By Tammy Wood on June 2, 2018
With the growth in mobile voice searches digital marketing, including SEO, has moved to an AI predictive model. To keep pace with technology, the marketers have done several surveys and studies to get ahead of the emerging trend. The range of virtual assistants, such as Siri, Cortana, Google Voice Search/Now,...
By Adam Bullock on May 24, 2018
You know, I haven’t had much to report lately. And that’s a good thing. I’ve been slowly, but surely, getting more and more used to AdWords Experience™. Are there some annoying little quirks? Sure. Is it as bad of a transition as I thought it would be? Not really! The...
By Spencer Mayes on May 20, 2018
With GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) right around the corner (May 25, 2018), it’s time to talk about how GDPR will impact Google Analytics. What changes need to be made to your analytics account to be compliant and not lose important data after May 25th? GDPR Background GDPR stands for General...
By Christian Bullock on May 13, 2018
… but there should be. Those working in the SEO industry keep close tabs on search engine algorithm changes. How search engines are changing the way they’re displaying results. How search engines spider web pages and impediments to that process. How search engines [insert a hundred other things]. What is...
By Adam Bullock on May 9, 2018
DAY ONE. The FIRST DAY and I can relate to Furiosa. I’ve spent some time already in the interface (I even found you, my fellow digital marketer, the best sorta hidden AdWords Experience™ report), so it’s not like I’m jumping in blind. But it sort of feels that way. Case...
By Adam Bullock on May 7, 2018
Google has just broke the news: the new AdWords interface will be switching by the end of the year. You’ve got 7 months to prepare! …or do you? You actually have 5 months. Although headlines have opted for the shorter & sexier “by the end of the year” or “year-end”,...
By Adam Bullock on April 23, 2018
It’s come to this. I’m ready. It’s time to give the new AdWords Experience™ a shot. I have been resistant to the new interface since the moment it has been available for me to use. Nay, since the moment it was announced (over TWO years ago!). At some point, however,...
By Adam Bullock on April 23, 2018
Fun fact: the ‘cost’ metric found in the AdWords interface isn’t always the actual cost passed on to the client. Duh, Adam, of COURSE there are tiny fluctuations due to spammy clicks and other adjustments from Google. Well, I’m talking about relatively large differences in the actual cost in the...
By Kerry Guard on March 7, 2018
Overview of the Role and this Posting Hello! The client portfolio at MKG Marketing is growing and the biggest need we have is a SEO manager. To be clear on timing for this hire: Our goal is to hire this person in the next 30-60 days. Job Purpose: What will...
By Adam Bullock on March 5, 2018
We Made It Official! Bing Ads has JUST rolled out a community program for its most dedicated advertisers - a Bing Ads fan club, of sorts. And we would be silly not to join. Any agency purely focusing on Google AdWords isn’t giving its clients the full landscape of search...
By Kerry Guard on February 21, 2018
We were recently featured on Clutch, the leading B2B ratings and reviews service for digital service solution providers. They comprehensively research SEO companies, consultants, ppc companies, social media advertisers and many more digital, and SEO service providers, and effectively map them with their unique research methodology. Their methodology is scored...
By Christian Bullock on February 12, 2018
Uh oh. You accidentally pushed a page live. And it’s showing up in Google searches! You’re probably asking out loud: How can I quickly delete this listing from the search engine results page?! Well, good news! Below are three ways you can ensure a page gets wiped out from Google,...
By Mike Krass on January 2, 2018
2017 was an unbelievable time to be a part of MKG. In the past 365 days… The team had two new babies and took a combined 180 days of maternity/paternity leave (hooray for baby Lexi and Magnolia June!) Our longest standing team member was diagnosed with lymphoma and subsequently beat...
By Mike Krass on December 7, 2017
In October 2017 we interviewed Mario Schulzke, the current Chief Marketing Officer at the University of Montana and longtime performance marketing veteran. Mario has overseen marketing at the University of Montana for the past five years. Prior to his current position Mario worked at ad agencies in Seattle, Portland and...
By Mike Krass on November 29, 2017
In October we interviewed: Emily from ShapeShift, a cryptocurrency exchange. Emily has been running marketing at ShapeShift for the past three years and was kind enough to sit down to discuss marketing for blockchain projects. What have the past 36 months of marketing ShapeShift looked like? In it’s current form...
By Tammy Wood on September 29, 2017
A slow site is a poor experience for users. As a result, search engines tend to rank slower sites worse than faster sites. The site must load quickly and aim for 100% uptime. Until recently, Google would only offer suggestions on steps to take to improve page load speed using...
By Mike Krass on September 29, 2017
We had the pleasure of interviewing an old professional colleague: Chris Stone. Chris has 10+ years of performance marketing experience on the agency and brand side. He is currently running demand generation activities for HoneyBook, a futuristic CRM product. The question we discussed with Chris was: How should brands compensate...
By Mike Krass on September 13, 2017
For those who haven’t heard Google’s Partner team has been running their Elevator Program for the past few years. Every year Google selects up to 250 high growth/high performance agency partners in North America and Europe to participate in a day of peer-led learning exercises. The outcome Google wants to...
By Adam Bullock on September 11, 2017
MKG Marketing is a special company. From the passion that its employees showcase every day to its values as an agency, MKG Marketing is not your normal digital marketing agency. And now you can add three-months paternity leave to what makes MKG special. It’s so very…progressive! And necessary! And I’m...
By Spencer Mayes on September 7, 2017
MKG has assembled Adwords Benchmarks for August 2017. From a collection of advertiser accounts in our Master Client Center (MCC) we saw the following Google AdWords benchmarks in August 2017 for the Tech, Healthcare, and Travel Verticals. Tech Vertical Adwords Display While CTR and CPC have trended down month over...
By Spencer Mayes on July 25, 2017
MKG has assembled Adwords Benchmarks for June 2017. From a collection of advertiser accounts in our Master Client Center (MCC) we saw the following Google AdWords benchmarks in June 2017: The tech vertical saw a slight increase in CTR and CPC, while conversion rate stayed consistent The Healthcare vertical saw...
By Mike Krass on July 5, 2017
We had the pleasure of interviewing Taylor Richardson, marketing manager at TurboSquid, back in June 2017. The first part of the interview explored the value of search marketing to businesses like eCommerce and Financial Services. During the second bit of the interview we discussed voice search and “future search”. In...
By Mike Krass on June 28, 2017
In June we had the pleasure of interviewing Taylor Richardson, marketing manager at TurboSquid in New Orleans, Louisiana. During the first part of that interview we discussed the value of search marketing to businesses such as eCommerce and Financial Services. In the second part of our interview we discussed voice...
By Mike Krass on June 20, 2017
In June 2017 our CEO Mike Krass had the pleasure of interviewing Taylor Richardson, marketing manager at TurboSquid.com in beautiful New Orleans, Louisiana. Our discussion covered the following topics How the value of search marketing is perceived across different types of businesses (eCommerce and Financial Services, as two examples) The...
By Mike Krass on May 24, 2017
In the first part of our interview with Jeremy Epstein, founder and CEO of Never Stop Marketing, we covered the current state of compensation for marketing agencies and brand marketers. During the second part of our interview we covered the future state of marketer and agency compensation using Blockchain as...
By Mike Krass on May 16, 2017
In the first part of our interview with Jeremy Epstein, founder and CEO of Never Stop Marketing, we covered the current state of compensation for marketing agencies and brand marketers. This second part of our interview will cover the future state of marketer and agency compensation using Blockchain as an...
By Spencer Mayes on May 10, 2017
As an agency MKG has audited a number of client’s Google Analytics accounts. With so many different ways to set up tracking in Google Tag Manager this can seem like a daunting task, but with the right tools it can be easy! Today I will walk through using Screaming Frog...
By Mike Krass on May 9, 2017
In April 2017 our CEO Mike Krass had the pleasure of interviewing Jeremy Epstein, founder and CEO of Never Stop Marketing and blockchain marketing evangelist. Their discussion covered a few different topics: Current and future compensation models for brand marketers and marketing agencies An introduction to blockchain for marketers: the...
By Mike Krass on April 25, 2017
SEO Firms: To Hire or Not to Hire? The Chief Executive at a large residential real estate development company asked me a really good question the other day: Why would I hire your SEO firm instead of a full time employee? I responded with the answer that I’ve found to...
By Mike Krass on April 19, 2017
Mike Krass first presented this story on stage at New Orleans Entrepreneur Week 2017. What fancy ‘marketing trend’ has caught your attention recently: Account-based marketing for B2B companies? What about influencer marketing for consumer brands? Or virtual reality with the futuristic crowd? The appropriate response before applying any of these...
