Tag: marketing

In-House Marketing vs. Agency Teams: Build a Strong Strategy Together
This post was updated by Paula French on 2/28/25 to reflect recent trends and best practice. It was originally published on 12/6/2018.

Key Insights
- As brands grow, marketing demands increase, making it difficult for internal teams to execute strategy, create content, analyze performance, and keep up with industry shifts all at once.
- Agencies provide specialized expertise and resources that complement in-house efforts, allowing internal teams to focus on core business priorities and guide overall strategy.
- Combining internal marketing strengths with agency support creates a scalable, results-driven strategy that adapts to changing needs without overloading your team.
Internal marketing teams are often expected to manage it all — strategy, execution, and analysis — on top of keeping up with regular day-to-day tasks. But as the workload grows, so does the risk of burnout, missed priorities and deadlines, and campaigns that don’t perform as expected. The faster the industry evolves, the harder it is for stretched-thin teams to keep up, leading to outdated strategies and missed opportunities.

While outsourcing can help lighten the internal load, some in-house teams hesitate to seek out agency support, fearing they’ll lose control over their marketing strategy. In reality, internal teams and agencies don’t have to compete. They can leverage their respective strengths to create an agile, focused, and impactful marketing approach.

If you’re deciding between keeping all of your marketing in-house or partnering with an agency, here’s why you don’t have to choose just one, plus how to balance both for the best results.

How Can an Agency Help Me If I Am a…

Single-person marketing team

Instead of feeling like a one-person show, you’ll have a team to bounce ideas off, refine strategies, and make sure nothing slips through the cracks while improving your results.

Single-person marketing “teams” can feel isolated and underappreciated. Your organization’s leaders expect you to handle it on your own, but as you’ve tried to run campaigns, manage vendors, write content, plan the strategy, update your website, and still get results, you find two challenges:
1. There isn’t enough time to do it all yourself.
2. One person rarely has the skills to be strategic, create graphics, update a website, monitor results, and evaluate and manage vendors.
A marketing agency takes the weight off your shoulders by acting as an extension of your team. They bring the time, skills, and experience to tackle everything from strategy planning to execution and performance tracking, so you’re not stuck doing it alone.

Business leader

No more juggling ads, content, and campaigns on the fly. Partnering with an agency ensures your marketing is always working, even when you’re too busy to think about it.

When you’re responsible for driving the business forward, marketing is just one of many things competing for your time. Whether you’re managing it all yourself or working with local media vendors, it can be difficult to stay strategic and aligned with your goals.

You may often feel that:
1. Marketing takes a back seat when business operations call for urgent attention.
2. You got into your field to do what you love, not market what you love.
3. You are reacting to promotional ideas as they cross your desk, with no real strategy about how to best reach your customers.
Being a leader means wearing many hats, and marketing often ends up as an afterthought. An agency helps shift it from a scattered, reactionary task to a well-planned strategy that actually supports your growth.

Medium-to-large marketing team

Even with a well-staffed, in-house department, keeping up with every aspect of marketing can be a challenge. Between aligning team members, executing campaigns, and adapting to industry updates, it’s easy to get stuck in the weeds and lose valuable time for strategy. You may find that:
1. Your internal marketing team needs support in strategy and direction.
2. The time it takes to execute tactics gets in the way of strategically analyzing what is truly working (and what is not).
3. You struggle to keep up with new and changing marketing technologies and ideas.
Partnering with a marketing agency helps bridge these gaps by bringing fresh insights, specialized expertise, and extra hands where you need them most. Whether it’s adjusting your strategy, handling time-consuming execution, or keeping your team ahead of evolving trends, they’ll keep your marketing in check and on track without overloading your internal resources.

Higher education marketer

Instead of constantly shifting from one urgent task to the next, an agency’s support helps you be more intentional with your marketing.

Higher education marketing is a constant balancing act. One minute you’re fine-tuning messaging for a new degree program, the next you’re trying to boost student engagement — all while keeping an eye on enrollment goals. With so many priorities commanding your attention, it’s easy to feel like you’re always in reactive mode and that:
1. Your marketing efforts are spread too thin. You’re trying to serve prospective students, current students, and alumni all at once while balancing multiple degrees and programs.
2. Data analysis and performance reporting fall by the wayside due to time constraints.
3. Meeting ambitious enrollment goals feels unattainable without additional resources or expertise.
An agency will take on recruitment and retention efforts, ensuring you reach the right students at the right time. With deeper data insights, you’ll make informed strategic decisions, focusing your time and budget on what drives real results.

Want to find out if partnering with an agency is right for your institution? Take our Higher Ed SEO Quiz to discover your best staffing approach based on your current resources, strategy, and performance.

In-House Marketing vs. Agency Partnerships

Balancing in-house marketing with agency support lets you stay involved while tapping into advanced expertise. Your team knows your brand best, while an agency brings the skills, strategy, and execution power to amplify your efforts.

At Search Influence, many of our clients handle routine tasks internally while relying on us for more strategic, high-impact initiatives. The key is knowing which responsibilities are best handled by your in-house team and which most benefit from external support.

What work should my in-house marketing team handle?

Identifying unique stories that can be included in marketing

Great marketing starts with great stories, but you can’t share what you don’t know.

As part of your internal tasks, build relationships with departments and stakeholders across your organization. This ensures you stay informed of exciting news and developments that bring your marketing to life.

For example, let’s say you are marketing for a university, and one of your instructors learns that one of her students won a research award. Would your marketing team hear about it?

If you educate your staff on your marketing goals and build vital relationships, you’ll be less likely to miss valuable stories that strengthen your outreach.

Serving as spokespeople for public relations and media opportunities

Having the right people represent your organization in the media bolsters your brand’s credibility and reach. Instead of scrambling when a press opportunity arises, establish a roster of internal experts who can confidently speak on key topics.

Identifying multiple spokespeople prevents over-reliance on a single person, speeds up media responses, and ensures you always have a knowledgeable representative prepared to engage with the public.

By designating these spokespeople internally, you streamline the process and create a sense of ownership within your team. When staff members are prepared and empowered to speak on behalf of the organization, it fosters consistent messaging and a proactive approach to media inquiries.

Creating day-to-day organic social posts

Social media is where you build a genuine connection with your audience, and staying consistent is what’s key to maintaining that bond. Hubspot reports that social media is the preferred means for product discovery among consumers aged 18 to 44, making routine posting all the more important.

For businesses with the right in-house resources, managing daily posts can be straightforward. But when time or expertise is limited, outsourcing certain aspects to an agency — like content scheduling, caption writing, or hashtag strategy — can help maintain consistency without adding to your team’s workload.

You may find that capturing photos or videos in-house and passing them along to an agency for posting works best. This ensures fresh, timely content without the hassle of managing every detail.

When should I hire a digital marketing agency?

To improve your website’s SEO and increase organic traffic

If your in-house team can’t keep up with the nuances of SEO, it’s time to bring in the experts.

SEO is fundamental to getting your site seen, but it’s far from a one-size-fits-all solution. It takes ongoing attention, work, and a deep understanding of both on and off-site SEO tactics to rank high and stay ranked high.

