With Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s most recent executive order (April 17, 2020), our state’s non-essential Texas retailers can begin offering “retail to-go” services this Friday. This is a fantastic opportunity for retailers to recoup some of the revenue that was lost over the past month when stores were shuttered.  So what is your plan for marketing your retail to-go program?

What is Retail to-Go?

Retail to-go means selling your retail merchandise without customers coming into stores.  Stores are still closed to the public, but orders can be accepted online or by phone and retailers can ship merchandise, deliver it or offer curbside pickup. 

What Does Retail to-Go Marketing Include?

Depending on your situation, retail to-go marketing may include a wide range of communication vehicles and marketing tactics. It will most definitely include a component of online marketing –  a website with photos of your products, business pages on social media channels, and email marketing to your client base. You may have some of these in place already, but what updates are needed to get back in business quickly?  Some changes you may consider might include:

• Add e-commerce capabilities to your existing website
• Make website changes or additions to let customers know about retail to-go
• Market and sell your products on your social media pages
• Deploying an email marketing campaign to promote your retail to-go services
• Search engine optimization to ensure your products are discovered by interested customers
• Paid search ads to be sure your products are prominently displayed in searches

Rocket Fuel for Retail

Hopefully, you have been keeping your customers informed during the COVID-19, so you’re on their radar and they’re anticipating your return to the marketplace.  The start of retail to-go means it’s time to go full blast.  If you need the help of an online marketing agency with more than a decade of experience, Globe Runner is your partner.  We are here to help inject your retail operation with rocket fuel, propelling it to success. If you’re ready to blast off, call us at (972) 472-8528 for a free digital marketing consultation.

In business, some departments are mission critical. At a minimum, you need a leader to make the decisions and an accounts payable principle to send out checks each week. (Because let’s face it, no matter how nicely you ask them, no one’s going to work for free.) A sales team is great for making sure money continues to come in, but without the right collateral, they could fall short.

This brings us to the age-old question: is marketing considered essential? We say emphatically, yes! But just because you need it, doesn’t mean you need it in-house. In fact, marketing is one of the easiest tasks to outsource.

Here’s what business savvy brands have to gain by doing so.

1. A new vantage point can widen your reach.

Though it makes sense to do business with a digital marketing agency that knows your industry, getting a fresh perspective could be a big boon for your business. As an outsider, the view from where they’re sitting could look drastically different from yours. This allows them to zero in on untapped markets and design compelling content that targets new potential customers. While your core consumers may not change, they can help pivot your messaging to appeal to wider audiences.

2. Work won’t halt because of the holidays.

What happens when a flu bug threatens to take down your small staff? How do you handle a holiday mass exodus? When you outsource your digital marketing to an agency, you don’t have to worry about any of the above. They work year-round to keep your content continuous. This means staying top of the charts, never letting your SERP suffer due to sickness or season. Your blog posts will keep your keyword strategy strong, and your social content will elicit eyeballs to your brand.

3. You don’t have to keep up with every SEO update.

500-600. That’s the number of algorithm updates Google implements each year! Do you have the fungible funds to pay someone to watch for, learn, and teach everyone about the roughly two changes a day? No?! A digital agency is a good alternative. It’s their job to stay on top of – and master – updates, both major and minor.

4. Save money while increasing your output.

Salary aside, employees are expensive. Insurance premiums alone can increase into double-digit percentages year over year. Not to mention the obligatory cost of living raises instated by most companies. To stay competitive, many business are also finding that on site amenities up to and including snacks or standing desks are the best, if only, way to hire competitively. By contrast, working with a digital marketing agency can save you big compared to the cost of bringing on an in-house entry-level marketing pro. You usually pay a monthly retainer, but only for the services you request, not the benefits.

5. You won’t have to manage your marketers.

With an outside agency, you’ll be in constant contact, but it won’t be because you’re micro managing. Focus on building a strong internal team without having to expend energy onboarding, even as you expand.

