.
Long gone are the days when simply throwing together a content calendar and posting your own content and some third party content was good enough. Posting for posting sake is dead. Today, you must be consistently creating visually strong and useful content that will resonate with your target audience. Talking at your audience hasn’t worked in years. Talk with your audience, give them opportunities to easily communicate with you. Create content that will allow them to connect with you and your brand story at a far deeper level.
Remember that visual content I talked about? The arrival of photo-centric platforms like Instagram and Pinterest ushered in the era of image-heavy content marketing. In 2013, a strong text only blog post, Facebook status update, or Tweet was good enough. Today, compelling visuals (both photo and video) are the name of the game. It’s important to create an experience for your audience through your visuals. If you aren’t investing a major part of your time, effort, or budget on strong creative you’re missing out on ways you can set yourself apart and grab your audience’s attention.
Along with visuals, the other key to setting yourself apart involves crafting and telling a compelling brand story. Storytelling and visuals work hand-in-hand, whether through a brand video, photos, graphics, or illustrations – to captivate your audience. Consumers are starved for a way to emotionally connect to your brand or business; visually create the path for them to do so.
Unless you’ve been under a rock the past year, you’ve repeatedly heard that video is the absolute king of content marketing today. But that wasn’t the case five years ago. While video content has been around thanks to YouTube since 2006, video didn’t become an integral part of social media marketing until 2 years ago. And we’re not talking about standard video content; we mean social video and live streaming as well. Mobile technology propelled this video explosion. Never before have you or I had access to such high-quality video production in the palm of our hands.And social media platforms have created environments where these easily created videos can thrive. Play along, upload videos, or go live often and you’ll soon see the fruits of your social media labor.
Brands have discovered the multi-faceted value in leveraging user generated content. Using CGM is a way to gain your audience’s immediate trust and credibility. 92% of consumers trust the recommendations of others over an ad (Expertcity). CGM creates a sense of trust that can’t be gained through traditional ads. It also brings your audience together through a shared emotional connection which is invaluable.
Hold onto your hats, this is good: 80% of internet users own a smartphone (Smart Insights) and over 50% of smartphone users grab their smartphones immediately after waking up (Express Pigeon). With numbers like that there’s no question we’re living in a mobile-centric world, and businesses are taking note. Today, top brands have added mobile customer service messaging, live streaming, and social e-commerce to their social media arsenal and it’s paying off. Creating mobile-friendly content must be a top priority today in 2018 and moving forward.
Before I lose your attention with more numbers, know that social networks have definitely become the new online stores. 56% of consumers say they follow brands on social media to be alerted to sales and coupons. 31% of online shoppers say they’re using social media specifically to find new items to purchase. I don’t know about you, but if I were a retailer, I would want to go and share my brand story, share useful information, and build a community in the exact place where people are spending the majority of their free time, especially if they’re spending their dollars there as well.
There have long been rumblings around the internet that social media is no longer effective. Can you believe that? We know they couldn’t be more wrong. What they mean to say (I’m positive) is that social media as we knew it in 2013 is dead and gone. It has evolved into a platform for brands to tell stories visually, entertain, educate, inform, delight, and connect with their audiences in an authentic and transparent way that fosters genuine conversations.
If you’re looking to create and execute a visually compelling social media strategy or campaign, Boxcar Creative is your team. Building brands into content creators and industry leaders through engaging content is what we’re all about! It’s 2018; don’t get left behind using 2013 social media strategy.
And now it’s your turn, what new social strategy will you be implementing to propel your brand forward this year? Tell us here or chat with us over on Facebook. We’re waiting to hear from you!
Are you looking to improve your ranking on Google and other search engines? Want to ensure that your website has perfectly optimized web pages that will generate a ton of relevant traffic? There are many sides to search engine optimization (better known as “SEO”), but today we’ll talk about the aspect that you have the most control over. You guessed it: On-page SEO!
On-page SEO refers to all individual parts that can be implemented manually and directly within your website in order to improve its position in the search rankings. Essentially, having a fully optimized web page means that you’ve implemented every aspect of on-page SEO effectively on that page.