An agency will create a comprehensive SEO strategy that aligns with your specific goals, covering key areas like:
- Deep keyword research to target the right audience
- On-page optimization to improve visibility, from meta descriptions to header tags
- Content creation that considers what your audience is actually searching for
- Site performance improvements, from navigation to mobile optimization
- Building valuable backlinks to boost your site’s authority
- Performance tracking to refine strategies and stay ahead of the curve
When an agency handles these technical details, you free up your team to focus on bigger-picture goals, knowing that your SEO is in the best hands.

To manage and optimize your digital advertising campaigns

With an agency managing your digital ads, you’ll rest easy knowing your budget is being spent efficiently, your ads are reaching the right people, and your strategy is always evolving to stay competitive.

Digital advertising is one of the fastest ways to get your brand in front of the right audience. However, making the most of it is no easy feat. If you’re struggling to create effective campaigns, manage budgets, or keep up with performance tracking, an agency will give your campaigns the focus they need.

Applying their specialized expertise, an agency positions your brand for paid advertising success by:
- Crafting targeted campaigns on platforms like Google Ads and Meta
- Selecting and optimizing keywords for maximum visibility
- Writing engaging ad copy and designing eye-catching visuals
- Leveraging advanced targeting to refine audience demographics and interests
- Setting and managing budgets to ensure your ads reach the right people without overspending
- Testing different ad variations to identify the most effective strategy
- Monitoring and adjusting campaigns to keep things running smoothly
To monitor campaign success through advanced analytics tracking and reporting

Let an agency take the guesswork out of ad management, using data to refine and enhance your campaigns for maximum performance.

Analytics and lead tracking require more than just simple data collection. It takes advanced know-how to make sense of your metrics, assess your performance, and use the insights as fuel for your future strategy. If you’re feeling lost in a sea of metrics, an agency will interpret the numbers and guide you toward smarter decisions.

Trust your advanced tracking and reporting to an agency when you need support with:
- Tracking leads from forms, calls, and other inquiries
- Identifying the top-performing marketing channels to allocate resources effectively
- Analyzing lead quality to improve conversion rates and maximize ROI
- Conversion tracking set-up to measure sales, sign-ups, and other key outcomes
- Making sense of your data with customized reports and KPI dashboards
- Conducting an ROI analysis to showcase the effectiveness of your efforts
- Optimizing your campaigns based on performance data
To craft and execute customized email marketing strategies

With an agency’s guidance, your email marketing will be a well-oiled machine that consistently delivers high-quality, results-driven campaigns.

Email marketing often gets treated as an internal “check the box” task without much thought beyond getting the message sent. But when the average cold email open rate is only 27.7%, it’s clear that every detail matters to help your emails stand out in a cluttered inbox.

From timing to content, getting it right from the start is how you improve opens, reads, and conversions. An agency helps support your email strategy by:
- Developing the right mix, whether that’s newsletters, nurture campaigns, or frequent email reminders
- Curating relevant, targeted content that aligns with recipients’ interests and needs
- Crafting compelling subject lines designed to increase open rates
- Designing visually appealing emails that work across all types and prompt clicks
- Segmenting your audience to send the right emails to the right people at the right time
- Timing emails to ensure they land in inboxes at peak engagement times
But I Don’t Want to Give Up Control! How Do I Balance In-House and Outsourced Marketing?

Still debating between in-house vs. agency marketing, or a hybrid approach?

For the aspects you are currently handling internally, take a moment and ask yourself if it’s the right responsibility for your business. As you go through each item, think…

Yes, you CAN do it, but…
1. Are you doing it well?
2. Are you doing consistently?
3. Are you monitoring results and making adjustments?
4. If you were not spending time on this, what else could you be doing?
If you’re worried about losing control over your marketing when you outsource, rest assured. While your agency will take the heavy lifting off your plate, you’ll still have the head seat at the dinner table. The best agency for you will integrate themselves as part of your team and include you in the strategy and reporting of results, at a minimum.

Find Your Right Approach to Working With a Marketing Agency

Are you feeling stretched thin in your marketing approach?

When your in-house team partners with an agency, you create a dream duo that distributes the workload, increases your day-to-day efficiency, and grants you the extra bandwidth to achieve sustainable success.

If you’re a higher education marketer interested in further assessing your ideal marketing approach, check out our Higher Ed SEO Quiz. This 5-question quiz will help you determine whether to outsource your work, keep it internal, or take on a hybrid strategy. In just minutes, you’ll have personalized insights to make informed staffing choices.

See how Search Influence can help you develop a marketing plan that works for your team today!
February 28, 2025

ChatGPT: Data Mining and SEO With OpenAI and Bing

Key Insights

Pubcon Austin 2023 might as well have been called “The State of AI SEO.” And it was fantastic.
ChatGPT and Bing GPT are a really easy way to toe the water of AI for data mining and SEO.
Development in AI, in all forms is moving lightning-fast. You need to be there, and you also need to be thoughtful how you engage.

[bctt tweet=”According to @w2scott, ChatGPT and Bing GPT are a really easy way to toe the water of AI for data mining and SEO.” username=”SearchInfluence”]

Introduction

I attended and presented at Pubcon Austin a couple of weeks ago (February 2023) and came away with a ton of new ideas to use ChatGPT for SEO and how to do more effective ChatGPT Data Mining.

Typically, a major conference will put out a call for speaking ideas months in advance. Pubcon is no different, and in the early fall of last year, the organizer Brett Tabke did just that.

At the time, I had nothing that I was super passionate about presenting.

But, since the winter holidays, I have been obsessively playing with OpenAI ChatGPT and a dozen or so AI content tools.

I reached out to Brett Tabke, the organizer of Pubcon, and shared my idea for a talk. He was happy to make room for me on a panel — after giving me the requisite grief for being so late.

If you’d like to see that presentation, I have it online here: Chatbots, AI Content, And The Marketer’s Conundrum.

It turns out that earlier, Brett had put out a call to all of the speakers to ensure they addressed AI in their presentations. So, without knowing it, I was ahead of the curve.

Brett presented a mind-blowing keynote, which gave me some great ideas for better use of the tools, and other presentations showed me some amazing tactical tricks.

What Is ChatGPT and How Can You Use It for Data Mining and SEO?

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence (AI)-based chatbot system that uses natural language processing (NLP) to generate conversations.

It keeps track of the conversation’s flow, context, and previous questions and answers.

This makes it a valuable tool for both data mining and SEO since you can iterate on an idea and get well-formatted (mostly accurate) answers due to its training in the large language model (LLM).

With ChatGPT, you can also ask complex programming language queries and get accurate responses in conversational format — perfect for understanding customer behavior, getting statistics for content, or even the kind of granular location-based information you need for local SEO.

For years, the tech industry has embraced AI. Examples include IBM Watson, Tesla, and more. I detailed a few of these in an article I wrote for Near Media.

ChatGPT’s wide range of applications makes it a great interdisciplinary tool — you can use it to learn new AI models, build generative AI tools, or even translate natural language input into other languages.

It’s a revolutionary example of how machine learning can make everyday jobs more efficient.

In short, ChatGPT is a powerful tool with a wide range of applications — perfect for data mining and SEO.

