Many businesses are in the digital marketing space. However, many seem to be spinning their wheels when it comes to building up any traction with their brand. This can especially apply to new companies. Thus, before beginning any marketing campaign, a business must establish and maintain consistent branding.

Inconsistent branding can penalize a company that is trying to establish a name for itself in its field. Changing logos, approach or site domain can confuse customers and possibly damage an organizations search engine rankings. Social media can also be impacted if for example a business has inconsistent colors, imagery or voice between platforms. This is something that many suffer from as companies can sometimes evolve from or outgrow their current public image.

If a business can maintain consistent branding, they can establish themselves as an authority or fixture in their industry. McDonalds, Starbucks and Amazon are all examples of consistent branding leading to heightened public awareness of their brand. When such a company does decide to change a logo or use different colors, customers notice right away. Also, consistent branding often results in synergy between marketing channels for a business as it provides guidelines that each bit of marketing can stay within to contribute to consistent brand awareness.

For any company old or new, consistent branding is key to expansion and cohesive marketing. What are some ways you all are ensuring consistent branding throughout your marketing campaigns?

The value of a comment, tweet or other social media response typically depends on the size of a business' network.  A larger network means more impact and value can be gained from posts and tweets. A highly engaged network can help combat the effects of small network size by amplifying a message. Engaging content can help magnify the impact of a social media profile.

Engagement is typically earned when a company's posts either solve a problem or entertain while simultaneously respecting their followers.  When a post earns a share or retweet, it becomes de-commercialized and increases in social value.  If that repost happens to come from someone who is already influential in social media, the amplification of engagement only increases.

Content that’s interesting, funny, and/or emotionally charged can help drive this engagement - considering that only 20% of posts should be used as promotion, with the other 80% existing purely to provide value or entertainment.  If someone does engage with a business' content, the business should be quick to respond and engage back.  That should help to encourage further spreading of the company's message in the long run.

Social media can be tough to figure out, and often ROI isn't seen until a social media network becomes large enough.  However, creating content that results in high engagement from users can help shortcut this path to ROI.  How are you all trying to maximize engagement?

Cohesion among a business' digital marketing channels is very important. Now that customers are more involved and have more tools in researching their purchases, marketing strategies across various platforms have become increasingly more necessary.  Cohesion among all the various marketing channels can create a synchronicity that is key for customer acquisition and retention.

In the automotive industry for example, customers have a variety of needs, be it service, parts or purchasing a vehicle. A shopper's journey to a dealership is typically long and spans multiple channels, including using search engines as a base for research, looking up reviews about potential dealerships and vehicles, price comparisons across multiple sites, getting feedback on social media, etc.  Thus, a one channel approach is no longer enough to guarantee a good flow-through of zero moment traffic.

As customers read reviews and shop around for a deal, PPC, SEO, email, social, display and others come into play, and often times these digital marketing channels are at ends with each other rather than cohesive.  For example, when AdWords and SEO are done in combination, they can work together to help achieve a goal, rather than have an SEO page that cannot be used for anything other than SEO and provides no conversion opportunity for the PPC visitor.

It's not difficult to achieve cohesion across all channels.  Businesses should start with the basic idea that multiple digital marketing channels should work together.  This turns the focus on overall marketing goals rather than perfecting each channel as its own goal individually.  In this way, marketing channels can support the overall goal rather than being at odds with each other.  What are some ways you all keep your channels in alignment?

In the race to have the best website with the most trafficked marketing channels and the best ROI, many businesses forget what is ultimately at the heart of their business - the consumer.  Keeping the consumer at the center of the marketing strategy with smart consumer marketing can ultimately help drive business.  The consumer's persona, journey and experience should be what influences a business' marketing efforts.

One way to master consumer marketing is through context. This comes down to knowing and understanding a buyer at any point in the sales cycle - the who, what, where, when and why the consumer wants to purchase.  Zero Moment marketing focuses on delivering a business' message to a shopper when they are ready to buy with the appropriate messaging.

Another oft-misunderstood way to get Zero Moment customers via consumer marketing is through engaging content.  The context mentioned above is what should influence this content so that clients are seeing the correct message at the correct time for maximum impact.

