If I take the time to write a post about an ad campaign, it’s because I really like it or I really dislike it, from a marketing standpoint.
Note when I use the term “TV ad” in this blog post, I’m using it broadly. It could mean a network TV ad or an ad that runs on cable TV or streaming channels.
How A TV Ad Campaign Can Impact A Company’s Brand
There’s no way a company/brand as large as Liberty Mutual hasn’t had their own internal marketing people, and their marketing agency, slicing and dicing the results, as far as their recent TV ads go — so they wouldn’t be running such campaigns if they weren’t effective. But, as someone with a 35+-year-marketing career who has been the keeper of small-to-large organizations’ brands, I just don’t get or even like the recent campaigns. They honestly make me queasy for these negative-impact-on-their-brand reasons:
It does not seem a good branding practice to have actors, and now a small animated creature, saying the name of your organization/brand wrong. For months now, I haven’t liked the whole “liberty, biberty” thing, but again, it’s likely working for Liberty Mutual as far as driving website traffic, inquiries, and actual engagement for services, or why would they have expanded on it vs. eliminated the use of the “liberty, biberty” phrase by actors and creatures?
It’s unclear what the new creature is and “it” just feels annoying, and it actually is annoying the people it interacts with in the TV ads.
Do you want your brand associated with lack of intelligence or lack of effort — I mean, the people played by the male actor, recent female actress, and now the creature, who either can’t make or take the time to get the name of the organization right? Or, just aren’t smart enough to do that?
Insurance companies for years and years have had various actors play the part of various pseudo-spokespeople for their brand, sometimes, with obvious idiosyncrasies, habits, and phrases. And, sometimes, these ads they make me giggle, causing memorability. But, Liberty’s ads don’t have me giggling. Think of Jamie and Flo for Progressive, or Jake from State Farm. Instead, Liberty’s ads really make the brand seem like a silly and not creditable one because of making fun of their own name. I’d put my energy into LiMu Emu if I were Liberty Mutual vs. the new non-identifiable, annoying creature. Maybe it’s just me, so I welcome hearing what other brand and marketing experts have to say about it.
Because we believe “traditional,” i.e., non-digital media and marketing is not dead, and often has a strong place in an integrated marketing plan, we’ve been recommending print advertising to clients, as appropriate, and helping to launch and monitor print campaigns.
What Is a Print Campaign?
Normally, when someone refers to a “print campaign,” they are referring to one or both of the following:
An advertisement that appears in a printed newspaper in one or more spots within an edition, and in one or more editions of the newspaper
An advertisement that appears in a printed magazine in one or more spots within an edition, and in one or more editions of the magazine
Keep in mind that often media/publications that offer print advertising will also share your ads in a digital version of the publication on their website, but that is not always the case. So, this blog post is focused on making sure hard copy/printed publication advertising is both effective and measurable.
How Do You Ensure A Print Campaign Is Effective?
Choose newspapers and magazines that your target audiences are likely to read
Include calls-to-action like “schedule a free consultation today.”
Don’t have too many competing messages or make the ad too cluttered
Use fonts appropriately — make sure there’s a hierarchy, so that the most important ad messages/ad content are in larger fonts
Provide several means for the ad viewer to get in touch with you, such as: a QR code that goes to the ad landing page (this is discussed below), the spelled-out URL of ad landing page like https://allintheresults/seospecial, a phone #, and if appropriate, an e-mail address. Never assume everyone wants to do business with you electronically or digitally. Always provide options for those who are less technologically savvy or who don’t like to use technology.
How Can You Track Print Campaign Results?
As mentioned above, ideally, if you are running a print campaign you would have a devoted landing page specific to the print ad in-question, and if the print ad is running in more than one vehicle, distinct landing pages for each of the vehicles the ad will run in. You can use the identical landing page for both a newspaper and a magazine you plan to run an ad in. Just create the website page under one of the URLs you plan to use in a specific publication, and then, copy the page and assign it to a distinct URL for each vehicle. Distinct page URLs will help you, the advertiser/marketer, to determine which ads are driving traffic to the website (just use Google Analytics to check on page URL views).