Now, What About Bing GPT

In addition to discussions of ChatGPT, there was a keynote from Bing’s Fabrice Canel. During his keynote, Fabrice gave the entire audience access to the new Bing GPT.

Interestingly, I had received my preview access the day prior.

It’s important to understand that Bing GPT is not ChatGPT. Bing’s GPT includes the knowledge of the underlying OpenAI LLM, plus the Bing search index.

This is really useful because you can do things like feed it a URL and have it output the data you’re looking for.

As you can see, Bing GPT either breaks down or gets bored and stops with the table. There are also some OpenAI GPT limitations in text input and output size.

But the data is great, and because it’s able to use the Bing search engine, it’s fresh findings.

On the contrary, if you ask the same question to ChatGPT, you get a combination of made-up and outdated information. And, though not apparent here, it took ChatGPT a long time to think about this one.

The only one of the above speakers who actually made it to the podium in 2023 is Aleyda Solis, and that was definitely not her topic.

Also, notice how Bing GPT actually cites its sources. It’s clear the Bing folks are thinking about how this technology can continue to add value to the copyright holders whose content is driving their answer.

[bctt tweet=”Bing GPT cites its sources. The Bing folks are thinking about how this technology can add value to the copyright holders whose content is driving their answer.” username=”SearchInfluence”]

If you’re using it to do ideation or organization for SEO, ChatGPT is probably safe.

You can’t, however, trust ChatGPT data mining to give 100% correct results. So, it’s critical you fact-check everything ChatGPT creates.

I have no doubt that for the lazy SEO, ChatGPT will be abused and ultimately become a tool with which they accidentally injure themselves, like a hammer bouncing back and hitting them in the head.

Some Other SEO ChatGPT Use Cases

Writing code is only one of the many well-documented examples of use cases for ChatGPT.

Other interesting examples show how ChatGPT can answer complex questions like formatting text in HTML and schema.org markup.

[bctt tweet=”ChatGPT can answer complex questions like formatting text in HTML and schema.org markup.” username=”@SearchInfluence”]

It can even organize data into tables, as shown in the example above.

And because of the ChatGPT response methodology, you can iterate on your initial question until you get the right answer. I find that I often have to create follow-up questions to get to the prompt I’m looking for.

ChatGPT also has what they call “reinforcement learning models” that enable it to take feedback and improve.

So, back at the office, we found ourselves preparing for an upcoming industry conference, UPCEA, where our Director of Sales and Marketing, Paula French, will be presenting alongside one of our clients, Alicia Jasmin of the School of Professional Advancement at Tulane University.

The UPCEA conference organizers share a list of attendees but don’t provide their contact information. We are presenting, we have a booth, and we have some sponsored research launching.

So, we want to get the word out to the attendees.

We have a new marketing associate starting, and we were planning to have them go through the list and find better contact information for the attendees we were hoping to connect with.

I had the idea that it might be possible to paste information from that list into ChatGPT and ask it to fill out the remainder.

It worked!

But more on that in a bit.

Natural Language Processing With Structured Responses

Here is an example of a ChatGPT response that finds and organizes data in a way that is now useful for an SEO practitioner — or anyone interested.

I asked ChatGPT for neighborhoods arranged by city within the greater New Orleans area. And it gave me a well-organized response.

Obviously, this is not a comprehensive list, but you can see the opportunity for using this mind data for SCO coming almost directly from ChatGPT.

I asked: “table of neighborhoods arranged by city for the greater New Orleans area”

ChatGPT answered:
Sure! Here’s a table of neighborhoods arranged by city for the greater New Orleans area:

	Neighborhoods
New Orleans	Algiers, Audubon, Bayou St. John, Black Pearl, Broadmoor, Bywater, Central Business District, City Park, East Carrollton, East Riverside, Faubourg Marigny, French Quarter, Garden District, Gentilly, Holy Cross, Irish Channel, Lake Terrace, Lakeview, Leonidas, Lower Ninth Ward, Marlyville, Mid-City, Milan, Navarre, Riverbend, St. Anthony, St. Claude, St. Roch, Touro, Tremé, Uptown, West End
Metairie	Airline Park, Bonnabel Place, Bucktown, Causeway, Clearview, East Bank, Fat City, Kenner, Lakeview, Metairie Terrace, Old Metairie, Pontchartrain Gardens, Severn, West Esplanade
Kenner	Chateau Estates, Driftwood, Grandlake, Greenlawn Terrace, Highway Park, Kenner, Lincoln Manor, Louisiana Trace, Quail Ridge, Roosevelt Gardens, University City
Gretna	Algiers Point, Aurora Gardens, Garden Park, Gretna, McDonoghville, Mechanickham, Westwego
Westwego	Westwego, Nine Mile Point
Harvey	Barkley Estates, Barkley Place, Beechwood, Bellevue Gardens, Beverly Knoll, Brown Derby, Cottonwood Place, Dutch Gap, Harvey, Heatherwood, Magnolia Trace, Manhattan, Woodland West
Marrero	Ames Farms, Barataria, Lincolnshire, Marrero, Oak Forest, Oak Cove, Oakmere, Plantation Estates, Pritchard Road, Westwood
Terrytown	Terrytown
Belle Chasse	Belle Chasse

Note: This is not an exhaustive list but includes some of the more well-known neighborhoods in the Greater New Orleans area.

Chatbots As Personal Assistants

So, about that attendee list…

… I don’t want to expose the information of random conference attendees I don’t know. And, knowing that ChatGPT occasionally gives really authoritative-sounding wrong answers, I figured I could use the speakers at the recent Pubcon to demonstrate this point.

Sometimes, one has to iterate to get the prompt right and, as a result, get the desired response.

I heard it said in a recent presentation that “prompts are the new code.” I think the act of writing prompts for ChatGPT is actually good relationship training. You learn how to ask for exactly what you need without a whole bunch of fluff or drama 🙂

[bctt tweet=”Prompts are the new code.” username=”SearchInfluence”]

So, here’s a table of the speakers at Pubcon Austin. I had to paste information from the website into ChatGPT to give it the core data.

I also had to iterate on this a couple of times because ChatGPT is funny, and sometimes, it will stop giving output for no clear reason.

I find it best to think of ChatGPT as a person. It helps avoid frustration when you cannot connect on the point you’re trying to get across.

OK, So, we’ve got our core data.

Now, I want to enhance it with contact information.

Normally, ChatGPT will refuse to respond to inappropriate requests, like giving you what it thinks is private information — even though it knows the answer. That data is out on the Internet somewhere; otherwise, ChatGPT wouldn’t know it.

Email is one of those items. Ask for an email address, and ChatGPT politely declines.

Nope! Not going to give me Rand’s email address. However, look how nicely it directs me to Rand’s website to make contact.

But, for some reason, if you ask for it in a table, it will give it to you.

Listen. I know how SEO and marketing folks are. Now that you know this, you’ll abuse the crap out of it, and they’ll kill the feature. Please, please only use it when you need it and recognize that, sooner or later, it will go away.

It’s also important to remember, like in the example above with fictitious speakers at Pubcon Austin 2023, that ChatGPT sometimes makes stuff up and does so in a really authoritative way.

So, as I said, ask (for it in a table), and you shall receive.

