Digital Marketing Orange County Blog
Why Contextual Marketing Needs a Bonus Pack
What’s automated, irresistibly relevant, and often entertaining all at the same time? If you guessed contextual marketing, the prize is yours. Contextual marketing is all those and more – a major game-changer in the world of digital...
Fly Higher with Instagram Videos
When it comes to popularity, Instagram is flying somewhere north of the moon. The good news is, your brand can hop on board for the ride. More than ever, products showcased on this social platform are increasing their reach beyond...
Digital Marketing: Does your Landing Page Unleash the Action Force?
Part 1: Get visitors to the website. Part 2: Get them to do something. Two basic marketing steps. Yet somehow, Part 1 gets disproportionate attention. Brand marketers burn so many calories luring visitors (with SEO and other means)...
Website Repair Kit: Turn Bouncers into Buyers
Was it something you said? Did? Why, inquire many baffled brand marketers, are website visitors coming and going so quickly? All those snappy designs and golden words. Have the metrics gone haywire? Did a cosmic event disrupt the...
SEO: Encourage the Content Crawlers
Most people shun that which crawls. And if the mover is sufficiently repugnant, fleeing, shrieking, and other signs of distress may ensue. Not so if the area of motion is the typical website. Here, crawling is vigorously encouraged....
Budgets Beware – Slaying the Ad Boredom Beast!
Can there be too much of a good thing. The answer, in most cases, is a resounding ‘yes’. Generally, the same ol’ same ol’ is a discouraging force, driving people away in droves. Even in popular territory such as Facebook, running the...
Digital Marketing OC: Can’t-Miss Tricks to Boost Email Click-Thru Rates
In a world of wide-open spam folders, ad emails often get nabbed from cyberspace before reaching the finish line. And even if messages land successfully, many remain unopened. If yours gets a peek, celebrate — you did something...
Digital Marketing: Give Your Banner Ads a Boost
Banner ads – love ‘em or hate ‘em, they’ll probably be around for a while. But as with everything else in the digital world, these promotions must stay relevant to remain effective. Here are several ways brand marketers can ensure this...
Digital Marketing: Upgrade Your Traffic Magnet
Each day, wisdom galore pours into the world regarding search engine optimization. Value and prestige belong to those who rank high. A lofty position, of course, commands the highest percentage of clicks – and consequently the lion’s...
Digital Marketing: Extend the Power of Google Ads
Praise to Google Ads. Nothing is better at spotlighting your brand during an online search for products or services. Advertisers, however, needn’t limit themselves to the basic info –not when there’s more to be had from this powerful...
Marketing OC: Boost Your Brand’s Push Power
They typically display on a mobile device without prior notice. Well, they’re not a complete surprise. Every push notification requires some sort of opt-in – a permission duly granted by a user to accept certain digital messages...
More Marketing for Social Media in 2018
Social media, the mainstay of the online conversation, has traveled a long way since launching over a decade ago. But the phenomenon is not ready to hit the pause button. Not even close. In fact, the likes of Facebook, Twitter,...
Keep the Selling Party Going Long After the Holidays
The 2017 holiday shopping season has shown remarkable vigor, energized by a mixture of soaring consumer confidence and a new finesse at all levels of brand marketing. While online sales have been expectantly instrumental in ringing the...
Brick n’ Mortar: Outmaneuvering Ecommerce
Considering the prevalence and power of e-commerce behemoths such as Amazon, brick and mortar businesses are slugging it out against monstrous competition–particularly during the merry holiday shopping season. There’s no question...
Harvey Wallbanger Cake Recipe
The Story of the Harvey Wallbanger Donato “Duke” Antone invented the Harvey Wallbanger drink in 1952 at Duke’s Blackwatch Bar on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Unfortunately, it was not a hit until the 1970s when...
Content Marketing for the Holiday Home Stretch
With about two frantic weeks left in the holiday shopping season, the bulk of brand marketing has swept through consumer land. Nevertheless, marketers are still racing down the ‘holiday home stretch’ in a feverish attempt to capitalize...
Whole New Game for Marketing
Few software developers, particularly those who launched the computer gaming industry, ever imagined there would be a ‘useful’ side to their cultural contribution. Whether puzzle, swordplay, laser blast, or leaping hedgehogs, the...
Marketing and Analytics: Read the Writing on the Wall
While the lion’s share of attention is focused on Facebook these days, marketers shouldn’t ignore the impact to be made with Twitter. This lesser-used of the social media mainstays still ranks high when it comes to drawing followers....
Marketing 101: The Bottom-of-the-Funnel Nudge
Once prospects reach the bottom of the marketing funnel, conversion is guaranteed, right? Well, not quite. Although these worthy folks have demonstrated solid interest in your brand, they’re still not over the hump that stands between...
Digital Marketing: Emails They Can’t Ignore
When it comes to generating results, targeted marketing wins the day hands down. The differences between this tightly-focused approach to customer acquisition and yesterday’s scattershot efforts is striking. Consider, for instance, the...