By Christian Bullock on February 24, 2017
We get it - everyone uses Google. Or do they? In the U.S. about 8 out of 10 people typically click over to Google to perform a search</a>. This leaves a loyal audience of two out of 10 performing a search on Bing or Yahoo. As an SEO, most clients...
By Mike Krass on February 15, 2017
So … how do you hire an SEO? This week Google updated the ‘Do you need an SEO?’ page of their webmaster support center with a video that outlined four key steps all businesses should take once they have decided to hire an SEO expert to help increase their organic search...
By Adam Bullock on February 9, 2017
When our team heard there was an event surrounding the deployment of Kubernetes and other cloud native technologies in production, we had to get there. We have a client who is in the same space, and knew the best way to learn about their audience is to meet them face-to-face. The Cloud...
By Mike Krass on February 2, 2017
On January 29th, the world’s largest advertiser (Proctor & Gamble) said they refuse to work with any media partner that cannot meet the tenants of their new 5 point program that kicks in this year (2017). Marc Pritchard, P&G’s Chief Brand Officer, spoke to the program requirements at the Interactive...
By Mike Krass on January 26, 2017
Welcome to the Hard Questions podcast, interviews with industry experts on the topics of growth, sales and marketing. The goal of this podcast is to explore difficult topics with subject matter experts who are willing to present a strong position based on their experience. In Episode #1 of the Hard Questions podcast, hosted by...
By Mike Krass on November 21, 2016
How Can Search Marketers Reduce Healthcare Marketing Costs or Improve Patient Outcomes? Last week I had the honor of attention the Innovation LA conference, a life sciences and biotech event put on by the New Orleans Bioinnovation Center. The conference featured panels exploring ways for early stage businesses to establish product/market fit or how to...
By Adam Bullock on November 9, 2016
While I was within Facebook Ad’s Power Editor (their online tool for heavy-duty ad updates on the Facebook Ads platform) today, my interface refreshed and I was informed that there had been an update. Woo! An update! And that’s NOT sarcastic! Facebook’s Power Editor is a bit of a clunker;...
By Mike Krass on November 8, 2016
pssst - jump to the bottom of this post to read October benchmark data Introducing the Facebook Live Video product We’re sure that many of you have read about Facebook’s new(ish) Live Video product. In a nutshell, anybody with an iPhone can: Log onto Facebook as a brand or personal page Tap...
By Mike Krass on October 17, 2016
Recently our COO Kerry Guard asked everyone on the team a very important question: Why do you choose to work at MKG? My answer is simple: I choose to live and breathe MKG because of the vision our team has collectively created and the fact that this vision is centered around our core values. And...
By Kerry Guard on October 10, 2016
We recently had our 5 year anniversary. That’s three years longer than anywhere I’ve worked prior to starting MKG and there’s a few very good reasons why that is. People First Exceeding Expectations Team Pride Big Picture Fearless If you’ve read our website then these may look familiar as they...
By Christian Bullock on October 3, 2016
There are three reasons why I choose to work at MKG: People Output Values Let me explain what I mean by each. People I work with fascinating, intelligence, wholesome people. My colleagues are people that I respect and that I know respect me. Each and every one of them is...
By Mike Krass on September 20, 2016
The reason I work at MKG Marketing? Easy: It’s because the people I work with give a damn. We have all worked places where people just do…stuff. And I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. You’re expected to upsell 10% of current business, so everybody upsells 10% of their...
By Mike Krass on August 1, 2016
Wondered how Google media products like AdWords or YouTube could measure in-store visits? With their Bluetooth Low-Energy Beacons (BLE) beta product, now you can measure when someone views/clicks on your ad and then actually makes it into a retail store. Google is calling this the Beacon Project for short. What are beacons? Beacons are small,...
By Mike Krass on July 25, 2016
Today is the day: we as a company are celebrating our fifth birthday. To be clear, this is the day we incorporated the business officially as a Limited Liability Corporation in the Washington state. Since then, we have become an S-Corp based in Washington state … okay now I’m totally boring...
By Christian Bullock on July 22, 2016
A question we got a lot from our clients is: Is it worth switching our site to HTTPS to benefit our site's SEO? As of right now, MKG believes that for most websites there isn’t enough of a benefit to switch to HTTPS due to the amount of planning and resources...
By Adam Bullock on June 30, 2016
On June 29, 2016, Facebook’s VP of Product Management for the News Feed, Adam Mosseri, revealed that Facebook is planning to update the news feed to include more personal posts at the expense of posts from pages and businesses. He wrote: Today, we’re announcing an update to News Feed that...
By Christian Bullock on June 29, 2016
Imagine: You’ve optimized your website. On-page SEO is dialed in. You spent some time building inbound links to your authoritative pages. Your technical SEO audits show no problems with crawls or technical issues of your website. Surely there isn’t anything left you can do that can have an incredibly positive...
By Mike Krass on June 27, 2016
MKG is a Google Premier Agency Partner Hot off the news wire: MKG has been named a Google Premier Agency Partner! What does this mean? Google has changed the support process for their AdWords, Analytics and Tag Manager products. In the past, every Google Agency partner had a dedicated account...
By Christian Bullock on June 21, 2016
Last Updated: June 22, 2016 When it comes to SEO copywriting, know that there really isn’t a hard set amount of words by page depth rule in place. For SEO elements such as title tags and meta descriptions, there definitely are limits you want to look to not exceed. What...
By Mike Krass on June 13, 2016
YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world Second only to Google, naturally :) So we decided to share some “rules of the road” based on campaign data from 8 clients in the Consumer Package Goods (CPG), Retail and Ecommerce verticals. These 8 campaigns racked up: More than 23,000,000...
By Adam Bullock on May 31, 2016
It’s my second time with MKG Marketing and I could not be more thrilled to be working with this exceptional team! Professional Background [caption id=”attachment_5804” align=”alignleft” width=”192”] Adam’s on the top, Christian below. We took pictures of each eating breakfast. We’re like that.[/caption] My name is Adam Bullock and I’ve...
By Jessica Ward on May 17, 2016
I know what you’re thinking, “She’s not new. I’ve been working with her since at least November, maybe even October.” Well, you’re right! We’ve just been so busy, that I haven’t been able to write this post until now. :) Professional Background I got the opportunity to work in digital...
By Mike Krass on April 26, 2016
This is a little bit of a teaser post, but we wanted to go over the concept of what a 301 redirect chain is. More specifically: What it is Impact on your website Impact on page authority Whenever you're doing any type of site migration or if you're changing URLs...
By Christian Bullock on February 23, 2016
Google’s emphasis on ensuring mobile users get the best experience from Google Search continues today. Google has now pushed live its Accelerated Mobile Pages format project live on the mobile news carousel. See below for a screenshot of what that looks like: As annotated, two things to look for in this...
By Mike Krass on February 10, 2016
This position is a 90 day contract position. But, our goal is to evaluate working together for 90 days, and if it’s a good fit, extend an offer for Full Time Employment (FTE). Our vision for this position is: 50% Paid Search across Google AdWords & Bing Ads 50% Paid...
By Mike Krass on February 8, 2016
This position is a 90 day contract position. But, our goal is to evaluate working together for 90 days, and if it’s a good fit, extend an offer for Full Time Employment (FTE). Our vision for this position is: 50% Technical, On-Page SEO: Inclusive of audits, technical optimizations, etc. This...
By Mike Krass on January 20, 2016
Ted Levitt from Harvard said it best: "...nobody ever buys a three-quarter-inch drill; they buy the expectation of a three-quarter-inch hole" Traditionally marketing services and consulting contracts were priced in hours; each hour represented a single unit of billable time. Makes sense, right? Not according to Tim Williams! Tim runs Ignition...
By Mike Krass on January 6, 2016
I joined the MKG team at the start of the year as their Digital Marketing Strategist intern. A bit about myself: Before joining MKG, I spent two years with BBVA Compass Bank. I worked in their customer analytics division. At BBVA, I helped build out the customer segmentation rules. We work...
By Christian Bullock on January 1, 2016
No, what you’re reading isn’t a name for a robot in Star Wars. Nor does it have anything to relate to Y2K on this New Year’s Day. Today marks my - Christian Bullock - 3 year work anniversary at MKG Marketing Inc. CB 3y MKG. The Past To quickly reflect...
By Mike Krass on December 14, 2015
It’s taken a few years, but with Google Tag Managers v2 release we’ve begun to see more documentation about how to properly deploy tag, create triggers and variables and generally make use of Google Tag Manager (GTM). This guide will teach you how to deploy a Click Event in GTM that...
