The Agents of Change Digital Marketing Podcast

Currently one of the strongest - and often untapped - digital marketing opportunities is YouTube pre-roll advertising. You know them as those 5-30 second videos that run before the video you want to watch, sometimes giving you the option to "skip it" and go straight to your video. Sure, some people can find them annoying, but if you use them in a way that is found to be interesting or helpful, you...

In this digital world, e-commerce is here to stay. One of the biggest platforms for this is Amazon. So have you considered selling your business's products on there? Many businesses think of Amazon as their competitor, but what you may not realize is that it's actually more of a partnership relationship. You can build brand awareness, market your web page, and even encourage reviews by selling on...

The landscape of content marketing has changed. To be successful you need to give your audience what it wants, where it wants it. And video offers a great opportunity to catch consumers where they hang out. Depending on which platform you choose to use, you should know what kinds of videos to be showing them. You don't want to be using the same videos on YouTube as you would on Facebook because th...

By now you know the importance of an email list for your business. But are you using those email addresses wisely and strategically, or are you just bombarding your clients - and prospective clients - with emails that will eventually cause them to remove themselves from your mailing list? One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is using their emails to actually try to sell to their audience. T...

There are many challenges that a small business will face today. How you overcome, improvise or jump those hurdles will say a lot about the direction your business is headed in. Learning to prioritize, plan for long term growth, utilize the strengths of your entire team, and knowing when to hire out certain tasks, are four of the top strategies that every small business should be thinking about an...

In order to create effective digital marketing campaigns, you need to have a strategy. Just posting willy-nilly on every platform without targeting - and retargeting - your audience will not lead to success and get them traveling through your sales funnel. Making sure all aspects of your digital marketing team are working together as a cohesive unit and building on each different part of the overa...

In preparation of a recent presentation on building your email list, I discovered that our email funnels were a complete mess!    I went in, cleaned them up, and I've noticed a surge in email signups since then.   In this week's podcast I share both the tips from the presentation as well as how I cleaned up our email funnels to jumpstart our signups.   Building your email list should be at the top...

You've managed to make the sale and get yourself a new customer, but do you know how to keep them a customer for the long haul? Businesses spend so much time, money and energy to acquire their customers, but often are not doing anything to retain those customers they worked so hard for. By following a few fairly simple rules, you can make your new customers not only long term clients, but also rea...

In digital marketing, there's an ongoing battle between organic search and paid search. Which one yields better results, which one is more cost effective, which one tracks ROI better, and more importantly which one works faster?  Honestly, it depends on what your goals are, and of course all good long-term web marketing strategies should include SEO. But PPC can show results fairly quickly and has...

One of the most anticipated parts of owning a business is getting to choose a name for your brand and products. But there's a little more to it than you think. Does your name easily resonate with your customers? Is it easy to pronounce? Will it stand the test of time for years to come? There are many factors to consider when choosing business and brand names, and making sure you can secure the mat...

Using video to reach and engage your audience isn't just a new fad, it's here to stay. So don't be afraid to jump in front of the camera and utilize its awesome power to connect with your audience through the power of storytelling. Everyone has a story to tell, and that personal touch helps to gain trust and personal connections. One of the best parts of video is you don't even need to drop a seri...

Instagram has over 700 million active users. That means there's less competition than other platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, which presents businesses with a great opportunity to really home in and target their audience without having to spend a ton of money to do so. Instagram has come a long way from the days when they were the new kid on the block and probably best known as a site for fu...

We live in an age where consumers are scrolling fast through social media, so we need to adapt to that in order to capture their attention in quick bites while still staying front of mind. Millennials are perhaps the biggest "mobile junkies" so if you want to reach them, you need to hang out where they are. Some of the best tools out there that you can utilize to accomplish this are Snapchat and I...

Your brand is your reputation, so you want to make sure you're putting your best foot forward by making yourself known and trusted on LinkedIn. And how exactly do you do that? You follow a few key strategies that will help your profile stand out from the pack. A few things that will have both long-reaching and long term effects for you is to be calculated with your bio. Make sure you're telling a...

How do you get people to know, like & trust you? You build a relationship with them, you tell stories that resonate with them, and you make them feel a connection with you. What's a great way to do that – with video. Whether it's for sales, marketing, or just a more personal connection than a simple written email, video has a power all its own. Video marketing is a gold mine right now because of a...

How do you get clients to know, like and trust you, and even send referrals your way? You build a relationship with them. When you gain loyalty through meaningful relationships, you reap the benefits of long term business - and more importantly - referrals which can keep your business thriving for years to come. By devising a relationship marketing system for your business, you are showing your cl...

A few weeks ago, leading up to the Agents of Change Digital Marketing Conference, I did a "Twitter Chat" with the help of my friend Madalyn Sklar, as well as a number of other digital marketing experts. We answered 12 digital marketing questions and had a rollicking good time! However, you can only give so much nuance in 140 characters or less, so I decided to take a few of my favorite questions a...

More than 2 billion people use Facebook daily, which makes is a no brainer as far as an advertising platform is concerned. Not only that, they collect so much data for its users that they share with advertisers to help them target their audience in even the most granular ways. But you can't just throw up any ad on Facebook and expect the business to roll in, it takes a little finesse and testing t...

It's a tale as old as time. For as far back as you can remember when you were a kid, you made friends by forming a connection with someone whether it be a shared interest or some other common or relatable trait.  In business it's very similar. When you've earned trust then you've earned business, and that's laying the groundwork for a sustainable business. When a business or brand relates authenti...

Staying ahead of the Google algorithm curve can be frustrating. Just when you think you've made some headway, they change it again. You need to remember that what works on Google today may not work tomorrow, so be prepared. A couple strategies to strongly consider that certainly don't look like they will change as far as Google search is concerned, are making sure your website is both fast loading...

Video is a great way to interact with your audience. Finding creative ways to reach your followers on all of the platforms they're hanging out on and redirecting them to your YouTube channel can mean the difference between success and failure. So how do you cater to all of the different algorithms that each platform puts in place to ensure you get maximum reach? The key is trying different things...

You've spent a great deal of time crafting and publishing the perfect blog post, are you getting all you can out of that content? Repurposing your content allows you to get more mileage out of the content you've created.  It's not that there's extra work to be done, it's that you're able to get a lot more out of one valuable piece of content than having to continuously create new pieces of content...

Times have certainly changed since the beginning of SEO, where the objective to winning the game was to just concentrate on a few keywords. Today, it's also about researching your competitors - both direct and indirect - to see where they're ranking and what they're doing to get there.   Fortunately there are a plethora of tools out there now to help us dig deeper to find out not only what keyword...

Like many things in the business world, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has changed dramatically since the early days, and continues to do so. Thanks to things like Google constantly tweaking their algorithms, marketers and content creators need to be crafty and smart with their SEO strategies. Gone are the days of just using your keyword phrases as many times as you could in your post or buying...

If you took a poll and asked people to explain what exactly Public Relations is, you'd most likely hear "press releases" repeated time and again. But obviously there's a lot more to it than that. PR is the business of persuasion where it is their job to convince an audience - both inside and outside your usual circle of influence - to promote, support, purchase from, and recognize your business, p...