Wow, this is the last ever digital marketing blog I will ever write for #wwudigimark, can you believe it? This quarter has been anything but ordinary, however, I think in some ways it has benefitted me as a digital marketer. With the entire quarter online, having to #wfh was definitely a challenge and an adjustment, however, I also believe that it makes me that much more desirable as a future employee because I have already adjusted to that work-life balance and having to navigate working from my bedroom. I hope that I have been able to show you exactly what I am learning in this course to become a successful digital marketer in the future.

I’m Definitely a Digital Marketer

14 blogs, 13 different subjects, and 4 certifications is what I will have completed after finishing this course. I can proudly say that I know all about:

• Analytics

• A/B Testing

• Inbound/Content Marketing

• Organic Social Media

• Paid Social Media

• SEO

• Paid/Local Search

• PPC

• Coding basic HTML

• Landing Pages

• Email Marketing

• VR, AR, MR

• Social Marketing

I have also obtained certifications in:

Google Analytics

Hootsuite

HubSpot Inbound Marketing

and will finish the quarter with the Google Ads certification.

Some of the areas I found to be particularly interesting were paid and organic social media. Currently through my internship, I have been creating organic social media content, however, I know that with a strong combination between implementing a paid strategy with the current organic content, I will be able to create a very strong social media presence to break the current algorithm and reach a larger audience of people to interact and engage with our posts.

Popular Posts

The blog that received the most visibility was my Paid Social Media blog with 31 views, however my Google Analytics blog received the most interaction with 24 likes.

My SEO blog received 30 views and my Social Marketing blog received 26 views. Additionally, my A/B testing blog received 19 likes and then the next blog that received the largest engagement was my SEO blog with 10 likes. I find it super interesting that the blogs with high visibility received some of the lowest numbers of engagement while the blogs with the highest engagement received the smallest amount of visibility.

Who is Looking

Who really looks at my writing? Well, besides some of my friends, fellow classmates, professors and sometimes my parents, the statistics of my blogs also show that people from Nike, Molina Healthcare, PitchBook Data, Seattle Children’s, and Ulta Beauty, have also looked at one or more of my blogs. I love this because I am interested in working at some of these companies in the future, and would love for members from each of those companies to already know where my knowledge lies and where I would be best fit to work in their company.

Conclusion

This quarter has definitely been one to remember. Through everything that we as a society have been going through in the world, the biggest thing that I have learned in this class is that I now have all the tools to change the world. Professor Mark Staton, PhD. told us that in our last class when we discussed social marketing. Now, more than ever, it is imperative to use our education the better the world. I know that my knowledge of digital marketing will be put to good use in the future to step up and be a part of this change. Thank you for following along through my series of digital marketing blogs. I can’t wait to show you how I put these tools to work in the future.

This blog is all about social marketing. Social marketing is something that I am passionate about. From what I remember, I have always been involved in volunteering, and fifth grade was the first time I remember really volunteering and creating a social marketing campaign.

What is Social Marketing?

Social marketing is NOT the same as social media marketing. Social marketing is all about the people. Social marketing is designed to create social change. It is not meant to directly benefit a brand. Social marketing sells a behavior to make a change and should benefit the public good and society. It can also be known as a long-term way to change human behavior.

“Let’s Talk Month” Campaign

An example of effective digital social marketing is the “Let’s Talk Month” campaign run by Planned Parenthood. This campaign encourages open communication between parents and their children about relationships and sex. It is proven that when there is clear, open and transparent communication between parents and their children about these specific topics, that teens are more likely to wait to have sex and if they do, they are more likely to use some from of birth control.

This campaign is meant to lessen the stigma around these conversations so that children and teens are well educated when it comes to relationships and sexual health. It is also meant to bring awareness to what a healthy relationship and sexual activity look like. Each year, Planned Parenthood encourages families to sit down together and have open conversations about sexuality – this includes relationships, bodies and body image, reproduction, gender and sexual orientation, sexual behavior, and preventing pregnancy and STDs.

Planned Parenthood provides resources for families to educate themselves before discussing this with their children, and they also post on their social media about this campaign. Throughout the month of October, they continue to encourage families to have these discussions while leading them to credible resources to start the discussion using tools that we have learned in the digital marketing class.

The tools worked because they were used to effectively target customers. More families now have the resources they need to talk and have discussions about healthy relationships and sex.

A Cause I am Passionate About

I would use the skills that I have learned in this class to bring awareness to this issue. Currently, childhood cancer only receives about 4% of national cancer funding while adult cancer receives the other 96% and that is why you may hear the phrase #morethan4. I would use my skills in

• social media using both paid and organic social media to bring awareness to this cause.

• Effective SEO to ensure that the organizations I am partnering with are having maximum increased visibility among audience members, in searches and on their web page. I

• Effective landing page with a clear call to action to bring awareness to the campaign.

