Content: Having the Conversation

Programmatic advertising – the automated, data-driven approach to buying and placing advertisements – is shaping the conversation around and future of promotional strategies. Marketers need to stay informed about its trends, technologies, and potential to maintain an edge as they promote their businesses and clients. Let’s break down the elements of programmatic advertising and discuss ways in which to optimize campaigns. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are at the forefront of the future of programmatic advertising and are currently developing at impressive speed. These technologies enable precise targeting and personalization, allowing marketers to tailor their campaigns to individual preferences and behaviors. AI and ML can analyze vast amounts of data, predict consumer actions, and optimize advertising strategies in real time. Learning about and investing in AI-powered tools is quickly becoming necessary to stay relevant and ensure tailored advertisements reach the right audience at the right time. Cross-Channel Integration Programmatic advertising will continue to integrate seamlessly across various digital channels. Focus on strategies that synchronize advertising efforts across platforms like social media, display ads, video, and mobile apps. This approach provides a cohesive brand experience and maximizes audience reach. Cross-channel integration also allows for a unified view of consumer behavior, enabling marketers to refine campaigns for optimal results. Improved Data Privacy and Compliance Data privacy and compliance with regulations like the European Union’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and California’s CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) are critical aspects of programmatic advertising's future. It’s important to prioritize ethical data collection and usage, ensuring the processes adhere to legal frameworks. Implementing strict data privacy measures not only builds trust with consumers but also mitigates the risk of hefty fines and reputational damage. First-Party Data and Contextual Targeting The reliance on third-party cookies is dwindling, and marketers are shifting their focus to first-party data and contextual targeting. First-party data is collected directly from customers, providing valuable insights into their preferences and behaviors. Contextual targeting leverages the content and context of a webpage to serve relevant advertisements. This is where investing in building and leveraging first-party data is imperative, as it allows companies to create personalized, contextually relevant ad experiences for their customers. Blockchain for Transparency and Security Blockchain is a shared, unalterable database containing records of transactions and assets in a business network. It can track orders, payments, accounts, and more, giving members access to the details of a transaction from end to end. This technology offers transparency, security, and trust in programmatic advertising, ensuring advertisers and publishers can trace the flow of ad impressions and verify data authenticity. Adopting blockchain helps combat ad fraud and enhances trust in the advertising ecosystem. Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) allows marketers to personalize ad creatives based on various data points such as location, device, and user behavior. This technology uses information to design campaigns in real time, ensuring that each user sees a tailored ad, increasing engagement and conversion rates. Embracing DCO enhances the relevance and effectiveness of advertisements. Influencer Marketing in Programmatic Advertising Influencer marketing is also becoming more integrated with programmatic advertising. By leveraging programmatic tools, marketers can identify and collaborate with influencers whose audience aligns with their target demographic. This merger enhances the efficiency and impact of influencer campaigns, amplifying reach and engagement. Adapting to emerging technologies in order to provide an engaging experience to consumers is part of a marketer’s journey. The future of programmatic advertising is dynamic and promising, and staying informed about this tool and incorporating it into marketing strategies will be instrumental in navigating the ever-evolving advertising landscape successfully.

When we say “Where’s the Beef?” What do you think of? Probably the classic Wendy’s campaign from the 1980s. Or how about Clydesdales playing football? You (hopefully) think of Budweiser. Humor is a global element that cuts through boundaries of culture, age, and gender, and fosters profound, emotional connections. Used correctly, it gets people talking, makes businesses memorable, and creates favorable associations with viewers. Let’s look at some helpful tips for including humor in your own advertising. Know Your Audience Understanding your target demographic in depth is the key to effective comedy in advertising. What makes them laugh out loud? What are their pain points? Make sure your humor speaks to their issues, values, and interests. For example, if you want to sell to tech-savvy millennials, clever humor using internet memes might be the way to go. On the other hand, a more subtle, conventional approach might be more successful if your audience is older and more traditional. Be Authentic When using comedy in advertising, authenticity is crucial. Insincerity can be easily detected by audiences and harm your brand's reputation. Make sure your comedy fits with the personality, values, and overarching messaging of your company. Humor can help you stand out in a congested market. Keep it Relevant and Timely Successful comedy in advertising (and usually in general) depends on being timely and relevant. Your advertisement may be more relatable and interesting if you relate your humor to current affairs, popular culture, or other relevant topics. For instance, when the lights in the stadium went out during the 2013 Super Bowl, Oreo capitalized on the occasion on Twitter (now X). "Power out? ", stated the tweet. “No issue. Even in the dark, you can still dunk.” This witty reaction not only attracted attention, but it also demonstrated Oreo's ability to react to a live event quickly. Strike a Balance While comedy can be an effective marketing technique, it's important to maintain balance. Do not overuse humor in your advertisement to the point where the call-to-action or message is obscured. The humor in the advertisement should support, not take away from, its main message. For instance, Geico's well-known "Gecko" advertising campaign strikes a mix between fun and spreading the word about insurance discounts. In addition to engaging viewers, the character's clever repartee and amusing circumstances successfully communicate the brand's value. Test, test, and test again Testing and iteration are essential to hone your use of comedy in advertising, as with any other marketing tactic. To gauge the reaction of the audience, conduct focus groups, collect feedback, and monitor analytics. Analyze the forms of comedy that your target audience finds most appealing, and change your technique as necessary. Keep an open mind about changing your strategy as time goes on. What is humorous today could not be as funny tomorrow, because comedy trends change. Keep an eye out for cultural shifts and be open to modifying your strategy to ensure your advertising is current and effective. Using humor engages people in a positive way and leaves them feeling good about your brand. Increase the success of your advertising by knowing your audience, remaining real, staying current, striking a balance, and continuously testing and refining your strategy. Keep in mind that a well-placed joke can make a lasting impression and distinguish your business in a crowded market.

