Artificial Intelligence Has Come To The Whopper!!

by Mark Treager Our Blog Content Marketing Marketing Mobile Marketing Technology VR, AR and Mixed Reality

AI is now being used to sell hamburgers! Awesome! Just under three hours after Burger King unveiled a new advertisement designed to hijack your Google Home to read a long-winded description of its Whopper burger, Google has disabled the functionality. It was fun/horrifying while it lasted!

Your Whopper hamburger can be ordered by Artificial Intelligence! Learn more…

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For the first time, you are seeing how a simple voice command can be used to provoke an ad to promote a product. This sort of stuff will be happening more and more as we have our voice-activated Google Home, Alexa and more devices that will use our voice to order, find, pay for and archive the stuff we need to run our every day lives.

AI is going to be the next big thing in impacting our lives and the way companies will market their products. And yes the day when the robots take over is coming! Stay tuned as will bring you more as the robot revolution develops.

Still Not Considering Content Marketing? 10 Stats That Will Change Your Mind!

by Mark Treager Marketing Mobile Marketing Our Blog Social Media Video Marketing

We get it! Creating great content can be a pain, hassle, frustrating, scary, confusing, expensive, time-consuming and most of all NOT fun! We avoid it! Put it off! Ignore it! Forget it! And often times just STOP IT!! We are here to tell you START IT!! NOW!!

Here are just 10 simple reasons, stats, results, and some real benefits from your company creating and starting your own Content Marketing Campaign!

Content Marketing vs. Paid Search – When you put content marketing against paid search, content marketing gets three times the leads per dollar invested. Plus with paid search you get to keep feeding it piles cash each month to get results. With Content Marketing you pay once for the content and it increases in value over time.
Lead Generation Value – Content marketing often times generate’s as much as three times as many leads as outbound marketing and will cost you 62% less. Why? When they read your content they want to not being forced to like conventional marketing!!
Ad Overload – In 1984, a person saw an average 2,000 ads/day. By 2014, they saw around 5,000. Now with ad blocking software, your message may never get through. Content has not blocking!
TV vs. Internet – Nearly half of 18- to 49-year-old people prefer to get their news and information online – and those numbers continue to grow by them using Search, Social Media and blogs they have access instantly to the information you want them to see when they want it.
77% of Internet Users Read Blogs – Small businesses with blogs added to their marketing mix get 126% more lead growth than those small businesses without.
Content Builds Trust – After reading any given product recommendation on a blog, 61% of online consumers made a purchase from the content on the page.
Content Converts – Content marketing produces conversion rates six times higher than other methods. The time and effort it takes to produce content will result in a better ROMI (Return On Marketing Investment).
Content Ranks – Populating websites with content can increase pages indexed by 434% and ranks higher in the search engines versus other sites that do not publish content.
Content Content Content… – Businesses striving to push out as much as 16 posts a month will get as much as 3.5 times more traffic than businesses publishing nothing to four articles in the same time frame.
Customers DigIt!! – Content Marketing establishes you as a subject matter expert over time. Content helps you become relatable to your customers. by including customers into your content campaigns from time to time they see just how you solve problems, become more relatable and more.

10 simple reasons, stats, results, and some real benefits from your company creating and starting your own Content Marketing Campaign!

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Now is the time to start planning your Content Marketing strategy for 2018 so when the new year begins you’ll begin to connect and attract more people to your brand. Make it simple, not complicated! In the weeks ahead we will begin expanding on how you can start and maintain your own Content Marketing for your business.

We want to hear from you! What specific questions do you have about Content Marketing you are dying to get the answers too? Drop us a line soon! #MarketingMadeGreat

Marketing Has Become Uncomplicated! FINALLY! Well…Not so much!?!

by Mark Treager Our Blog Marketing Mobile Marketing Social Media Video Marketing

Digital marketing today has gotten even more complicated with no real signs of slowing down!! From the infographic above here are some statistics that you need to see that MARTECH published in their Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic (2017): Martech 5000 infographic that caught my eye!

Statistics from the 2017 Marketing Technology Landscape

The official stats for this year:

• There are now 5,381 solutions on the graphic, 39% more than last year
• There are now 4,891 unique companies on the graphic, up 40% from last year
• Only 4.7% of the solutions from 2016 were removed (and another 3.5% changed in some fundamental way — their name, their focus, or their ownership)

[Tweet "Here are the 2017 Stats on the Marketing Technology Landscape!"]

That’s not a trivial amount of growth, churn, or confusion for any company to digest no matter how big or small you are to get a handle on! Not to mention the amount time, resources and treasure it takes just to manage it all your current digital marketing efforts! Frustrated yet? We are always asked how can my company compete and still build relationships with new and existing customers at the same time with all of these options? Great question!!

Frankly! The growth has become more than even we can keep up with! I hate to admit it but when we started nearly 25 years ago it was easy to get a company tfound on the Internet!! People just wanted their logo to spin or my all time favorite BLINK (you know who you are that asked!)!! They thought it was the way to be unique! So now what is a company to do if even their trusted marketing resource/agency can't even keep up with everything?!? Another GREAT question!!