By Jessica Ward on November 9, 2015
Understanding how many people visit your website and what they do when they get there is important for everyone from the part-time blogger to the corporate CEO. That's where Google Analytics comes into play - a robust, free tool that can help you understand the performance of your website. This...
By Mike Krass on November 2, 2015
MKG is hiring a SEO intern! Oh my goodness - two job postings in 1 day! This blog post outlines an internship opportunity here at MKG Marketing beginning in January 2016. This job posting will cover: Vision & opportunity: Who is this person and how far can they spread their wings? Day...
By Mike Krass on November 2, 2015
MKG is hiring! This blog post outlines an internship opportunity here at MKG Marketing beginning in January 2016. This job posting will cover: Vision & opportunity: Who is this person and how far can they spread their wings? Day to day: What your role and responsibility will look like. Job requirements: What...
By Christian Bullock on July 6, 2015
Our digital marketing agency has always preached: Subdomains are not ideal for a website's site architecture. An organized site architecture (or information architecture) is crucially important for effective on-site SEO. With an optimized architecture, the benefits are: Optimized flow of PageRank through web page Natural topical associations between pages Better...
By Mike Krass on May 26, 2015
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/205155657” params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166” iframe=”true” /] Introducing Dirk Strauss We’d like to introduce you to our friend Dirk Strauss. Dirk is a software developer and Microsoft MVP who lives and works in South Africa. He writes a lot of technical and how-to guides for .NET and C# developers. Oh yeah...
By Christian Bullock on May 18, 2015
The Set-Up Our client - Parallels - has a piracy issue. The Problem There are approximately 17,670 global searches a month for Parallels’ popular desktop virtualization software Parallels Desktop for Mac. Fairly big number, right? What I didn’t mention was any context for this number. There are 17,670 global searches a month...
By Mike Krass on May 11, 2015
TL;DR - This post outlines the results from a recent Paid SEM survey we ran. The question we wanted an answer to: How do SEM pros present campaign build outs for feedback and approval? It all started with one simple question: How do other SEM professionals present Paid Search build outs for...
By Mike Krass on April 27, 2015
How do you QA your A/B testing experiments? When we first tried out Optimizely, an A/B testing tool, all we thought we had to do was to navigate to the ‘Preview’ option of the experiment variation and take a quick peak to QA the experiment. Wrong!!!!!! Over the years, we’ve learned...
By Kerry Guard on April 22, 2015
A client recently asked if there was a way to share an image with their Twitter posts through JetPack. I read a few documents to understand my options: https://dev.twitter.com/cards/types/summary-large-image https://dev.twitter.com/cards/cms-integration#plugin_yoast But at the end of the day I just felt overwhelmed and more confused than ever, so I went back to...
By Christian Bullock on April 20, 2015
Keyword stuffing: a topic that was a very hot one in the search engine optimization world many years back. 10-15 years ago, it was a sure fire way to actually secure a competitive ranking in search engines for whatever keyword you were using stuffing techniques. Nowadays? It’s still discussed… but...
By Christian Bullock on April 15, 2015
We received a great question from one of our clients recently. That question was: What targeting options does Facebook Ads have? After explaining the high-level options, the client replied with: Yeah, but what are all of the targeting options? Does Facebook have this available anywhere? Much to our surprise, we...
By Mike Krass on April 8, 2015
TL;DR Version: A step-by-step guide to learn how to benchmark your websites ranking in search engines against competitors and compile your findings for an executive-level SEO conversation. Template download included! Ever wonder how you stack up against your competitors on search engine results pages (SERPs)? How about how much search engine market...
By Mike Krass on March 30, 2015
For the TL;DR crowd: This story discusses a few ways to use Google Analytics and Google’s Developer sandbox to ensure your website is mobile friendly. h2>Why do you need a mobile friendly website?</h2> Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past month, you’ve probably heard the official announcement from...
By Mike Krass on March 23, 2015
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/196505160” params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166” iframe=”true” /] For the TL;DR crowd: This podcast explores the intelligence events feature of Google Analytics. Listen to the audio above or skim through the excerpt and transcript below for more detailed information. Google Analytics Intelligence Events: What are These Reports? As we mentioned in our post last week, Google...
By Mike Krass on March 16, 2015
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/195707412” params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166” iframe=”true” /] For the TL;DR crowd: This podcast explores the automated reports feature of Google Analytics. Listen to the audio above or skim through the excerpt and transcript below for more detailed information. Google Analytics: What are Automated Reports? As we mentioned in our post last week, Google Analytics Funnel...
By Mike Krass on March 9, 2015
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/playlists/86675120” params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”450” iframe=”true” /] For the TL;DR crowd: This podcast explores Google Analytics to find out where mobile app users drop off in the purchase process. Listen to the audio above or skim through the excerpt and transcript below for more detailed information. Google Analytics Know How: Finding Out Where...
By Kerry Guard on February 13, 2015
Are you looking for your next great job? That one role you can't wait to get out of bed in the morning for? The one that makes you so excited that you can't contain your enthusiasm? Good: We're hiring! Take a look at the job description below to see if...
By Adam Bullock on January 30, 2015
Well gang, this is it. I'm hanging up my MKG watch. I have made the exciting (and, admittedly, somewhat intimidating) decision to actively pursue a career in education. From my time as a mentor and volunteering in a 2nd grade classroom, working with children in a learning environment has become...
By JennaForstrom on January 30, 2015
As I wrap up my last week here at MKG, it’s hard not to reflect on what the team and I have been able to accomplish in four months. Here are some of my favorite highlights: Launching the VMware OnDemand Ambassador Program Working with 48 VMware experts on a weekly...
By Mike Krass on January 29, 2015
YouTube Best Practices YouTube is a pretty big deal. Let's look at the numbers: More than 1 billion people visit YouTube each month. Over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube – that’s almost an hour for every person on Earth. 100 hours of video are...
By Mike Krass on January 22, 2015
This blog post is meant to help you become a better influencer online. With these six simple steps you’ll be able to attract companies interested in doing influencer outreach to score great perks like free swag, VIP access and cash for doing what you already love – creating content online...
By Adam Bullock on January 9, 2015
"It's only just about Google online..." "Just worry about your rankings on Google, don't worry about anything else." "Interested in advertising online? Put it all in Google." Raise your hand if your digital marketing employee/agency/guru of choice has uttered any of the phrases above. Truth be told, we've also said...
By Kerry Guard on January 5, 2015
January 1, 2015 marks a very special day .... ... Christian's 2-year anniversary of working full time at MKG Marketing!</blockquote> That being said, I'd like to take the time to do a little self-bragging for Christian by recounting five stories that prove Christian is a shining example of the type...
By Adam Bullock on January 2, 2015
We used the word 'kickass' to describe 2013. Well, how did we follow up a 'kickass' year? With an awesome 2014! (Playing the song below will significantly enhance this blog post - it's recommended you jam out.) [soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/128399415" params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="100%" height="450" iframe="true" /] Our AWESOME Clients We can't overstate...
By Adam Bullock on December 22, 2014
The year 2014 has been a big one for MKG, not only professionally, but personally as well. One of five beliefs we have at MKG is “People First” meaning we recognize that we are all human beings before we are teammates, clients, influencers, or customers. We celebrate “People First” by...
By Adam Bullock on November 26, 2014
It's that time of the year! Being thankful isn't a new concept for the gang here at MKG Marketing. We spend time every single Friday discussing the things we're thankful for during the work week. I decided to gather some thoughts from the team and share it with the world!...
By Kerry Guard on November 12, 2014
Not sure if you read the news, but Twitter recently announced that they "made a change earlier this year to ensure that search engines like Google and Bing could better access 50,000 popular hashtag pages" and due to this change have had a return of 10x of organic search traffic...
By Kerry Guard on October 20, 2014
What is social media automation & who cares? The marketing world is hellbent on automating everything: programmatic advertising (from folks like Rocket Fuel, <a href=https://www.dataxu.com/?utm_source=mikekrass" target="_blank">Data Xu</a> and more), programmatic email marketing, marketing automation from Marketo and more. So how can folks automate some of their social media activity? By using...
By Mike Krass on October 15, 2014
I’m Jenna Forstrom, the Link Builder, MKG has been looking for and I’m wicked excited to be joining the team! If the “wicked” didn’t already give it away, I’m originally from the East Coast, but have been living in Portland, Oregon since 2008. When I’m not staring at a computer...
By Adam Bullock on August 29, 2014
Get ready, Philly! Members of MKG Marketing will be presenting at the What If...? Conference in Philadelphia, PA. The What If...? Conference is meant to bring entrepreneurs, technophiles, thought leaders, status quo challengers and more together to shake up the world! Focused on quick, actionable sessions, participants will get hands-on...
