Inbound Marketing Blog

I have a confession to make… I’m not fond of Google AdWords’ Quality Score calculation, on a good day. From what I gather from digital marketers the world over, I’m not alone in my belief.

The idea itself is a great one—a way to filter and rank advertisers for similar goods and services in Google’s AdWords auction—so that the advertiser with the highest bid doesn’t automatically win each auction. It’s intended to effectively eliminate a monopoly on ad space that would be waged between deep-pocketed corporations (although some would say, with good authority, it too often is a battle of the titans).

Avinash Kaushik, Digital Marketing Evangelist for Google, recently wrote a  LinkedIn Influencers article stating social media is still well behind organic search and email for customer acquisition. He uses U.S. data, but his findings are worth noting for other countries. Organic search outperformed the combined results of Facebook and Twitter by over 15%. Also impressive, email marketing outperformed the social networking duo by 6%.

So you’re ready to invest in your business’ online presence but you’ve got at least one of two problems:

• No time to do Internet Marketing yourself

• Not sure how Internet Marketing really works (and works effectively)

That means you’ll need some professionals to manage this for you - an Internet Marketing agency. You’ll need the best agency to run your business’ digital marketing. I’d suggest a real thorough search of agencies because the last thing you want is to bounce around from agency to agency because of poor results and poor service.

Here are some tips to avoid that mess so you can pick the right Internet Marketing agency for your business:

3 Things They Did Right, And What They Could've Done

Whether intentional or not, with social media, great campaigns are viral, and spread like wild fire.

Remember when Oreo tweeted during the Super Bowl blackout and everyone couldn’t stop talking about it?

This year, the winner of the most viral campaign went to JCPenney. Although the campaign was slightly controversial, I thought it was a great move for the department store.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about building a content strategy and actually doing content marketing, it’s that it takes time. If you’ve been sold on content marketing, you probably know that it’s an investment - of your time and creativity.

Every year brands line up to pay for commercial spots in North America’s biggest sporting event – the Super Bowl. According to network host Fox, This year’s Super Bowl had an average of 111.5 million viewers, a record for a US program.

The massive viewer count is why advertisers aren’t afraid to spend. Budweiser is already enjoying the success of their ad. Their “Puppy Love” commercial has gone viral and now has over 43 million views on YouTube.

With a four month gap from my university studies, I started 2014 with my eyes set on landing an internship with a digital marketing agency. I started my search on a Vancouver job posting site and came across the LocalTrifecta Internet Marketing Internship Program.

Last week, head of Google’s Webspam team Matt Cutts went off on the practise of guest blogging:

“Okay, I'm calling it: if you're using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Why? Because over time it's become a more and more spammy practice, and if you're doing a lot of guest blogging then you're hanging out with really bad company.”

This received plenty of backlash from SEO’s and Digital Marketers alike. Most surprising was his word choice - “Stick a fork in it, guest blogging is done”.

If you’re reading this, chances are you’re a business owner or manager considering your Internet marketing agency options. There are plenty of Internet marketing agencies in Vancouver and all have their own ways of setting up and pricing the packages they sell.

We’ve heard from a number of business owners - some already frustrated, and some who were unaware of the untruthful actions taken by their Internet marketing agency. This blog post will show you what’s happening to other businesses all over the Lower Mainland and how you can avoid getting burned the same way.

You know how most clubs or bars have a bouncer out front to ensure its patrons are ‘on the level’—they are who they say they are—all while ensuring the riff-raff remain out, or are kicked out if needed?

They play an integral role in ensuring things run as they should, maintaining the integrity of the establishment while ensuring its visitors are receiving what they want: an enjoyable experience that they expect when arriving at the club.