Conclusion

Social marketing is important. It is something that I believe in, and is something more people are seeing value in. Social marketing campaigns should start or continue to change human behavior for the better, and when we all come together, we will be able to see that change to create and build a kinder and more compassionate world. My next blog is the last one for #wwudigimark, so look out for what is coming next.

The reality is: VR, AR, and MR are the future. After a week-long break from writing digital marketing blogs, I am back and am now Hubspot Inbound Marketing Certified. In today’s blog, I will be talking all about VR, AR and MR, the differences between them, and how to use them in digital marketing to achieve goals.

I have only experienced VR one time. It was when I was in Portland for the St. Jude Walk/Run to End Childhood Cancer. When wearing the Oculus headset, I was able to experience the “No More Chemo” party that each child is given when they have completed their last round of chemotherapy. It was a very moving experience, and it also showed me and other participants why we were there to begin with and why we should continue to support St. Jude in the future.

Virtual Reality (VR)

Virtual Reality is the immersion into another world. The headsets completely take over your vision to give you the impression that you are somewhere else. These headsets (you might know them as oculus headsets) completely fill your field of vision with whatever is being displayed. Being immersed into a virtual reality throws you off. It is weird to be so realistically placed somewhere else when you know you are not actually there. Everywhere you move your head, you never go back to reality, but continue to see the virtual one.

I had this experience when I was watching the No More Chemo party. Everywhere I looked, I was in that hospital room in St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, TN. It was so realistic. I could see the nurses clapping and the balloons and signs saying that the child was finished with chemo. It is surreal to be able to experience a milestone like that in a child’s cancer journey. Finishing chemo treatment is a huge milestone in the battle against cancer, so having the ability to “be there” and “be a part of it” really changes the way you see events like that.

This photo is of Avery watching the No More Chemo party in VR at the Portland Walk/Run to End Childhood Cancer.

Augmented Reality (AR)

Augmented Reality adds to your vision. This is different from VR because it does not replace your reality it just adds to it. Like Snapchat’s dancing hotdog, and Pokémon GO, AR uses technology to project images over whatever you are looking at. Examples of AR would be Google’s attempt at their glasses. Called the Google Glass, the glasses were supposed to provide moving AR to consumers. Another example of AR is Pokémon GO. This game projects different Pokémon onto the surfaces around us. AR especially in games like Pokémon GO can cause some issues such as people taking it too far and dying. It can also be very useful such as potentially creating a natural immersion so that phones and tablets would get replaced.

Mixed Reality (MR)

Mixed Reality is the result of blending the physical world with the digital world. Mixed reality is the next evolution of interaction between human/computer environment. Mixed reality is created by advancements in computer vision, graphical processing power, display technology, and input systems.

It is not actually a new term. The term was coined in 1994. MR will democratize intelligence. It will allow workers to have to travel less and may solve many business problems. Microsoft’s HoloLens smartglasses digitalize things. The glasses and MR interface allow operators to see instructions that guide them through complex operations. All information can be displayed using smart glasses. Google Glass was a device that allowed mixed reality in business. It didn’t work out in the end but the idea was right. All clients had the ability to do more because now they had personal training videos at their fingertips and your co-workers could even connect with you too. MR allows us to enhance our lives.

MR can be used in business because it is a combination of both VR and AR. In MR, consumers can be inserted into a virtual world and then see elements pop up into that world. This helps in digital marketing because it can help many businesses connect and work in new ways.

VR and AR in Digital Marketing

You can use VR and AR in digital marketing! VR can be used to show people experiences. To immerse them into a new world and get them to experience things that never would have been possible before. Many campaigns can be done through VR.

AR can be used in digital marketing because it can allow consumers to see how things might look in real life. An example of this is Ikea’s AR app. This app allows consumers to see what pieces of furniture may look like in their home. This helps sell products in digital marketing. Now, sites may see more traffic because consumers can actually test products in the desired space.

Conclusion

VR, AR, and MR are all very important tools to look for in the future. These tools are growing and becoming progressively more relevant in our society. The future of business may end up in MR because and because of certain situations going on in today’s world, MR is necessary more than ever. That wraps up the blog about VR, AR, and MR. Stay tuned for what I am talking about next!

This blog is all about email marketing and marketing automation. I don’t know about you, but personally, I have so many different email accounts that I use for different things. My shopping email is FULL of different promotions and emails from all of the retail companies that I subscribe to. My professional email inbox is full of jobs various platforms think I should apply to. My school email is full of updates from the university and my other account sends me various club news. Read more to learn about the benefits to email marketing and how marketing automation and email marketing work together to create better overall marketing.

Why Email Marketing?

So why should you use email? Here’s a peak into what my email inbox looks like. You should use email because there are over 3.930 billion email users. By 2023, it is predicted for that figure to reach 4.371 billion users with a 3% growth rate per year. Still not convinced? According to the DMA Consumer Tracker, 95% of consumers check their email every day. When I check my shopping email daily, I have at least 10-15 new emails offering me promotions, free shipping, and all sorts of other things to try to get me to purchase something from their company. If all of these statistics still don’t convince you to use email, then you should know that it is a very cost-effective way to market your brand to a wider audience. This fact alone should definitely convince you.

