What's Next? Tech/Marketing in 2022

With an improving economy, we’re now finding ourselves with more marketing dollars to spend. Yet we’re still emerging from a covid cocoon, and sometimes it’s hard to imagine a future without Covid. 

The urge to gather is strong, but look for a hybrid model

We’re hosting events again, but they’re likely to be hybrid models, deploying technology for those who cannot or prefer not to venture out. Events may be smaller and more intimate. Have we seen the last of the massive trade shows? 

Supporting a cause should be part of your marketing plan

Consumers, especially millennials, like to support companies with a mission—those who are partnering in some way with nonprofits. This could include doing a promotion and matching the donations, underwriting an event, donating a percentages of a day’s earnings to a cause. There are endless ways to make this work. According to nonprofit coach Mallory Erickson, these types of partnerships can help you reach a wider audience. 

Say goodbye to smartphones 

Who knew that the pandemic hit the smartphone industry especially hard, with global smartphone shipments declining in 2020 as demand and supply hit the skids. Smartphone sales will have to compete with a new line of smart eyewear and wearables that are entering the market. Apple has developed smartglasses and virtual reality headsets, though they’ve not yet been released. There’s a growing industry of wearables and hearables, like the Apple AirPods. 

Remote workforces are here to stay

While Silicon Valley, Silicon Alley and Silicon Forest will still exist, there will be an impact as big tech workers continue working from home as the pandemic winds down. Startups and smaller companies likely will follow suit. The result? A highly skilled tech workforce distributed across the US—no longer relegated to tech centers.

Healthcare is the next battleground for big tech

Tech giants will make further inroads into the healthcare industry, capitalizing on the smart fitness industry. Amazon’s fitness tracking wearable and Google’s acquisition of Fitbit are evidence of this trend. Technology will be forcing the pharmaceutical companies and insurance industry to evolve. This is already happening–major insurers are offering to reimburse us for wearables like the Apple watch.

The “home of things” industry is growing

The rising popularity of smart home devices and home surveillance systems such as Amazon Ring and Google Nest has created a new “home of things,” or HoT, industry. Google, Amazon and Apple will be the players in this space. Who has kids who put back empty cereal boxes and milk cartons? Think about a trash can that can detect the empties and automatically order replacements. 

Antitrust action may fail to keep up with big tech’s moves

The Biden administration will be ramping up antitrust enforcement of big tech. But the rapidly changing landscape may be moving too fast for regulators to keep up. 

This is the perfect time to start working on your marketing plan for the coming year

Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and digital marketing specialists. 

Historical Optimization: New Life for Old Blog Posts

Blogging can be a tough commitment, but it remains an important part of a content marketing program. In a time of minimalism, I remind people that search engines need content to go to work, and good content is nonnegotiable. Blogs should be at least 300 words—longer is better. 

Go for evergreen–repurpose those posts that have an afterlife

• Do some reconnaissance. Identify blog posts worth updating. Think about whether the topic is still relevant. If so, it’s likely a good candidate. Your keywords probably need a refresh since they change all the time. 

• Google’s Keyword Planner: It’s free and you may as well use Google’s methodology. Key in some phrases and see what the Planner comes up with. Look for words where the competition is Medium and the cost per click at the high end is whatever you’re comfortable paying. I generally set this at $5.00. 

• Update your post, making it more comprehensive. If you’re not making noticeable improvements, don’t bother with this exercise. Provide some accountability with a quote from an industry expert. Provide an example of how this is being used, how it’s affecting users, how it’s making a difference. It may be that you could highlight a particular product or person. Be creative. Remember that good marketing tells a story. 

• Optimize your new post. Put your keyword research to work. Do the stuff that you may/not be doing. Identify a new image. Label the image with your business name and name of what the image is about. Create descriptive tags in the alt tag fields. Here’s a good way to think about alt fields: If someone pulls up your blog on a phone with limited bandwidth and the image doesn’t show up, the alt tag will describe the image so they’ll know how the image is intended to contribute to the story. 