Here are the on-page SEO elements that make up a perfectly optimized webpage:
Search engines prefer URLs that are:
SEO Friendly URL:
SEO Unfriendly URL:
Each page of your website should have a unique page title (Including blog posts!) that includes the main keyword for that page.
For example, if you write a blog about a chocolate chip cookie recipe you tried over the weekend, include the keyword ‘Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe’ within your page/post title.
A few examples:
Now that the keyword is infused in the page title, when someone looks up ‘Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe’ in a search engine, your webpage has a better chance of ranking because you have included those keywords.
When building a website, meta descriptions can be easily overlooked. But what most people don’t know is that they’re missing a huge on-page SEO opportunity. These descriptions are shown within the search results when your page is listed on a search engine. It’s important to place relevant keywords within these descriptions to help your page rank for the corresponding search queries.
If we refer back to the ‘Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe’ example, a good meta description for that blog post might include the mentioned keywords and related ones. Therefore, “This easy chocolate chip cookie recipe is possibly the most delectable, flavorful, chocolate chip cookie ever made.” would definitely be an excellent meta description to use, as it is concise, while containing a number of specific keywords.
When organizing content on your website, you should divide your content into sections or paragraphs to make it easier for people to navigate. These sections of content can be given heading, which is where H1, H2,H3, H4, etc. tags are used.
Generally H1 tags are reserved for your main page title, with subsequent headings (just like the ones I have used throughout this post) being issued H2, H3, etc. Search engines use these to determine what is important within your content. This is why keyword rich headlines are more useful than generic ones. Make sure you write keyword rich headings in the order of priority in H1, H2 and H3 title tags. They are used by many crawlers to differentiate important content.
A webpage consisting purely of text content can only be so appealing. Engaging images, videos and infographics have proven to reduce bounce rate and increase time on site. These two critical user interaction metrics are major ranking factors in Google’s current SEO algorithm. These enhanced metrics increase the perceived value of your content –which means that people are more likely to link to it.
Your keyword should appear in the first 100-150 words of your article. This is something that will usually occur naturally. But many people are compelled to begin their posts with a long introduction and insert their keyword for the first time later than recommended. Instead, insert your keyword within the first 100 words of your post. Doing this helps Google understand what the content on your page is about.
Google began penalizing sites that are not mobile-friendly in 2015. To ensure your site is not at a disadvantage, I’d recommend having your website built with responsive design (Google prefers it). Honestly, it’s surprising to us when we see sites that aren’t mobile-friendly yet. If you need some extra convincing, you’ll receive the incentive of more search engine traffic if you take the leap.
Using outbound links in your posts is an easy, white hat, on-page SEO strategy to get more traffic. When you include outbound links to related pages on your post, it helps Google understand the topic of your page and portrays your page as a hub of quality information. A good rule of thumb: try to use 2-4 outbound links per 1,000 words.
Important Reminder: The sites that you link out to reflect on you. Ensure that you are linking out to reputable sites whenever possible.
Internal links allow your web visitors to spend more time on your website and explore the great content you’ve created. An increase in the average amount of time spent on your site is an important ranking factor. Our recommendation: link to 2-5 older posts whenever you publish a new one.
Google has admitted that page loading speed is, indeed, an SEO ranking factor. You have the ability to boost your site speed by using a CDN (content delivery network), compressing images, and switching to faster hosting (most effective). Rule of thumb: Make sure your site doesn’t take more than 4 seconds to load. It has been found that users would not re-visit a site that took longer than 4 seconds to load.
Test your website speed here: Google PageSpeed Insights
LSI keywords, latent semantic indexing, are synonyms that Google uses to determine a page’s relevancy. Writing long content increases the chances that you’ll use LSI keywords naturally. To ensure that you’re using LSI keywords, type your keyword into the Google search engine and scroll down to the “Searches Related to…” area at the bottom of the page. Be sure to include a few of them into every post.
Your target keyword should be included in the file name and within the alt text of at least one image on your post. Image optimization gives search engines additional hints of what your page is about, which will help it rank in organic search. For example, if Google sees images with the alt text “blue icons” and “green icons” it tells them: “this page is about icons”.