Email allows for companies to show consumers what deals are available, and it also allows for a more personalized relationship between a brand and a consumer. It is more personal because you can tailor emails to include the person’s name or use remarketing tactics to show them an item that they have looked at before. Email is also a more consistent way of communication than something like social media because not everyone sees the ads posted on social media, but many people have email and users between the ages of 12-17 are using email more than Snapchat or Facebook. Email is also mobile, so it is accessible to many users.

Email Software

An email software allows you to send mass email messages and can track data such as who opened the email, who engaged with the email and more analytics like that. Email software like Mailchimp make it easy to design beautiful, personalized email campaigns. It also allows you to keep your store connected to your customers. Software also collects data on your customers so that you can better target them in the long run and optimize the way in which you are sending emails and the interaction that they receive.

Campaigns are more easily executed when using an email platform because consumers can use the platform to effectively use STP (segmenting, targeting, and positioning) to make sure that they target the correct audience with their campaign. Two email software programs available are Mailchimp and Constant Contact.

Mailchimp V.S. Constant Contact

Mail Chimp, an email marketing platform, makes it easy to design beautiful, personalized email campaigns. It is also free to make an account. Constant Contact is also an email marketing platform, but it also has a website platform as well. There is a free trial but after that, there will be a fee to use the service. Both are email marketing tools that make mass emailing simple and emails look elegant. Both allow you to track your performance of your emails in real-time with the ability to see when it was opened to if there were any other interactions within the email. Mailchimp allows you to segment your audience which is good for increasing the click-through rates and e-commerce orders the campaigns generate. For businesses that solely want to do email marketing, I think that Mailchimp would work for you especially if there are not many people with expertise in email marketing because it seems like an easy platform to use. For bigger businesses, Constant Contact may be the better route to go because that platform could also be where you manage your website.

Marketing Automation

Marketing automation allows businesses to save time and money, measure and optimize marketing investments. According to Marketo, marketing automation is a “must have” for all modern marketing teams. The best practices of marketing automation are ones that encompass marketing campaigns across all channels. This includes:

·      Email marketing

·      Direct mail

·      Landing pages and forms

·      Social initiatives

Automation allows consumers to run campaigns across the entire customer lifecycle. Marketing automation allows leads to not die. It continues and nurtures them in a more personalized way until they reach the end goal. Marketing automation is best used to continue to nurture leads. In terms of email marketing, this could be sending a person a more specific and personalized email message about a product they seemed interested in. This continues the conversation between the brand and the customer until they potentially become a conversion without letting their lead die off.

Conclusion

Email marketing is extremely important in maintaining brand awareness with consumers and maintaining the relationships between consumers and the brand. Consistently using email to campaign will ultimately help your company because they will understand how to continue to track potential leads and see through the relationship with them until they become conversions. Email marketing is more important than I ever would have thought, so I hope this guide was able to teach you more about the importance of email marketing and marketing automation. See what I’m learning next in #wwudigimark with my next blog coming to you soon!

Have you ever wondered why things were designed the way that they are? Another thought that could’ve crossed your mind was why you decide to sign up for whatever the given CTA was when you clicked on a link and it brought you to the company’s landing page. This is because of UX/UI design. Landing pages are important in trying to convert visitors. These are two things that we are going to discuss throughout this blog. Read more to learn all about effective landing pages, a “T-shaped marketer” and UX/UI Design!

Landing Pages

So, what are landing pages? Well, a landing page is the page that appears after you click on a link. Landing pages have a CTA (Call to action) on them as well as a form and are used to enroll people in a loyalty program, sign up for a specific campaign, or something else like that. Landing pages have a goal and the goal should be designed and tied to the CTA. The page should be simple, clear and concise because the goal of the page is to persuade the visitor into converting.

The Perfect Landing Page

Ultimately, this can’t be done without creating effective landing pages that contain all of the necessary elements to convert visitors. According to the HubSpot’s guide on How to Optimise Landing Pages for Lead Generation, there are a few key elements that will make your business’ landing page succeed.

• No navigation

• Clear, Concise Headline and Subheading

• Value Statements

• Relevant Image

• Lead Capture Form

• Privacy Policy

• Compelling button Copy

• Social Proof

Including these attributes on your landing page will help ensure that you maximize the number of conversions from new audience members.

Landing Page Examples

Landing pages should be simple. A couple of examples of good landing pages are Lyft and Microsoft. Landing pages are important for inbound marketing purposes because landing pages should be customer focused. They should be thinking of the customer and what will make their experience with the page and the interactions with the page easier to use.