An aligned set of data-driven messages gathered through well-designed technology that connects across a business' whole organization can ultimately stop any confusing mixed messages that can arise from multi-channel consumer marketing.  An enterprise has to, in a way, behave as the customer might expect them to and deliver a consistent experience that goes with both the consumer experience and the business' messaging.

Finally, making something easy to buy seems like a no-brainer.  But in industries such as automotive, it becomes tough to convince a shopper with a preconceived notion about the buying process that the experience will be better than what they expect.  If a business can anticipate a buyer's needs and make it easy and fast to purchase, convenience will ultimately win over a new client.

There are a number of ways to market, but ultimately putting the consumer at the center of the marketing will be what drives results and loyalty from shoppers.  What are some ways you all can think of to help put customers at the center of marketing efforts?

Many feel that digital marketers have an easy job.  Just slap a call to action on a graphic, send it to Google display, post it on social media, buy some keywords and - done!  In reality, digital marketers have a tough job that involves generating traffic and leads, amassing data, and using that data to create more traffic and leads.  With such a complex job, there are a few things to keep in mind that can bring success  to the average digital marketer.

One pitfall is over-analyzation.  Digital marketers are presented with the opportunity to analyze mountains of data, yet often it’s best to stick to the core metrics of the business.  These could include purchases, new customers, direct actions and conversions.  These basic bits of data will do the bulk of the heavy lifting in guiding the marketing.

Creating relevant content that people want to read is key for content marketing.  Digital marketers may become so caught up in making heavily SEO-optimized content that they lose sight of being informative and helpful.  Many just plain forget to distribute the content, which is equally as important.

The desire to be anywhere and everywhere is also a pitfall to keep in check.  Although it can be tempting to do tons of conquesting or to try and dominate every channel, the reality of marketing is to focus, build and adapt based on areas that have shown success.  There is such a thing as being spread too thin.

There are several more tips that can help digital marketers find success.  What are some other digital marketing tips you can add?

It’s no secret that a majority of customers now browse and shop on their mobile devices.  While many businesses have mobile ads running, there are some key ways to think about these channels that should enlighten them as to why mobile advertising is more important than ever.

Many people still use desktops and laptops every day.  However, most of these users also keep their mobile devices by their side the entire time.  When they are served an ad on a desktop or laptop, there is definitely a “third party” effect where the ad is in a way intruding on the user’s experience.  This makes the ad a little bit easier to ignore.  However, most people view their mobile devices as a bit more “personal” than their desktops and laptops.  Thus, when a user is served up mobile advertising, theoretically there is a slight increase in the chance that they will pay attention.  The shopper sees the mobile ad as slightly more legitimate in this fashion - they are more “familiar” with the messaging they receive via the devices they view as more personal.

Generally, people are easily distracted from advertising.  Often times, someone that works on a laptop or desktop all day will periodically check their mobile devices.  However, people will generally not stop looking at their mobile device to check their laptop or desktop.  Thus, mobile advertising should earn more of a user’s focus than that shown on a “regular” computer.  While people have trouble concentrating on a desktop or laptop in favor of their phone or tablet, the reverse is generally not true.

Shoppers generally feel more familiarity and focus with their mobile devices than their desktops or laptops.  What other psychological benefits of mobile advertising can you think of?

With all the focus on the tactic of creating new content, many websites are starting to see real gains in SEO ranking.  However, this may come at a cost of actual customers!  Most of the text on a site is likely never read by shoppers, as people tend to digitally skim rather than actually read content word for word.

In a quest to make a website SEO-friendly, one should not allow pages to become overly verbose.  When it comes to customers actually buying things, they want the information quickly and easily.  Large graphics, videos, and other things that have little to do with SEO-friendly text content often are what sells a client.

Seeing as internet shoppers lack the time to slowly read information on a site, they will instead digitally skim the data on a page.  Therefore, when creating pages that are designed for client interaction, the focus should be on creating the best shopping experience.

SEO friendly text doesn't need to be at odds with the shopping habit of clients who digitally skim information.  Bullet points are a great way to quickly convey information that both search engines and pressed-for-time shoppers can pick up.  Lists in general help clients get the facts quickly without having to wade through tons of location and keyword rich text.

SEO optimization and new content is great for a website.  However, a balance must be struck between what resonates with customers and what resonates with search engines. How are you all appealing to both search engines and real live readers?