Social sharing buttons do not have a direct role in ranking your site, however, social shares will generate more traffic to your content. And the more traffic you get, the better chance you have that someone will link to your content. Additionally, web traffic is also a ranking factor for SEO. That being said, be sure to place social sharing buttons prominently on your site.
If you follow these guidelines for your web pages and blog posts, you’ll have a increased chance of ranking within search engines. However, on-page SEO is just one aspect of SEO. There are additional ranking factors that help determine where your page lands within search engine result pages, commonly referred to as SERPs. We’ll discuss those aspects here on our blog soon, so stay tuned!
Need SEO help for your website? We’d love to work with you! Feel free to drop us line on our contact page if you’re interested.
Here at Boxcar Creative, we use Brand Tiles (or style tiles) to convey the design direction for any website or digital collateral we plan to build. Our clients often mistake a Brand Tile for website layouts. But as we usually have to emphasize, they are NOT layouts. 🙂
Brand Tiles are a design deliverable in the form of a digital mood board that consist of fonts, colors, photo treatments, buttons and other interface elements that communicate the visual essence of a brand for the digital space. They assist with forming a common visual language between our designers and our clients and provide a stimulant for discussions around the design preferences of the client.
The best analogy for Brand Tiles is that they’re similar to an interior designer’s finish palette or mood board. The paint chips and fabric swatches an interior designer presents must be approved before going all in and designing a room. The same idea applies to our process in designing websites. Our Web designer will not design three different webpage mock ups for a client at the first design kick-off meeting. It simply is not efficient or cost effective for either parties.
It seems simple to come out and just tell your client what you think they need for their website, but your clients hold an invaluable amount of information about their industry that can intelligently inform the design of their website. So what we do is stop and listen by initiating a design kickoff meeting. During this meeting, our design team becomes acquainted with our client and we discuss the answers to their website design survey (completed before the meeting).
During this phase, our designers individually interpret how the insight communicated during our meeting translates into design principles. With the meeting notes in hand, our designers are able to make choices about how to use the elements of design in their brand tile. Ultimately, the designer’s goal is to provide the perfect visual cues that will guide client’s subconscious assumptions towards the communicated desired adjectives and themes.
This is the step of our process in which the designer creates the Brand Tile. They determine themes from the aggregated feedback and begin to match those ideas up with styling techniques. The Brand Tiles give our client a point of reference to determine if their vision is aligned with the designer’s.
To be as efficient as possible, we present multiple tiles to give our client information to work with that can influence the evolution of a final brand tile. We often see that our client’s opt to combine Brand Tile options; combining Brand Tiles fosters a process that allows for a natural evolution of stylistic elements without losing sight of the established design goals. Making revisions to Brand Tiles is a simpler and more objective manner of refining a visual design without being too vague or precise.
Like our process? We’d love to work with you! Feel free to drop us line on our contact page, if you’re interested in some killer web design.
As marketing continuously becomes more and more focused online, it’s important to be equipped with a digital agency or marketing team that will drive your business in the best direction with experience and knowledge. We believe investing in the right team can make or break your success.
There are definitely a variety of structures that have proven to be successful. Sometimes responsibilities may be divided or combined resulting in more or less roles depending on the amount of work that needs to be done. For our purposes, here is an outline of what a digital agency marketing all-star team would look like:
Driving traffic and finding people in need of a particular solution is this person’s passion. This team member oversees all of the inbound marketing campaigns and strategies and is the SEO, SEM and Social Media expert in the office. If you didn’t know, SEO is an extremely important aspect of online marketing. Having this person on your team will ensure that your site, blog, and other aspects of online marketing are optimized to rank as high as possible. As you know, social media is certainly linked to digital marketing, so it’s definitely wise to put someone in-charge of all things social. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etcetera — it’s this person’s job is to make sure that you’re not only posting the most relevant content, but engaging with followers.
Digital graphic designers are technically-savvy individuals who use their creative abilities to inspire the creation of digital design. They produce the design and production for websites, product graphics, web logos, social media graphics and banners, static and rich banner ads, email campaigns, and email templates. Not only should the designs that are created by this person be aesthetically appealing, but they should also be functional. Before hiring someone for this position, be sure you ask to review their portfolio to ensure that your taste in design are aligned.