Whether they be phone, e-mail, or inquiry form submissions, in advance of the print campaign dropping, let appropriate internal staff know about the nature and timing of the campaign and ask them to record how inquirers learned about you. You can also add that question to your online inquiry form. Many marketers/advertisers include a drop-down menu (containing various marketing vehicles) on their inquiry form from which inquirers can choose “how they learned about you.”
Conclusions About Print Advertising
If you’re going to spend the time and $$ executing print ad campaigns, be sure that:
The ads themselves are effective and are geared toward generating leads, sales, and engagements for your organization as discussed above.
Ensure you put the right tracking mechanisms in place before you launch the print ad campaign, so you can evaluate the ROI of the campaign.
Need Help Creating, Executing, and Evaluating A Print Campaign?
As we mentioned in our blog post about our digital marketing agency and SEO company celebrating our 11-year anniversary, recently we’ve been testing more print advertising and Google Display advertising for clients. Sometimes, your organization and/or your marketing consultant or agency either doesn’t have enough experience employing certain types of advertising or marketing, or they don’t have enough experience employing certain types of advertising or marketing related to your organization’s particular industry, challenges, and opportunities.
The above-mentioned scenario means the only way to know for sure whether or not a particular marketing vehicle or marketing activity might generate great awareness, leads, sales, or engagement for services for your organization is to test that vehicle — run a pilot campaign using that particular vehicle and see what results reveal.
Recently, we’ve been working with a client in the food space that offers a food-related service vs. offering a food product that you can buy at the grocery store. They were already running Google Search ads that were served up to individuals specifically looking for their particular service. We suggested they also:
employ Google Display advertising and have image/display ads served up to people reading about relevant topics as well as people to people who had researched relevant topics in the past and/or had bought products/services similar to theirs in the past.
Evaluating A New Marketing Activity: What Does A Conversion Cost You?
While both of the new campaigns had strong click-thru rates, and the Google Display ads had an extremely low cost-per-click, when we did a really deep dive to determine which, if either, of the two new campaigns were generating conversions, i.e., calls, submitted inquiry forms, etc., we determined that the Display ads were NOT generating conversions — ultimately, making the cost-per-conversion crazy high for the Display ads, even though they had a very favorable cost-per-click.
Are we glad we tested both of the new types of campaigns? Certainly. The client is still somewhat in start-up mode, and is still testing and trying a number of marketing vehicles and activities to determine what will work best for them as far as lead- and sales-generation goes. And, we wouldn’t have learned the Display ads wouldn’t be effective if we haven’t tried. We spent short money and only ran the campaign for about six weeks. Our money and time investment wasn’t huge, and we learned this type of ad doesn’t make sense from an ROI standpoint — too many people clicking on ads because of the “curiosity factor,” likely, because the ads were food-related and images included in them were enticing and inviting.
We’ll continue to run the other new Google campaign — the Search one — because it is generating conversions, and we’ll keep an eye on the cost-per-conversion to determine if we should continue to run it, but the ads have only been running for 2 months and we need more time to get a sense of the advertising ROI.
Need Help Testing A Particular Marketing Vehicle Or Activity?
We can’t believe it either, but today (April 1, 2025) marks 11 years of Results Communications & Research (Results C & R) being in the marketing agency and SEO company business.
As we always have been, we are very grateful to the many talented marketing consultants, marketing agencies and their staff, and other marketing professionals we’ve had the pleasure to collaborate with, and to learn from. We mention a few of those marketing collaborators on our Our Team page, but the list is so long, it’s hard to give a shout-out to everyone we’ve enjoyed meeting, knowing and working with the last 11 years!
And, we are incredibly grateful to the close to 150 client organizations — both for-profit and non-profit — with whom we’ve brainstormed and strategized to achieve the best possible level of awareness, sales leads, and actual sales (both product and service sales). Many of our current clients have been with us a number of years. You can access a list of our past and current clients to see examples of industries we’ve served by visiting the Clients page of our website.
