If you are doing Facebook ads you need to know about this important change coming soon …. Facebook has announced that as of September, a relatively new and controversial feature on their advertising platform called Campaign Budget Optimization will become the mandatory default. Not the optional setting that it is now   You can expect that starting in September when you create your new campaigns, they will use Campaign Budget Optimization as the default whether you like it or not! You can also expect that any existing campaigns will be migrated to Campaign Budget Optimization as well.   What that means for you is that it’s time to prepare! What is Campaign Budget Optimization?   First, let’s make sure that we know what it is we’re dealing with. Here’s what Facebook has to say on the matter: “Campaign budget optimization is a way of optimizing the distribution of a campaign budget across your campaign’s ad sets. This means we automatically and continuously find the best active opportunities for results across your ad sets and distributes your campaign budget in real time to get those results.” How Does Campaign Budget Optimization Work? It’s still very early in this rollout, and the advertising … [Read more...]

You may find this guide useful to 6 of the best SEO analysis tools: https://www.cardinaldigitalmarketing.com/blog/a-step-by-step-guide-on-the-6-best-seo-analysis-tools-and-how-to-use-them/ It covers various tools such as ahrefs, SEMrush, Google Search Console, Ubersuggest, Pingdom, and google mobile-friendly test. It has a broad overview of each tool as well as screenshots of them Definitely worth a look.     … [Read more...]

As 2018 comes to a close, a savvy marketer will be looking ahead to the upcoming year and developing a digital marketing strategy to stay ahead of the competition and boost brand awareness. With so many changes that occurred at the end of 2018, it’s important to revamp your strategy and account for current trends, strategies, and technologies to maximize your efforts. Here are the biggest digital marketing trends leading into 2019:   Topic Clusters Search engines are now favoring clusters of content that surround a particular topic, as opposed to keywords. If you want to stay at the top of the search rankings, you need to develop these content clusters that link to one another. To do this effectively, you need a broad topic outline that covers the most pertinent subcategories. Then, the surrounding content should have specific, long-tail keywords that connect back to the original outline with the same keyword. This boosts your overall performance since any page performing well will result in the entire cluster performing well. This moves you further and further up the rankings. In addition, choosing topics in which you have proven subject matter expertise or knowledge will give you an even … [Read more...]

For a small business, gaining steam on social media is undeniably an uphill battle. You have to contend with algorithms that make it nearly impossible to get discovered until you achieve a certain level of visibility. This situation puts you in a catch-22: you can’t get anyone to view your content until you get engagement, which requires views!   Nevermind the fact that social media overwhelmingly prefers silly or opinionated content—two things that really don’t gel with the average business’s branding. Sure, you can gain thousands of shares by posting ridiculous cat videos, but there’s a slim chance all that attention will aid your business goals.   Despite all these challenges, putting your business out there on social media isn’t just worth it; it’s necessary. According to research from Stone Temple, 63 percent of all web traffic in 2017 came from mobile devices. In the U.S., 87 percent of mobile internet time is spent in apps. What are the most common apps? Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat, to name a few.   Following this logic, people on the internet spend the majority of their time looking at social media apps on their phone. While Google Search is another top app—meaning … [Read more...]

    Recent surveys show that the majority of businesses plan to increase their digital marketing budgets over the next 12 months. These increases mean stiffer competition and growing rates to achieve the desired level of impressions and performance.   Today’s internet marketing practices have matured dramatically since the days of dial up. Channels like social media have likewise matured, changing the landscape from a “Wild West” feeling to a more familiar competitive market. As businesses spend more on aspects of marketing like paid ad inventory, prices go up. There is, after all, a finite number of eyeballs browsing the internet at any given time.   Businesses also find themselves competing more earnestly for organic traffic and impressions. While it used to be easy to rank high on search engines if you were the only business on the block doing SEO, now achieving results pits you against countless others.   With all this going on, business owners should expect to dig deeper into their pockets in the near future in order to achieve their goals for awareness, revenues, growth, and more. To help encourage you to keep pace, here are some observations we’ve made that reveal … [Read more...]

Every business needs a social media presence, and most can benefit from actively trying to market and generate leads on the most popular social platforms.   The fact of the matter is that social media has become the preferred form of media in our day and age. 67% of people say they get their news from social media first, for instance. News breaking most often comes from shares or second-hand sources on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. In effect, content publishers have to have social media at the front of their mind if they hope for their outlet to get exposure for breaking a story as opposed to a competitor.   For businesses, this same principle holds true. If you aren’t active on social media, others may talk about your business and seize control of the narrative. Or, even worse, your business is all but invisible until someone else shares content or news talking about you.   In addition to providing visibility, having a proactive social media marketing strategy can help boost your sales performance and help you achieve your marketing goals. You can earn new customer leads, increase brand awareness, and even offer customer support through social channels.   To cover the … [Read more...]

  Social media has profoundly changed the way we all use the internet, and that includes how businesses interact with their customers.   In the years since platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn were first introduced, they have evolved from an occasional distraction to the focal point of many people’s internet browsing. Conversations and content that used to be spread across multiple sites can all now be found in the same place: your social media newsfeed.   Businesses that ignore this transition face a harsh reality. Social media is often the first thing people check when they go online, and it may even be the only thing they check on any given day. Without a presence on social media, your business may very well be invisible!   That’s why many businesses, such as art installation company studioSPACEnyc, have a social-first approach to their online presence. “If we look at the analytics of the website and how many people view my Instagram account, we’ll see 200 a day on Instagram and 15 on my website,” says its owner, Jacob Fisher.   Not being on social media also means you miss out on huge opportunities for advertising, customer support, boosting performance … [Read more...]