Coding is probably one of the most tedious and challenging tasks involved in digital marketing. This is the team member that brings the approved designs to life! This position includes building responsive websites and landing pages, coding the HTML for email campaigns, implementing that JavaScript code to record the event in web analytics. These tasks require highly specified knowledge and experience to perform.
Your director of creative strategy should be a part of the day-to-day oversight of all creative executions but also be able to deal with challenges as they arise. The leader of your creative team is the glue which holds all of the creative brand touch points together.
While most of the time team members are able to work with a lot of autonomy, you need to have a someone in charge with a vigilant eye over every team member’s work and timelines. This digital web chief should be a great communicator, organized, and able to schedule meetings and follow up to ensure everyone is on the same page.
Account Management guides and develops digital marketing programs, provides strategically sound solutions to business objectives. Your digital account manager maintains deep knowledge of your business, your industry and your business’ competition and is ultimately responsible for the overall success of all initiatives.
Now that you understand the roles that make up a digital agency, do you have a team equipped to handle advertising in the digital age? If not, we can help! Here at Boxcar Creative, digital marketing is our speciality. From web design to paid search and social campaigns, we’ve got you covered. Feel free to shoot us a line on our contact page if you’re interested.
Commercials, billboards, annoying pop-ups, and all that stuff. Your average person probably sees dozens to hundreds of ads every day across all platforms. To be honest, it’s almost impossible to avoid them unless you don’t read papers or magazines, use the internet, listen to the radio, watch television, or go outside. So whether you like them or not, they’re here to stay. But how did they start? We thought it’d be fun to talk about the history of advertising and how the major platforms have evolved over the years.
Advertising dates back to the ancient world. Evidence has been found that thousands of years ago, people in ancient Egypt people wrote on papyrus for posters and notices. Going back even further, old stones have been found painted with notices in India dating back to around 4000 BCE. But that was the old way of doing it, so how about the new way? What we think of as “modern advertising” really goes back to the invention of the printing press. Once movable type was created and machine printing a possibility, advertising soon followed. People were able to produce leaflets and posters in larger quantities. Utilizing this new technology people could advertise anything from a shop to public elections, or a local theater group putting on a production. It allowed people to get the word out and spread their message. From there, a world of possibilities opened up. During the 18th century, town newspapers started to pop up throughout Europe and the North American colonies. Shops and stores in town were able to create and design advertisements to be displayed in these papers and for the first time “mass marketing” became plausible. While print ads are becoming less popular today, with fewer and fewer people reading physical newspapers and magazines, there will always be a place for print ads in the world of marketing.
By the 19th century business began to think differently about how to grab people’s attention, which gave rise to the billboard. The first recorded mention of a large format billboard was from 1835 in New York. Jared Bell began printing 9×6 posters advertising the circus. When printing technology more rapidly advanced through the next century, billboard advertising became more accessible for businesses to advertise with. Over time, billboards managed to get larger and more complicated, with some even using physical objects extending past the borders or popping out of the ad itself (the Chick-fil-a cows would be a good example). And in recent years, advancing digital technology has allowed for some billboards to become all digital; instead of having to plaster the advert on the existing billboard, you can just upload a file that now plays on a 30 something foot screen above the highway. This method is cheaper, easier, and allows for the owner of the billboard to make more money since they can have multiple ads play at the same time by just switching to a new one every few seconds. Billboards are a tried and true method of advertising for almost 200 years, and as long as people go outside we’ll see them for many more years to come.