AI Is Not New To Google Ads/Google Ads Is Not New To AI
Related to our above desire to continue to grow our Google Ads skills, we want to remind our readers that AI is not new to Google Ads and Google Ads is not new to AI. For years, Google Ads has been able to offer “display” ad campaigns that are targeted to individuals who show affinity to certain products or services because of past buying or researching of them, having interests related to them, visiting websites focused on them, or reading about them on a variety of diverse websites.
AI and Writing Website Content, Particularly Blog Posts
And, speaking of AI, another area in which we hope to do more client work in the coming year is blog writing for clients. We’ve offered blog-writing services for years — and a number of clients have taken us up on it — but because we really enjoy writing, we hope to do more of this work for clients.
We don’t think AI search-engine/tools like ChatGPT will, or should ever, replace humans when it comes to website content and blog post writing. There’s great evidence that, at least some of what is spit back by AI search engines is not accurate. Plus, we don’t think an AI tool can ever bring the behinds-the-scenes knowledge or heart ‘n soul of an organization to website content writing or blogging. Only the organizations, themselves, truly understand what challenges their target audiences face — what their pain points are — and what they most need help with and how the organization’s products and services make a difference in their client’s/customer’s lives.
Traditional Marketing Opportunities Are Often Missed Ones
Our Principal, Gail Snow Moraski, in a photo from around 2014, the year she founded Results C & R
Many Thanks and Let’s Catch Up!
Many thanks to the clients and marketing professionals we continue to collaborate with!
If you’re a past client, a prospective client we spoke with, or a fellow marketing professional with whom we collaborated in the past, or if you’ve interned with us in the past, let’s catch up. Schedule a time to do so today!
As shown in the image below, my husband, Jay, and I had the good fortune of attending a women’s basketball game this past Sunday, at my undergraduate alma mater, University of Connecticut (better known as UCONN). If you’re a fan of college basketball and/or of March Madness, you know that UCONN has had a very strong women’s basketball team for years, and in recent years, the men’s basketball team has played quite well and won the NCAA championship for the last two years! I share all of this because their great success means it’s very hard to land tickets to watch either of the two teams play. Fortunately, we were gifted some tickets from our nephew for Christmas!
Being back on UCONN’s main campus in Storrs, CT brought back so many wonderful memories of my three years spent there (I spent my entire senior year abroad in France as a participant in their JYA (junior year abroad, although as previously stated I went my senior year) program in Rouen, Normandy.
A French Major To An SEO Expert
As a French major back in the 1980’s, I never would have imagined that I would eventually become a marketing professional nor that such a powerful networking enterprise/system/solution (I really don’t know the best way to refer to something that impacts our daily lives to the degree it does) like the internet would ever exist. Heck, PCs (personal computers) didn’t exist when I was at UCONN. The only computer courses that students had access to were ones where you created punch cards that fed some crazy big computer contraption (I think it was called a mainframe computer, but maybe someone will correct me?). Of course, that meant there were no knowledge or dreams of e-mail, social media, or search engines back then!
But, after working at financial services companies post-college-graduation for a few years, I went back to school part-time, and then full-time, to get my Master’s in Business Administration (M.B.A.) at Boston University (B.U.). Post graduate-school, I worked in many a corporate marketing role, and lead various marketing teams, at healthcare and financial institutions. And then, in 2014, I hung the shield for my digital marketing agency, Results Communications and Research, where I greatly enhanced my knowledge of search engine optimization (SEO) and eventually began to specialize in it because I was so passionate about it!
If I had told my 17 – 21-year-old under-graduate self that, one day, many hours of my work day would be spent helping for-profit businesses and nonprofit organizations be found on search engines for relevant terms in relevant geographies, and be found on the internet, in general, I’m sure she and my UCONN friends would have laughed.
But, here I find myself in 2025 and I’m loving every minute of it!