• If there’s a field, fill it in! Identify your keyword focus and write a metadescription.

Promote your new content like any new post

Let’s face it, even for the most creative among us, the well runs dry, so here’s some good news. Historical optimization is a great way to freshen old blogs so they’ll generate more traffic in their second life. Old means just that—blogs you’ve already written—content that just needs a few tucks and it’s ready for primetime again.

I spent some time on my own website, where I have more than 250 blogs. Some of these are complete dogs, which I deleted. I didn’t turn this into a career, but within about 15 minutes, I found a few blogs are evergreen–they most definitely deserve another shot at life. 

When you publish your updated post it will show up as a brand new post on your blog. Promote your updated content just like you would any new post. Email it to your blog subscribers, post it across your social media network. Repurpose it in your newsletter and upload an excerpt to your Google Business Page. 

Could your content marketing strategy use a boost? 

Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and digital marketing specialists. 

The New American Renaissance: Covid Becomes the Driver for Growth

Covid-19 has disrupted daily American life in a way few emergencies have before. But it has also shaken things up, clearing the way for an economic boom and social revival. The New York Times’ David Brooks is calling it the “American Renaissance”.

Brooks describes how West Germany and Japan endured widespread devastation during World War II, yet in the years after the war both countries experienced explosive growth because their old arrangements had been disrupted. The devastation and old patterns that stifled experimentation were swept away. Disruption opened space for something new.

Millions of Americans endured grievous loss and anxiety during this pandemic

Many also used this time as a preparation period, allowing them to burst out of the gate when things opened up. The result? 

• 4.4 million new businesses were started in 2020, by far a modern record. 
• A report from Udemy, an online course provider, says that 38 percent of workers took some additional training during 2020, up from only 14 percent in 2019.

Americans socked away trillions of dollars in 2020, putting themselves in a position to spend lavishly as things open up.

The best job market in 25 years. The economy has already taken off 

• Global economic growth is expected to be exceed 6 percent this year and continue through 2022. 
• In late April, Tom Gimbel, who runs the recruiting and staffing firm LaSalle Network, told The Times: “It’s the best job market I’ve seen in 25 years. We have 50 percent more openings now than we did pre-Covid.” 
• Investors are pouring money into new ventures. During the first quarter of this year US startups raised 41 percent more than the previous record, set in 2018.

Socioeconomic rebalancing takes three forms

1. Power has begun shifting from employers to workers. In March, U.S. manufacturing expanded at the fastest pace in nearly four decades. Workers are in the driver’s seat. Employers are raising wages and benefits to try to lure workers back.

2. A rebalancing between cities and suburbs. Covid-19 accelerated trends that had been underway for a few years, with people moving out of big cities like New York and San Francisco to suburbs and to rural places like Utah, Idaho and New York’s Hudson Valley. 

3. Finding balance between work and domestic life. Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom expects that even when the pandemic is over, the number of working days spent at home will increase to 20 percent from 5 percent in the prepandemic era.

The biggest shifts may have been mental

Millions of Americans worked remotely and found that they liked being home, dining every night with their kids. We’re becoming a less work-obsessed society, trying to be more connected to our families and our communities, more present. Nobody knows where this national journey of discovery will take us, but the voyage has begun.

Join the renaissance! Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and digital marketing specialists. 

SEO: Forget Keywords. Think Topics

 Search engine optimization (SEO) keeps evolving. It’s still about showing up in search, making your website more visible to those who are looking for the solutions that you provide. But the techniques to improve your rankings have changed, and it has to do with those notorious algorithms that are constantly on the move. Search engines have grown more sophisticated; they’re now using updated algorithms and practices to determine the contextual meaning behind keyword-based searches.

Search engines exist to solve your problems . . . 

And they’re getting much better at predicting what you want. The old days of randomly filling up a page with keywords is over—search engines recognize this for what it is—shameless keyword stuffing. Good content is nonnegotiable. In order to rank you, search engines look for title tags, keywords, image tags, internal link structure and inbound links. Also figuring in are navigation structure and site design–these are things we can easily execute ourselves. 