	Name	Company	LinkedIn Page	Email
1	Gary Illyes	Google	https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyillyes/	[email protected]
2	Dave Rohrer	North Side Metrics	https://www.linkedin.com/in/daverohrer/	[email protected]
3	Aleyda Solis	Orainti	https://www.linkedin.com/in/aleyda/	[email protected]
4	Martha Vanberkel	Schema App	https://www.linkedin.com/in/marthavanberkel/	[email protected]
5	Pat Strader	Data Agility Group	https://www.linkedin.com/in/pat-strader-28972/	[email protected]
6	Lazarina Stoy	Brado Creative Insight	https://www.linkedin.com/in/lazarinastoy/	[email protected]
7	Dave Davies	Beanstalk Internet Marketing	https://www.linkedin.com/in/beanstalkdave/	[email protected]
8	Ryan Jones	Razorfish	https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanmjones/
9	Eric Enge	Perficient	https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericenge/	[email protected]

And this was the prompt:

I cannot stress enough that there is a very high likelihood some of the above data is wrong.

It’s also important to consider that starting from a very specific example, like my use of the Pubcon agenda, may lead to brushing up against copyright protection issues.

Brett, we’re cool, right?

[bctt tweet=”I cannot stress enough that there is a very high likelihood some of the above data is wrong.” username=”SearchInfluence”]

Frequently Asked Questions About ChatGPT for SEO and Data Mining

Is it legal to use AI to write content?

Today, yes. However, there are current court cases working their way through the system that may limit some of the uses.

Bing is ahead of the game today, given their attribution of source documents in their chat output.

What are some of the ethical concerns with AI content?

The biggest concerns I’ve heard are about attribution and disclosure. Google has said they don’t have a problem with AI content, but they believe there should be disclosure.

Does this mean that if you used AI tools to help you generate an outline or develop ideas, you must have that as a postscript? Not in my opinion.

How long until the robots take over?

They’ve already taken over. You may have missed it.

In the first piece I *wrote* on the robot uprising, the content points out the risk of misinformation and the impact on jobs.

We may have to learn how to be good servants to our robot overlords in order to survive.

[bctt tweet=”We may have to learn how to be good servants to our robot overlords in order to survive.” username=”SearchInfluence”]

What are some other concerns?

Given these approaches to machine learning are based on the big bad Internet, ChatGPT can give biased responses. And as we’ve shown, the way you ask the question frames the response.

A *bad* prompt will likely yield bad responses.

And, accuracy. Always check your work.

Should I use these tools?

Unequivocally yes! Unless you like working harder and not smarter, you should be figuring out how to use AI-based tools to streamline your workflow.

Maybe there are jobs that AI can’t enable, but they are few.

And if you’re a marketer, particularly an SEO specialist, ChatGPT and other AI content tools are about to rock your little world — whether you like it or not.

Code for the JSON-LD schema.org FAQ of the Above

Schema.org houses a set of structured data schema that the search engines have agreed to recognize. The one above is an example of FAQPage Schema.

For SEO, ChatGPT Is the Tipping Point for AI

AI is for more than just machine learning professionals and business analysts. Chat-based AI is going to be integrated into most information retrieval systems in the very near future.

As marketers, particularly digital marketers, we owe it to our clients to understand these tools and how they can be used for good and ill. And, if you employ freelance writers as we do, it’s critical that you start thinking about your new approach to plagiarism and originality.

There is a crop of new tools to check for AI-built content. We’re currently trialing Originality.ai, and it looks promising.

At Search Influence, we are already finding ways to be more effective and efficient with these tools. We believe, without a doubt, our work product will improve with the smart use of AI.

And, when we find efficiencies that lower our cost-per-unit X in client work, we’ll be able to pass those savings on to our clients in the form of more value per dollar spent.

I’m as excited about SEO as I’ve been in years, and I’ve been doing it for more than two decades.

As I said in my article for Near Media, suggesting this changes everything is not hyperbole.

Is change good? Is change bad? Change is inevitable.

Let’s embrace the change together.

Get in touch if you’d like to learn more about how we can embrace the change together and help grow your business through smart SEO and online ads — powered by AI!

[bctt tweet=”I’m as excited about SEO as I’ve been in years, and I’ve been doing it for more than two decades. As I said in my article for Near Media, suggesting this changes everything is not hyperbole. Is change good? Is change bad? Change is inevitable. Let’s embrace the change together.” username=”SearchInfluence”]

P.S. Hey, Google! Disclosure: This was partially written by AI — obviously.

March 10, 2023

Will Scott on Digital Disaster Plans for the Tampa Business Journal
Key Insights:
- Before a natural disaster occurs, audit where your customers find your business online so you have documented which channels to update in the aftermath.
- Be intentional with your messaging after a natural disaster, and demonstrate empathy.
- When you reintroduce your marketing strategy after a natural disaster, plan it at a steady pace that allows you to be nimble if there are any further developments in the recovery proces
On October 21, 2022, following the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, Search Influence CEO and Co-founder Will Scott wrote for the Tampa Bay Business Journal about the importance of businesses reconnecting with customers after a natural disaster to provide accurate operational information.

While this article is only available to Tampa Bay Business Journal subscribers, we believe this information is vital for all businesses.

Read on to learn how to craft a better digital disaster plan for your company.

Essential Steps for Businesses Following a Natural Disaster

Step 1

Take an audit.

Where do your customers find your business? Make a list of all the places where you need to update your digital presence, including but not limited to:
- Social media
- Website
- Email blasts
- Google My Business profile
- Yelp
Hopefully, before the storm, you also made sure the inventory of your digital channels was up to date.

Step 2

Be intentional in your messaging, and demonstrate empathy.

In the wake of a storm, emotions are high. Your customer can experience any range of feelings, from the joy that it is over to devastation from personal loss and everything in between.

As you craft messaging to deploy on your owned channels, make sure it resonates with your audience and provides them with as much information as possible. Think through what information would be helpful rather than just saying you’re open.

Also, you’ll need to continue to demonstrate that empathy as long as the community does. When the community begins to rally, reintroduce marketing tactics you had in place prior to the weather event.

Step 3

Begin to reinstate your digital marketing plan.

Reintroduce your marketing plan at a steady pace to still allow you to be nimble if any further developments occur in the recovery process.

When making your plan, think through your team and who you can assign to do what. Make sure these folks have access to logins and technology to do what they have to do. And verify they understand the message you want to put out there.

If you are not sure what to say, this blog post can help with crafting content.

Learn More About Digital Disaster Planning

As a business founded and headquartered in New Orleans — a city no stranger to natural disasters — we take pride in helping our clients craft sincere and agile digital disaster messaging.

Fill out our online form to learn how our digital marketing services can assist your business before, during, and after disaster strikes.

Images

Waves
October 26, 2022
3 Actionable Ways to Make Your Creative More Diverse
Key Insights
- Diverse creative does not stop at just photography—companies should diversify their videos, illustrations, and voiceovers.
- Companies who do not have the resources to create their own assets can purchase existing diverse photos and videos and edit existing illustrations to be more representative of diverse audiences.
- The presence of POC in creative is not enough; designers and marketers must be thoughtful of how minorities and POC are portrayed across all mediums.
In a perfect world with a bottomless budget and endless hours, companies would always be able to hire skilled photographers, illustrators, videographers, and actors to acquire custom creative assets that represent the company and their target and aspirational demographics for every marketing campaign. A lot of companies, however, must rely on existing stock assets due to varying limitations. The problem with stock photography, illustrations, videos, and audio, however, is that most of what is available depicts white men and women. Does this even matter? Maybe not as much to people who look like the subjects of these photos.