E-Commerce: Putting the Shopper Before the Cart
Typically, shoppers don’t ditch their carts during a grueling grocery store excursion. A different matter entirely in the e-commerce realm. In this space, shopping cart abandonment is routinely practiced – even by users primed for a...
Website 101: Anchor Text Done Right
Any users who’ve clicked their way through pages of online content has had first-hand dealings with anchor text. These are the words in big, bold blue (or possibly other color) – the verbal link you slide your cursor over to perform...
Give Your Online Surveys an Edge
So far, so good. The survey responses are pouring in. But how does an advertiser know they’ve hit the mark? Generally, the hit is verified when responses supply juicy insights that facilitate reliable decisions. These precious,...
All-Ears Marketing
With brand markers preoccupied with commandeering a constant flow of output, it seems that communication is a one-way street. But before recipients of information can appreciate fully the content sent their way, important steps must be...
SEO Beware – Crawlers Are on a New Path
If your brand is targeting the top of search engine results, crawling is mandatory. Crawling in this case is the digital mechanism used by Google to scan and index websites. Think of electronic operatives looking around and firing...
How to Protect Your Identity
I have been getting calls and emails for the last few weeks about all the hacks and cyber events. The central question is always, “what do I do to protect myself?” It’s actually an impossible question to answer. Why? We do not have...
Marketing 101: The Golden Rule of Digital Influence
In a sense, influencer marketing has been here for as long as advertising has. Just ask the ancient Greeks. In previous times, the art of influence was practiced by important, recognizable personages promoting a specific product,...
A Big Lift for B2B Marketing
The ubiquitous mobile device is now firmly entrenched as the premier B2C delivery system. Who isn’t carrying a pocketful of messaging these days? B2C marketers know it, and use it. So why hasn’t B2B caught on? Not that business-focused...
The Everywhere Leads Generator
In many marketing scenarios, leads acquisition is a necessary first-step. Knowing who’s keen to embrace a message, product, or service enables brands to narrow down the field to manageable dimensions. Rather than a scattershot blast,...
Must-Know Metrics for Video Marketers
In a world obsessed with interest rates, video marketers should assign an equal if not higher priority to a pair of other rates: play rate and play-through rate. Both are important, and both are, though inextricably related, two...
Retargeting: Marketing to the Ones That Got Away
It is important to know when the right time is to engage in retargeting to potental customers. You want to catch them before it is too late....
Mastering The Marketing Metrics
Our quadrant of the universe abounds with metric data. Utilizing metric data effectively isn’t a piece of cake. Read more about metric data here......
Moment by Moment Marketing
If in-depth analysis characterizes your marketing video, don’t expect roaring crowds. Video viewers, demand brevity....
Brand Protection With NPS
The mere thought of it sends shivers through the brand marketing world. Alarm bells sound when it happens. People scramble for answers. The dreaded event is the unceremonious farewell customers give to a less-than-satisfactory product...
Mobile Marketing Mandate
The necessity of mobile marketing is a foregone conclusion in contemporary marketing circles. But knowing what’s needed isn’t necessarily the same as knowing what to do. As with most important endeavors, the basics must be incorporated...
Feed vs. Read: And the Winner Is …
In the search to maximize marketing impact, advertisers bravely explore new roads to success. One road to the land of gold has been the automatic news feed. This handy packet of content generally is supplied via channels such as...
Getting Past the Marketing Midpoint
Website visitors are pouring in, tromping down the marketing funnel. There they are, in the middle. Will they advance or abort? That all depends. Their decision largely will depend upon what they encounter. They’re on a quest to solve...
When Narrowmindedness Pays Off for Marketers
Be wide open and embrace all. A good policy in many instances. But there are times when narrow thinking can pay generous dividends. Case in point is the microsite. This destination is a public arena ripe for brand promotion and user...
Brick and Mortar: The Digital Path
Who says digital and physical retail must be diametrically opposed? Those who do are in for a stunning surprise. The two have met … and the meeting apparently is good, and destined to get better. Driven by an urgent need to be relevant...
Video Marketing: Let the Message Fit the Moment
Crank out the marketing videos and throw them into the ring. So long as they’re touting your brand, they’re hitting the mark, right? Well, maybe. It’s entirely possible that they’re falling miles from the mark. How will marketers know...
The Plus Side of SEO
With search engine optimization getting the lion’s share of attention, another kind of optimization often remains hidden in the shadows; It shouldn’t be because it’s a critical. When all is said, and done, it’s the ultimate...
Is Your Website an Obstacle Course?
The good news is, most website visitors want to reach your intended destination. Whether that destination inspires them to make a purchase, fill out a form, or any of a dozen other objectives, brand-consumer goals often begin in...
SEO’s Counterpart: Three Steps to a Conversion-Rate Boost
With search engine optimization getting the lion’s share of attention, another kind of optimization often remains hidden in the shadows; It shouldn’t be because it’s a critical. When all is said, and done, it’s the ultimate...