Microsoft

This landing page created for Microsoft is a good example of what a landing page should look like. This landing page is simple, straightforward and clearly shows where the CTA is located. There are additional links to the speakers as well as information about the webinar. This landing page is easy to navigate and easy to use. It is customer friendly because it is very clear on how to use sign up for the webinar. The experience that a user has with this landing page will result in a higher conversion rate because it is customer focused, or easy for the customer to use.

Lyft

Lyft has another great example of what a landing page should look like. This clearly is calling visitors to apply to become a lift driver. This landing page has a clear CTA, and even gives consumers an estimate about how much money they could make if they were to apply as a Lyft driver. This strategy is useful because it can also create leads if not conversions. The cost calculation can generate leads for people who are interested in becoming a driver but are not yet 100% sure they want to take on the job. Other visitors to this landing page can easily convert by using the form to insert their information. This landing page is also customer focused and easy to use. It very clearly has the customer in mind, and their experience using this landing page will result in more lead generation and conversions.

T-Shaped Marketer

So what is a T-shaped marketer? A “T-shaped” marketer is someone who has a light knowledge, a broad array of skills, and deep knowledge/ability in one or a few of these subjects. This graphic by Moz shows what a T-shaped marketer looks like. Having the skills of a t-shaped marketer is important because it makes you a more asset to a company. T-shaped marketers are important because they have knowledge about many different things but they are also people who specialize in specific areas, which allows them to be useful because they can understand everything that is happening within the process. 

UX/UI Design

UX and UI design, although thought to be interchangeable, are actually different. UX or user experience design is “all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products.” UI or user interface design is strictly a digital term it is the point of interaction between the user and a digital device or product. UX and UI both are responsible for transferring a product’s development, content, research, and layout into an attractive, guiding, and responsive experience for users. A T-shaped marketer should understand both UX and UI because it will allow them to fully understand all aspects of the product. This will give them a better understanding of how to use their broad knowledge of many marketing concepts and the deep knowledge of one or two of those concepts to best market the product.

Conclusion

Creating a successful landing page is vital to a company because landing pages bring conversions. UX and UI design are both important because they help us truly understand products so that we can more effectively market them to consumers. This blog gave you a look into being a T-shaped marketer, UX/UI Design, and landing pages. I hope you can learn how to be a more effective marketer from learning about what a T-shaped marketer is. Stay tuned for what I will be learning next in #wwudigimark and see you soon!

I’m back, and this time I’m talking all about coding. Coding and computer science in general can seem very daunting, but I promise that it is not as bad as it may seem. A very basic knowledge of coding and the way it works is important to digital marketers because understanding the way websites are made benefits companies when trying to optimize them.

Codecademy

Codecademy allows people to learn how to code. With a free subscription you can learn basic HTML, Javascript, Python, SQL, and other languages of code. I took a little time to go through and complete the course Introduction to HTML. Throughout the course, I learned how to create a website using HTML. Codecademy taught me how to insert images, videos, create lists, and much more.

Here, Codecademy taught me how to insert an image into the website that is being built. This is important because all websites need some quality images in order to make them interesting and engaging!

In this lesson of Codecademy, I learned how to insert a video. Inserting video allows for consumers to really see exactly what you may be selling. Videos are an important part of a company’s website. For example, on REI’s website, they have product tutorials and reviews that are video’s so that you can see exactly what you’re getting and the benefit from it.

In this lesson, I learned how to create a form. This is vital to a company because it allows for them to collect information from consumers. The form allows for the members to input their information into the form so that they can access their account. All businesses need this especially if they have a loyalty program or something like that.

Further and more toward the end of the lesson, I learned how to make the code easier to understand. By changing some of the tags and headlines, it allows for people to better understand just what you are trying to do with your website and what action needs to be taken next to move forward with the creation of the site.

Squarespace

Squarespace is a company that “empowers people with creative ideas to succeed. Our platform empowers millions of people — from individuals and local artists to entrepreneurs shaping the world’s most iconic businesses — to share their stories and create an impactful, stylish, and easy-to-manage online presence.” And Squarespace does just this. While using Squarespace, I created my own personal website. I found it very easy to use this platform to create a website.

This platform is very people friendly. Squarespace doesn’t really use coding, so therefore it is easy for all people to use. There is the option to us CSS to change the design for the website, but there are also more user-friendly ways to design a website. Instead of coding color, text-size and other things like that, Squarespace allows users to choose using visual editing tools. I inserted a blog that I wrote about music, and it was very easy to do. It was almost like writing this blog post on LinkedIn.

The functional and easy-to-use nature of Squarespace as shown in the photo above, allows you to see the changes as you are making them and it also does not require coding. By simply selecting exactly what you want, it allows for websites to be made fast and easy.

WordPress

WordPress is another platform to create a website/blog. Again on this platform I made a website for myself to compare the user interface between WordPress and Squarespace. The mission of WordPress is WordPress is “software designed for everyone, emphasizing accessibility, performance, security, and ease of use.” I believe that WordPress is much more geared toward large businesses because there is the ability to code in HTML on it as well as really customize your website from a blank page. It also is geared to make apps and other things besides websites.

