A Brighter Web | Grow your business with digital marketing

Is SEO still relevant to marketers, especially with recent changes with technology? The short answer is yes, and we invited search expert Bobby Kircher to discuss why. Let’s make search optimization practical and achievable for small businesses like yours. Links Bobby’s website: https://bobbykircher.com/   Papaya Search: https://papayasearch.com/ Bobby on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobb...

Is your small business struggling with content marketing? In this episode, we invited on our friend Adam Walker to talk about repurposing content for different platforms. These simple tips will help you scale your marketing strategy to reach a wider audience and save time. Links Adam’s Website: https://adamjwalker.com/   Tech Talk Ya’ll on Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/techtalky...

After 60 episodes of the Brighter Web podcast, we're changing things up. Starting in 2024, we're bringing guests to the show and talk about digital marketing topics. We'll be back in a few months with some new, slightly different-sounding episodes.

There’s no shortage of digital metrics to measure, but conversions are perhaps the most important. These are the actions that actually help your business to grow. But how do you measure and improve your conversions online? What are website conversions? Form fill Download a file Watch a video Purchase Donate What is conversion optimization? Making adjustments to your website to get people to take a...

The internet is about far more than just making money—but that’s certainly something you can do. Content creators have found plenty of ways to earn income from the digital stuff they make. This list is far from comprehensive, but here are 10 big buckets of ways to make money from the content you create online. Selling a service (like GreenMellen) Website development Coaching or consulting Graphic...

Effecitve marketing requires an investment. For a business, this means creating and spending a marketing budget. But how much should you spend on marketing, and what return should you expect? There’s no one answer, so let’s examine the right approach. Where do I start with my marketing budget? Figure out what you’ve spent to this point. Create a document to track everything and work with your acco...

Digital marketing is useless without personal connections and word-of-mouth referrals. But is networking played out or ripe for you to take advantage of? It all depends on your approach.  How does networking help my marketing? Get to know people in a more casual setting. Face and name recognition can be as important as brand recognition. Build a relationship with people before you begin selling. Y...

There are plenty of great and effective digital marketing channels, but there are just as many bad ones. Or at least good channels that tend to be used poorly by lazy marketers. These are our six least favorite marketing channels. Robert’s 3 least favorite Direct mail: because it’s usually useless and hard to track. Billboards: because no one looks at them while they’re driving. Twitter: because i...

Technology can make marketing easier for your business. The various software tools your company uses for marketing combine to make a marketing stack. But what tools should you use and how do you build the right marketing stack? What is a marketing stack? The set of tools and technologies that you use to plan, execute, and measure your marketing efforts. What are the different categories to conside...

We’ve talked about several skills marketers need in previous podcast episodes. Now, let’s bring it all together and give an overview of the seven most important skills we all need to hone. Which ones do you need to work on? Planning: Just going out and “doing it” will likely end poorly. Get a strategy. Writing: It’s the key to great communication and creating great content. Consistency: Pushing ha...

Creating your own marketing channels is a valuable practice. However, you can reach new audiences and gain extra credibility by sharing your content on other people’s platforms. These guest contributions have their own pros and cons, which we’ll discuss here. What do we mean by guest contributions? Sharing content on a platform that you don’t own. It’s like public relations (earned media), but it’...

Marketing has no shortage of acronyms, and B2B and B2C are two of the most important. These represent two large business categories, however, they’re not as different as you might think. Listen in as we compare and contrast these two types of companies (plus a few more). What are the biggest differences between B2B & B2C marketing? In case of acronym confusion, “business to business” and “business...

Customer testimonials and case studies are everywhere within marketing. But what’s the difference between these two things, and how can your business use them? Let’s unpack how to maximize your customer stories. What’s the difference between testimonials and case studies? Testimonials are direct quotes from your customers, clients, or vendors. Case studies are more in-depth examinations of a speci...

We did it—we made 50 episodes of the podcast! Since most podcasts never make it past episode 3, we figured this was a time to reflect back on what we’ve learned so far and how we made it this far. Thank you for being a listener of the Brighter Web Podcast!  Most listened-to episodes Getting Found Online with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Keeping Up With Key Business Metrics Keeping Your Email M...

Buzz, buzz, buzz. No, it’s not a bee, but it’s equally as distracting—it’s another digital notification that’s pulling you away from your other priorities. Dealing with digital distractions is a daily dedication, but one we all must definitely deal with. What are digital distractions? Pings Rings Beeps Buzzes The constant stream of notifications that break our concentration What are some examples?...

Constantly cranking out new marketing content gets exhausting quickly. Using evergreen content that can be recycled makes the content marketing rat race a little more sustainable. Here’s some approaches for how to create and use evergreen content in your business. What is evergreen content? Topics that you can talk about at any point during the year Different from timely content that’s only releva...

Online reviews are often trusted more than other forms of marketing because they come from neutral third-party sources. You can’t fully control your brand’s reputation, but you can respond to negative reviews and encourage positive feedback. Why are online reviews helpful? People trust objective parties more than your brand People use online reviews before they make a purchase These online sites m...

Believe it or not, there’s more to marketing than digital media. Websites can coexist with billboards, and email doesn’t replace direct mail. The best marketers learn how to leverage both of these types of marketing to work together.   Why should people care about non-digital channels? Because some can be effective.  Not everything can (or should) be digital. You should have a balance of offline,...

If you’ve ever been on the internet, you’ve probably seen some video content—it’s everywhere. Some platforms—like YouTube and TikTok—are completely video based. There’s a reason why video content is so effective, but it’s not that easy or cheap for every business to create quality videos. This episode is your guide to understanding video and where to get started. Why is video so popular with digit...

There aren’t many magic bullets or quick fixes in digital marketing—but there are a few. One of them is this surprisingly powerful and sneaky checkbox in the backend of every WordPress site. Here’s how that Magic Checkbox works and why you should probably avoid it. Today on the Brighter Web Podcast, we’re talking about the WordPress magic checkbox. We did an episode on the Magic Email , and this i...

Does anyone like being interrupted by unsolicited promotional emails in their inbox? Because that’s what cold emails are—and they’re not the only form of cold marketing. Let’s talk about why we don’t like cold emails and discuss some better alternatives. Why we don’t like cold emails They’re an interruption in a place you don’t want to be interrupted. They feel like an invasion of privacy. They do...

We won’t bury the headline for this episode—because that’s how important headlines are. Unfortunately, they’re often overlooked and underrated in digital marketing. We’ll help you craft more effective headlines with a few ideas and suggestions. We don’t want to bury the headline, so that’s exactly what we’re talking about. Whether its a website or an email, we spend ages on design and body copy—on...

Are the robots coming for our jobs? Artificial intelligence is nothing new, but new innovations are pushing AI to the forefront of digital marketing. Businesses will need to adapt to how new machine-learning tools are changing how we do online promotions. Welcome to the future of marketing. Why are people so excited about AI? It makes hard tasks quick and easy. There are some amazing use cases, fo...

Most people say that they’d like to write a book one day, but few ever do. Book publishing is a challenging but rewarding process that too few get to experience. Luckily, one of our co-hosts has firsthand experience to share with any marketer or business leader looking to write a book. Our co-host Robert Carnes has written three books, including his latest book The Story Cycle , all about storytel...

Speakers. Sponsors. And swag. Who doesn’t love getting to go to a good conference? But with so many events to choose from, how do you pick the right ones and make the most of the experience? Let’s do a deep dive into the wide world of marketing conferences. This is related to a recent episode we did about continuing education for marketers . We wanted to take a deeper look at learning from confere...