The New Content-Customer Alignment
Smart, intuitive, and anticipatory. This trio of adjectives suitably describes the phenomenon known as dynamic content. In the marketing sphere, dynamic content is highly reactive – it adjusts and aligns with known user characteristics...
Ad Extensions: Add Power to Your Ads
If your business is running a paid search campaign, Google has a gift for you. The gift, known as an ad extension, provides a bonus boost for your AdWords strategy. As the term implies, a Google ad extension literally adds information...
A Persona For Every Product
Before a brand unleashes any marketing campaign, a customer persona must be defined. And so, the knowledge quest begins, driving all known resources forth to learn what makes their customers tick. This highly-regarded process, of...
More Conversions: Marketing Your Way to the Bottom of the Funnel
With so much emphasis on reaching the top, brand marketers often lose sight of an equally important destination – the bottom. The location in question is the bottom of the marketing funnel. This is where all the conversions happen....
Retention: Reversing the Brand Break-Away
Virtually every brand knows the feeling. It’s that sinking sensation experienced when hammered by the latest customer attrition statistics. Yes, once-devoted shoppers are breaking away from your beloved camp, sometimes producing a...
Call to Action (CTA) : Marketing’s Profitable Nudge
You can’t push your way to profits. Not in the world of brand marketing, anyway. Slam consumers with too much force, and they’ll likely bolt from the barn. This caveat is particularly relevant to the implementation of any...
Business Branding: How to Pounce Down Your Bounce Rate
Getting people to your website is one thing. Keeping them there is another. In the world of digital marketing, it’s common for people to connect with a website, glance around, and bolt – the ‘see and flee’ syndrome. Otherwise known as...
Small Brand vs. Big Brand: Take Your Share
If you’re a modestly-sized, relative unknown vying to make some marketplace noise, fierce competition is your foe. Think of what you’re butting heads with. Basically, you’re pitting scant resources against powerful, cash-chunky,...
Branding: Improve Your Native Ad’s Nature
Look Native, Be Native, Stay Native It looks like an editorial. It feels like an editorial. But it is not an editorial. What is this conglomeration of text and images that masquerades as a magazine or newspaper article? Branding...
The Value of Consistency in Multichannel Marketing
Multichannel marketing has changed the game. Marketing was a lot simpler when the only available delivery system was word-of-mouth. Invent the wheel, and tell your neighbor about it. Or maybe roll it over to a friend for a quick demo....
Chatbot: Digital Marketing of the Chatty Kind
If your staff could spare more moments to interact with customers & prospects, think how much better your brand would look if it was represented by a friendly face. Que chatbot. You’re dreaming! Your staff is swamped, and...
Brand Marketing: Conversion Tracking Explains All
How can brand marketers determine what really happens after users click an ad? How do they know if a prospect does what was hoped for? This enlightenment is readily available thanks to a digital tool called ‘conversion tracking’. Much...
Striking Thumbnails and Other Video Marketing Tips
In video marketing, thumbnails play a much bigger role than you think. As every worthy brand marketer knows, content shouts loudest when it’s reliably searchable. If content catches the search engine eye, plenty of limelight is coming...
The Expanding Reach of Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing, it’s happened for centuries. Once they grab the limelight, their opinion turns to gold. It doesn’t matter what their station in life — celebrity, government official, business leader, athlete, or who knows...
Building a Better Marketing Information System in 5-Steps
Focus on the customer … focus on the customer. This juicy advisory morsel has been served unceasingly to brand marketers far and wide. It has been observed faithfully since the dawn of civilization. The reason for its prevalence is a...
How to Bait Buyers Into Buying Your Stuff
Why do people buy online? A fair enough question, and one that brand marketers should ask – and hopefully answer with a high degree of accuracy. But taking a reverse route can prove equally beneficial. Rather than limit oneself to the...
Branding: Hurry Up, It’s the Holidays
See that blur? Feel the wind? You’ve probably waited until now to unleash your holiday marketing thrust. What you’re experiencing is the mad tumble-rush of holiday shoppers passing you by, leaving you behind in an empty desert. Catch...
Marketing to the Moment: How to Find & Optimize Your Brand’s Moment
There’s a right time for everything. Swing too soon or too late, and you’ll miss the ball. As in most other fields, this principle has influenced many a marketing strategy. In the age of mobile media, however, the principle is the...
What Will Happen in the Search Engine Showdown?
Something’s stirring in the world of search engine marketing. Small movements, sometimes undetected, are taking place. Significant changes will be the result. The movements are those of competing search engines stepping into the dusty...
Learn the 5 Often-Overlooked Buying Stages of the Modern Consumer
It has been called everything from the ‘buyer’s journey’ to the ‘consumer buying decision process’. But no matter which label brand marketers slap on the phenomenon, most experts divide it into five basic stages. Interestingly, the...
How to Find Marketing Strategies for the Small Screen
Mobile video hasn’t scored its first international blockbuster. Few productions have triggered advanced ticket sales and long lines. Nevertheless, more and more eyeballs are finding their way to the small screen. And surprise, brand...