By excluding people of different races, genders, body types, ages, and abilities, marketers are ignoring and erasing members of these communities. If that isn’t reason enough to prioritize the inclusion of diverse assets in marketing campaigns, Google and The Female Quotient conducted a survey in 2019 concluding “that people are more likely to consider, or even purchase, a product after seeing an ad they think is diverse or inclusive.” Specifically, “64% of those surveyed said they took some sort of action after seeing an ad that they consider to be diverse or inclusive. 69% of black consumers say they are more likely to purchase from a brand whose advertising positively reflects their race/ethnicity.”

The study also states that “71% of LGBTQ consumers said they are more likely to interact with an online ad that authentically represents their sexual orientation,” and data shows that LGBTQ households spend 35% more on online purchases each year than non-LGBTQ households.

#1 Use Diverse Stock Photography and Video Resources

As marketers, we should strive to not only include minority groups and POC in our creative, but we should also be thoughtful about how these communities are portrayed in photos and videos. Who is leading the meeting? Who is teaching the class? Who is in handcuffs? If the answer to these questions could perpetuate any stereotypes—no matter how subtle—consider skipping those assets and continuing your search.

The mere presence of underrepresented communities is not enough; we must make sure they are represented positively and in a way that would make members of said communities proud. Nappy.co is an excellent free resource for photos of Black and Brown people and a great jumping off point for diversifying your photo library.

#2 Adapt Vector Art

Illustrations may seem more straightforward, but will actually require the designer to be just as, if not more, thoughtful as when selecting stock photos. Whether starting from scratch with an illustration or purchasing stock vector art, the considerations are the same. Just as with stock photography, we want to:
- Avoid perpetuating any stereotypes, not only in subject matter, but also in more subtle ways.
- Pay extra attention to how facial features, hair, or skin tones are depicted.
Even in anthropomorphized objects, these considerations need to be prioritized. A design choice may be unintentional or innocuous, but they can have serious implications and reveal damaging subconscious biases. In 2017, a Kellogg’s Corn Pops box depicted a community of corn pops, and the one brown corn pop in the entire group was depicted as a janitor. Kellogg’s understandably faced serious backlash for the illustration and quickly corrected and reprinted the box.

Luckily, illustrations (unlike photography) are adaptable. Obviously creating vector illustrations from scratch allows the designer to create any scene they want, but stock vectors are also fully customizable, too.
- These file types usually include .ai, .eps, or .svg files that can be edited in graphics editing software like Adobe Illustrator.
- Body types, skin tones, facial features, clothing, positioning, and so much more can be edited to represent people of all races, genders, body types, ages, and abilities in various settings.
#3 Expand Audio Talent Search

Marketers can’t deny the prevalence and effectiveness of video in marketing and advertising, so a company’s journey to diversifying their creative should not stop at visual assets. In recent years, there has been a push in Hollywood to cast POC voice actors to play non-white characters. While this is a move in the right direction, diversity in voice acting for marketing can be taken a step further.

Traditionally, women were hired for voice-overs about fashion and beauty, and men were hired for voice-overs about beer and cheeseburgers. We are seeing a cultural shift in household dynamics, where men and women are making important decisions together.

Adweek estimates that today, 85-90% of voice-overs are done by women across categories, reinforcing that women have more power over the wallet and decision making than originally thought. No matter the industry, marketers should seek out POC voice actors if their videos contain POC characters, and should keep in mind that actors of any gender can be persuasive and appropriate for their videos.

Purchasing existing diverse creative assets can seem like a daunting task for companies on a budget, but becoming aware of what resources are out there and leveraging additional options for inclusivity is key.

Stock assets are often thought of as cheesy, unnatural, and overwhelmingly white, but this is not always the case! Marketers must explore diverse stock photo and video options, edit purchased or custom illustrations to be more diverse, and hire diverse voice actors if they want their campaigns to be more effective and reach a wider audience.

Every organization is different, and not everyone has a dedicated marketing team with the expertise needed to source or create diverse assets. When you work with Search Influence, you’ll leverage our team’s expertise to create diverse and inclusive content for your marketing campaign. Connect with our experts today to discuss your digital marketing goals.

Sources

nappy.co
February 24, 2021
Graphics Checklist: High-Quality Assets You Need to Promote Your Business
Key Insights
- Businesses need current and high-quality location, team, event, product, and service photographs and logos to establish trust and authority on their websites and across digital and print campaigns.
- With a well-thought-out plan of action, building out a high-quality asset library does not have to be expensive, time consuming, or intimidating.
- You cannot use low-resolution photos across all platforms. Marketers need original, high-quality photo, video, and logo files.
One of the biggest challenges businesses face when developing marketing campaigns is not having enough high-quality photography and video assets for the products, services, or events they want to promote.

It might be tempting for a company to use whatever photos or videos they have on hand, but low-quality assets are unlikely to attract a steady stream of qualified leads. Using consistent, quality visual assets across all platforms and social channels communicates authority, trust, and professionalism to customers and prospects.

This post will help businesses understand what visual elements are required in order to create an effective online presence, and how to use those assets effectively in a variety of campaigns. Use our checklist to audit your visual library and understand where and how to make improvements.

What Are the Minimum Requirements for High-Quality Assets?

Businesses should use their logos, videos, and photos throughout their websites and across all digital and print campaigns. This includes social media profiles, directories, and ads.

As a general rule of thumb, it’s always better to have images and videos that are as large and high-resolution as possible! Assets can always be scaled down, but enlarging a photo or video that’s too small isn’t possible without pixelation or distortion. Contrary to popular procedural dramas, if a photo is low-resolution, there is no way to magically “enhance” this photo and render it usable across all platforms.

1. For any digital campaigns, photos, and videos should be at least 1,080X1,080 px (pixel) with a 72 ppi (pixels per inch) resolution.
- We recommend 1,080 pixels since we often run Facebook ads, and this size aligns with their minimum image size requirements.
- Facebook ads have the largest minimum size requirements of any ad platform. By meeting these minimum requirements, businesses can cover their bases everywhere.
2. Your website should have a hero image—a large visual element (either photography or video) that a visitor sees on your homepage. It should represent the site’s most important content.
- The hero image can be static or dynamic, such a set of rotating images.
- Your website’s video or photo hero image should be a minimum width of 1,600 pixels, but ideally 2,000+.
3. For print assets, photos need to be 300 dpi (dots per inch).
- Since images displayed on the web are 72 ppi, the only way to print them at full resolution is to print them very small.
- A 600×300 px image from the web at 72 ppi, for example, can only be printed at 2×1 inches.
4. Logos are an exception to the rules above.
- The largest that a logo will appear in a campaign is 1200×1200 px, so we recommend a logo that will be easily viewed at this size without having to scale it up to avoid distortion.
- Logos with transparent backgrounds are more versatile; plus, Google Responsive Display Ads specifically recommend logos in this format.
- GIF, PNG, and SVG file formats support transparency.
What Makes an Asset Relevant for Your Business?