It’s important to know the “who” before you can talk about or decide on the “how.”

Inbound marketing is a strategic approach to creating valuable content that aligns with the needs of your target audiences and inspires long-term customer relationships.

The process of building a new website might sound relatively simple - give a designer some text and images, position a few key calls-to-action, hand it off to a web developer and release it to the world. But, if you want a website that works for you (instead of only being more work), and brings value to your organization, consider these 7 things that can’t be skipped during your website project. Prioritizing Goals and KPIs If you don’t set goals for your website, you won’t know if it is serving your needs and the needs of its visitors. And, without KPIs, you won’t have an easy way to measure your progress towards those goals. Also, simply having goals isn’t enough - they need to be prioritized. Cost and time will always limit what can be achieved, so knowing the most important goals for your website will help you stay laser focused when deciding what needs to be done and what can wait. One question we often ask our clients is “Why do you need a new website?”, and someone who has defined goals and KPIs will have no problem quickly giving an answer. To help define and prioritize your website’s goals and KPIs, try answering the following questions: What isn’t working with your current website? What are your current metrics? What are the highest priority goals? How do you know if they’ve been achieved (what are the quantifiable goal values)? Describing Personas It’s easy to forget who exactly a new website is being built for - the visitors! But, who are your visitors? Describing visitors as personas , (hypothetical visitors), helps identify the traits, demographics, and goals of those visitors. Most websites will have a handful of key personas to support and each should be distinct enough that you will need different approaches to align their goals for visiting the site with your own for building it. To better understand what your site’s visitor personas look like, try answering the following questions: Who is your current target audience(s)? Is anyone missing from that? What are they looking for and how can your site help them? Designing a Visual Sitemap A visual sitemap is an important prerequisite for creating a website. Without it, identifying all the pages (and URLs) of a site can be very difficult. A visual sitemap also gives a good indication of where the priorities (and complexity) of a site’s content is. It can also be a good way to show how an organization thinks about their business and how that aligns with how visitors want to engage with the content of the website. Creating a sitemap is often an iterative process involving many stakeholders. After creating the first draft, ask these questions to help refine it: How is information or navigation structured in your site (deep vs wide)? Does the site structure reflect your priorities? Does the sitemap support your user journeys? Curating Content Having a sitemap isn’t enough to create a website. You’ll need content to fill the site’s pages and give visitors a reason to come to your site. Typically, content managers will work with stakeholders to collect content, edit it and identify the structure of the content that needs to be presented on the site’s pages. It can be tempting to just start creating pages in a site and pasting content in from various sources in an organization, but content curation will give everyone an opportunity to validate that the information is correct and expresses the right message to visitors. Through the curation process, content managers will be able to identify what content is unique across a site and what should be centrally managed and reused. Using a robust Digital Experience Platform makes this content governance possible. Approving Wireframes and Designs With the content defined, wireframes can be created. Wireframes are the blueprints of the structure of a page, combining content with presentational layout. While they should include real content, they should limit the inclusion of design. A website’s wireframes should account for the unique variations of content types (ex: a product page vs a promotional marketing page) and the various devices a website could be viewed on, as well as any possible accessibility issues. Once wireframes are approved, designers can begin the design process for a website (creating high fidelity mockups ). They combine brand guidelines, wireframes, and content, ensuring a consistent look and user experience. People often want to start building a website with the design because it’s an easy way to get creative inspiration. But this can have negative effects because it encourages trying to fit the sitemap, content, and wireframes to the design. Aiming for Accessibility Web accessibility is, unfortunately, an afterthought for many projects. There are legal requirements for websites to serve those with disabilities, but these requirements are not the only reason accessibility should be prioritized for your website. The way that a search engine crawler navigates and consumes content on a website isn’t that different from the way someone with a visual impairment would, because a search engine crawler has no visual capabilities. If you want to improve SEO, consider optimizing your site for accessibility. Accessibility doesn’t only cover physical impairments, it also addresses situational impairments. If a visitor to your site has a weak or intermittent network connection when browsing your site on their phone, the website should still offer them a usable experience. The experience of the site visitor, as indicated by page loading performance, influences search rankings, so accommodating situational impairments will help a site rank higher in search results. Accessible websites are, by definition, websites that enable visitors to use different methods of navigation and interaction. They support more devices and content consumption use-cases than non-accessible websites. This means they will be more likely to support new devices and technologies in the future. If a screen reader can effectively interact with your site, then it’s likely that an AI assistant could as well. New device form factors, like low-powered electronics, phones with foldable screens, and smart home devices with touch screen displays will be more likely to provide great experiences on an accessible website than one built without prioritizing accessibility. Defining A Project Scope and Plan Everything mentioned so far sets the foundation for building a website and is often part of a project discovery process. Once that discovery is complete, work can begin on building the website and loading in content. However, a successful project discovery should also generate a project scope and a project plan. The project scope is the “definition of done”, or what needs to be accomplished to reach the finish line. Without it, it can be very difficult (or impossible) to know if everything has been accounted for when building a website. Without a scope, it also becomes easier for scope creep to impact a project without adjusting timelines or cost. The project plan details the ideal timeline for accomplishing the items outlined in the project scope. A project plan should be flexible enough to adjust to the complexities of business (ex: change in scope) and life (ex: paternity leave for a lead stakeholder) and the delays they incur. These changes will be reflected in the timeline of the plan, helping stakeholders concretely understand their impact. A project plan also helps identify areas of the scope that are complex or uncertain by including additional research or discovery time. Stakeholders and those building a website can then keep an eye on these parts of the website build and ensure progress stays on track.

There are so many good reasons to communicate with site visitors. Tell them about sales and new products or update them with tips and information.