You don’t have to guess or rely on information provided by a prospect (who reaches out to your organization because of an ad or some other marketing activity) to figure out if the online ads you paid to have placed on an external website are working for you. It’s much more accurate to gauge the effectiveness of your online ads through information available via GA Google Analytics than rely on individuals who answer inquiry calls for your organization, or on the caller to remember how they learned about you.
Using Google Analytics (GA4 Analytics) To See If Your Online Ads Are Generating Results
Let’s say you bought an ad on my website, allintheresults.com. You can check your Google Analytics traffic acquisition reports to see if any readers of/visitors to the allintheresults.com website were “referred” to your site because they clicked on your ad that was displayed at allintheresults.com
STEP 1. Log into your Google Analytics Account at https://analytics.google.com.
STEP 2. Click on the reports icon (square with bar graph in it) found in the menu bar on the left-most side of your dashboard
STEP 3. Click on “Acquisition”
STEP 4. Click on “User Acquisition”
STEP 5. In the center of the screen where it shows your various sources of traffic, including referral traffic, click on the “+” sign to the right of the words “First User…Primary Channel Group”
STEP 6. Select “Traffic Source” from the menu that appears
STEP 7. Then select “Cross Channel User Source,” and then, “First User Source/Medium”
STEP 8. Now scroll thru the report generated (note make sure you scroll thru all the pages of the report) and look for any website that is listed as a referral source. If ads you were running on allintheresults.com were driving traffic to your website, you would see that as a referral source and the number of users that landed on your website as a result of clicking on your ad housed at allintheresults.com
My SEO consulting firm is not currently running any external ads on social media, but you’ll see having a social media presence on LinkedIn and Facebook is causing individuals to click on links in our profiles or our posts to visit our website.
STEP 9. Check the two left-most columns in the report that is shown in the middle of your Google Analytics screen to see if a website is listed as a referral in the left-most column or if the word “referral” is listed after the name of the website in the second column. If that is the case for a particular website, then that means visitors are coming to your website because of clicking on an ad (that has a hyperlink to your site associated with it) or from a backlink on an external site. And, you can see in the report the number of visitors who came to your site from the external site in-question.
If you don’t see the website listed from whom you purchased an ad, then, it’s very likely the ad has not generated any clicks, and ultimately, visits to your website. But, you should reach out to the website you bought the advertising with to discuss this.
Our SEO Consultants Are Here To Help With All Your Online Advertising Needs
After 30 years working in corporate roles, and many of them in marketing and marketing leadership, our Principal, Gail Snow Moraski, decided to launch a digital marketing agency that would allow small business owners and nonprofits the same breadth/depth of experience they’d get from a larger marketing or adverting agency, but at lower rates, and more personal attention.
From corporate roles, our Principal knew a decent amount about paid SEO (Google Ads) because of working with ad agencies (for whom she was a client) on various campaigns, but her knowledge of organic SEO (search engine optimization) was fairly limited. Since she’s always been a very technical and analytical person — characteristics that are required to really succeed at both paid SEO and organic SEO — needing to slice ‘n dice data and use technical skills really appealed to her. So she set out to better educate herself on both organic SEO (tactics that support ranking well in search engine results without paying for a media/advertising buy) and paid SEO (search engine marketing/SEM).
Gail’s first marketing job after completing her MBA with a marketing concentration at Boston University was at a market research firm where she oversaw market research studies for well-known consumer brands. She loves “peeling back the onion,” to see what the data reveals and that’s an exercise she does all day long related to all of the following activities (and many more!):
Employing website diagnostic and SEO ranking audit tools to access whether or not an organization’s Google My Business Profiles and/or website are ranking well in Google search results for relevant terms in desired geographies
Making and/or recommending organic SEO revisions to websites and Google My Business Profiles, or revisions to Google Ads campaigns, and assessing how those revisions impacted results
Plus, per our recent blog post, “Is Social Media Worth It?,” our Principal has always been a bit apprehensive about organizations relying too heavily on social media posts to move the marketing & sales needle. Based on years of analyzing Google Analytics website visitor data and behavior for a diverse mix of clients, our experience has been that social media posts, in most cases, do not generate sales, leads, or inquiries. There are exceptions to this, particularly when it comes to consumer goods and service organizations, but we’ve seen many an organization invest a very disproportionate amount of their marketing $$ and time in social media post creation and scheduling when very little, if any new business, is generated from it. Should all organizations maintain a social media presence of some sort? Sure. You want your organization to be viewed as “relevant,” and social media also creates awareness, the first step in the sales cycle, but don’t expect social media to move mountains.