For the last several years we have been pioneering solutions that are bringing clarity to many companies that bridge the technology/relationship gap with customers to answer just that question. Simply put!! Customers just want you to stop telling me about all of the features and benefits of your product that you think I need and just listen to me for a change! I promise you I'm going to tell you what I want if you will just ask! Once you listen it will be very easy to show up where your customers are using your product or services?

[Tweet "Digital marketing today has gotten even more complicated with no real signs of slowing down!!"]

The AHH Moment!

I assure you you will have an AHH moment! I know we did! Here's what you will discover:

• When are you going to make a product that will solve...?
• I'm willing to pay more if your product could just...!
• Can you show me a way to get from X to X over time?
• If you could just add these features I would upgrade to...
• And the sort of questions you are always asked here that if you would just...

When you know what customers want then really provide them the things to solve their problems, it will be very easy to find the right digital marketing tools to reach them! Take the time to just ask! I assure you they will tell you!

Need the tools to find out what they want. PLEASE just ask us! We want to share! Many of the tools we offer are actually FREE! Shhh...Whatever you do don't tell your competition you are going to start asking your customers what they want to meet their needs going forward. Why? They will start getting very, very nervous that you will start stealing their customers. Hey! 😉 No worries. I'm not going to tell them you are!

Our Po!nt: Listening to your customers want should to be what the new normal as you company grows and expands its product lines. The answers makes it very to easy to partner with your marketing team to find the perfect way to reach customers right when they need you! Share with us your customer AHH moments! We would love to hear them. #MarketingMadeGreat

Virtual Reality: Is Coming To Your Business?

by Mark Treager Marketing Mobile Marketing

Pokemon Go Virtual Reality Game — Virtual Reality has now arrived!

The Smartphone has shifted the way advertisers market towards consumers. I’ve never seen anything more powerful than a device that seems to be permanently attached to our lives. If you ask anyone these days their smart device is never more than 4 feet from them, 24/7 and many say they cannot survive without it. The best part about the Smartphone technology is that it can target specific mobile users. It makes it easy for online advertisers to reach their desired target markets and locations. Virtual Reality technology is now making that possible.

The newest app, Pokemon Go, only released on July 6th of this year, has placed the power of marketing into the hands of the local business owner. While many larger corporations are waiting to cash in on sponsored advertising through the apps PokéStops, small business owners are not waiting. Many businesses are by simply applying guerrilla tactics to lure and profit off of their existing customers as well as attracting new ones by inserting themselves into the game.

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What does Google’s ‘Mobile-friendly’ tag mean for you?

by Mark Treager Marketing Mobile Marketing Our Blog

As a marketer- I lo(athe)ve Google. You see, marketers live and die by a site’s Google search rank… And so do you, you just might not realize it.

Back in November 2014, Google announced they would be launching a new method affecting mobile SERP (search engine results page) – the mobile-friendly tag; a great feature for anyone who has ever found themselves Googling an obscure topic to settle a dinner argument. April 21st marked a day which will live in digital infamy (at least for all us SEO nerds); Google now penalizes your site for not being mobile-friendly.

Google’s Webmaster page has lots of goodies for anyone who wants to attack the whole enchilada, but for those of you who are busy and want to make sure your site is compliant and move on with your life here is a list of three things you can to do make sure you aren’t falling victim to a Google rank penalty.

To preface these tips- this change does not currently affect the SERP for desktop searches, only searches done from mobile devices (i.e. smartphones-not tablets).

1- Google your website on your phone.
Check your site’s SERP location by doing a quick Google search on your own mobile device. If your site is mobile friendly you will see a mobile-friendly tag beneath the site title. If you do- you can stop there, but if you want to ensure your site is indexed by Google as mobile-friendly proceed to Step Two.

2- Check to make sure your site is indexed as mobile-friendly.
If you are slightly paranoid (like me) you should check out this mobile friendly test to verify your site is being indexed by Google as mobile-friendly. If it is- way to go! You’re done- for now. If your site fails this test don’t panic- we can fix it!

3- Choose a mobile-friendly template.
If your site doesn’t pass the mobile friendly test, it’s time to think about an upgrade… sooner rather than later- as in now. Upgrading your site might sound like a daunting task and it could be if you were all alone. Thankfully there are plenty of experts out there to help you make a fairly seamless transition to a new site without causing a whole lot of disruption all while improving your organic search rank.

Once you have upgraded your site to a mobile friendly template you will need to resubmit to Google so it can be crawled and indexed- which sounds absolutely disgusting but it’s actually a good thing.

So, why does this all matter? Why should you care? No one looks at your site anyway…

With the entire landscape of digital media, advertising and research turning to a vastly mobile-centric world it is paramount that all websites are completely responsive and mobile-friendly. This means ensuring that you are not using any software that is not compatible with mobile devices (we’re looking at you, Adobe Flash). End users need to be able to check your site and click on links easily- this means spacing out links, using a site template that will respond well to mobile devices (WordPress is great for these) and generating content that is easily consumed for those users accessing your site on the go.

Did your site fail the mobile-friendly test? Are you filled with questions, comments, concerns or really cute dog pictures? Drop me a line at Cornerstone Media Group and be prepared to be amazed! Laine@CSMediaGroup.com

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