What Digital Marketers Should Do To Better Manage Their Online Brand


In this 21st century we are living in, everything is online, I mean EVERYTHING. Which can be incredibly scary for a new brand, and even scarier if you’re the person in charge of managing online activity. But don’t worry! I am here to help with my experience from class and a few reliable sources! Keep reading to find the most effective way to maintain a good brand identity. 

First of all, NEVER just delete or block general negative comments. Now if something is threatening and ridiculous and just doesn’t make sense, I would say delete it. But for the most part what makes a company trust worthy is the good AND the bad, as well as how you handle the bad. 

Always put the customer first, interacting with the customer on platforms like instagram and twitter are great ways to show you are an active member of social media as well as saying you care about the “little” people that support your brand. Jeremy Goldman, CEO and founder of Firebrand agrees with this when he said “Sixty-seven percent of consumers use social media for customer service inquiries” (Goldman). This means even if it’s a negative comment, if there’s a small way you can solve the problem while promoting your problem solving skills go for it! 

Another way to manage your brand is posting frequently and engaging content. Think outside of the box!! Social media is full of plain boring ads that consumers click past and scroll past thousands of times a day, get out of your comfort zone. Explore memes, pop culture jokes, celebrity references. As long as it maintains your brand identity having a little fun on social media is always a good idea to help you stand out. 

Chris Ducker, a well known and influencer blog builder with tips about building an online identity says another big tip to building an online brand is tell your story, everyone loves a good story and it personalizes the experience. In this about me page, “try focusing on a few benefits as to why they should stick around on your site” (Ducker). Adding a face to the brand as well as a compelling story brings in more customers, support, and likes! Just don’t forget to have an email subscription box clearly visible for after the consumer falls in love with you, your story, and your brand ;). 

The biggest advice is to stay loyal to your brand and try to be as transparent as possible! Customers know when they’re being cheated and when something is fake, and they will steer clear because trust me there are a lot of other options in this day and age! Good Luck out there! Happy clicking 🙂 

Sources: 

Goldman, Jeremy. “7 Essentials for Any 2018 Digital Marketing Strategy.” Inc.com, Inc., 8 Dec. 2018, https://www.inc.com/jeremy-goldman/7-essentials-for-any-digital-marketing-strategy.html.

“The ‘Easy-to-Follow’ Guide to Building an Online Brand.” Chrisducker.com, 28 July 2019, https://www.chrisducker.com/building-an-online-brand/.

Email Marketing: Building Personas

This week we are focusing on email marketing and personas. a marketing persona is a detailed outline of your target market segment, so developing a persona helps you deliver the most relevant information the quickest. I’m here today to help ensure you have the best marketing tools at your fingertips to lure in these buyer personas and attract the right people! 

You see when sending emails out the biggest hurdle is making yours stand out, if you just send out a generic email it will most likely get filtered through to the spam folder, or just thrown out all together. So, the trick to getting your email noticed, is tailoring it to your specific customer. Below I have a couple steps guaranteed to make your email personalized, professional, and noticed.

1: Email Marketing Strategy 

Your personas can help guide a clear plan for email ads in an effective way. Build trust and brand awareness by focusing on ads that add value to your customers’ lives. Make sure to also increase conversion rates by enticing them with a unique call to action that can relate to them personally as well. When these things are done well you can increase your customer lifetime value by building a personalized relationship from the beginning!

2: Align the Email Campaigns with your Customers Journey

This is when you put on the shoes of your persona and try to relate to them the most. THe buyer process can have several steps but the most important ones are being noticed, considered, and then buying. First being aware of the problem and looking for solutions, where your solution catches their eye. They consider it, researching their options weighing out the pros and cons. ANd then hopefully they purchase it from you after realizing you offer a good value.

3: Increase your Open Rates on Emails 

This is one of the harder steps that we referenced earlier where getting your email noticed out of all the others can be difficult. Having a strong theme for your email as well as a captivating message is crucial, followed up with a killer call to action. Your email heading is like the hook of an essay, it has to get the pesona interested. Keep it open but curious so they click through to see what you have to offer them, and always use action words. 

4: The Irresistable Offer

So, once they open your email those action words you brought them in with are now going to have to translate into an offer so great they can’t resist. Whether its a free trial, a discounted membership, or a heavy loyal customer discount, this is where you pull all the stops. Your call to action button in this email should use words like: call now, download now, subscribe today. 

5: The Final Land

Once a customer accepts the call to action button, make sure the button takes them to a personalized landing page. It’s crucial that whatever deal you talked about in the email follows through on this personalized landing page. As well as a clean easy to read web representation of what you’re trying to do. Taking this next step to ensure a 10/10 experience in your webpage leads to a higher chance of conversions. 

“5 Ways to Create Super-Effective Emails with Buyer Personas.” WordStream, Jan. 2019, www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/01/31/email-marketing-with-buyer-personas.