Given the above, Our Principal wanted to focus our energy and time for clients on marketing activities that most move the sales needle and has always believed that, as long as your products, services, and solutions are ones that research shows individuals are searching to find, why not put a good chunk of your marketing $$ and time in being found by those individuals since they are “hot” leads?
Let Us Bring Our Passion For SEO To Helping Your Organization Be Found On Google (and other search engines, of course!)
We can regularly be seen on LinkedIn responding to SEO conversations, and we read everything we can get our hands on about SEO. We also passed a number of Google Ads certification exams. Plus, as mentioned above, we constantly test and evaluate ideas for getting our own Google My Business Profile and website, and well as those of our clients, ranking higher in relevant search results. Let us bring that passion, knowledge, and expertise to your organization’s SEO efforts. Reach out today to schedule a complimentary discussion with us about your marketing challenges and opportunities!
Because one of the services my agency offers is PR — and we’ve had some decent success obtaining meaningful media coverage for some of our for-profit and non-profit clients (as documented in our Public Relations Portfolio) — of course, we reached out to The Patriot Ledger to see if they wanted to do a “then and now” story about our South Shore organization since they covered our story nine years back. We’re still awaiting news, literally and figuratively on that one, but we figured why not go ahead and share a similar version of that story on our blog using the highlights we shared with them? So, here goes…
I prefer to refer to my business as a digital marketing agency vs. a marketing consultancy because we do as much as hands-on work as we do developing & recommending marketing strategies.
Our story actually began with me launching my own WordPress website without the help of anyone else, and my officially hanging my digital marketing agency’s shingle via that site. And, if I knew as much as I know about WordPress and website development now as I knew then, I would have originally launched my site with WordPress.org (the platform that it’s on now) vs. WordPress.org, so I could use the many great WordPress plug-ins from the get-go! Or, I might also have considered Joomla instead, but owning a business and getting it right is all about the journey. And, you can’t learn what you need to learn without making a few mistakes and getting your hands dirty, right?
What’s been particularly challenging as an organization who helps others with their own marketing is, sometimes, as I’ve been known to share, “the cobbler’s kids have no shoes.” That means often we are so busy helping our clients with their marketing, we don’t have time for our own. The aforementioned said, we make every effort to have our firm’s own marketing activities (such as our website and social media profiles) serve as a shining example of how to maintain a strong online presence, and it’s great that we’ve been able to use our own business to test and try out various marketing activities — therefore, serve as a bit of a guinea pig — before we test or try something brand new with clients.
I believe and hope my story can motivate and inspire others considering opening their own business. Before, or right after I launched my business, I was told by one individual who works with entrepreneurs that 80% of female marketing consultants fail. I refused to be a statistic, and regularly told myself that during the first 5 years, which were the hardest. It takes a good five years to get the word out there and have business come to you organically/naturally thru referrals, leads, and recommendations from others — made by former co-workers and clients, existing clients, other marketing consultants and agencies, and other organizations who serve the same vertical/target audiences whom you serve.
My philosophy and dreams when I started my business have remained pretty constant and I’m pleased to report I’ve followed them. I’m particularly proud that I’ve been able to continue to offer what I believe, based on research, are very reasonable rates to small for-profit and non-profit organizations. Due to my years of experience and expertise, clients have access to the same level of knowledge and skills that they’d have access to via a larger marketing agency, but at much lower rates than what a larger agency might offer. And, because we have significant experience in both traditional marketing AND digital marketing, we can offer the majority of services a larger, full-service agency can.