By Adam Bullock on August 26, 2014
This could be the digital marketing job opportunity you've been waiting for. Maybe you're tired of the corporate grind and ready for the next challenge in your career... Join us, MKG Marketing, as our SEM/Social 'Link Builder.' We are a small yet robust digital marketing agency that has posted double...
By Adam Bullock on August 8, 2014
Pinterest recently released a messaging feature within their network. At first blush, you may be confused; Pinterest is a site all about pinning stuff you find, right? Well, you may find it surprising that Pinterest says pinners use their “send a pin” feature (introduced last year) over 2 million times...
By Adam Bullock on August 1, 2014
As a marketer, I obviously prefer Google to Bing. And I would recommend that companies focus on Google rather than Bing the majority of the time. But as a consumer, I love using Bing. Yep, I'm not afraid to admit it. Hear me, world: I love Bing! I've boiled it...
By Adam Bullock on July 16, 2014
Too often, websites fail to convey the absolute awesomesauce that a company offers. Simply, it's in how a company chooses to describe their product/offering via the words on their website that can be its downfall. We wanted to give you the "secret sauce" on how to properly describe your offering...
By Adam Bullock on July 10, 2014
This post is written by Vincent Ng, founder of MCNG Marketing, author of Pinterest to Profits with Pintalysis and the host of the Pinterest podcast, Pictures to Profits. In the second part of this two-part blog series (read part one here!), Vincent looks at the last 3 steps for starting...
By Adam Bullock on July 8, 2014
This post is written by Vincent Ng, founder of MCNG Marketing, author of Pinterest to Profits with Pintalysis and the host of the Pinterest podcast, Pictures to Profits. This first part, in a two-part blog series, gives the basics of Pinterest and looks at the first 4 steps for starting...
By Adam Bullock on July 1, 2014
In an earlier blog post, we set out to try to put the amount of time we spend watching commercials on Hulu Plus into context. Using an average San Francisco salary to calculate time spent watching commercials, Kerry found that she had wasted $4,612.50 of lost time due to commercials...
By Kerry Guard on June 23, 2014
The future of search. Enhancing search engine's search results. Could change search forever. All of these phrases are what others have used to describe the Knowledge Graph. That being said, are you able to have influence over this "Knowledge Graph" and have it potentially serve up what you choose? Yes...
By Adam Bullock on May 30, 2014
DuckDuckGo is booming to the tune of 1 billion searches in 2013. Are you curious how much traffic is coming to your website from the privacy-focused search engine? Or how you can advertise on it? Read on for your DuckDuckGo primer to learn all you need to know. Duck...duck...GO! What...
By Adam Bullock on May 26, 2014
One of the most important question for companies is how to get customers to stick around. Since this is MKG Marketing and we’re in the business of amplifying your awesomeness, we go one step further: how do you get your customers to sing your praises? To chant your name while...
By KerryGuard on May 19, 2014
Time flies when you're having fun! And that's why when you watch commercials it feels like time is standing still. I'm sad my favorite TV shows are over for the season, but thrilled that I no longer have to watch commercials for the next three months! A commercial-free summer. Like...
By Adam Bullock on May 9, 2014
As marketers, some of the new tools that come across our desks are usually too good to be true. And in the case they are as good as advertised? It costs an arm and a leg to actually use them. I'm here to tell you that Peek by UserTesting bucks...
By Mike Krass on April 24, 2014
Per our article about the three things we want to do as a team each quarter, I'm kicking off our first health challenge. In the next few months we're looking to do two things: Collect 100 medical pages as a team and upload them into our new Free ZHR (Zweena...
By Kerry Guard on April 16, 2014
It's been 32 months since I embarked on the journey of starting my own company As any entrepreneur can tell you, starting a company leads you to experience the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows.</blockquote> When you're down, it seems like you'll never be able to...
By Kerry Guard on April 14, 2014
A few months back the team published our goals for 2014. These goals included personal as well as company growth ideals that we as a group and individuals wanted to strive to achieve. Among many of our goals for this year, one of them stood out to amongst the rest:...
By Mike Krass on April 9, 2014
As part of our 2014 Goals, specifically Mike's goal of having each of us step into each other's shoes, I decided to take a crack at being a Paid Search Director. Let's just say, I have a new found appreciation for letting experts handle certain things, especially when it comes...
By Adam Bullock on April 3, 2014
Greetings and hello! My name is Adam Bullock and I am thrilled to have joined the MKG Marketing team as their rockstar Content Marketing Strategist! My professional background runs the gamut of different industries, but the one constant has been my passion for digital marketing and finding innovative ways to...
By Kerry Guard on April 1, 2014
As part of our MKG 2014 goals (Mike's specifically), we were tasked with getting out of our professional comfort zones and living in one of our team member's shoes for an hour or so.</p? I chose to put on Kerry's web designer hat. I mean, how hard could designing a...
By Kerry Guard on March 6, 2014
For all it's wonder and glory, there's one thing missing from the Google Tag Manager product. Detailed Q&A forums! We utilize Google Tag Manager (GTM) for the majority of our clients; it reduces the number of IT requests put in to engineering, helps us securely manage marketing tags across the...
By Kerry Guard on March 3, 2014
I was fortunate to attend SearchFest 2014 in Portland, Oregon on February 28, 2014. This is the eighth year that SearchFest has been put on in Portland and I've actually been to every single one except for SearchFest 2013. So, I've seen how this event has grown both in attendance...
By Kerry Guard on February 25, 2014
Wanted: IT Professionals Over the past two years, we've been using a phenomenal user testing service by the name of YouEye to gather qualitative research about our customers. This survey data helps us make data-driven recommendations to our clients to help shape their product roadmaps. Interesting stuff! While YouEye does...
By KerryGuard on February 25, 2014
The Challenge of Using CSS in Squarespace 6 Running several blogs under one Squarespace 6 site allows for a lot of reuse; however there are some limitations such as tweaking the sidebar on a per-blog basis that are still challenging for developers to work through. The Solution A combination of...
By Kerry Guard on February 21, 2014
Are you looking for your next great job? That one role you can't wait to get out of bed in the morning for? The one that makes you so excited that you can't contain your enthusiasm? Good: We're hiring! Take a look at the job description below to see if...
By Kerry Guard on February 12, 2014
Our team loves to make important decisions on our feet: Literally We'll lace up our sneakers and host a meeting while we go on a walk. The team is big fans of stretching our legs and getting some fresh air as we make decisions; it just feels good! On one...
By Kerry Guard on February 10, 2014
It was just one of those amazing conversations MKG uses x+1 for all our programmatic media buying and data management platform (DMP) needs on behalf of our clients. They€™re transparent, have little down time and end up delivering great results for our clients. Last but not least, they really like...
By Kerry Guard on February 6, 2014
Everyone from Rand Fishkin of Moz to Neil Patel of KISSmetrics is saying it lately: Social signals are proving to have influence over organic search ranking factors For the most part, SEO's are blogging that social signals influence on organic search rankings is in it's infancy; that while it is...
By Kerry Guard on December 23, 2013
As we're approaching 2014, we wanted to take some time to reflect on how 2013 treated us. To be frank: 2013 was a kick-ass year for MKG Marketing. Allow us to explain why! Our Clients We couldn't be in the position that we are in now without our clients -...
By Kerry Guard on December 12, 2013
Can You Guess Who the Fastest Growing Companies Are in the US? Each year, CNN Money releases their 100 Fastest Growing Companies list that highlights the fastest growing companies in the United States. The criteria include: Revenue ($) Revenue Growth (3 year) Profit Growth (3 year) Total Return (3 year)...
By Kerry Guard on November 1, 2013
More than 2 BILLION Google Searches Display Video Results Every Day: Is Your Brand Involved? Earlier this year, we began providing more value to our clients by expanding our search engine optimization capabilities and experience. A large portion of that expansion included writing long & short form articles as well as...
By Kerry Guard on October 1, 2013
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a billion. In this day and age, everyone is getting into video marketing. And why not? It’s a great way to demonstrate products, to showcase your business or to help share what your company culture is all about....
By Kerry Guard on August 29, 2013
How Do You Properly Run a Marketing Test? We were chatting with a prospective client the other day when she made the following comment. I like this proposal. Let's run a test for the next six months to see how it performs. "That sounds great," I found myself saying "But,...
By JaminDaily on July 29, 2013
I wasn't kidding! Time flies when you're having fun and I've been having a blast! I can hardly believe my internship is done and I'm packing my bags to head back to Montana. Admittedly, I'll probably leave one of my bags packed because I'm flying back to Mountain View, CA...