6. Drastically cut your turnaround time.

No matter how strong her work ethic, a one-woman department simply can’t keep pace with an entire agency. She might be lucky if she can turn out a well-written blog post and a few social media snippets between meetings. Hire an external marketing team and complete complex campaigns in a fraction of the time.

7. Expand your content marketing creations.

You know that complex campaign you just launched? If you contracted with a digital ad agency it’s likely to have all the bells and whistles. We mean everything – from clickable PPC ads and viral social media posts to HD video ops and strategically placed PR articles. Agencies are more likely to have experts in every communications channel and can send your marketing collateral skipping across every single one of them.

8. Focus on nurturing leads, not generating them.

Finally, digital marketing agencies help you build your brand so you can concentrate on building your business. They’ll free you up to take your leads down the sales funnel and all the way to the bank.

So what do you say – are you in to outsource? We’re all hands on deck.

Worried a robot is going to eventually take your job? This blog post may or may not allay your fears. However, if you’re ready to improve your digital marketing strategy in 2019, better build a bot.

If chatbots still sound too 2049, simply think of them as a form of marketing automation.
You probably already use automation in your email drip campaigns to help reach your target audience and generate leads. Bots work similarly.

Chatbots are inexpensive, programmable software that can be designed to automatically carry out any number of tasks quickly and accurately. Their conversational nature can save you tons of time, and early adopters have seen benefits from increased conversion rates to streamlined operations. (More on these in a bit!)

Not sure if automation is right for your business? Let’s talk about just six of the ways chatbots can help take your brand into the future.

1. Never miss an inquiry.

No need to have your employees work the graveyard shift or pay them time and a half for a holiday. Chatbots work 24/7 365 days a year and you’ll never hear them asking off in the middle of your busy season. They’re also helpful in fielding floods of inquiries, so whether you’re getting more web traffic from that cute and clever copy you wrote or from a potent new product, you’ll be ready for the deluge.

2. Do more without hiring more employees.

Hiring new staff means taking a chance on potentially ill-suited personalities. It also comes with more time-off requests (see above) and increased expenses. Whereas chatbots are like a team of employees who always do exactly as they’re told (programmed) for a fraction of the cost. In most cases, a bot can be bought for a few hundred to a few thousand dollars depending on functionality.

3. Market to Millennials.

The overwhelming majority of millennials would rather converse via text than over the phone. Live chat satisfies their instant gratification expectations and allows them to conduct their comparison shopping without commitment. From your end, it’s simply another touch point in which to promote your brand and squelch any concerns that might impede the sale.

4. Increase conversions.

Having a hard time getting traction with your email marketing campaigns? According to Chatbotslife, “Chatbots are seeing open rates of 80%+ and CTR’s of 25%+.” Now, imagine several hundred repeat customers seeing your latest promotional offering. You could be staring down some serious sales.

5. Make internal communications simpler.

With all this talk of digital marketing, it can be easy to overlook the real machine that makes your operation run: your team. Having a system in place to streamline and enhance your internal communications can mean the difference between duplicated tasks and redundancies, and everyone being on the same page working toward the same goal. Bots can be particularly helpful if some or all of your team work remotely.

6. Personalize your online ads.

Who prefers personalized ads? 71% of consumers. You can happily and easily oblige with chatbots on your site. Not providing a customized user experience? You can be sure your competitors are, so time to chat up or bot out. Chatbots can even help you with the preliminary task of information gathering about your core demographic. Their simple if/then formula makes it easy to base responses on the answers users provide in your initial questioning.

Still think bots are bits of dark magic designed to put you out of a job? Try shifting your perspective a little and seeing them for the engagement and traffic tools they are. Use them wisely and let the results speak for themselves.

Not sure which bots are best for your biz? Let’s have a chat.

2018 is rounding to a close. Even as we type these words we still can’t believe it ourselves. It was a big year in search marketing and an even bigger year for our full-service digital agency.

Over the last 12 months, we made two huge strides that have helped us live up to our Globe Runner namesake. Between our two big wins at this year’s American Advertising awards and being named one of Inc. Magazine’s Top 10 Fastest Growing Marketing and Ad Agencies in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metro, we’re well on our way to running our corner of the globe.