The biggest lesson I’ve learned that I’d love to share with others starting a business is this: don’t think of others in your space as competitors. Think of them as collaborators – people who serve the same target audiences who may need your services.
Our Impact: Local (South Shore of Boston), National, and International
I’ve helped a number of young adults who grew up on the South Shore, or elsewhere in MA, get hands-on experience that they were able to parlay into a post-graduation job elsewhere.
Related to the above, I’ve had the great fun and pleasure of working with my nephews, my brother, my brother-in-law, and my late sister-in-law on various client projects.
I’ve also met with a number of college or graduate school students looking to pick my brain about careers in marketing and learn from me – including one in my neighborhood who found me thru a Google search! Yes, because early on I recognized I needed to create a Google My Business Profile for my own business to be found by local, relevant searchers and this is something I regularly help my clients with now!
I’ve given a large number of pro bono hours to nonprofits as part of a totally free consulting/volunteer situation or discussion, or as part of their paid arrangement with me. I’ve had a number of very interesting local nonprofit clients, including ones in the faith-based space, arts and music space, ones serving vulnerable populations, ones serving individuals with special needs, and one providing financially challenged teens the opportunity to serve vulnerable teens abroad, and more! Some have an international impact.
One of my specialties is helping nonprofits apply for a Google Nonprofit Ad Grant. I, then, often stay on and manage the Grant for them – $120,000 in free Google Search advertising annually. I can explain more.
I also have a number of for-profit clients on the South Shore, but my client base is national and I have had clients in New Orleans, CA, Texas, and more!
I’ve served over 120 for-profit and non-profit organizations in the 10 years I’ve been running my digital marketing agency/SEO company.
I had no idea when I launched my business that I would become an expert in something that I only had very little knowledge of at the time when I launched my business – search engine optimization (SEO). Many of my referrals for or sub-contracted work come from other agencies, marketing consultants, and website designers who need to pull someone into their client work/project who knows how to get websites and Google My Business Profiles ranking well in Google via organic and paid search (Google Ads) SEO activities. I’ve become a self-taught SEO expert and very proud of it. I just read and watched everything I could get my hands on, took Google Ads certification classes, and attended free webinars. I still do that daily as Google’s Search Engine will be switching to an AI one, and I’m already helping my clients be proactive about that and prep for it (Google SGE).
As indicated above, while I do sub-contracted or referred work for other agencies, marketing consultants, and website designers, many of my clients are my own clients, and I usually have a plate of about 12 – 15 clients for whom I’m doing ongoing, digital marketing work for on a monthly basis, plus also juggling several one-off/one-time clients at the same time. At any given point in time, I’m normally doing work for about 17 – 25 clients with the help of some fabulous interns and associates, as they were/are available.
I’ve given a number of free workshops for SCORE and other organizations serving entrepreneurs, and I’m a SCORE volunteer and have provided tons of free advice to entrepreneurs by meeting with them on a complimentary basis. And, related to all of this, I’ve had a blast partnering with fellow marketing experts to give presentations that address multiple marketing areas of expertise! Thank you! You know who you are!
I’m a data geek and SEO geek and proud of it. I’m a huge data slicer and dicer and that’s what separates me from a lot of others in my space. I always say I won’t encourage clients to start or continue with marketing activities that don’t make sense for them based on what data is showing. I consider myself to be my clients’ accountability partner, and I’m not afraid to give tough love when I need to. I’m not afraid to voice a different opinion than other marketers. If I think something isn’t going to work, or isn’t working, I speak up.
I’m also proud that my marketing agency survived our recent COVID-19 pandemic and was extremely proactive about providing helpful insights from the very start of the pandemic for marketers to appropriately respond to the pandemic/pivot, such as these blog posts about using paid ads during the pandemic and how to make sure your social media presence wasn’t offensive and was relevant.
I give back significantly to the community. I was involved with the Braintree Relay For Life Committee for a while, and now, I do a number of charity walks in addition to all the other beneficial work I mentioned above.