I personally found it more difficult to use WordPress, especially when trying to use HTML in it. After many minutes of trying, I finally used the code in the first photo to insert the photo of myself in the second photo.

Squarespace vs WordPress

Squarespace’s platform is similar to WordPress because it allows customizable website creation. Squarespace was designed more for small businesses that don’t have entire sections dedicated to their website maintenance. The features of Squarespace are easily accessible and easy to use. This is different than WordPress because since you cannot code the website, it is all from templates, which may have more restrictions to what you want to do with a company. WordPress is more friendly to companies that are larger and have people who know the ins-and out of coding. Bigger companies that have a department full of content creators and coders would be better off using WordPress because of the ability to customize the website and make it as user-friendly as possible.

Are These Tools Useful to Digital Marketers?

All three are useful tools for digital marketers. These are all useful because as a digital marketer, having a good understanding of web development and coding comes in handy for optimizing user experience with your website, content included on the website, and SEO. If you are a small business owner, Squarespace would be a great tool for you to use because it is easy to create very nice and easy to manage pages. There are also built in tools in Squarespace that help to optimize SEO and other digital marketing tools that you may want to use so that your website is running at peak performance. WordPress would be good to use as a digital marketer because it has a lot of tools that are available to you. It is very geared toward people that have more background knowledge on web development but for digital marketing it could be used as a tool to create a website that people find easy to interact with and it may be used to convert more users if used correctly. Codecademy provides a user-friendly platform to acquire these skills at no cost or a small fee to dive deeper into the skills of each specific coding language.

Conclusion

Coding can be very intimidating, but if used correctly, then it is not actually as bad as it looks. I definitely learned the value of coding through my time working through Codecademy. I hope this blog was able to give you a little more insight into the difference between Squarespace and WordPress to help you find which platform works best for you! Lookout for my next blog to see what we’ll tackle next in #wwudigimark!

Hi and welcome back to my series of blogs about digital marketing. This time in #wwudigimark, we will be discussing PPC and more specifically Google Ads, Bing Ads, and that one university in the Northwest of the Northwest with the really cool MBA program.

Google or Bing? Which One Should You Use?

Before there were Bing Ads there were Google Ads. Google Ads used to dominate the market for PPC ads but now it is in high competition with Bing Ads. Businesses are constantly trying to figure out which search engine they should pour their money into when advertising, and while both will most likely work, Google and Bing are also very different.

My personal go-to search engine is Google. I can’t tell you why, but it just seems to be the one I always click on. While this is one of the difference between Google and Bing, there are some qualities that Bing has that Google does not. One of the problems with using Google ads is that it is expensive. It is more expensive than advertising on Bing, but Google has more traffic come through it. If you are a larger business, it may be in your budget to use Google ads. If you are a small business, Bing might be more your speed, but don’t worry, using Bing doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to reach consumers that are in your target market.

Another difference between Google and Bing is the people that use the search engines. Google and Bing may host different demographics of people, so it is best to look and use whichever group of people you are more likely to serve. If you find that your target market is more accessible through Bing but you want to use Google “just like everyone else,” it is better to use Bing Ads because your conversion rate may be higher than when you use Google Ads.

Google Ad Campaigns

When creating campaigns for Google Ads, it is best to segment your campaigns so that they receive the most traffic possible. The campaigns should take into consideration keywords that are useful to your campaign as well as ad creation and landing page mapping. It should also appeal to the audience by paying close attention to the brand, products/services, and goal. Google allows you to select from different campaign options and you can narrow down your network so that you are segmenting to specific people.

Bing Ad Campaigns

Bing Ads allows you to reach a new group of high-quality customers and increase your return on advertising spend. Although Bing may not get as much traffic as Google, it is important to understand how to maximize using Bing ads so that you can get as many conversions as possible with the audience you reach. This can be done by:

• Keywords – bid on keywords and make them adjustable based on traffic volumes

• Location – specify location so that your ad is more targeted

• Language – one or all applicable languages for your campaigns

• Scheduling – pinpoint ads to specific times of day

• Device type – connect with customers on mobile device, tablet device or PC device

• Time of day and day of the week – target by time and use specific time zones

• Audience targeting – target demographically

• Shopping – target purchase intent with shopping campaigns for e-commerce

The Third Best in the West

Did you know Western is home to the third best MBA program in the West? I bet you didn’t actually know that if you just said to yourself “yes I did know that” (unless you are a Western faculty member (Mark/Ed) or MBA student).

Western’s MBA program has much to offer to students preparing them them for dynamic, changing, and interconnected business environments. The program is highly regarded, and is also AACSB Accredited which means that it is among the top 5% of business schools globally. So why doesn’t Western see more applications and interest to their program?

I personally believe that even with an amazing program, it is hard to compete when the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business is only around 120 miles away. Bellingham being the beautiful place that it is, is a little far north for some people looking for that “big city” life, but it is also something that the program should capitalize on.