Join us for a humble brag as we look back on our accolades – plus, some key content marketing strategies that helped us get here.

Globe Runner – an Inc. 5000 Company

4203. That’s our official ranking on Inc. magazine’s 37th annual Inc. 5000. We’re now settled firmly among the admired ranks of other fast-growing, privately-owned companies in the nation.

How did we do it? Well, for starters, we grew our sales 81% in three years, making our Addison, Texas company one of a handful of digital marketing agencies who made the cut.

Yes, we’ve come a long way from our 2009 humble beginnings.

However, we’ve continued to maintain our original mantra: to help companies grow digitally. Though our mission has remained consistent, we’re continually adding new tools and experts to our full-service digital marketing agency, offering clients an internet marketing experience that’s a bounty of in-house creative design, SEO, SEM, and content marketing solutions.

In fact, it was the creative team that was responsible for our next major victory in this year of firsts.

Globe Runner – an Award-Winning Digital Agency

Next, lend us your ear as we sing the praises of our out-of-this-world team. Creative powerhouses Eddie Hale and Brett Dougall spearheaded long-time client Muenster Milling’s new Ancient Grains dog food line and packaging system.

The revamp resulted in Globe Runner taking home two Addy awards (Bronze and Silver) from the American Advertising Federation.

With two prestigious Addy Awards lining our shelves, we’re (humbly) touting ourselves as award-winning comprehensive Dallas digital marketing agency and SEO consultants extraordinaire.

And for good reason.

With the more than 40,000 entries the American Advertising Federation receives each year, the competition was stiff, to say the least. Their mission to reward the art of advertising aligns with our mission to provide our Dallas SEO clients with unparalleled creative strategy.

Essential Search Marketing Must-haves

Are search marketing and content marketing one in the same? Hardly.
Though there’s plenty of overlap, each is nuanced and has a specialized role in increasing web traffic and leads. We used a combination of both to help propel our agency to new heights this year.

Here’s a quick checklist of digital marketing must-haves for 2019 to send your brand into orbit:

1. Long-term commitment to content. We all understand the value of posting regularly, but all that time you spent creating content and writing great blog posts is wasted if you treat it as a one and done situation. One easy way to commit to your content over the long term is to go back and update past posts that have done well. Add to their word count, bring them up to date. You’ll be surprised how much it can positively impact their SERP.
2. Write longer posts. Speaking of lengthening your content, more and more studies show that pieces in excess of 2,000 words see more web traffic than the shorter, average 500-word article. Try getting quotes from experts or members of your team. You can also ask members of different departments to do short write-ups then edit them together for a more uniform and expanded post.
3. Consult your buyer personas. How can you create an effective content marketing strategy without knowing who it is you’re talking to? It’s the main reason our digital agency is big on buyer personas. Every piece of content you publish should be written with one or two of these people in mind. Make sure your entire team has access to them and is so familiar they refer to them on a first name basis.
4. Engage for more engagement. Having a conceptual understanding of who your target audience is, is one thing. Conversing with them is something else entirely. Make it a point to engage with everyone who’s engaging you. Whether you’re replying to comments they post on your feed or following them directly, the more up close and personal you can get, the more conversions you’ll see.
5. Analyze your analytics. This should go without saying, but as an SEO firm, data is our bread and butter. Use it to see which posts are performing well and gear your strategy to make more of the same.

Stay tuned to see what we roll out next year! And if you’re ready to ignite your brand with a little search marketing rocket fuel in 2019, make contact with our creative combustibles.

Part 4 of a quarterly digital marketing guide from our agency experts.

They say all good things must come to an end. In this final segment of our quarterly digital marketing trends for 2018, we’re committed to helping you complete the year on top of the world.

For the last time this calendar year, we’ve used our collective brainpower to construct a snapshot of the digital landscape. Flashpoints in SEO strategies and social media marketing, as well as PPC and web dev developments, await you.

