It’s almost 2026 — no, we’re not ready either — which means the year of America’s 250th birthday is upon us. The American semiquincentennial will be on the minds of a significant portion of your customers next year, and it stands to reason that your marketing campaigns should reflect that. Here are a few tips to make it happen.
Lean into history.
This is a no-brainer for destination marketing organizations — of course you should focus on how your destination connects to the American Revolution we’re going to be celebrating! But no matter what your sector, little sidenotes of history can be a great way to get a customer’s eyes to linger on your site or email campaign. Did Washington sleep ...
Continue Reading
If you’ve been online in any way, shape or form recently, chances are high you’ve stumbled across an AI search engine. From ChatGPT to Claude to Perplexity and beyond, AI tools have become seemingly omnipresent — and for good reason. With such a wealth of information, these platforms can serve as valuable tools for business owners and entrepreneurs hoping to improve workflows and save time.
Now that AI has become so integrated into search engines (Google’s AI overviews, anyone?), those good ol’ SEO practices you’re likely familiar with won’t always cut it. So, what’s a business professional to do? Adapt, of course! After all, it is possible to show up in AI search. You just need to get familiar with ...
Continue Reading
The beginning of a new year is a prime time for year-end reviews. For many businesses, it’s the time to review annual budgets, expenditures, goals and traffic, and for good reason. There’s nothing like looking back to look forward, since it helps business owners reflect on strengths and weaknesses and figure out where to lean in or pivot for the year ahead.
Where some businesses go wrong, however, is making the start of a new year the only time they do a check-in. When it comes to their digital presence in particular, business owners would do well to make dedicated time for review sessions not once a year, but every single quarter (at a minimum). The digital space is changing ...
Continue Reading
Who doesn’t love getting things for free? But when brands give out freebies, they’re rarely actually free for the brand. So how do you make sure you’re getting a return on investment if you’re not getting paid? We’ve compiled a list of tips for how to do freebies right.
Give Away Something of Actual Value
Chances are that people won’t remember you if you give them a free pen with your company’s name on it. But if you host a raffle for product samples or for a free hour of your services? That’s a different story. Potential customers are more likely to become customers when they’ve received a taste of what they’re missing.
Add Urgency to Your Offer
People respond best to freebies ...
Continue Reading
In case you haven’t heard the buzz online, the Google core update that rolled out in August 2024 has had a major impact on page views and user traffic for more than a few websites. As per Google, the update aims to improve search results so they’re geared toward reader service and are “genuinely useful.”
Sounds vague, right? It all ties back to Google’s focus on E-E-A-T, which stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. In other words, page rankings on search aren’t just about SEO, but a whole slew of factors. Now, instead of working on optimizing a page with the likes of keywords and meta text, creators need to also strongly consider things like brand reputation, site longevity ...
Continue Reading
If you want to know why brand voice matters to your company’s success, just remember the chicken sandwich wars.
Back in the distant social media past of 2019, Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen launched a chicken sandwich. Chick-fil-A apparently took exception to this, tweeting what the New York Times called “a thinly veiled critique” of the new offering.
Thus, the first salvo of the chicken sandwich wars was fired. Within 15 minutes, Popeyes’ Twitter account returned fire with the now-immortal words “…y’all good?”
The tweet went viral, leading to such massive demand for the new Popeyes sandwich that lines formed around the block at local Popeyes restaurants and the company eventually had to concede it had simply run out of the popular offering.
While creating ...
Continue Reading
You already know that email marketing is key to reaching your customers. But do you have the right targeting system in place to reach the people who are actually most likely to buy from you?
Here are just a few targeting filters you should consider implementing to ensure you’re reaching your optimal audience:
Location: Do you want to reach only people in your city or county? Or people within a day’s drive?
Age: Is your ideal audience young and single, just starting a family or on the verge of retirement?
Income: Do you only want to reach people over a certain income threshold?
Lifestyle interests: Maybe your product or service is something that mainly appeals to, say, homeowners or hobby ...
Continue Reading
As any business owner today likely knows, social media is a powerful tool. Whether that means setting up a strong Google Business Profile or managing a Facebook page, business professionals need to have a pulse on what their online presence looks like. Unsurprisingly, few platforms garner as much attention as Instagram. For business owners, the photo- and video-based platform can serve as a major asset to help promote products and services or get the word out about new offerings.
Here are a few tips to make the most of the platform:
1 | Craft strong captions with a consistent voice
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but that doesn't mean you should ignore the caption. Instead, use the caption space ...
Continue Reading
With the much-discussed advent of generative AI — artificial intelligence that can produce various kinds of content based on prompts from a user — it’s become easier than ever to plug your information into an algorithm and let it do the work for you. But should you?
It’s true that AI is constantly learning and getting smarter. But the truth of the matter is that, for now, AI tools still struggle with creating certain kinds of imagery — for example of human hands and feet.
Then there’s the fact that AI learns by scraping existing information off the internet. What this means in practice is that any kind of design AI creates for you is going to be based on something ...
Continue Reading
A Google Business Profile is a powerful way to help your business on search — and it’s easier to manage than you think.
You know that moment when you’re searching for something on Google and you see a business profile card pop up? That’s a Google Business Profile page in action. A built-in feature on the search engine, these free profiles offer businesses the chance to develop a strong first impression online. And, since more than 83% of the global population uses Google as its primary search engine, according to Statista, chances are high that a Google Business Profile will get more than a few eyeballs on it.
So how can you set up your Google Business Profile?
1 | Google Your ...
Continue Reading