Team, SalesHandy. “The Significance of Buyer Persona in Email Marketing.” SalesHandy, 3 Sept. 2019, www.saleshandy.com/blog/buyer-persona-in-email-marketing/.


Consumers New BFF: How to Gain Their Trust, and Money

It’s the 21st century, the PEAK of knowledge is at the tip of our finger tips. There are Einsteins, Shakespeare’s, and Newton’s constantly surrounding you…. Or at least these people think of themselves as that. You see the 21st century is full of empowerment, self identification, and confidence, all good things, right? Well all good things until you’re reading reviews of the restaurant you and your significant other want to check out and you notice nothing but 5 star reviews with what seems like scripted replies and fake rave reviews…. Real or fake? 

Today I’m covering cyber security, how safe is it out there, and how can you convince people to trust YOU? 

The PwC, a network of firms online collecting information, claims that only “25% of consumers believe businesses handle their data responsibly”…. ONLY 25% (PwC.com).

This is a moral marketing dilemma. You see we are literally the first generation to have this much access to technology at once, so we’re all figuring it out at once. So there’s a lot to understand, where do we draw lines? How much can we really collect from others?  We are experiencing what the American Marketing Association, or AMA calls a crisis of trust, consumers have lost faith in institutions ranging from business to government (AMA).

I would say were currently looking at a danger level of 4 out of 5 on a scale of 5 when it comes to online advertising. I say this because it is SO new and so there are privacy laws but they’re not very specific and usually in really small fine print that even if read doesn’t make sense to the average eye, so big companies are still getting away with a lot of scaring consumers. Remember the purge where everyone could do literally whatever they wanted? We are just now coming out of that in interweb version, as we learn more about how to use technology and how we can collect information about users. We are getting better, some websites make you consent to using cookies now, but there’s still a lot of work to do, and consumers are still scared. Which means your job, convincing consumers to trust you, is even harder. 

The EU actually has a law that requires companies to specifically spell out what they’re collecting from consumers and consumers have to opt IN not out… maybe we could learn a thing or two.

There are grey areas but as marketers it is our duty to act responsibly and ethically for our consumers. So I have put together a checklist to live by to strengthen that relationship and come across as honest as possible:

–Knowing your target market – First of all know who it is you’re reaching out to, potentially the number one step in any kind of marketing so this one should be a no brainer! 

-Be as objective as possible – Being objective wins huge bonus points, explain what you’re selling and let that be consumers guide, your product/ service should sell itself anyways : )

-Be transparent – Don’t pretend you’re the absolute best or the biggest top dog, consumers don’t even like that, shop local is in, big corporate is out. You’d be surprised how a story and explaining your background can gain following.

-Speak the truth – Like I said, everyone loves a good story, speak the truth about you, your brand, and what you’ve developed.

-Think through before you post/ create – We have seen FAR too many marketing mishaps. Dare I bring up the H&M children’s clothing brand mishap of last winter? Or Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi ad that was immediately taken down? 

-Imagine the implications – Basically just imagine your sweet sweet grandmother reading it and how she would feel, would she approve? Even better, would she be proud? 

-Revise again, and again, then post – The internet is forever, read it over, make sure it is to the best of your ability, and then post. 

-Sit back and be proud of your work! – You did a good ethically responsible thing, be proud of yourself! Celebrate!

Work Cited:

Ama. “Can Marketers Repair Social Media’s Crisis of Trust?” Medium, AMA Marketing News,

4 May 2018,

medium.com/ama-marketing-news/can-marketers-repair-social-medias-crisis-of-trust-6

7f3fb1f797.

Boote, Tim. “What Have Ethics Got to Do with Digital Marketing?” Digital Marketing Magazine, 17 Jan. 2017,

digitalmarketingmagazine.co.uk/digital-marketing-features/what-have-ethics-got-to-do-w

th-digital-marketing/4031.

PricewaterhouseCoopers. “Consumer Intelligence Series: Protect.me.” PwC, 2019

www.pwc.com/us/en/services/consulting/library/consumer-intelligence-series/cybersecu

ity-protect-me.html.

“Privacy Policies Are Legally Required.” PrivacyPolicies.com, 2019,

www.privacypolicies.com/blog/privacy-policies-legally-required/amp/.

“What Is Cyber Security? Definition, Best Practices & More.” Digital Guardian, 15 July 2019,

digitalguardian.com/blog/what-cyber-security.

What To Do When Your Webpage Doesn’t Rank.

With all the crazy things on the internet, and the pure saturation of every website and search market out there, one of the hardest things as a new company or website is being NOTICED Websites are noticed by ranking high in search engines. So here I am to break down the insight I have about ranking well from classes I’ve taken to research I’ve done on my own. The number one biggest thing when it comes to search engine optimization is relevancy and quality. How do you do this you ask? Stick with me. 

SEO optimization use an algorithm to help us rank higher on web searches.