By JaminDaily on July 22, 2013
Last week I shared the mindset that has helped maximize my experience as a Digital Marketing Intern for MKG Marketing and, more importantly, to have fun while I am in San Francisco! In part four of this series, I will explain some of the benefits of working for a small business...
By JaminDaily on July 15, 2013
Last week in the second part of this five part series, I gave you a snap-shot of my responsibilities here at MKG Marketing and shared some technical learning aspects related to those roles. I'm glad I wrote that blog last week, because if I had waited until now...it would've been twice as...
By JaminDaily on July 7, 2013
Last week in my Diary of a Digital Marketing Intern: part 1 of 5, I told you a little about me and a bit about how I began working with Mike Krass (CEO) and Kerry Guard (COO) at MKG Marketing in San Francisco. In the second part of this series, I'll share some of my...
By Mike Krass on July 1, 2013
Time flies when you’re having fun, and as I near the half-way point of my digital marketing internship here at MKG Marketing, it’s helpful to step back and reflect on the process. Hence, the Diary of a Digital Marketing Intern series was born! In this series, I plan to outline...
By JaminDaily on June 12, 2013
What's the Anatomy of a Great Tweet? In the article to follow, we’re going to walk through 5 easy steps to tweet like a pro. Those steps are as follows: Content Subject: What it's About Sub-Title: Create Proper Content Expectation Give Credit Where Credit is Due Provide Link to Original...
By Mike Krass on June 7, 2013
I recently read a blog post on Conversion XL and I have to say, this guy is mean! It’s hard to care about what he’s selling, because the tone of his content feels like he’s either yelling at you or calling you an idiot, which as a potential client I...
By Kerry Guard on May 28, 2013
What Types of Content Should You Produce? Our previous post in the Content Marketing Bible series focused on how to create a content marketing strategy. Within that post, we briefly touched on different types of content to utilize for your content marketing strategy. This post will expand on that and focus...
By Mike Krass on May 24, 2013
This post was created out of a conversation we had with a client recently when they blatantly told us: Go run a paid search campaign for us, please. That was it. No background on why paid search was chosen, how it had been used in the past or who made the ultimate...
By Kerry Guard on May 20, 2013
As we announced last week, our team is producing a six-part series on content marketing to be distributed for FREE via e-book at the end of June. This series was born out of one simple question from a few of our clients: "What steps does your team use to approach content marketing?"...
By Kerry Guard on May 14, 2013
Content is King: Don't you Want a Place on the Throne?</a> As clients continued to ask for our assistance with their content marketing strategy, we thought it would valuable to create a Content Marketing How-To Guide here on the blog for our loyal readers to learn more about our approach to Content...
By Kerry Guard on May 8, 2013
Do you know how to calculate the lifetime value of a loyal customer? Marketers often discuss the lifetime value of a loyal customer as a key metric to compare alongside customer acquisition costs, retention & churn rate. In this article, we'll walk through the process of calculating lifetime value using what's known...
By KerryGuard on May 6, 2013
"Can we track our marketing efforts if we drive traffic to a Facebook Promotion page?" Recently, one of our clients asked to drive ALL their digital marketing efforts, tracked by 3rd party tags, to a Facebook Promotion page. In remembering what Don Draper said two weeks ago in Mad Men, about...
By KerryGuard on April 30, 2013
Dear JetSetter, a Premium Hotel Booking Website: I would just like to commend you for the awesomeness that is your digital marketing, which features a heavy does of personalization marketing. Not only did you deliver me a re-targeting ad on Facebook after I visited your website, but it was personalized...
By Kerry Guard on April 25, 2013
This question comes up all the time when speaking with brand marketers: How do I find a good social marketing media agency? As we’ve heard that question so many times lately, we decided to put together three tips for brands to use in finding their next great social media marketing...
By Kerry Guard on April 24, 2013
In our previous blog posts, we discussed measuring the return on investment of marketing analytics and brought up the idea of a dashboard. Just to review: A dashboard is an interactive tool that aggregates all your data into a single view. Analytics from multiple sources are contained in one place,...
By Kerry Guard on April 22, 2013
We've been named the Agency of Record for Zweena Health! So who is Zweena Health and what do they do? Well, according to their website: Zweena is an innovator of personal health solutions focused on empowering healthcare consumers and changing the way individuals use their own health information. In laymen's...
By Kerry Guard on April 19, 2013
We here at MKG Marketing are big fans of deploying Google Tag Manager on our clients' websites. First, if you're unfamiliar with what Google Tag Manager (GTM) is, this is how Google describes their product: "Google Tag Manager makes it easy for marketers to add and update website tags -- including analytics,...
By Kerry Guard on April 17, 2013
In our experience, many clients initially view analytics as ... A value add service, attached to additional lines of business Pre-packaged together with any kind of lead generation campaign A sinkhole of a line item in their budget sheets Why is this? Again, in our experience ... Analytics have been...
By KerryGuard on April 16, 2013
If you’re in the marketing industry I’m sure you tune in each Sunday night to watch Mad Men. I know I do. Mad Men is incredibly beautiful and well done. The shows producers suck you into the world of the 1960’s through the fashion, interior design, and product placement such...
By Kerry Guard on April 8, 2013
During a conference call earlier this week, the client brought up a great question: How does your team evaluate banner ad creative? I mean, do you have certain guidelines to judge effectiveness prior to launching the banner advertising campaign? The short answer: YES! In fact, there are four considerations we...
By Kerry Guard on April 2, 2013
Introduction to Integrated Marketing Analytics Microsoft, one of our larger clients, has several different marketing communications running simultaneously; they run paid online advertising, organic & paid search marketing as well as social media and content marketing programs, just to name a few! But, as large of a company as Microsoft...
By Kerry Guard on March 26, 2013
As a digital marketing agency that focuses on integrating multiple channels into our clients’ marketing mix, we are constantly asked the following: Where does mobile fit in? And how do I measure performance? Based on our experience running mobile marketing campaigns, we wanted to highlight three executions & measurement options:...
By Kerry Guard on March 19, 2013
The lights had just gone out at the Superdome in New Orleans in the now-infamous Super Bowl blackout when Oreo sent a tweet that said Power out? No problem. You can still dunk in the dark. It was a completely spontaneous marketing move that tapped into an event unfolding in real time....
By Kerry Guard on February 20, 2013
The American public showed signs of shock as the newest comScore search engine rankings for January 2013 reported that Google owned 67% of the U.S. search engine market share. This is in conflict with what the typical U.S. computer user believes, which is 100% of searches happen on what the...
By Kerry Guard on February 12, 2013
I’m of the opinion that loved ones should receive flowers on Valentine’s Day. It’s just in my DNA. That being said, like other online shoppers, I did some research to see which flower delivering service was worthy of my business this year. In the back of my mind, I was...
By Kerry Guard on February 8, 2013
As we move farther into 2013, analyst data continues to roll in detailing 2012 digital marketing trends, case studies & discoveries. Here at MKG Marketing, we’ve had the opportunity to carve out quite a niche as a B2B marketing agency over the past 17 months, working with clients such as:...
By Kerry Guard on February 7, 2013
As you may have read, we’re in the business of delivering loyal customers to our clients. But what exactly is a loyal customer? The following are four characteristics that help us identify customers who are (or could be) faithful to a service, product or brand: Repeat Purchaser You can’t predict...
By Kerry Guard on February 4, 2013
Throughout our relationship with their SMB marketing business unit at VMware, where we worked with their Go Pro & vCenter Protect Advanced product lines, we posted some tremendous wins from the search engine marketing (SEM) work we produced. These wins ran through a gamut of landing page & multivariate testing...
By Kerry Guard on January 22, 2013
It's important to stand-out on a search engine results page. Recent studies show that the top three organic results (that is, the results that show up below any paid search ads at the top of the page) receive the lion's share of clicks from users - 68% in fact (citation)....
By Kerry Guard on January 7, 2013
We’re extremely happy to official announce: Christian Bullock has joined MKG Marketing as our Director of Paid Search Marketing. Christian joins us from Amplify Interactive, a search marketing agency based in Portland, Oregon, and brings more than seven years of paid search experience across a number of different clients & verticals with...
By Kerry Guard on December 13, 2012
As brands look to create unique content to differentiate themselves from competitors and acquire new customers, an early question that often comes up is: Should we do this ourselves or outsource this work to a content marketing agency? When clients come asking us this question, we often tell them that...
By Kerry Guard on November 7, 2012
With the 2012 President election results now in ... .. and Barack Obama delivering his victory speech to a boisterous crowd in Chicago following Mitt Romney’s concession speech to an equally-excited crowd in Boston, we realized that we had heard a lot of great statements made by both of these great politicians...