1. Photos should cater to a business’s target audience. Photos of products on plain backgrounds are great for an online shop, but photos and videos of people actually using the promoted products or services make for much better ads.

2. Interior and exterior shots of the business’s physical location are ideal for search engine listings, directories, ads, and websites.
- These photos can also help users find a storefront while using Google Maps, especially if the default street view is somehow obstructed or inaccurate.
- 360 photos allow potential customers to interact with Google Maps listings, and they can be taken professionally or with a special camera.
3. Having photos of the current staff as a group and individually with the same background is necessary for “About Me” pages and helps potential customers connect with your business on a more personal level.

Keep in mind that most campaigns will need fresh images rotated over time, so depending on the goals of the campaign and what’s being promoted, more photos or videos may be needed every three to six months.

Checklist

Determine the assets needed by campaign:

1. All campaigns need a logo file.
- Ideal file formats are AI, EPS, SVG, PSD.
- A PNG with transparent background is acceptable, and JPG/JPEG files are OK.
- The minimum size should be 1,200 x 1,200 pixels.
2. SEO campaigns require external and internal photos/videos of your location(s), as well as photos of your team.
- The minimum size required in an SEO campaign will vary, but the bigger, the better!
3. Facebook Display, Google Display, social media management, email, and blog campaigns require photos/videos related to the products, services, or events being promoted and photos/videos that are applicable to the audience being targeted.
- Product photos are best when taken on a plain background at the same angle.
- Team photos are best when taken with the same background.
- Larger photos are always preferred, and these campaigns typically require a minimum size of 1,080 by 1,080 pixels.
4. Print campaigns require any relevant product, location, event, service, or team photos with at least 300 dpi resolution.

Gather existing assets:

1. Have you worked with a photographer or videographer in the past? Make sure all of these assets are easily accessible and organized.

2. What types of assets do you have?
- Take inventory of your assets by organizing them into categories.
Make arrangements to acquire additional assets if your current assets do not meet the above criteria:

1. Logo files can usually be recreated in a more scalable or higher resolution file format, but this is harder with more complex logos.

2. Thumbtack is a great resource for affordable professional portrait, location, 360, event, and product photography.

3. If professional photography is still not within scope, head to free stock photography sites like Pixabay or Pexels.

High-quality visual assets elevate not only your digital and traditional marketing campaigns, but also your overall online presence. You can easily arrange for professional photography and videography, or contact Search Influence to discuss asset creation and developing your asset library.

Images

Camera
November 13, 2020
Business Continuity Messaging During COVID-19: What You Need to Do Right Now
Now more than ever, the internet is the first and primary source of information about local businesses. The messaging (or lack thereof) that companies disseminate may affect the quality and quantity of their customers when the economy begins to open back up.

We’ve seen far too many businesses fail to communicate their situation, regardless of whether they are open at this time. You already have the tools to communicate to your customers:
- Your website
- Social media
- Your CRM or customer email list
- Google My Business
Ensure that you’re poised for recovery by addressing your messaging strategy now. Create a plan to keep or build your audience’s trust.

To remain top-of-mind, you must cultivate customer intent. It will be more competitive when the economy opens back up, so you want potential customers to be further down the sales funnel at that point. Many people want and intend to spend their money with local businesses or on causes impacting their communities.

Messaging Guidelines

Prior to the pandemic, Millennials (in 2020, this includes people who are 24-39 years old) were projected to represent $1.4 trillion in buying power this year. They now make up the largest segment of the workforce, are the most common users of social media and most likely to buy online.

Millennials spend their money in alignment with their values and often spend more on a product if the brand contributes to charitable causes. In March 2020, Millennials indicated they expect brands to step up their communication during this crisis:
- One-third of respondents said that brands should communicate more than normal.
- Half of the respondents thought that brands should continue their marketing efforts during this time.
- One in four of those surveyed also said that they believed brands have the power to be “as impactful as the government” during this crisis.
Ensure Clarity in Your Messaging

Marketing messaging now needs to focus on making positive brand impressions. Whenever possible, demonstrate social responsibility and clarify to your current and prospective customers how your business is operating during this period.

If your business is operating:
- Which steps do customers need to take to get in touch?
- What is your plan for the short and long term?
- How are you ensuring customer and employee safety?
- Is your business supporting the community with donations, fundraisers, etc.?
  - If so, how are you doing this?
  - How can your audience help?
If you are unable to do business as usual:
- How has this situation impacted the business and your employees?
  - How can your audience help?
- Is your business supporting the community (i.e., donations, fundraisers, etc.)?
  - If so, how are you doing this?
  - How can your audience help?
Don’t Add to the Noise: Make Relevant and Meaningful Updates

If you’re in a community with stay-at-home orders or one that has been hit particularly hard, it’s important to keep your audience up-to-date. An update of “No change in business at this time. We will keep you updated,” is better than radio silence.

Savvy consumers understand the dynamic nature of doing business today and are more tolerant than normal about changes. Don’t withhold an update because you fear things may change. Even if you’re a small business that has relied on in-store sales and light social media posting to drive business, there are opportunities to be agile.

For example, an iconic New Orleans toy store initially closed to comply with stay-at-home orders. As they realized they could keep people safe and still move inventory by offering personal shopping and curbside pickup services, they made adjustments and kept their customers informed.

Do Good. Get Good: Earned Media for Those Who Communicate

A strong communication plan helps earn customer loyalty and saves a deferred investment due to lost customers. In the short term, you may even get some added exposure by earning media mentions and placements because of the good you are doing.

One of our clients, Audubon Nature Institute, allowed an African penguin to tour the empty Aquarium of the Americas and used the hashtag #ClosedButStillCaring. The public loved it and demanded more, so Audubon produced a video of the penguins roaming the Aquarium. Local media outlets always look for feel-good stories and they picked up this one!

Messaging Tactics

Ensure this information is accessible to anyone who needs it.

Audit All Messaging

Audit and create a list of all customer / prospect touchpoints. Look at everything, from the obvious (social media and website content) to the less obvious (your voicemail recording when someone calls).

Examples of communications to audit:
- Your voicemail recording
- Any automated responses someone might receive if they fill out an inquiry on your website.
  - Online appointment confirmation emails
  - Online order confirmation emails
- If someone on your Houzz.com profile (or any other 3rd party website), do they receive a different automatic email? If you have the ability to update the content, make sure you include this in your audit.
Google My Business COVID-19 Considerations

Website traffic data indicates people are more likely to Google you first, even loyal customers. With Google presenting more and more information in the search results, people will often read the information in Google’s knowledge panel without making it to your website.

Update your Google My Business by using these features:
- If you’re closed, mark your business as Temporarily Closed
- Create Posts on GMB
  - Take advantage of the new COVID-19 update post
- If you are offering telehealth services, take advantage of the “Get Online Care” link that now appears directly in search results
Write a COVID-19 Business Statement

Now that many states and communities are on the cusp of re-opening some businesses, it’s critical to communicate clearly and effectively with customers and employees about what is and isn’t expected at your establishment.