Think back on your business goals at the beginning of the year. We’re here to make sure no box is left unchecked. As you prepare to blast out of 2018 and into the next fiscal year, let this final digital marketing mix help you warp speed past the competition.

Here’s your digital dose of everything fueling 2018 marketing trends in Q4:

Technical SEO/Link Building:

1. FAQ, Q&A and How -to search snippet results

Soon there will be even more ways to showcase your content in Google. At last month’s Singapore conference, Google showed what types of previews users will see in their search results. The idea is to use a variety of Q&A, FAQ, or How-to formats to make sure search results are as relevant and useful as possible.

2. New Search Console

Soon, owners will have more access to manage access and adjust permissions for users and other sites. Reporting features are also more robust, promising swift and welcomed changes to the search console.

3.Responsive search ads

Could you use a third headline and little more descriptive text in your responsive search ads? Google has given the green light for you to text long and prosper. You’ll now have up to 90 characters to make your elevator pitch in responsive and text ads!

Social/Content Marketing:

1. Hootsuite updates

Hootsuite Inbox Beta gives you swift, consolidated access to your Twitter Direct Messages and Facebook Private Messages. If you’re looking for an additional channel to connect with customers, this will help. Monitor your messages from multiple profiles for increased oversight of complaints and compliments. Be aware these have taken the place of your Twitter Inbox and Outbox Direct Message Streams.

Hootsuite Explore isn’t yet available to everyone, but likely will be. The feature helps source brand mentions from anywhere on the web so you can tune into the conversations that matter most. They’ll even put them in a timeline where you can segment and analyze based on filters like the location.

2. Live video!

It’s become a big deal on social networks like Facebook. You’ve probably seen them start to pop up on the right-hand side of your feed. Now, you can read comments and respond to users in real-time. Why is this important? According to Livestream, “80% of audiences prefer watching live video from brands as opposed to reading a blog. And 82% of consumers say they would rather watch live videos than read social media posts.”

3. Chatbots

These digital conversation starters themselves are nothing new, but they are growing and integrating with all variety of social media platforms. For instance, Pizza Hut is one of the first national chains to allow customers to order food through their social media accounts using a chatbot.

4. Influencer Marketing

We’re no strangers to influencer marketing strategies. If you read our blog you’re in on them, too. Now, instead of partnering with celebs and other big-time figures, companies are increasing their credibility with micro influencers. According to one Forbes report, “Research shows that micro influencers have 60% higher engagement rates than traditional celebrity influencers.” The same study suggests a more than micro 22% increase in your conversation rates using the tactic.

PPC:

1. Google AdWords rebrands to Google Ads

The latest AdWords update ushers in a big push for machine learning and smart ads. It comes with a new marketing platform and Ad Manager to help you advertise over multiple channels while making sure you’re appealing to the right target audience.

2. New Expanded Text Ads

Differentiating yourself from the competing links on a SERP just got easier. If you feel like you’re having déjà vu it’s because we already alluded to this in our SEO link building section. It’s important enough that it bears repeating. What can the three headlines and expanded 90-character count descriptions do for your brand? A lot. One Wordstream piece reported, “Google found these larger ads received 15% more clicks than other ad formats…[and] saw that advertisers increased their ad CTR by an average of 20% after making the change.”

3. Updated Exact Match Keywords

As culture evolves so does our language. Dictionaries are updated with several new words a year and our day-to-day lexicon shifts with the times. How we search is following suit. Very soon, exact match keywords no longer need be exact to show up in search results. They need only be variants that convey the same meaning through synonyms, paraphrases, and other results that clearly satisfy the user’s original intent.

Website/development:

Our fearless web dev keeps us abreast on all things front and back end. Here are some quick updates that made it across the desk last month.

1.  Chrome 70 is now in beta
2.  Chrome (68) brings a new “not secure” notification when visiting HTTP pages
3.  Firefox 62 supporting variable web fonts
4.  PHP7.3 is coming soon
5.  TypeScript 3.0 was released
6.  Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) and how to debug websites
7.  Starting in October, most browsers will distrust Symantec TLS certificates entirely

Whatever your hopes for expansion were in 2018, lead generation to increased web traffic, we hope these guides have helped you navigate the terrain successfully. Until next year!