By Kerry Guard on October 23, 2012
MKG was founded upon one key idea: To be different We have many values that we follow internally here at MKG Marketing, but acting as a different kind of marketing agency is at the top of our list. In our opinion, this means … Not Fostering a 'Take-Take-Take' Mentality Far...
By Kerry Guard on October 22, 2012
Big news coming off the MKG Marketing presses: We won our first award! In partnership with one of our favorite creative shops, Ryan Partnership San Francisco, the work we did for cloud collaboration client Box was honored with a Media Post OMMA 2012 award for online advertising creativity. Also, take a...
By Kerry Guard on October 8, 2012
As a website operator, you have 1/20th of a second to capture your visitors attention That statistic, as provided by our friends at Launch Tower, helps show that brands should be interested in finding ways to make their website more valuable & engaging to their visitors. With that statistic in...
By Kerry Guard on August 20, 2012
Backupify, a data backup / protection service based in Cambridge, conducted a recent survey to understand the value of each user & status update some of the biggest social networks generate. In terms of the value of each user, the top three most valuable users by social network were: Facebook...
By Kerry Guard on August 10, 2012
As we quoted in yesterdays blog post, social media allows consumers & brands to engage in a two-way conversation. That conversation can center around … Customer support Product development Real-time feedback All the traits mentioned above gather around one central concept: How brands can use social media to make a...
By Kerry Guard on August 8, 2012
Big news for us over at MKG Marketing: We turned one year old on July 25! Since kicking off our company a little over a year ago, we have gone through a few versions of the value we provide our clients: Small media buying shop Small media planning and buying...
By Kerry Guard on July 17, 2012
Following the IdeaMensch #ID48 conference here in San Francisco, I wrote a blog post detailing all the great things I learned that evening. One of the speakers, Modify Watches CEO Aaron Schwartz, mentioned that customer service is the most important factor in being a part of the Modify Watches team. It’s...
By Kerry Guard on July 10, 2012
By way of a mutual contact, I had the opportunity to grab a quick cup of coffee with Traction Agency CEO Adam Kleinberg this week. Traction calls itself an interactive agency, but they believe everything is interactive. They are part advertising agency, part innovation consultancy and have worked with brands...
By Kerry Guard on July 9, 2012
Following his defeat of Chael Sonnen Saturday night at UFC 148 in Las Vegas, Anderson Silva was a pretty happy guy. For those of you who are not huge UFC fans, Anderson Silva is the Michael Jordan of ultimate fighting. His accolades include … 34 wins between MMA & UFC...
By Kerry Guard on July 5, 2012
Earlier this evening we had the pleasure to attend IdeaMensch 48, a 48 state tour put on my good friend Mario to help gather people who want to bring ideas to life. In honor of a great evening, we wanted to share a couple highlights from a few speakers …...
By Kerry Guard on June 25, 2012
In their recent 2012 Merchant Survey ... The e-tailing group studied the ROI impact of different personalization techniques used by marketers. Here are some other interesting facts that the survey discovered: Lack of Purchase: 72% of site visitors that place an item in a virtual shopping cart don't actually make...
By Kerry Guard on June 15, 2012
Today’s guest post comes courtesy of one of our favorite media partners, Bloomberg West Coast Director Gretchen Sword. Name: Gretchen Sword Company: Bloomberg Position: West Coast Director 140 characters or less: Bloomberg News is the most influential business news publisher in the world. I am also from New Jersey and proud of it! What...
By Kerry Guard on June 12, 2012
As a digital media agency, we are constantly toeing the line between buying programmatic, hyper-effecient channels (DSP’s, for example) and contextually relevant, brand-targeted environments (site direct). Why do we toe this line? Well, there are a few reasons: Every client is different, thus requiring unique media mixes to deliver on their...
By Kerry Guard on June 7, 2012
How much time are you spending on your mobile device? According to a recent article in The Atlantic, 10% of users time is spent on mobile devices. Why is this a relevant statistic? Because while users spend 10% of their time on mobile devices, only 1% of ad spend is dedicated...
By Kerry Guard on June 4, 2012
In a recent announcement, B2B marketing software giant HubSpot announced that running paid advertisements on Facebook generated a 71% increase in sales from social channels year over year. This news is huge for Facebook following the GM announcement that they would be eliminating their entire Facebook advertising budget A couple other...
By Kerry Guard on May 30, 2012
We just read a great ClickZ article that examined what Google calls "bad ads" across their advertising platform. According to their definition, “bad ads” are accounts or advertising creative that violates Google’s terms of service & advertising policy across the web. In the article, the following stats were uncovered: In...
By Kerry Guard on May 29, 2012
Mashable's new article, 10 Amazingly Clickable Banner Ads, examines ten highly creative and effective banner ads that are just begging to be clicked. Here are a few of our favorites: Nissan When users searched for a new car on dubizzle.com, Dubai's best resource for house & car hunting, Nissan wanted to...
By Kerry Guard on May 23, 2012
How can traditional and social media channels work together? As media channels have evolved, marketers & advertisers are constantly looking for ways to create the perfect communications mix. The answer to this question, oddly enough, is more often than not an additional series of questions. Questions include: What value can...
By Kerry Guard on May 22, 2012
In a recent iMedia Connection article, ROI DNA’s VP of Branding Jim Nichols took a look at 9 different brands that used shock ads. The brands included: Meth Project (photo above) Super PAC Dolce & Gabbana Groupon Top Chef Sisley L'Oreal Dermablend Benetton Febreze After grading each brands ad on...
By Kerry Guard on May 21, 2012
With another agressive move into the mobile arena, Facebook acquired Karma for an undisclosed amount last Friday Facebook has been making waves in the mobile space, with Karma being it’s fifth mobile-specific acquisition this year alone. The others include: Instagram Glancee Tagtile Lightbox How will these purchases improve Facebook's product?...
By Kerry Guard on May 18, 2012
The Kindle Fire is Amazon's best selling product With that in mind, Amazon has decided to sell ads on the device’s welcome screen. Here are some of the details: Minimum of $600,000 commitment must be made to get in on a welcome screen ad package For $1,000,000, brands would gain access to...
By Kerry Guard on May 16, 2012
In the past month, Facebook has been pushing engagement as a key performance metric instead of volume of likes. This was apparent when the social network rolled out their ‘talking about this’ metric, which calculates the number of users who are actively mentioning / interacting with a brands Facebook fan...
By Kerry Guard on May 15, 2012
So, what's the advantage of operating your company like a start up? In my opinion, there are three distinct advantages: Ability to Make Decisions Start ups have the ability to pull the trigger and act quickly. A few examples include: Decision Making Timelines: Start ups literally don't have time to waste...
By Kerry Guard on May 14, 2012
Earlier today, I came across a great Quora thread that discussed some of the decisions Facebook made to skyrocket it’s user base to more than 500 million users. Which made me think … What can we learn from Facebook's user acquisition strategy? In terms of driving qualified leads and nurturing existing...
By Kerry Guard on May 11, 2012
In a study released by the Pew Research Institute earlier today, it was discovered that … 74% of smartphone owners use their phone to get real-time location-based information Other highlights featured in the study include: Nearly 1 in 5 (18%) of all smartphone owners use geo-social apps to 'check in'...
By Kerry Guard on May 10, 2012
In honor of all start up agencies & companies out there, we wanted to republish KINGSDAY Managing Director Sander Volten’s guest blog post from Talent Zoo, 10 Reasons to Start an Agency in This Economy. Without further ado … 1. Passion Starting a company / agency from scratch makes you hungry...
By Kerry Guard on May 9, 2012
This post was inspired by a recent conversation I had with a former employee of AdMob, the mobile ad network that Google acquired in November 2009. As we recently brought a SaaS start up onto our client roster, we began to examine whether there was a niche market of start...
By Kerry Guard on May 8, 2012
After reading this ClickZ article, Choosing the Right Partner: The Client-Agency Relationship, we wanted to pass along a couple tips the author shared about building the right client / agency relationship. Enjoy! Tip #1: Make Sure the Agency's Skills Closely Align With Your Needs Situation: Many client-agency relationships fail because...
By Kerry Guard on May 7, 2012
As the title of this post & graphic above suggests, this article sets out to ask brands if they understand the journey customers make from the beginning to end of a purchase process. We should probably establish a baseline, so I’ll ask you all … Does your brand understand a...
By Kerry Guard on May 4, 2012
An Ode to Big Green Disclaimer: This post has NOTHING to do with marketing, digital trends or media strategy. It's a simple ode to a very supportive piece of furniture to our company. This chair is the literal backbone of all our blogging wisdom. This booger-green throne is my iron...
