Yes, you have a digital spirit animal. We all do. The question is, how do you know which one you are? More importantly, how can you keep it from messing up your digital marketing efforts? In this edition of Plain Talk, we will define bias in digital marketing by identifying digital spirit animals. We’ll also give you a clear path to building your ideal website.

There’s an invisible battle waging in the background of the internet. The prize? Your attention. Brand websites, social media apps, and search engines are all vying for your attention by applying algorithms that facilitate showing you content based on the probability that you’ll want to see it. In today’s edition of Plain Talk, we’ll explore where digital targeting is evolving and how to utilize invited personalization.

Businesses today are investing an increasing amount of effort, strategy and creativity in the content they produce for existing customers and prospects. In this edition of Plain Talk, we will talk about some of the top content marketing strategy tips to consider. We’ll explore how to ensure your content is developed to be discovered by Google and placed prominently on SERPs (search engine results pages). Let’s make sure your hard work is found and appreciated by your target audience.

Have you ever been to a webpage that wasn’t optimized for your phone properly, and the ads blocked the content? How about waiting so long for an ad to disappear that you clicked on the ad, then clicked the back arrow just to see if it would end sooner? Well, you’re not alone; 90% of those surveyed find digital ads annoying. In this edition of Plain Talk, we’ll look at problems with programmatic advertising and the damage targeting top-of-funnel metrics, like impressions and clicks using broad ad networks, can have on your brand.

Inflation is everywhere. Mortgage rates have increased by more than 2.5 percentage points this year. There’s a shortage of housing inventory. The housing market is cooling off quickly. We’ve all seen the headlines, and they do paint quite a picture. But isn’t time to liquidate your mortgage marketing and lead-gen strategies just yet. It is time to rethink them, though. In this edition of Compound Interest, we will investigate where the market looks to be headed. Then, we’ll share how you can best re-task your mortgage marketing efforts to maximize revenues.

In an effort to be more efficient and more effective, today’s advertisers are pushing to get more targeted by eliminating “waste” and driving results. While this pertains to all media, the biggest and most exciting benefit of digital media is you can reach, as the old saying goes, “the right person at the right time with the right message.” It seems simple, right? “The more targeted, the better” seems to be the new motto. But what happens when you take that too far? Or when your campaign doesn’t work, despite being 100% honed in on the “ideal” target audience. In today’s edition of Plain Talk, we’ll examine three major targeted marketing strategy mistakes we see and discuss how you can avoid similar pitfalls in your campaigns.

In 1990, the Canon EOS Rebel camera ad featuring tennis star Andre Agassi boldly told us, “Image is Everything!” Back then, it certainly was something, but was image more important than it is today? You needn’t look any further than your friend’s and family’s social media pages to realize that the “ideal self” is still alive and kicking in 2022. In today’s edition of Plain Talk, we’ll juxtapose concepts that center on the concept of real self vs. ideal self in advertising and what we think that means for the future of brand relationships.

Consumers, investors, employees, policymakers, and business partners are becoming more interested in learning the benefits of ESG, driving its importance and complexity for companies and institutional investors. While it’s predominantly linked in its most formal executions with publicly traded corporations, there is value to smaller private companies and brands to enhance or grow a halo effect if done properly, with purpose and authenticity from all involved. In this edition of Plain Talk, we’re not giving advice on developing an ESG initiative. Instead, we’re focusing on 11 ideas to boost your ESG branding by leveraging your practices.

During the two years of the pandemic, we were forced to stay home and not travel. Business was anything but “business as usual.” Overnight, The B2B world had to grow new synapses to reach, educate, and sell to new and existing clients remotely. While phone and Zoom calls picked up much of the slack for B2B marketers, digital marketing was also forced to evolve significantly. In today’s edition of Plain Talk, we’ll outline the three biggest industry changes that will “stick,” how they affect your B2B digital marketing strategy, and what you need to do about them.

For many years brands, and not surprisingly, the advertising industry shared the opinion that it was between difficult and impossible to bring the services that a traditional marketing agency provides “in-house” to the client company. There was pretty good evidence that this was the third rail of advertising. Many large companies tried to build in-house agencies only to shut them down or struggle as the quality of their marketing mysteriously slumped. However, today there are some pretty compelling success stories for in-house agencies (IHAs). So, we thought rather than ignore this truth, we would have a closer look. In today’s edition of Plain Talk, we’ll help you examine what conditions might be necessary to succeed in in-house marketing. We’ll explore what you gain and lose and whether in-housing might be for you.