Build your SEO strategy around topics, not keywords

Keywords should feel natural, not forced, but your focus should be on the intent of your audience. Build your SEO strategy around topics, not keywords. If you do that, you’ll be naturally optimizing for keywords. For example, if you’re writing about planning a wedding, you don’t need to list every single wedding detail—champagne, catering, food, cake, flowers, photographer, music and all the other details. Google, in all of its wisdom, knows this. It understands the topic of wedding planning.

It’s not just about your website; building backlinks

Search engines work on your overall web presence, and backlinks are an important component. Any link from someone else’s website to yours (or any other site) is a backlink. Backlinks help Google find new pages on your site faster, and they’re associated with increased credibility and trust. 

How to build backlinks? Look for opportunities to be a guest blogger and include a link back to your website. Links should be from websites and content that are relevant to your focus. A really easy way to build links is to post your blogs to your Google Business Page. You can post a blog excerpt with a Learn More button and link back to your website. Easy. 

Your social channels are an important part of your SEO value 

Social can have a big impact on your organic search. Think about what goes on with our social activity—sharing posts, tweeting and retweeting. It could be through a Facebook friend, Twitter follower, a connection through another social network or something totally unrelated. Sometimes social search will even prioritize content that has been shared by an influencer. 

Our challenge is creating search experience optimization. We want users to not only find our websites but to stay there, drill down through our content and come back later and become a customer.

Does an SEO analysis and upgrade of your website need to be part of your marketing strategy? Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and digital marketing specialists. 

An In-person Event–Is This a New Trend?

This was the year of virtual. Without skipping a beat, we moved our lives online. Thinking back, we have to shake our heads at how completely seamless it was. Classes, support groups, fundraisers and even conferences moved online. 

I’m attending an old-fashioned, in-person conference in July

But I just registered for a conference in Monterey. That’s right. An in-person event. There will be speakers, breakout sessions, cocktail hours and schmoozing. After a year of meetings that required no more exertion than parking myself in front of a computer, I’m left wondering about the event format of the future. 

In LinkedIn’s newly released State of Virtual Events report, 75% of event marketers worldwide say they plan to continue running virtual events. Others are developing a hybrid model that mixes virtual and in-person events. 

You don’t have to be an event marketer to know that there are aspects of in-person events that we can’t replicate virtually. The organic, opportunity-generating conversations that come about through face-to-face contact. Listening to interesting speakers that generate great conversations—these are hard to replicate virtually.

We love the advantages of virtual events

One of my colleagues who was late to the Zoom environment told me recently how thrilled she was to be working online. “It’s so efficient! I can’t believe how much I’ve gotten done without even leaving my office.” Well, yes. It’s pretty hard to beat the convenience. And there’s the scalability and accessibility of turning audiences of a few hundred into thousands. 

The bar has been raised on virtual—we expect a higher degree of professionalism 

Virtual events have become video-driven experiences with expert speakers who know how to engage with concise, punchy presentations. There’s a real hunger for innovation. We keep raising expectations, making these events more interactive, responsive and entertaining.

So when will in-person events really stage a comeback? 

I’m going to my event in July, but I really don’t know what to expect. This could be a complete bust. We’re really only just opening up after a year of Covid. Many people are still wearing masks. Still others will choose not to attend at all—just too risky. I talked to my sister-in-law in Florida, and she was shocked that I was even thinking of attending a conference. She’s barely left her home in more than a year. That was a huge reality check–we’re pretty much back to business as usual.

And then there’s the expense . . . 

Just because we miss physical events doesn’t mean they’ll return in a rush. We’re still reeling from a year of Covid. It will be difficult for many companies to justify the expense of conferences—the ROI has always been difficult to quantify. Hybrid events that stream content from a physical event to a wider, virtual audience may be the best way to get the best of both formats. As confidence returns, the landscape may change.

Is it time to update your website? Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and digital marketing specialists. 