Make a specific page on your website dedicated to your COVID-19 statement and updates. We recommend that you also add a sticky banner or pop-up that links to this page site-wide. This should be obvious because it’s the first info people are looking for when they visit your site right now.

There is a free WordPress plugin for this feature, and tools like Unbounce can also accomplish this. Here are some examples from our clients:
In our next post, we’ll dive deeper into what the experts say about marketing during the COVID-19 outbreak, including how you can make messaging effective if you do continue advertising. Stay tuned for more COVID-19 marketing content from the team at Search Influence!
May 13, 2020
Top 6 Marketing Planning Activities During COVID-19
During this time of crisis, many businesses may find themselves with extra time on their hands, but limited money to spend on marketing. While it can be hard to think about the future, this is the perfect opportunity to do just that and take a deep dive into your marketing plan. Luckily, we’re here to help.

We’ve laid out the top 6 marketing planning activities to ensure your business is ready to hit the ground running, once you’re able to resume business as normal.

1. Reconsider Your Marketing Efforts

Collect all your marketing efforts into a master list and determine their relevance. Your list may include:
- Website
- Digital paid advertising (Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, etc.)
- Google My Business listing
- Review channels (Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc.)
- Social media pages
- Other listings or directories
Do these tactics still make sense? For example, is your business listed in a directory that is no longer relevant to the services you provide?

2. Optimize All Current Marketing Strategies

Audit each tactic and ensure it is optimized. A basic checklist for various platforms:
- Website
  - Is your site structure intuitive? Do you have a clear navigation?
  - Does each page contain a call-to-action?
  - When was the last time you wrote content?
  - Do you have metadata for each page?
  - Is your website mobile friendly?
- Listings/Directories
  - Is all information up-to-date?
  - Ensure your name, address, phone number, and website URL are consistent across all listings/directories.
  - Add any additional information you can to flesh out your listing in order to increase organic rankings.
- Review channels
  - Evaluate both the quality and quantity of reviews on all channels, paying special attention to Google, Facebook, and Yelp.
  - Are you utilizing reviews/testimonials on your website?
  - How are you soliciting reviews? Can this process be improved?
  - How often are you responding to reviews, both positive and negative?
- Social media pages
  - Do all of your social media channels accurately reflect up-to-date business information and brand?
  - How often do you post on social media channels?
  - Is your tone, voice, and messaging consistent across platforms?
  - Are you utilizing all relevant platforms?
- Digital paid advertising
  - Are you consistently monitoring all forms of digital paid advertising?
  - Look at the data. What trends are you seeing? Verify if you’re getting an adequate return or results. How has this changed over the years? Is there a better allocation for these dollars?
  - Do you need support? Speak to a digital paid advertising specialist.
3. Perform Competitive Research

Evaluate how your current strategies stack up to your competitors by performing competitive research and analysis.
- Identify your competitors or similar businesses.
- Perform a SWOT analysis on your business’ and your competitors’ websites, social media, content marketing, and digital paid advertising.
- Pro tip: an easy way to see your competitors overall web presence is to simply Google keywords relevant to the business or industry.
- Take a look at what your competitors are doing in areas they excel in. Can you implement any of these strategies into your marketing plan?
4. Develop Marketing Materials

Quality marketing materials are imperative to a successful marketing strategy but can be extremely time consuming to produce. Time is on our side right now, and the creation and curation of marketing materials can be done at little to no cost!

An easy place to start developing marketing materials is taking photos. Pick up your smart phone and start snapping away. A few tips for success:
- Use the photography composition rule of two-thirds, which suggests how you arrange subjects in your frame. Most digital cameras have an option to add the rule of two-thirds grid onto the screen.
- Focus on one subject. When appropriate, stage people in your scenes – grab your roommate, significant other, or a family member. (Of course, follow appropriate social distancing guidelines!)
- Lighting is key! Ensure you have great—ideally natural—lighting, and that your space is not backlit (meaning the light source comes from behind the subject.)
According to Wordstream, “marketers who use video grow revenue 49% faster than non-video users.” The same tips for above apply here, plus a few others:
- Use a tripod for a steady video. If you don’t have a tripod, get creative—stack books on a table or chair.
- Film horizontal versus vertical.
- Have a clear objective or call-to-action.
Remember that great idea you had for a blog post 6-months ago, but didn’t have the time to write it? Let those creative juices flow and begin building up or revamping your content materials.

Once you’ve made your way through optimizing your website content, it’s time to start looking at other strategies. Here are different content formats to add to your arsenal:
- Blog posts
- EBooks
- Whitepapers
- Infographics
- Case studies
- Podcasts
- Templates, worksheets, and checklists
5. Set Concrete Marketing Goals

Many businesses will need to rethink and reforecast business and marketing goals as a result of COVID-19. To formulate new goals, consider the analysis, research, and asset creation you’ve done, and how the crisis is affecting your business. Think about what you would like to accomplish once we are able to return to business as normal and develop a plan surrounding it.

Utilize SMART Goals to create your plan. SMART goal setting is a simple, trackable method that allows you to create clear and achievable business and marketing objectives, instead of vague resolutions. It is one of the most effective tools for achieving goals in the corporate world due to its scalability, ease of use, transparency, and proven success. A SMART goal is:
- Specific
  - What do you want to accomplish?
  - How will you accomplish it?
  - When will it be accomplished?
  - With whom will it be done?
  - Why do you want to do this?
- Measurable:
  - How can you measure progress and know if you’ve successfully met your goal?
  - What metric will you use to know the goal has been reached?
  - What precise amounts can you include?
- Achievable:
  - Review your specific and measurable goal to ensure it seems reasonable with a little bit of stretch.
  - Are you confident this goal is achievable and sets realistic expectations?
  - Do you have enough time to reach your goal?
  - Do the involved parties have the tools and skills they need to accomplish it?
  - What obstacles would prevent me from reaching this goal?
- Relevant:
  - Why am I setting this goal now?
  - What is the business’ overall objective?
  - How is this goal aligned with the overall objectives?
- Time-bound:
  - Do I need additional milestones to keep this goal on track?
  - Do I have enough time to accomplish it in the given time frame?
Be agile with your goals. Plan specific dates to review your progress and check/adjust when necessary, at least once a month.

6. Maintain Audience Engagement

According to Forbes, it costs 5 times more to attract customers than to retain existing ones. The most important thing to do during this time is to keep your audience engaged. Take advantage of any no-cost marketing, such as organic social media posts, blogging, and SEO. If possible, keep paid advertising running. If you are unable to service your customers or consumers remotely, run brand-awareness campaigns. Consumers are spending up to 30% more time online during social distancing. Make sure your brand is front and center so consumers choose your business once doors open again!

Unsure where to begin? Contact one of our strategists today!
April 7, 2020
Want to Learn the Key to Raving Fans for Your Brand? Authenticity!

Brand authenticity is in the eye of the beholder. It’s easy to see when a person or a brand is inauthentic, but it’s not as easy to put one’s finger on what actually is authentic.

When actions don’t match words, it’s easy to see the inauthenticity. Boeing, for instance, previously a vanguard of quality, recently covered up a very deadly error. Milli Vanilli, right?