Our Focus On Health & Wellness
If you’re a regular reader of our blog, you’ll know that I’ll throw in a good blog post about walking once in a while. You can use the categories search tool/drop-down menu to search on “walking” to see the various walking topics about which I’ve written.
Since my corporate marketing days, I’ve always loved to share health & wellness tips — whether they be with fellow employees as part of an internal communications role, or with members of a health plan I worked for, and from the get-go with Results Communications & Research, I’ve aimed to inspire those with health (and other challenges) to never give up, and keep fighting via my “Keep Up The Fight” website page. And, I recently put up a new blog post about an invisible disease with which many health warriors who have battled or are battling other forms of illness have to contend.
Our Thank You
My digital marketing agency/SEO company and I would have never made it this far without all the help of great collaborators, cheerleaders (friends, family, my husband Jay, and other fellow small business owners), and most importantly, our clients who looked to us for expert marketing guidance and assistance. We have many clients with whom we’ve served as an outsourced marketing department for years, and we thank you for your faith in us! We’ve so enjoyed being a part of your business family! We also thank those who we haven’t had the opportunity to work with for as long as some of our long-term clients, but have enjoyed or are enjoying being a part of your organization’s success story.
What’s Next
I don’t know what the future holds for Results Communications & Research, but I’m excited about what’s to come! And, I know I will continue to try to give back as much as possible with the platform that this fun, educational, and interesting business provides!
Want To Benefit From The Marketing Services Of A Digital Marketing Agency/SEO With A Long Tenure And Who Gives Back?
As we’ve shared in other blog posts, we don’t love the use of the phrase “traditional marketing” to refer to activities that marketing teams at organizations, and advertising agencies, employed prior to the arrival of the internet and the digital marketing tactics made possible by it, but it’s become a tradition now to use the word “traditional,” and it’s something we don’t see changing. As we just alluded to, digital marketing activities are those that require the internet for execution and/or present information in a digital fashion or on some form of digital media.
Per our blog post heading, the aim of this discussion is to provide some insight on the difference between traditional and digital marketing and when to use each form. Most organizations will benefit from employing a combination of traditional and digital marketing for the reasons outlined below.
What Is Digital Marketing?
As we expressed above, digital marketing activities are those that require the internet or other digital technology/platforms for execution. Unlike traditional marketing opportunities that are all about putting the idea of your products, services, and solutions in the heads of individuals who might be a good fit for them, many digital marketing activities, such as organic search/SEO, paid search advertising, and social media posting are focused on getting information in front of individuals who are actively searching for your particular organization and/or the products, services and solutions you provide. Digital marketing activities include:
E-mail marketing – sending an e-mail/e-blast to existing clients, or to prospective customers who meet your target-audience criteria, e.g., meet certain age, geography, income, gender, job title, industry, or other demographics.
Display advertising/social media advertising – this includes running paid ads that are served up by a social media platform, such as Instagram or Facebook (you can buy ads on the two aforementioned platforms together) to people meeting the targeting requirements you set, such as those outlined above for e-mail marketing; plus, Google Ads offers display (image) advertising to allow you to reach individuals whose behaviors, interests, and demographics make them a good fit for your products and services.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – employing free/unpaid/organic tactics such as optimizing behind-the-scenes meta/SEO post and page title tags to ensure your website and Google My Business Profile rank as well as possible in Google and other search-engine results for relevant searches conducted by your target audiences.
Paid search advertising – think Google Ads or Bing Ads – these are ads that are served up a the top of search results for search terms used by target audiences that are relevant to the products, services, and solutions an organization offers. This former blog post addresses when it makes senses to employ paid search/paid SEO tactics.
Banner advertising – this is advertising that is bought from an external website that serves the same target audience your organization wants to reach.
Other – the above list is not exhaustive, but highlights the most common forms of digital marketing. Other examples of digital marketing include, but are not limited to, digital billboards or transit posters, and ads that run on a TV-type monitor at transit stations, such as subway stations.