Is It Time To Include Google Ads in Your Marketing Plan

Google advertising, or paid search, has become a common component of many marketing programs. Google ads are structured as an auction where we bid on keywords. They’re free until someone clicks on our ads—thus, the term “pay-per-click advertising” (PPC). The cost of the keyword determines the cost of the click.

Effective way to drive traffic to your website, increase sales and brand recognition

PPC is fairly complex. I’ve been working with a client for the last year doing YouTube and Google ads, and I continue to learn. A lot of marketers throw their money at this without properly understanding, monitoring and adjusting their campaigns, so it may not be the best use of their marketing dollars. Google rakes in something obscene like $100M/day on digital advertising. Like Las Vegas, the house wins. 

My goal is to drive a slow steady stream of traffic to our website

Our Google ad campaigns have been successful, according to our conservative goals. I’m careful to watch my keywords because the associated costs can change. One week a word can be worth $4, then the price can climb to $8 or more. I’m okay with $4, but not $8+. I watch our billing summary, and if it’s starting to get too expensive, I sometimes pause one of our campaigns to manage overall costs. 

Increased traffic has resulted in more click-throughs and calls

The Google ad activity has translated to new business. We could do more, but ad campaign pricing can quickly start ballooning. Your impressions, clicks and calls may increase, but so do your costs. You decide how much you want to spend.

Here are some guidelines for creating a Google ad campaign

1. Set a clear objective . What are your overall business/ad goals? Are you selling a product or a service? If signing up for your newsletter is your goal, this can be a tough sell.
2. Create your ad infrastructure. The fields for campaign details, including location, are fairly robust. Key are audience demographics–gender, age, interests, industry, etc. Think about how your audience spends their free time, what they’re likely to be interested in. 
3. Keywords. The more words, the more specific the potential response. You’re qualifying your buyers. Fewer clicks, but a greater chance that users will meet your desired client profile. 
4. Identify your budget. How much do you want to spend? The billing for Google ads is confusing, though Google has just rolled out a new program that gives you more control of your spend. 
5. Conversion. If users are purchasing a product, it makes it easy to determine the effectiveness of your campaign. If you’re selling a service, it’s more difficult to quantify. Calls and clicks can be harder to measure. 
6. Landing page. You will need to create and optimize a landing page on your website. A strong call to action drives users to act. 

Are you considering adding digital advertising to your marketing plan? Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and digital marketing specialists. 

A Facebook Popup Takes on Misinformation

It’s been six months and counting, and an estimated 50M Republicans still believe that Trump won the 2020 election. That the January 6 rioters who stormed the capitol with the intent to hang the Vice President and kill House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were “really just behaving like normal tourists”. According to Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, the Capitol attack was largely a “peaceful protest.” Really?

Like it or not, our social media platforms are where we gather, and they’ve inherited the responsibility for both spreading and controlling the growing problem of misinformation.

Facebook steps up with informational alerts

Facebook is taking another step to reduce the spread of misinformation that includes increased user penalties. Facebook has partnered with independent, third-party fact-checking teams, and it touts its use of artificial intelligence (AI) to automate the fact-checking process. 

A Facebook popup warns users about the possibility of misinformation

Facebook has launched a new popup alerting visitors to a Facebook Page that this page may be sharing false information, as per fact-checkers. The popup clearly communicates that because a Page has shared questionable content in the past, there is the distinct possibility that current content may be incorrect. 

“We want to give people more information before they like a Page that has repeatedly shared content that fact-checkers have rated. You can also click to learn more, including that fact-checkers said some posts shared by this Page include false information and a link to more information about our fact-checking program. This will help users make informed decisions about whether they want to follow the Page.”

Upping the penalties for distributing misinformation

“We will reduce the distribution of all posts in News Feed from an individual’s Facebook account if they repeatedly share content that has been rated by one of our fact-checking partners. We already reduce a single post’s reach in News Feed if it has been debunked.”