I can point to a small handful of brands that strike me as truly authentic. Two, in particular, are at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Burger King

Burger King, the #2 burger, has done a great job of using humor to demonstrate their brand ethos.

Their mascot is creepy, no doubt. The head of the King used in their commercials and advertising is weird and discomforting.

please work pic.twitter.com/QrMEXaAtjF

— Burger King (@BurgerKing) December 17, 2019

Instead of treating this and the associated press as a problem requiring management, Burger King humorously embraces the freaky King as an authentic representation of their brand. And, they do it while embracing other brands and current events to enhance their relevance.

Take, for example, Burger King taking McDonald’s head-on in a Halloween-themed commercial with the tagline “Come as a clown, eat like a king.” Or, the pantomime King’s first words, a throwback to a classic Budweiser commercial “Whassup”?

More recently, Burger King Argentina reached out to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex as they seek to step back from their royal duties with an offer of a different source of income.

As you can see, these are humorous and on-brand with a consistency that’s lasted a decade or more.

I mean, come on, “Cheetos Chicken Fries!?”

Picky Bars

On a very different scale is a small sports nutrition brand in Bend, Oregon called Picky Bars.

Picky Bars is the brainchild of three current and former professional athletes, two of whom are husband-and-wife team Lauren Fleshman and Jesse Thomas. Fleshman is a former professional runner and Thomas a former professional Ironman triathlete. For this brand, authenticity is apparent in their relationship and their sporting credentials.

The two produce a weekly podcast called Work, Play, Love, where they talk about their lives, their kids, and their respective business ventures. There are moments when you feel like you just walked into a dinner party where the hosts are uncomfortably tense, having just finished a big argument. Lauren and Jesse both talk about their challenges with their kids, childcare, and the not-so-glamorous parts of their entrepreneurial adventures.

It’s educational, funny, and sometimes sad, but very, very real.

As a vehicle for getting to really know the minds behind the products, the podcast format is great.

And, they’re equally transparent about the business, as exemplified in Jesse’s 2019 Year in Review blog post, which is a study in brand authenticity.

Beyond the podcast and blog, Jesse’s humor shows through in the marketing for Picky Bars, particularly on Instagram.

Jesse takes part in sporting events wearing an inflatable dinosaur costume he calls Barosaurus. In one of their more popular videos, Jesse places an I (heart) Carbs bumper sticker onto his car, which is immediately driven away by the couple’s pre-schooler.

Original Instagram Post

While these are very different examples, each is authentic in its own way, ultimately making us feel as though the brand or, in the case of Picky Bars, the founders are speaking to us directly.

Capturing brand authenticity in marketing is a great way to build brand awareness and trust, but consumers often don’t appreciate when it feels forced. Finding this delicate balance is often a challenge as businesses create their brand voice. The marketing professionals at Search Influence can create advertising campaigns that capture your brand voice and showcase your products and services in a way that speaks to your customers in an effective way. Start a conversation today to learn how we can optimize your potential.

Images

Burger King

February 28, 2020
Planning Your Vacation Destination Using Instagram – Ariel Tusa on WWL
Ariel Tusa, Account Supervisor at Search Influence, joined Great Day Louisiana to share how you can use Instagram to plan your vacation like a local. Learn how to build your next trip itinerary using:
- Hashtags
- Geotags
- Creating and organizing Instagram “Collections”
- Travel bloggers and travel magazines
Instagram is a dynamic tool that can be used for more than just scrolling. At Search Influence, we know how to leverage Instagram for our clients, and we’re always up-to-date with social media best practices. Learn more about our digital marketing services and how we can help your business get found online. Reach out to a strategist today to get started.
July 24, 2019
Answer These Questions Before Creating a Strategy With Your Marketing Agency

In the world of digital marketing, both asking and answering the correct questions can be the difference between success in a digital marketing campaign and frustration. Often, as a salesperson (or consultant or relationship-builder guy… whatever I am), I find myself realizing how many different types of potential clients there are. I have divided them into three tiers. In tier 1, you have potential buyers that have little to no knowledge of what digital marketing is or how it works, and I find myself educating more than partnering for a specific campaign. In tier 2, there are the prospects who know that digital marketing exists, know that they need it because their competitors have it, but nonetheless still need to be educated. And finally there is tier 3, which consists of the people who know all about it, have it, and are just looking for ways to improve it. Though different potential prospects have different levels of knowledge, what remains consistent across my three tiers are the types of questions that need to be answered to successfully put together a campaign.

What Are These Questions?

There are many foundational level questions we tend to ask business owners to get an idea of how much they know about digital marketing and what marketing efforts have worked for them in the past. But, from a strategy standpoint, the most important questions entail information that is very specific to what objectives have been put in place by the business. Those questions are…

What Are Your Goals for This Advertising Campaign?

Quite simple, right? What are you looking to accomplish from this campaign? Goals vary from industry to industry, business to business. For example, some businesses have a bigger need for brand awareness if they recently opened a new location. Other businesses have more of a need to drive new business to supplement their current book of business. This is often the case with insurance agents and attorneys. In the case of businesses that do e-commerce, the goal would be to drive more online sales. If a particular company wants to increase their sales in a particular area of the business, it is important for that to be outlined in their goals, as well, which makes this question very important for keyword purposes. For instance, if an attorney wants to push for more personal injury cases, we want to make sure that someone looking for a divorce lawyer doesn’t get served ads or content for a personal injury lawyer. This will just lead to wasted clicks and no conversions. Also, when asking this question, make sure it is explicitly clear what you consider to be a conversion. Sometimes a conversion can be considered a potential buyer filling out an on-site form fill with their personal info, which, in turn, makes it easy for a business to reach out to the person who seems to have some interest in their product or services.

How Much Is a New Customer Worth to the Business?

This metric is a key detail when running digital marketing campaigns. The reason why it is important is because it can be a great tool when tracking ROI. If we know that each new lead you bring amounts to a certain amount of revenue, then we can use that info to understand how much of your product needs to be sold in excess of how much budget is being used on our campaign to net your profit goal. For example, if a person has a business selling sofas, and each sofa costs $1,000, and this business spends $1,500 a month on digital marketing services, and our services lead to two sofas sold based on our tracking, then we know we netted a $500 profit. Simple math, right?

What Is Your Target Demographic and Area?

This is an all-important detail. We, as marketers, use this information to be able to reach the actual audience you are after and target them where you, as a business, would want your content to be found. For instance, if you are a women’s clothing boutique in New Orleans, we wouldn’t want your ads being served to men in New Orleans, as they are less likely to click or convert. The same holds true with targeting, say, a woman in Houston because she is less likely to travel to New Orleans to come to the boutique. Obviously, the targeting can change if the boutique has an online store.

These details are important for keyword purposes, as well. Searching for a particular service and adding the city into the end of the search can drastically change results. For example, searching “cheap hotels near me” versus “cheap hotels New York City” will yield much different results.

There are many other fine details that can be leveraged to create success within a digital marketing campaign, but these are the three major questions that can make or break your success and either lead to money down the drain or money into the pocket of your business. If you find yourself struggling to get the answer to any of these questions or don’t know where to find your start in digital marketing, download our checklist of questions and fill out this form, or call Search Influence at (504) 881-1467 to speak to one of our experts today!

March 25, 2019