Western can use PPC to increase awareness and applications to their program. Some ways that they can do this is through the use of location, landing pages, and keywords.

Location

Bellingham, located thirty minutes from the border to Canada, and two hours north of Seattle is something that the program should capitalize on. When students are searching for highly accredited grad schools, they may be looking to re-locate to somewhere they have never been before, and beautiful Bellingham, WA may be the place for them. The culture of Bellingham allows for the perfect combination of young-adult/student life as well as the working-professional life. Capitalizing on the Bellingham bay and accessibility to working with clients would set Western apart from other university programs.

Expand Ad Text

Western should use PPC to increase awareness through the expand ad text. They should use the 180 characters in the two descriptions to highlight all of the features that sets Western’s MBA program apart from other school’s MBA programs in the state. This could highlight class size, the accelerated program, or other things that sets Western’s program apart. This should use keywords, but it would be better if they were important keywords that other programs did not use too heavily.

Keywords

Western should highlight their program using the correct keywords and also should highlight their accelerated program through the use of keywords. This would benefit Western because keywords are what draw an ad to being portrayed. Using words that accurately describe the program but would also set the program apart from others is vital in giving your ad and using PPC to your advantage.

Landing Pages

Western should also utilize the correct landing pages depending on what they are going to be targeting. They should ensure that their ad campaign brings the audience to the correct page to give them the information that they may be looking for. Relevant ads and landing pages allow for a high click-through rate gives a higher quality score. An increase in that score could lead your ad to becoming more successful when the campaign is being run.

Ad Extensions

Lastly, Western should use Ad extensions to utilize PPC to increase awareness. Using sitelinks would link customers directly to areas of the website. This is extremely useful when needing to bring potential applicants to specific parts of the website. The positive to ad extensions besides using sitelinks is the use of callout, location, call, price, and promotion extensions. These are all tools that you can use to be able more efficiently create their ads so that Western is shown more often with the ads.

Conclusion

PPC is a great way to advertise! It allows businesses to pay for their clicks and only when a person pays for their clicks. I hope that this blog taught you about how to effectively market to your target market that will give you the most conversion. Stay tuned for next time on my blog for #wwudigimark.

Hey You! That’s right, I’m back but instead of SEO, I’m talking about voice and local search. Do you frequently talk to Siri? Maybe you’re more of a Google or Cortana person. Whoever you love best, you know the coined phrase “Hey___”, hence the beginning of this blog “Hey you”. Well, voice search is on the rise, so read on to find out more about voice and local search.

What is Voice Search?

Voice search is exactly what it says; completing a search using your voice. Every time you search using your digital assistant (Siri, Cortana, Google), you are participating in using voice search, and now, more than ever, people are searching with their voice.

Have you ever told Siri to search for you when you’re driving? As much as I hate to admit it, I have done this, and I am guessing you have too. All these things are a part of using voice search, and by 2023, it’s predicted that 8 billion voice assistants will be used. That’s a lot of voice searches!

Why is it Important?

Voice search is important because of the number of people that use it. If you think about it, voice search is the type of search that people should use. This convenient, hands-free solution to asking a question works for all different types of people. Little kids can now learn the answers to their questions and older adults can search things like never before. The necessity to optimize your website for voice search is not something to be ignored. I often find myself asking Siri to look up answers to questions that I have. She also sends messages, makes phone calls, and looks up directions for me too.

Optimizing Your Website For Voice Search

You should optimize your website for voice search using Search Engine Watch’s six easy steps to optimize your website for voice search.

1. Featured snippets: Featured snippets are selected search results that are featured on top of Google’s organic results below the ads in a box. These are important to voice search optimization because 30% of 1.4 million tested Google queries contain them and voice assistants pull their answers from there.

2. User intent: Tells us the actual reason a person typed their query into a search engine.

3. Long tail keywords & questions: Helps optimizing both VSO and SEO. Key phrases that contain more than two keywords face less difficulty and provide higher chances to rank at the top.

4. Page speed: If your page doesn’t load fast, people will not have patience to wait for it.

5. Structured data: Helps search engines crawl and quickly read the content on your website. Local SEO: Most people use VSO for finding local businesses, so having effective information about local businesses will increase the likelihood of your website being seen.

What is Local Search?

Local search marketing is “anything you do on the web to promote a physical business that makes face-to-face contact with customers. It applies to both single-location small and medium businesses, national enterprise brands, and chains.”

Local Search’s Importance

Local search is important because it is SEO that focuses solely on local businesses. It’s important because:

• 50% of people who searched a store actually went to a physical store.

• 18% of local mobile searches lead to a sale within one day

• 60% of American adults conducted searches for local services or product information on tablets and smartphones

• 50% of searchers on their mobile phones who conduct local searches are looking for things LIKE a local business

• 97% of consumers looked online for local business in 2017, 12% look online every day

How To Optimize for Local Search

Local search is conducted by optimizing your website for its users. HubSpot’s blog walks through the steps that explain how to optimize your website for local search.