Limiting the News Feed reach will stir up the Facebook conspiracy theorists and those who believe the platform has no right to stop their sharing whatever they like on the platform. What happens is pretty dramatic: Facebook and Instagram networks–more than 4B users/month, will stop seeing their posts if they keep sharing phony conspiracy theories and misinformed reports. These users likely will perceive this as censorship and loss of their freedoms, with big brother controlling the flow of information. 

Facebook is right to act

Their fact-checkers ensure that false information is being flagged and removed where possible to reduce its spread and stop the use of the Facebook/Instagram network to amplify misinformation and its hateful, violent narratives.

Misinformation has become even more unrelenting of late

Misinformation about the Covid vaccine is slowing the broader recovery efforts. Facebook and Instagram are operating the largest interconnected, most influential network of humans in history. It’s important that they assume a leadership role, take action and attempt to disrupt and manage the flow of misinformation. 

Time to talk about digital ads? Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and digital marketing specialists. 

Will Google Really Put an End to Third-Party Cookies by 2022?

You may have heard that Google is eliminating third-party cookies by 2022. What does this mean for you—or your marketing? It’s important to understand that there are first- and third-party cookies. It’s only third-party cookies that are being eliminated.   

So what are cookies?

Cookies identify online users and have become a mainstay of digital advertising. As web servers have no memory of their own, cookies make websites remember our actions. In this way, they’re not asked to perform a task over and over again. In their simplest application, they help provide a better user experience. 

Ever wonder how our favorite sites remember our login information?

Or how they remember the languages we speak, the items in our carts, and other key things that make our online experiences seamless? They’re using cookies to remember these details. I’m in Istanbul right now, and when I go to sites I use all the time, sometimes they’re in Turkish. My laptop auto-adjusts to Turkey time—not PDT. All the ads are in Turkish. A little bit creepy, but also amazing. It’s cookies, hard at work. 

First-party cookies

A first-party cookie is a code that gets generated and stored on your website visitors’ computers by default when they visit your site. A first-party cookie will provide information about what users did while visiting your website–how often they visit it and other basic analytics that you can use to help develop an effective marketing strategy. 

Third-party cookies

Third-party cookies are tracking codes that are placed on a web visitor’s computer after being generated by another website other than your own. When a web visitor visits your site and others, the third-party cookie tracks this information and sends it to the third-party who created the cookie–which might be an advertiser. 

A great example of the power of third-party cookies

Let’s say you’re getting married and start shopping for wedding paraphernalia–caterers, dresses, flowers, shoes, jewelry, photographers, etc. You pull up Amazon to start researching availability and costs, viewing a lot of items and spending time on a number of product pages. Exhausted from this effort, you pour a glass of wine, purchase a pair of shoes and take a break. Now you start receiving emails and ads for dresses, flowers, caterers, bakeries and jewelry that you looked at on Amazon but didn’t purchase. For any vendor in the wedding industry, having access to this kind of rich information–a user’s browsing history–is powerful. This is what third-party cookies are able to deliver. And this is what the data wars are all about. 

If you’re an advertiser, third-party cookie data allows you to learn about your web visitor’s overall online behaviors and create comprehensive retargeting strategies to reach them. There is a timeline—some time in 2022, third-party cookies will be eliminated. We’ll see. Frankly, I think they’ll find a workaround—there’s just too much money involved.

Time to talk about digital ads? Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and digital marketing specialists.

Leveraging the Power of Google Business Page

How many times a day do you Google something?

We’re constantly turning to Google for help—for directions, a correct spelling or definition, the weather, bus and train schedules, baseball scores and restaurant reviews. It’s hard to imagine life without this versatile tool. 

Yet many business owners still haven’t created a Google My Business page 

Google My Business (GMB) is a free tool for businesses to manage their Google presence–Search, Maps, Ads, etc. GMB can help your customers find you, increase your reach and drive traffic.  