Broadcast Advertising – radio and TV (network and cable — of course now, you can also run advertising on streaming channels and stations)
Print Advertising – magazine, newspapers, and other print publications
Direct Mail – a postcard or letter is mailed to a purchased or existing list of current or prospective clients
When the list is purchased, the names and addresses you obtain would meet certain criteria that you specify, like geography, age, gender, income, job title, industry, etc.
Outdoors Advertising – billboards (static poster, and now digital options as well)
Transit Advertising – posters and signage (static, and now digital options as well) that appear inside a bus, train, or subway car, or on train, bus, or subway platforms. You can also “wrap” a bus or train, or a bus stop kiosk, with your branding.
Mall or movie theater advertising – posters and signage (static, and now digital options as well) that are placed throughout mall corridors or advertising that appears at the beginning of a movie while one is waiting for a movie to start.
Event Attendance/Tabling – the aforementioned could refer to having a table at a community or some other event where prospective customers can walk up to your table to obtain information about your organization and your products and services.
Tradeshow Attendance/Booth – the aforementioned is all about setting up a booth at a trade show which is expected to draw your target audience, and sharing information about your products and services with booth visitors.
PR/Publicity – distributing press releases to gain media coverage of an announcement made by your organization, or pitching your story to media/reporters who serve your target audience in hopes the media/reporter will “cover” your story.
Other – the above list is not exhaustive, but highlights the most common forms of traditional marketing. Other examples of traditional marketing include but are not limited to distribution of branded, promotional items, and lobby merchandising (if your organization has physical locations that customers can visit).
Why Most Organizations Should Employ Both Traditional and Digital Marketing Tactics
As we’ve discussed with many of our clients, some target audience members may not be “online” regularly. Perhaps, their busy personal and work lives just don’t allow for them to be regularly viewing social media posts and profiles, and/or conducting search-engine searches. Or, they may just not like being online.
While, individuals who visit your social media profiles and/or land on your website because they conducted an appropriate search-engine search might be warmer/hotter leads — therefore, they may be more poised to buy your products, or engage you for your services/solutions in the near future — some other target audience members may need some prodding or reminders (delivered to them via traditional media) about your products, services, and solutions.
Sometimes, there’s just not enough people searching regularly related to the products, services, and solutions that your organization offers. Target audiences just don’t know you and/or your products and services exist. All the more reason to employ some traditional marketing tactics.
Free Marketing Brainstorm With Marketing Experts
Our Boston marketing agency has experience related to executing the majority of the digital marketing and traditional marketing tactics above. Unsure which tactics to execute when, or need more detail on what’s involved in executing them, and/or more information on production and media-buy costs?
Regardless of whether your organization is for-profit or non-profit, because it’s highly likely you want target audiences to learn about your mission, products, services, and solutions, and you want to be able track which marketing and communications activities are creating awareness and sales/engagement, you’ll stand to benefit greatly from setting up and using the following four types of free Google accounts:
Google Search Console – this tool serves a couple of purposes. It allows you to see for which search terms Google is most frequently serving up your website. And, then, for which search terms for which Google serves up a listing (which includes a link to your website) are searchers then clicking on the link to visit your site. This free Google tool also lets you see, on average, where in Google Search results listings, a listing with a link to your site appears, and the % of people who click on a listing link when it is served up to them. You can also use your Google Search Console account to submit revised or new blog posts or website pages for indexing/crawling, so that you don’t have to wait for Google to find this new and revised content, and therefore, wait for Google to start serving it up in search results for relevant searches.
Google Tag Manager – this tool allows you to set up tags that track various actions that a website visitor can take on your website. These tags basically “fire” and provide data to and in Google Analytics when visitors take actions like completing and submitting an inquiry form on your website, clicking on a hyperlinked e-mail address or phone number, scheduling an appointment, or purchasing something. Such desired actions by visitors are known as “conversions.” Without the use of a conversion-tracking tool like Google Tag Manager, you’re never going to know what marketing activities are causing website visitors to “convert,” and as a recent article about analyzing digital advertising results from Search Engine Land explains, that’s so important to understanding the effectiveness of various marketing activities and where to spend your marketing time and dollars.