Search Engine Optimizations are run using these exact measurements, relevancy and quality,  in an algorithm we don’t have access too. But get this… there are careers in SEO where people literally spend all day observing trends and documenting notes and trying to find a way to help YOU know how to rank the best!

First of all, your webpage should match up with what ad you’re sending, uniform theme is key because if you’re webpage doesn’t match the ad, you’ve already lost people’s attention. You should also choose common words for your pages that are easy to search, making your web page easy to find.  Shane Barker from The Startup, a blog about beginning a company, explains this well when he says, “Your entire SEO strategy is dependent on how relevant your keywords are to your brand and your products or services (Barker).”  

Another crucial way to ensure you show up on google searches is developing your Google My Business page. This is the site where when you search for certain things it shows up closest to the searcher, as well as with pictures, reviews, and website links. It’s very important that you not only develop this page but keep it up to date with the right phone numbers, addresses, business hours, and current photos. People are more likely to try something or trust something other people have tried to, which is where the reviews of the google page and other platforms like Yelp are important.

Another tip Thrive Hive, a current business advice website, mentions that Google’s algorithm has a way of sifting through what they believe could be spam of junk, so maintaining a high quality website is huge. Who’s your target audience? Does your website say that? Are you using nice contrasting colors? Is your website easy to read and follow? All of these things may seem insignificant but if your webpage is high quality content and makes sense to what you’re trying to say, then you’re moe likely to get the ok from Google, which will put you higher up in searches!

These are just a few tips to get you on your way to being #1, always remember relevance and quality is key. You may also find my blog post from last week “5 Ways to Increase Landing Page Conversions” helpful to make sure your page is up to date!

Works Cited:

Barker, Shane. How to Rank on Google’s First Page. The Startup, 28 June 2019,

medium.com/swlh/how-to-rank-on-googles-first-page-43606e3feb0c.

“How to Get on the First Page of Google [2019].” ThriveHive, 2019,

thrivehive.com/get-on-the-first-page-of-google/.


5 Ways to Increase Landing Page Conversions

As a millennial web surfer I can tell you there are blogs and websites for just about anything you can think of, unique niches you haven’t even heard of , and inventions you didn’t know you needed, until you saw them on the world wide inter-web.

I’m here to make sure your webpage is the best, most eye catching, important page the people are drawn to! I’ve outlined 5 key points that I think are absolutely crucial when starting your own landing page.

1. Actually make a landing page that reflects your message

One of the biggest problems with landing pages is people don’t believe they need them and they use a generic homepage as their landing page. Dan Shewan from WordStream, explained in his piece ‘The Clueless Marketer’s Guide to Building a Landing Page from Scratch,” that linking ads back to your home page is a mistake because although you think it’s easy to understand and the best layout homepages can be overwhelming and confusing. This is why it is crucial to make a lead page unique for each ad experience you put out there.

2. Simple, Simple, Simple

Once you have a landing page specific to your blog, it’s important your message is clear. Although color scheme doesn’t have a correlation with success, contrasting colors are always more eye catching than other combinations. Another key idea is choose bold print with clear messages, the shorter the message the better. 

3. Make your conversions clear

Too many web pages try to be all encompassing and target too much at once, when it is important to focus on your main goal. Jacob Mcmillan, writer of ‘How to Create a Landing Page from Scratch,’ explains how a landing page is supposed to be the entrance to a funnel, so explain the basis of what you’re doing but don’t get too busy with lengthy tangents or busy themes that distract the potential consumer from what they are there for. If its a subscription company have a clear email box to join, but if its a retail online company make sure your shopping cart is clearly visible! 🙂

4. Customize your theme

Having a logo or at least a clear motto will help people remember who you are and what you represent even after they click away from your site! Think about all your ‘go to’ brands for different things, chances are you can see their logo in your head along with whatever story you associate with them. Including things like ‘about’ pages may seem trivial but help the potential consumer to trust you and your brand more when they put a face to the name of the company.

5. Identify your websites first post and get going!

Finally, and last but not least, you’re on your own! It’s time to identify your first website and get going. It’s important to take all these tips, stick with them, and run with an idea. Anything you put time and effort into will show through to the consumer.

Thank you for following me along for this outline 🙂 I wish you the best of luck in your webpages and hope these tips and tricks can help you along your journey!!

Work Cited:

Leist, Rachel. “How to Write a Blog Post: A Step-by-Step Guide [+ Free Blog Post

Templates].” HubSpot Blog,

blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-start-a-blog#sm.00007ssv1q6ovdkcq1p1c0jjakt6m.

Mcmillan, Jacob. “How To Create A Landing Page From Scratch.” The Daily Egg, 8

Jan. 2019, www.crazyegg.com/blog/landing-page-from-scratch/.

Shewan, Dan. “The Clueless Marketer’s Guide to Building a Landing Page from

Scratch.” WordStream, 12 Apr. 2019,

www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/04/21/building-a-landing-page.