1. Optimize for Google My Business: This is an important first step because Google My Business is the TOP of local search. It allows your business to meet Google’s needs, so it is verified.

2. Improve your internal linking structure: Internal linking supports website navigation. It also assists with information architecture and website hierarchy. It also distributes page authority and website hierarchy.

3. Optimize URL, title tags, headers, meta description, and content: This is important because it makes it more likely that search engines will optimize the content on your website.

4. Add location pages to your website: Provide readers with critical information about your business.

5. Create local content: Local authority for your industry by promoting local industry.

6. Ensure your website is mobile friendly: If your website is not mobile friendly, it will not be functional to consumers.

7. Ensure name, address, and phone number are consistent online: This is where you NAP. You should ensure that your name, address, and phone number are always up to date.

8. Optimize online directories and citations: If Google can’t verify your information, it will not show your business is available and real.

9. Get inbound links with relevance and authority: This helps boost your local SEO which allows search engines to explain to consumers that you are real.

10. Engage on social media and add posts to Google My Business: Share your Google My Business page on social media so that people know about your business.

Conclusion

Voice and local search are frequently used search methods. Every day people use their voice search assistants to answer their questions and search for local businesses and restaurants. Understanding the importance of optimizing your website for voice and local search will greatly increase the visibility of your website. As we wrap up search engine week, it is important to understand the extreme importance of search engines because a lack of understanding them will lead to poor visibility for your business. Stay tuned for my next blog and see what we’ll be learning next about digital marketing!

I’m back, and this week in #wwudigimark, we’re talking about search engines, but more specifically, SEO. Have you ever wondered why it was so important that you typing the correct words into Google’s search engine matters? Read on to find out how one word can make all the difference when you’re dying to find the right answer to your ever-persistent questions.

SEO

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO), is the practice of increasing quantity and quality of your website’s traffic. It is also the exposure of your brand through organic search engine results. So, it is bringing consumers and awareness to your website through optimizing the spot that your website will rank when someone searches for your product/service on a search engine. Does your page show up in the top spot on the first page of Google? Well, if it does, then you are performing some great SEO.

Why is it important?

SEO is important because it allows your website to have more visibility without having to pay for it to appear at the top of Google. Organic search results through a search engine cover more digital space than paid ads. Also, most people don’t click on paid ads. Therefore, it is important to use SEO to boost your website’s presence on search engines. SEO assists in building brand awareness and relationships with present and potential consumers. While it may seem like all of the modifications that you are making to your site may be small, they add up to equaling large improvements. SEO is critical in maintaining visibility, however, it is important to do it correctly to maximize the exposure that your website receives.

How do you do it?

While it is not an exact science on how to perform SEO, it is critical to do it correctly so that the website can maximize its visibility without deceiving consumers. The most important parts when performing SEO are:

Keywords are important because putting in the correct words will greatly increase your chance at being seen

Content helps in engaging your audience and helps you reach the broadest audience possible

Off-Page SEO helps external optimization that happens when people are not necessarily on your site

Local SEO is important because 57% of all searches are from mobile and they are looking for something local, whether that be a restaurant, bar, hair salon, or grocery store.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is important because it shows ads that are paid for. This includes Google Adwords, Google shopping ads, display ads, and more.

It is critical that by trying to optimize your website, you do not deceive consumers in the process. Google has a guide to effectively performing SEO, and in it, it advises that you follow a few basic principles:

• Making pages primarily for users, not search engines
• Don’t deceive your users
• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whenever you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website to a Google employee.
  • Another useful test is to ask “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?
• Think about what makes your website unique, valuable, or engaging

The ability to effectively perform SEO was coined by Google: EAT. This stands for:

• Expertise
• Authoritativeness
• Trustworthiness

This is another way to ensure that you are effectively performing SEO. Having a high-quality page will be measured by having a high level of EAT as a quality evaluation.

Mozlow’s Hierarchy of SEO Needs

MOZlow’s Hierarchy was created by Rand Fishkin, founder of MOZ. He designed it to explain the steps necessary to effectively using SEO. If utilized correctly, this gives the necessary steps to effectively utilizing SEO for a website.

Link Building

What is Link Building?

Link building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own. Just like a spider, Search engines are essentially using these hyperlinks to crawl the web between links of individual pages on your website and also links between entire websites as a whole. This is very difficult for SEO specialists because it is hard to do well and hard to do effectively to give your website a competitive edge.

Link Building and SEO

Link building is important in SEO because search engines use links in two ways.

1.    To discover new web pages

2.    To help determine how well a page should rank in their results

If the links do not signal that they would be useful to answering the question, then they will not be able to use those links to direct others to your website. If the link does not signal to the search engine that it will sufficiently answer the question or be a useful resource to a person, then it will not be ranked well.

Important Issues in the World of SEO in 2020

According to Search Engine Watch, there are 8 trends in 2020 that may be difficult for all SEO.