Since the birth of simple machines, man has been building. As the world has become more wired, we’ve taken to constructing online. The instruments we use to form our creations have also changed. If you’re thinking of assembling an effective marketing strategy in 2018, make sure you fill your digital toolbox with these SEO and PPC tools.

SEO Tools

1. Screaming Frog

Duplicate data and broken links can sink your site. Screaming Frog is a well-known crawler tool that will scan up to 500 pages for free, alerting you of missing meta data, missing alt tags, auditing your redirects, etc.

2. Moz

One site, two services. Moz Pro is a lesson in SEO best practices like link building, google rankings, and content marketing. Moz Local handles SEO listings so you are more likely to show up in searches that pertain to your city.

3. Ahrefs

You can learn a lot from your competition. The big data compiled by Ahrefs shows you their backlinks, helps with keyword research, and allows you see what’s working for your industry.

4. Majestic

Search engine marketing is big business. Majestic gives you the tools you need for proper link intel. It has some PR peppered in, too. The SEO Backlink Checker and inbound links come with summary data that shows the authority and impact of each.

5. Mailshake

All hail email marketing. If you don’t have a huge listserv built, this cold email outreach tool can help. They have professional email templates for all your sales and marketing collateral. For about $20/month they’ll also let you automate scheduled follow ups and replies. Want to track clicks and open rates? They do that, too.

6. Hunter.io

On the flip side, if you want to focus on growing your electronic mailing list, Hunter helps you search out and verify the necessary email addresses.

7. VWO

Want to see which email subject lines or web copy is resonating with potential customers? This conversion optimization program supplies pertinent data regarding visitor research. It’ll also let you perform A/B testing so you can put out the most potent messages about your brand.

8. Spyfu

If you want to know which keywords your competitors are using to draw away your potential customers, this tool will let you download them directly—for free! Capitalize on their successes and avoid their mistakes with these key insights.

PPC Tools

1. Bing Ads Editor

Google may get a lot of airtime, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore the massive audience using Bing. Bing Ads Editor helps you speak directly to 5-10% of the market share that’s up for grabs. Manage ads, track your edits, and create killer PPC campaigns.

2. AdWords Editor

This software helps you manage your PPC accounts and edit your paid search campaigns on Google. The more accounts you have and the broader their individual scopes, the more essential it is.

3. Google Keyword Planner

Use this Google keyword tool during the planning phase of your pay-per-click campaign in Adwords. Features include monthly or yearly search volume calculators to see what users are asking and location targeting to give you an estimate of impressions for a specific area. It’ll also tell you what the competition is like and how much you want to budget for each keyword.

4. AdWords Performance Grader

Google will even grade how well your PPC campaign will perform. They put it through more than 40 checks, providing you additional management tools like A/B ad testing along the way. AdWords Performance Grader also comes with customizable reports of your audits so you can show your team what’s working.

5. Supermetrics

To help with monthly reporting, Supermetrics allows you to upload cost data from Bing Ads and Facebook ads into Google Analytics Cost Analysis report. Google Analytics connects to Google Adwords and pulls in your advertising spend, but does not do this for other channels; so measuring success showing “cost” out of the box is limited. Supermetrics automated this process for you to see paid media channels performance with “spend” data in Google Analytics.

6. SEMrush

And the competitor research just keeps coming! Get a look at their organic traffic, social media engagement, PPC campaigns, and even video ads. Use the entire suite to inform you of your own successful online marketing campaigns.

7. Dialog Tech

Believe it or not, phone calls still have their place in online marketing. The trick is to be able to track them. As audiences respond to your digital marketing or PPC campaigns Dialog Tech gives helps you handle call attribution and offers insights to help you optimize the customer experience.