By Kerry Guard on May 3, 2012
Brian Balfour, the CMO of Boundless, shared some great advice in this OnStartups article Building is Not Enough: 5 Practical Tips for User Acquisition. Based on our own experience, we wanted to expand on three of Brian’s tips in a little more detail. 1. Don't Test a Lot of Channels at...
By Kerry Guard on May 2, 2012
This spring, John Deer has added ‘want’ and ‘own’ buttons to a custom tab on their Facebook brand page. This is an example of brands bringing Facebook engagement to the next level When users visit the John Deere brand page, they have the option to test drive the ‘Deere Season’ app, which...
By Kerry Guard on May 1, 2012
Yours truly, MKG Media, was featured in a GigaOM interview! We were joined by some great Bay Area media minds, including … Marcus Pratt -- Director of Insights & Tech at Mediasmith Inc Dick Reed - CEO at Just Media Click on the photo above to view the video. So,...
By Kerry Guard on April 30, 2012
A lot has been happening with us here at MKG Marketing! We’ve continued to work with our first client, brought on a new SaaS client here in the Bay Area, started working with ‘secret national retailer X’ (more details to come!) and have a surprise client or two up our...
By Kerry Guard on April 27, 2012
901 million worldwide users. Nearly 500 million mobile users. Over $2 billion in annual advertising revenue. Yep, we're talking about Facebook. As Mark Zuckerberg continues to build his social networking empire, we’d like to share a few ways to measure the paid and organic success of your Facebook marketing efforts....
By Kerry Guard on April 26, 2012
Andrew Luck, Robert Griffin III, Trent Richardson and more will headline the bright lights of New York City tonight. That's right: Tonight is the 2012 NFL Draft. Literally thousands of hours have gone into evaluating these soon-to-be professional athletes; interviews, film study, phone calls to ex-coaches … well, you get...
By Kerry Guard on April 25, 2012
Ever wonder how your company could simplify the way they communicate with their customers? You're not alone In fact, there are numerous companies who have built their products and services up around the idea of automating traditionally cumbersome marketing tasks. Take a look below at the three ways brands can reach...
By Kerry Guard on April 24, 2012
Tuesday marks a big day for the MKG Media team ... We'd like to welcome YouEye, the usability testing SaaS product, to our client roster! Here’s the quick run down of what YouEye offers: Create a user test for any website / piece of interactive content Hire testers, by demographic category, through...
By Kerry Guard on April 23, 2012
Last Week, Invite Media’s James Lancelot wrote an Ad Exchanger article that mentioned the current state of ‘cookie wars’ that is happening in the digital media industry. Lancelot made a wise statement: the old model of buying multiple ad networks in order to reach 100% of your audience across the web...
By Kerry Guard on April 21, 2012
By now, many of you may have heard of AMC's new show: The Pitch The Pitch pitts two opposing ad agencies against each other to compete for an assignment from a nationally-recognized brand. Many of the larger ad agencies turned down the opportunity to appear on The Pitch, citing the fact...
By Kerry Guard on April 19, 2012
Unfortunately, one of the great legends in 20th century television broadcasting passed away this morning. Dick Clark passed away as the result of a stroke at the age of 82 Clark leaves 3 children, 2 ex-wives, 1 current wife and nearly $200 million in net worth behind. For someone like...
By Kerry Guard on April 18, 2012
How can you bring simple & brilliant together? Something that we preach to current and prospective clients of MKG Media is that the creative concept(s) and the communication channel (i.e. the media) should work hand in hand. To illustrate this point, I regularly use this analogy: Would you put the Mona...
By Kerry Guard on April 17, 2012
The Bay Area is buzzing about the closing act for the first weekend of Coachella … Tupac rose from the dead to perform alongside Snoop Dogg & Dr. Dre Or so it would seem. San Diego-based AV Concepts worked with Dr. Dre and his team to create a hologram of the famous...
By Kerry Guard on April 16, 2012
Building a brand is one of the more complex and intricate pieces of the marketing mix. Building a brand sets out to … Elicit an emotional response every time a consumer sees it Be memorable Prove it's superiority over your competitors and most importantly … Building a brand boils down to...
By Kerry Guard on April 13, 2012
In the latest politicial mishap, democratic party strategist Hilary Rosen uttered the following comment about Ann Romney: 'Ann Romney has never worked a day in her life.' In the spirit of always learning from other people’s mistakes, we realized there could be no better way to learn from Rosen’s...
By Kerry Guard on April 12, 2012
We here at MKG Marketing wanted to pass along a great new white paper that was released by Nielsen last week. The paper, The Digital Revolution:A Look Through the Marketer's Lens, examines research data from April 2012 (as in this very month!) and uncovers some really great trends and data...
By Kerry Guard on April 11, 2012
In our running series of blog posts featuring influential members of the digital media industry, we’re proud to feature Jay Friedman’s comments in today’s blog post. Name: Jay Friendman Position: Managing Director / COO Company: Goodway Group What is the most difficult piece of your digital media operation to explain to...
By Kerry Guard on April 10, 2012
These were the words that Ozzie Guillen, manager of the Miami Marlins professional baseball team, spoken in a Spanish-language interview released earlier this week. “I respect Fidel Castro,” Guillen said in the article in Time Magazine. “You know why? A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the...
By Kerry Guard on April 9, 2012
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 18 hours, it’s likely that you’ve heard the news that Facebook is set to acquire the mobile photo genius company known as Instagram for a cool $1 billion (cash plus stock). So What Does This Have to Do With...
By Kerry Guard on April 6, 2012
In our previous blog entry, How Useful is Dynamic Media Pricing, we examined the pros & cons of using RTB media partners in your digital media plans. But a bigger question still remains … As a brand, how do you know if RTB is right for your marketing efforts? Here...
By Kerry Guard on April 2, 2012
In the ‘good old days’ of marketing, measuring campaign success used to be a very simple task. Step 1: Go out and spend a bunch of money Step 2: Measure product sales before & after campaign went to market Increase in sales = SUCCESS! No increase / decrease in sales...
By Kerry Guard on March 30, 2012
We discussed the fact that marketing is about making connections in a previous blog entry, and this next example does just that. Viggle is an iOS application that pays users to watch television. The Viggle application is best described as a TV version of Shazam, the popular mobile application that...
By Kerry Guard on March 29, 2012
Real time bidding, or RTB, is the process in which media platforms like Data Xu and Rocket Fuel dynamically bid on every single impression that you €” the advertiser €” has agreed to purchase. This means that an ad buyer, through the platform of their choice, can value each individual opportunity...
By Kerry Guard on March 28, 2012
In 2004, Frank McCourt purchased the LA Dodgers franchise for $430 million. This January, the club was $579 million in debt (in spite of McCourt taking out a personal loan to cover payroll halfway through the year) and the dust had just settled over the hostile takeover the MLB performed...
By Kerry Guard on March 27, 2012
The future is here, and it goes by the name of Tacocopter. With one simple install of the Tacocopter app on your smartphone, a remote-controlled flying apparatus (photo below) will be sent to your GPS location with your favorite order of tacos. While there is some debate about whether Tacocopter is...
By Kerry Guard on March 26, 2012
More than a year after the Federal Trade Commission introducing a privacy framework draft, the agency now wants data brokers to create a web site that details data collection, sales & disclosure. Last years draft was published as a final version today, which you can download by clicking here, and...
By Kerry Guard on March 23, 2012
Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann, is posting family photos on the site. Reese Witherspoon told the world that it was a “collection of the most amazing, wonderful craftiness on earth” on the Conan O’Brien show. The U.S. Army has issued a Pinterest ‘how-to guide’, as it’s been described. Pinterest is here...
By Kerry Guard on March 22, 2012
According to ComScore, social media is now the number one online activity. Facebook notes that there are 60 billion ‘likes’ every month and 250 million photos uploaded each day. YouTube shows that 100 million people take a social action (defined as a like, share, comment) every week on their site....
By Kerry Guard on March 21, 2012
Last summer, Ad Age published a five year interactive marketing forecast that was produced by Forrester. The highlights include ... Mobile spend is growing by 38% year over year and will reach $8.2 billion by 2016 Search marketing will continue to own the largest piece of the spending pie and...
By Kerry Guard on March 20, 2012
You may or may not have heard about near field communication, or NFC, as it’s begun to pick up steam over the past year or so. NFC is the technology behind Google Wallet as a mobile payment processor, specifically … What is NFC? NFC technology is a short-range tool that operates...
By Kerry Guard on March 19, 2012
As this recent ClickZ article, Shopping is Social, pointed out, placing a check out cart on your brands Facebook page is not an engaging social shopping strategy. Social is all about engagement. So how can brands use social shopping to engage with their consumers? Group Buying A great example of...