With GMB you can:

• Manage information: Contact information, address, products and services. Businesses that verify their information with GMB are twice as likely to be considered reputable by consumers. 
• Interact with customers: Customer reviews, photos that show off what you do. Businesses that add photos receive 42% more requests for directions on Google Maps, and 35% more clicks through to their websites than businesses that don’t.
• Understand and expand your presence: You’ll receive a monthly report that details activity. Find insights on how customers searched for your business, and where those customers are coming from. 

Useful GMB page features

• Posts and Events. Share offers, updates, event information and other details with your customers. I post blogs to this section—title, a few paragraphs, a Read more and a link back to the blog on your website. My monthly report shows a surprising number of views and interactions with these posts. 
• What’s New:  COVID-19 updates. For one of my clients, we’re staying the course on our Covid protocols, and we want our clients to be reassured that we’re taking their safety seriously. 
• Offers: Having a sale or promotion? This is the place to share this information.
• Products: List products and services. Keep in mind that there are always character limits. Use your keywords and be strategic. Make sure you’ve communicated your value proposition, what makes you unique.

Creating your GMB page: Verify via U.S. Mail

• As with all Google tools, you’ll need to create your login using a gmail account. Don’t have one? Go to Google Gmail and create a new account with a login and password.
• You also will need to verify your GMB page. Most businesses are verified by mail with a verification postcard from Google. Yes. That really is the U.S. Postal Service. Google believes you need a street address to be a valid business—it’s also a Google Map dependency. A PO Box won’t work. Send this off to Google and watch for your code in the mail. Log back in to your GMB page and insert this code to complete the GMB process. 

But that really shouldn’t be the end of your GMB activity

Update your page with changes to your business, with new blog posts and events. Treat your GMB page like your other social media sites. Post your blogs to this page, add photos. Don’t let it stagnate.  

Need help making the most of Google tools? Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and content marketing specialists. 

Apple Rolls Out New App Privacy Controls

Data privacy is back in the news, and this time it’s Apple that’s stepping up to protect our data. They’re scheduled to roll out their new Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) this spring. IDFA is assigned by Apple to a user's device, and it means that every app has to ask us upfront whether it’s okay to share our data with third parties. Note that this is Apple users only—not Android.

So what does this mean for you?

I’m not a big app user, and I don’t ever download games. However, I just took a look at my phone. I’ve got apps for my banks and some stocks, Uber, Lyft, the New Yorker and The NYTimes. For the subway in Buenos Aires from my trip there a few years ago. You get the idea--these apps add up. For our expanding app accumulations, we’ll now be able to decide whether/not we want anyone tracking our online behavior and using it to market products to us. 

This is your chance to quash data tracking in all Apple apps

Why, after all, would we want anyone tracking our behavior to sell us more stuff? With the new IDFA, we’ll get a prompt asking for our consent to track us--known as app tracking transparency (ATT). These prompts that will be displayed in all iOS (Apple) apps are expected to see many users switching off data tracking altogether. If you’re doing online advertising, this could have serious consequences. 

Digital advertisers are wary about the effects of this change

“Privacy means peace of mind, it means security, and it means you are in the driver’s seat when it comes to your own data,” said Apple Senior VP Craig Federighi. “Our goal is to create technology that keeps people’s information safe and protected.”

Under settings dubbed the “Privacy Nutrition Label,” users will be able to see which apps have requested permission to track their data and can either grant permission or deny it. App makers will have to honestly explain how they plan to use the data.

• When you use a new app, a notification will explain what the tracking will be used for, and then it will ask if you want to opt into tracking. 
• You can toggle IDFA data sharing on an app-by-app basis. 
•  You can turn off app tracking altogether and no apps can ask you to be tracked.

Apple's IDFA change has been highly controversial

Facebook actively opposed the change, arguing that it will negatively impact small businesses by driving up the cost and decreasing the effectiveness of their digital/PPC advertising. Apple is also contending with a group of Chinese companies that has banded together to launch an alternative data-tracking tool for their apps. These apps will essentially bypass IDFA, likely in violation of Apple's terms. That could put Apple in a tough position on the broader rollout of the new prompt. Worth watching.

Time to talk marketing strategy? Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and content marketingspecialists.