Digital marketing trends change quickly, but the pillars of success remain the same. Keep an eye on what’s being done in your industry and continue hammering away with these online marketing tools.

Want an SEO foreman to oversee your progress? We’re definitely up for the job.

Part 2 of a quarterly digital marketing guide from our agency experts.

Globe Runners know how to use digital marketing trends to create liftoff. We’re not in the business of staying grounded; we’re in the business of sending our clients to new heights. To do that, we spend a considerable amount of manpower cataloging the digital landscape.

With this aerial view, we can anticipate SEO updates and algorithm changes before they make an impact. We also use it to implement technical strategies to search and social media marketing that help our digital advertising campaigns fire on all cylinders.

Here’s your quarterly look from our vantage point:

Technical SEO/Link Building:

1. Ahrefs updates domain ranking to better reflect SERPs

Moving away from website authority as calculated by search rankings, the new update ranks your domain as compared to its “link popularity” against other sites on the web. It scales from 0 to 100, and after some quick computations, it spits out a DR score based on the websites that link to yours.

The Ahrefs update comes in an effort to be more transparent about how sites are ranked. It also aims to clear up misinformation about the former DR scale.

If you’ve seen a change, have your SEO agency check the following for a more accurate review:

• Cumulative search traffic
• Your site’s top 100 ranking keywords and the positions of the most relevant ones
• Total quality websites, including page and content, of those linking to you

2. March 12 algorithm update

With this update, the quality of your content is safe. The core update was designed to prioritize SERP (search engine results page) quality. The Google update was also structured to reward quality sites that hadn’t been ranking well as opposed to penalizing those that broke the new rules.

Many of our clients have been pleased by these new parameters Google is now using to determine what defines a quality site. Of course, if you were negatively affected by this string of March 2018 Google Updates, we’ll happily help you course correct.

3. Google replaces SERPs with answers structured data queries

If someone goes to Google looking for a quick answer with a straightforward question like, “what is the capital of Costa Rica?” or “how many calories are in a margarita?” an answer box will appear.

This update is a huge benefit to the user, but not website owners (unless you are the authoritative website that Google is pulling the answer from), as it will lessen the click-through rate in organic search results.

Local SEO/Citation Updates:

1. Be Proactive on Google My Business

Last quarter, you heard us talk about the new Google Q&A section located in the knowledge panel. Here’s how to stay active with it.

• New features include Google Q&A, which currently doesn’t have notifications. Check for feedback regularly and monitor for questions about your business. Being proactive means you can even post FAQ’s as a business with answers.

• Chat on Google My Business is another new feature that can be enabled, providing another way to reach prospective customers and respond to questions or concerns.
• Google posts are becoming a strategic way for brands to stand out in the knowledge graph and Google Maps. Posts can be scheduled and planned ahead of time for promotions, special events, etc.

Taking these actions on GMB will improve click-through rate, earning more website visits, phone calls, and in-store visits.

2. Review Response

Everyone knows reviews are important, but a response to a review is just as valuable. Even if you have 20+ reviews with 5 stars each, posting a response to each one will take you above and beyond. Instead of a generic, “thanks for sharing your experience,” include more context. Have a dialogue in your follow up. Look up customers in your CRM database and see what products/services were purchased. For an auto shop, your response can become, “Jim, thank you so much for sharing your experience. Congrats again on adding a new member to your family. Your Chrysler Pacifica is tuned up and ready to perform for your road trip this summer.”

A response like this is personal and highlights the level of care you’re likely to see at this auto shop.

3. It’s not all about the Reviews

There’s more to great marketing than collecting positive reviews. You might be getting testimonial letters sent to your company, survey responses, and emailed feedback. Take a look at all your interactions with customers and where their feedback is published. Use that content in a testimonial on the website.

For B2B, it can be hard to generate reviews. It can be easier to start with logos of companies you work with. Work up to asking for quotes that can be used as testimonials from your client contact.

A case study is the final tier of reputation management. It can take more effort to gain approval and write case studies for clients, but it’s worth getting several published for each location of your business.