Any talk about inventions that truly changed the world must include radio. Theories and concepts for broadcast radio began in the early 1800s, and scientists and inventors continued to work on the potential technology throughout the century with early stations and broadcasts appearing in the late 1800s. Towards the beginning of the 20th century, radio technology was more viable than ever with several stations operating throughout the world. As time went on, radios became cheap enough that some people were able to own them in their homes. Music, news reports, and daytime dramas became great sources of in-home entertainment and marketers seized this open opportunity. The first radio ads began to play over public radio in 1922 and in the next 10 years, most stations featured some sort of commercial. Some companies even began to sponsor radio programs. The most famous of these were soap operas, weekly radio dramas that played during the day and targeted women, many of which were sponsored by companies that manufactured soaps and cleaning products (hence the name). Radios became common in society very quickly, with everyone wanting one in their home and car companies beginning to place them in their vehicles. Even now, millions of Americans listen to the radio every day while on the way to work and back home. News, music, and other forms of entertainment have allowed radio to be a viable platform for advertising for nearly a century.
It’s doubtful anything in the 20th century made a bigger impact on culture than the television. For decades, TV was the center of every American home. The family would gather around the TV a couple nights a week to watch the latest episode of “I Love Lucy,” “Happy Days,” “The Cosby Show,” “M.A.S.H.,” and “Seinfeld.” It changed the face of entertainment and marketers began to slide in. In the home, TVs didn’t become mainstream until the late 40s and early 50s, but even before then ads were showing up. The first TV ad debuted in 1941, a 10-second spot for Bulova watches that played during a New York baseball game. Within the next few years during the war, TV broadcasts became more scarce while the nation was focusing its efforts and resources on the war. But things picked back up after the war ended. In the 50s, sponsored programs became all the rage; much like the soap operas on the radio in the 30s. But by the 60s sponsored programs had fallen out of style, and commercials as we know it became the trend. During the 70s, laws regarding how you could advertise on TV became standard, such as not being allowed to advertise smoking during children’s programs. Today, TV is a bit of a dying breed. While millions of Americans watch every day, more and more people are cutting the cord in favor of online streaming services. Even the most popular shows on TV today pull far smaller numbers than the most-watched shows just 20 years ago. It’s hard to say that television is dying, but it’s certainly falling out of favor. So the real question is, how much longer are marketers willing to put money into TV commercials over its new media competition.
Then comes the newest form of major advertising, digital. This is a bit easier to talk about because unlike every other method I’ve mentioned so far, it’s recent (dating back to the 1990s). So to narrow it down, let me explain this medium. Digital is what the advertising world refers to when it comes to marketing using digital devices, primarily through the internet. You can argue that digital marketing dates back to the 80s with people sending out spam alerts to internet users in the hopes of getting their information, or even to 1993 where the some of the first clickable ads appeared on the website Global Network Navigator. But the online world of advertising really began to change with Hotwired. Hotwired was an online based web magazine that got the idea to have advertisements appear on their website to earn extra cash. They called them “banner ads,” a term that is still used today. As time went on, the internet became more accessible, coding became more advanced, and advertisements became more commonplace. Video ads, pop-ups, interactive banners, email marketing (which first began to show up in the early 90s), etc. Things began to change once again in the late 2000s with the rise of social media and mobile marketing due to the saturation of smartphones. All of a sudden, people were connected to the internet constantly, going online to be entertained and see what’s happening in the world. There are people who have access to high-speed internet every minute of the day and you can bet that advertisers love those potential customers. With people canceling their newspaper subscriptions, cutting their cable, and turning off the radio to listen to their phone while in the car, so-called “traditional” media has one foot in the grave while digital marketing is constantly on the rise.
It’s hard to boil the history of advertising down to a few pages. It’s a tactic that is traced back thousands of years. You could write a thesis paper on each of the major mediums that were mentioned in this post. But at the end of the day, this was just meant to be a quick summary. It’s obvious that ads will never go away. No matter where you get your news and entertainment from, marketers will find you. Commercials, sponsored content, product placement, etc. Marketing and advertising are here to stay, and whether that’s good or bad is up to you.
Sources:
http://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540sept10/2010/11/29/the-evolution-of-advertising-from-papyrus-to-youtube/
https://www.qualitylogoproducts.com/promo-university/history-of-tv-ads.htm
https://bizfluent.com/info-7746188-history-print-advertising.html
https://oaaa.org/AboutOOH/OOHBasics/HistoryofOOH.aspx
https://www.voices.com/solutions/radio/history-of-radio-advertising
https://www.adpushup.com/blog/the-history-of-online-advertising/