1.   Voice search

• People search as they speak making it difficult to correctly identify keywords.

2.    Featured snippits will continue to dominate search results

• Search engines may display the featured snippit over the organic and paid result because of convenience.

3.   Leveraging Influencers for SEO

• Much of a budget for some companies is spent on “influencers”. They have a lot of power in terms of visibility of a product or service.

4.    BERT Won’t Leave

• Affects queries and question’s that are asked

5.  People Want Digital Experiences

• Pages will not load as fast hindering the patience of a potential consumer.

6.    Video=Content King

• Video is 50% more likely to show up for a search result first.

7.    Content Length

• Only high-quality content will beat page 1 ranking.

8.    Mobile Search

• Mobile Search will increase as more people depend on their mobile devices to surf the web.

Conclusion

SEO is a fundamental part of digital marketing that can potentially make or break your website’s success. Having the ability to improve the position of your website so that it is being seen by a large audience is important because it allows the company the ability to effectively communicate to an audience before they even know that they have a question. I hope that this blog has allowed you to see and understand the importance of SEO and what a necessity it is for a business. Next, we will be talking about voice and local search, so I’ll see you next time for the next blog in #wwudigimark!

I’m back, and this time in #wwudigimark, we’re talking about paid social media. That’s right, all of those ads with the subtitle “sponsored” that you continuously scroll through in your feed, that’s what this blog is all about. While you may find it very annoying to see all of these paid social media ads, they actually do a lot to move consumers through the purchasing funnel. Keep reading to find out how paid social media will help your business.

What Is It?

Paid social media is like the “wonder” section of the Venn diagram. It is the perfect combination of art and science, so if you’ve ever wanted to be both an artist and a scientist, then this is perfect for you. Paid social media is the display of advertisements on popular social media channels that target specific sub-audiences. These are all ads that have been paid to be placed in the location that they are. While organic social media is great because it is free, there are many benefits to paying for your social media ads.

Investing in Paid Social Media

This right here is why you should invest in paid social media. Investing in paid social media is very important. Paid social media is the only way that social media can really make any money for your business. Organic social media is great, but it is rarely seen by many of the people you have as followers. Paid social strategy = social ROI. While brands continue to use social media, it is actually seen that most people are not engaging with it as much even if they use it. Instagram ‘s interactions dropped 40% in 2015 even though companies continue to post while their engagement was only around 2.19 interactions per post. It is important to invest in paid social media because two billion people are using it every day.

Brands that decide to not engage in social media risk falling behind because every other brand is already continuously using it. In 2019 it was predicted that in the US market, social ad spending would top $31 billion making up 29.4% of digital ad spending. This is very important in understanding why companies should invest. Investing in paid social media allows for companies to pay for visibility. Social media ads that get customers to stop and convert or become a lead allows companies to gain more visibility. Paid social media also gives you the opportunity to pay for your audience. You have the opportunity to be selective in who sees the ads and which groups of potential consumers you want to target.

Core, Custom and Lookalike Audiences

There are three different audience types that you can target using paid social media. Facebook Business has described them as core, custom and lookalike. These categories help target these audiences by customizing the type of audience that sees your ad.

• Core audience: You can set the rules for where the ads are delivered. The audience can be adjusted to be as broad or well-defined as you want, based on the criteria of location, behavior, demographics, connections, interests

• Custom audience: allow you to connect with people who have already shows an interest in your business, whether they’re loyal customers or people who have used your app or visited your website.

• Lookalike audience: are a fast and effective way to connect with people likely to respond to your ads. All you have to do is create a source audience of people you know. The ads will then reach people with common interests and traits.

These predefined audiences are another way for companies to maximize the exposure of their company with individuals who are most likely to convert.

Facebook Ads and Their Benefit

Facebook Manager Ads allows the creation and management of paid social media ads. I currently hold the position of marketing assistant at a local nonprofit organization. Part of my role is to monitor and create ads. These ads can be targeted to specific groups of customers. These three examples of ads that I have created will benefit the camp because they each have a different call to action and they also show the difference between advertising to different audiences.

The first ad example would be one that is advertised to a core audience because it is generic, and it can be broad and sent to audiences based on criteria of location, behavior, demographics, connections, and interests.

The second ad can be used to be advertised to a custom audience. This could be to people who are most likely to view the website or based on people who have been identified to have previously visited the website.

The last ad could be used to target a lookalike audience. This could be used for this type of audience because it is sent to people who are likely to respond. This ad shows that there is a way to get involved and gives an outlet for people to become involved with the ad.

Conclusion

Paid social media is one of the best ways to advertise your business. Social media, as we have learned can be very beneficial and while it is nice to have the option to do it for free, paying will pay off in the long run with an ability to generate ROI from the ads. Hopefully this blog has answered all of your questions that you might have as to how to effectively use paid social media. Stay tuned for next week’s lesson in #wwudigimark and don’t forget to pay for some of your advertisements!