Consider a project page if approval from clients is unlikely. An interactive map of projects completed in your location is a great way to visualize projects in your market. Nearby Now and other tools allow for your crew to simply log a new quote on a smartphone. The tool takes care of the rest, uploading the location and details of a project to the website.

Enhance your location pages with testimonials, case studies, and projects in that market. It will help you stand out from competition, add valuable content for Google, and improve conversions.

Social Media and Content Marketing:

1. Demand for mobile-ready content

Google’s mobile-first algorithm, set to launch next year, will soon rank and index sites based on their mobile content. This will be a huge departure. While it’s far from the death of desktop, ranking well will soon require webmasters to prioritize the user experience. That’s happening more and more on our phones with over half of all searches being conducted from our hands, not our laps.

While no one knows exactly when the transition will occur, it’s best to prepare now. Taken in batches, it could save you from a disastrous algorithm update.

2. IG dominates in engagement rates

Poised to surpass the 1 Billion mark by year’s end, Instagram continues to dwarf rival social media networks. Thanks to the early and sustained adoption of hashtags, more than ¾ of businesses are finding increased opportunities for engagement and user-generated content.

Ads rake in billions of dollars each year with brands capitalizing on story advertising. Geo-tagging is also increasing engagement, offering brands one more win for their digital toolbox. Want to continue capitalizing on the engagement bandwagon? Post photos with faces!

3. Snapchat update will create a rise in IG, and even FB, stories

It’s normal to expect a bit of backlash when a company unveils a new update. But the fervor with which users have rejected Snapchat’s latest interface is nothing short of unprecedented. Snippy snapchatters have even petitioned on Change.org for a reversal, amassing more than 750K signatures and counting.

Good news for Instagram and Facebooks stories, though. They’ve siphoned off user overflow in the process and marveled at their increased online engagement. Could the switch be permanent? We’ll be keeping watch.

PPC:

1. Changes to AdWords ad policies to comply with the GDPR

Changes from the other side of the pond have washed up stateside. Namely, Europe’s new General Data Protection Regulation. Google AdWords is responding in kind by, “require[ing] that publishers take extra steps in obtaining consent from their users.”

2. Shoptalk: new shopping actions program that offers a universal cart

In an effort to stay competitive with the ‘Zon, a new Google initiative will shake up the typical PPC campaign model for big companies like Target, Costco, and others. They’re moving to cost-per-sale instead but made sure to specify that organic rankings would remain constant.

3. AdWords interface change

Snapchat isn’t the only one unveiling a new interface. AdWords is sporting a new overview and home that tab that lets you quickly visualize some top-level data in your account. Navigation, native reporting, and added extensions are some of the touted ‘improvements,’ but feedback from PPC managers has been mixed so far.

Creative/Art Direction:

1. Simpler is always better

With Twitter, Instagram stories and .06 non-skippable ads, we need to be quick, to-the-point, and relevant. In other words, we need the nuggets. Tailor your online content so it can be absorbed in the instant-gratification-pace of your audience.

2. Phone-ing it in

Large screens, high resolution, budget-friendly tools, and vids with an intimate feel—these are the draws of making movies on an iPhone. They’re also just some of the reasons marketers and even filmmakers are using our magic handheld devices to create their masterpieces.

More and more, we’re learning that with talent and insight, smartphones can be powerful marketing tools. Since phones are our most familiar medium, it only makes sense to continue utilizing them and their plethora of apps to create viral digital marketing content.

3. Sharing stories, finding a way to relate

Marketers are natural storytellers. Whether using catchy social media posts, intruding web copy, or snappy branding, the goal remains the same: tell the story behind the brands. It’s a human-centric approach that’s aimed at finding new ways to share common ground with their consumers. These inroads offer their customers and clients new ways to consider a marketer’s brand.

If you want to make a personal connection, but aren’t sure where to begin, why not start by sharing a bit about the people behind your product? The men and women beyond the work are likely some of your most unique marketing collateral.

Need a little help with your digital marketing launch? Let us send you into the stratosphere