In the pay-per-click world, value is derived from how inexpensively a lead can be acquired.  Many times, a low cost-per-click combined with a high conversion rate can indicate a winning formula.  However, sometimes it can seem like a campaign is averaging a high cost-per-click.   There are many factors that affect this cost, but the two easiest to understand and control are competition and quality score.

Competition refers to how many other advertisers in a similar industry are bidding on the same keywords.  If an advertiser is experiencing a high cost-per-click on a particular keyword, all other things being equal, it could be an issue of the keyword being very popular among local advertisers.  If a keyword search yields a ton of ads on the SERP (search engine results page), then it is obvious that there are many others bidding on the same terms, driving the cost up.  At this point, the advertiser should consider if it is worth it to pay the high cost-per-click.   If the ROI doesn't add up, it may be time to stop bidding on that keyword or choose a similar keyword with less competition.

Quality score has a number of components, but typically the main ingredients are relevancy of keywords, ads and landing pages along with bid.  If a high cost-per-click is occurring on an otherwise low competition keyword, an advertiser should review their quality score on the keyword to determine if an improvement could yield a lower price.  Better keyword grouping and more relevant ads and landing pages can make your ads more relevant in Google's eyes, which means lower rates!  Also, more relevant ads generally result in higher click-through rates, which also affect quality score in a positive way (historical CTR and conversion rates are both factors).

Overall, there are several reasons why a keyword might be suffering from a high cost-per-click, but the two easiest to address might just be competition and quality score.  What are some ways you all use to lower your CPC's?

Dealers often have questions about SEM campaigns they are running.  Rightfully so, as SEM doesn't come cheaply, and unlike a newspaper ad or mailer, paid search isn't tangible.  Often times, the term "quality score" is thrown around to describe why a cost-per-click might be high or low.  It all comes down to relevance.

The standard components that seem to make up the bidding system used by SEM utilities like Google AdWords are comprised of things like landing page content relevance, expected click-thru rate, historical click-thru rate, ad content relevance, bid, and competitor bids.  While all these are fine technical terms that marketers understand, to the average business owner these might just be buzzwords that don't explain why PPC advertising costs what it does.

In order to put SEM relevance into perspective - it all comes down to relevancy addiction.  These days, people know what they want and they just need to know where to get it.  Thus, most people are impatient with getting answers or results, which Google is very aware of.  Google understands that if it provides the most relevant results to demanding consumers, it leads to the best user experience, driving consumers back over and over and over again.  That's why if people have a question today, they Google it!

Therefore, when a user is searching on Google, Google is trying to show the best and most relevant results, even in it's advertising network.  The pricing of SEM is therefore less when the keywords, ads and landing pages used in an ad group are all tied together in such a way that they provide an extremely useful and relevant result for a searcher.  If someone searching has a good experience with a site found via clicking on an SEM ad, Google rewards that with lower overall pricing and more prominence in search results.

If a dealer is struggling with high cost-per-click, low click-thru rates and poor conversion, often times the landing pages and ads need to be looked at to raise this relevance.  How are you all designing your campaigns for optimal relevance?

Vehicle specials and sales have long been a means of driving traffic into a dealership.  Before the days of the internet, a blowout special in a newspaper advertisement or mailer could bring in loads of foot traffic.  Today, most dealerships make do with a specials web page, and there are a few basic tips that can help it be more effective at capturing customers.

Linking vehicle specials from featured images on a dealer site’s homepage is one of the most commonly used methods to get customers over to a specials page on the website.  Many times, there is an image slider featuring new cars and current promotions.  Dealerships should definitely keep this practice of showing their best deals first.

Similarly, there are also benefits to linking to vehicle specials in the main site navigation.  SEO for the specials page should see a lift, as well as a traffic increase from making it easier to navigate to the page.  If specials pages aren't being linked to from a site menu, that may be the first place a dealer wants to concentrate on in order to get their promotions viewed more often.

Finally, if vehicle specials are being kept on a "specials page" rather than being shown right on VDPs or SRPs, those specials should contain calls to action that link to the related inventory.  That way a potential shopper can be funneled from the special, to inventory, to the specific vehicle they want, to submitting a lead.  If everything is in order and looks trustworthy all along this funnel, the shopper is more likely to act as a zero moment client.

The above are simple, basic ways that vehicle specials can be promoted internally.  Where are you all listing your specials?