By Kerry Guard on March 16, 2012
What on earth makes these MKG guys experts? First of all, we don’t claim to be the end-all-be-all of digital media & marketing knowledge … Far from it, in fact. We consume a large amount of industry newsletters, attend events (like yesterdays Cloud Force conference post) and grab drinks with...
By Kerry Guard on March 15, 2012
Today, I had the pleasure of attending the Cloud Force conference here in San Francisco. Put on by Sales Force, the conference brought together start-up founders, marketers and brand leaders from companies like Burberry, Toyota, Radian6 & more to discuss the way the social enterprise is quickly shaping how business...
By Kerry Guard on March 14, 2012
Todays guest post comes courtesy of our good friends at Adometry out of Seattle. Name: Colin Robinson Position: Director of Sales, West, at Adometry What Adometry Does: Adometry is a digital analytics company that provides ad verification & attribution services. Our goal is to improve the effects of online advertising through...
By Kerry Guard on March 13, 2012
8.4 million viewers per game across 4 television networks & more than 26 million site visitors over the first few days of the tournament. Those are stats from the 2011 edition of the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament, which means … The 2012 edition of March Madness is upon us....
By Kerry Guard on March 12, 2012
Highlight. Glancee. Banjo. Sonar. These are just a few of the location-based social apps that have taken over Austin, Texas’ South by Southwest interactive conference this year. So how do they work and what do they do? Highlight Highlight uses your Facebook profile to match you up with users nearby...
By Kerry Guard on March 9, 2012
A new Borrell Associates report found that $159.2 million will be spent on digital advertising and email marketing this sales cycle. To put that into perspective … That represents a minuscule 1.5% of total political ad spending across all channels TV, direct mail, telemarketing and other media channels account for more than...
By Kerry Guard on March 8, 2012
There are a million and one ways to generate awareness or create buzz around your brand. But how can media agencies nurture bottom of the funnel leads? Here are a few examples … Email Marketing: Perhaps the most traditional way to nurture leads, brands collect email addresses through lead gen...
By Kerry Guard on March 7, 2012
As of yesterday morning, the exodus of advertisers from the Rush Limbaugh radio program reached a new high: Forty. After publicly calling Georgetown student Sandra Fluke a ‘slut’ and ‘prostitute’ who should have to post video of herself having sexual intercourse on the internet in order to go before congress to argue...
By Kerry Guard on March 6, 2012
Super Tuesday is upon us – Voters in 10 states will participate in caucuses and primaries that will award more more delegates in the Republican presidential nomination than all the caucuses and primaries that have come before it. So, what is the digital media equivalent of Super Tuesday? While there isn’t just...
By Kerry Guard on March 5, 2012
One of the main advantages of bringing an agency on board to help clients co-pilot their marketing efforts is simple: overall business strategy. Instead of relying on limited staff / resources internally to create strategies & pull together advertising results, a client can lean on the agency to provide this...
By Kerry Guard on March 2, 2012
Recently, I spoke to a channel marketer who mentioned her company was having issues converting people with their online marketing efforts. So, I asked her: What is the flow, or path, to conversion for this program? She responded with … First, the user has to 'like' the brand on Facebook...
By Kerry Guard on March 1, 2012
As we discussed in yesterdays blog post, “What is a data management platform and why do I need one”, we wanted to show you a couple useful ways a DMP can bring value to your organization. Become the King of Data Mountain The more first party data you personally own,...
By Kerry Guard on February 29, 2012
A DMP -- or Data Management Platform -- is a centralized location that use first and third party data sources to create custom data segments. These segments are valuable because: They allow brands to target campaigns more accurately Brands can measure which audience segments performed the best Brands can refine...
By Kerry Guard on February 28, 2012
Monday’s latest rendition of the Daytona 500 featured it all: A super wreck on the second lap, drivers updating their Twitter accounts mid-lap and even someone slamming into a maintenance vehicle on the track. But I'd like to explore a couple things that the Daytona 500 can teach us marketers...
By Kerry Guard on February 27, 2012
At some point in your working life, it’s inevitable that this subject will be brought up by the client … Our conversions are booming, but how do we understand if these are quality leads? Here are three different ways to measure or justify the quality of leads that your online...
By Kerry Guard on February 24, 2012
Andrew Edwards wrote a great article on ClickZ titled The Analytics Bridge to Nowhere; the premise of the article centered around many companies’ short sighted-ness when it comes to establishing and executing actionable analytics programs. With that in mind, we wanted to provide a quick roadmap that clients and agencies...
By Kerry Guard on February 23, 2012
The other day, we walked you through the process of measuring mobile marketing conversions</a> using an online conversion funnel. Today, we'd like to show marketers how to identify holes, gaps and general inefficiencies in online conversion funnels. Situation #1: Tons of leads begin the sign up process, yet few actually complete...
By Kerry Guard on February 22, 2012
How the heck do I measure performance of my mobile marketing campaigns? Building on yesterdays 3 Examples of Mobile Marketing Genius post, the next step would be to share an example of how an agency like ours would measure the effectiveness of mobile marketing conversion events Courtesy of our good...
By Kerry Guard on February 21, 2012
You’ve probably heard the statistics about smartphone ownership; mobile is the next marketing frontier. Just to brush up, let me remind you that … According to comScore, 40% of all mobile devices in the US are smartphones IDC found that by 2015, more US internet users will access the web...
By Kerry Guard on February 17, 2012
ClearSaleing, the analytics and attribution provider, provided data to eMarketer that showed the average revenue per order & revenue per click based upon which paid & earned media touch points consumers interacted with online. The data showed … Social and display were the top two performers in terms of average...
By Kerry Guard on February 16, 2012
A couple days ago, Rocket Fuel’s VP of Analytics Jarvis Mak wrote an article detailing the metrics agency professionals should be using to determine the success of their online media campaign. Through his extensive experience at Rocket Fuel, Havas Digital, Nielsen (and much, much more), Jarvis shared the following insights:...
By Kerry Guard on February 15, 2012
Inspired by this years Westminster Dog Competition, in which Malachy the Pekingese took Best in Show, we wanted to explore how clients can take home the Best in Show prize within their own companies. How can you, a marketing manager, take home Best in Show for your online marketing efforts?...
By Kerry Guard on February 14, 2012
With Valentines Day upon us, men and women alike are probably wondering why they’re receiving ads for flowers.com and ‘making that special someone happy on this special day’. This is called Online Behavioral Advertising (OBA). For example, if you visit flowers.com and, after navigating off the site to somewhere else on...
By Kerry Guard on February 13, 2012
According to recent Nielsen research, television viewership is through the roof amongst the 65+ demographic. The same does not hold true for the 35 and under crowd. In Q3 2011, Adults 25-34 watched 4 1/2 fewer hours of over-the-air TV than they reported in Q3 2010. For the first time...
By Kerry Guard on February 10, 2012
Earlier this year, Sarah Fay (Chairman of Board of Governors for ad:tech and iMedia) discussed advertising measurement with Ted McConnell, the new EVP of Digital at the Advertising Research Foundation. I didn’t want to spoil the entire interview, so instead I pulled out a few gems that Ted provided in the first...
By Kerry Guard on February 9, 2012
What's the difference between a user and a customer? Yesterday, I had the pleasure of listening to a DigiDay interview with Aaron Shapiro, the CEO of digital agency Huge in New York city, when Aaron brought up the concept of a user versus a customer. Specifically, Aaron was discussing how...
By Kerry Guard on February 8, 2012
Proctor & Gamble CEO Bob McDonald’s recent comments regarding Facebook advertising being free lit up the phone lines amongst ad agency professionals. To frame this conversation correctly, let me share his comment from the P&G Q4 earnings call: "... with things like Facebook and Google and others, we find that the return...
By Kerry Guard on February 6, 2012
Since America just experienced the biggest advertising day of the year, the Super Bowl, we wanted to take a moment to call out a couple winners and losers that stood out to us during the big game. So without further ado ... Winners Acura: Not only is the new Acura...
By Kerry Guard on February 4, 2012
After defining your audience next determine what your target audience needs to know and what actions they should take to find out more. This is one of the most important pieces of the campaign as this is what will be measured and optimized against to improve your campaign over time. First, message....
By Kerry Guard on February 3, 2012
According to ComScore research released in January of this year, 31% of online ad impressions are never even seen by an end user. Let me be clear ... Every 1 of 3 impressions Your Campaign Delivers Has the Chance to Go Unseen by the End User So, how can we...
By Kerry Guard on February 2, 2012
Today's post will be short, sweet and centered around one of the hottest topics in Sillicon Valley & Wall Street over the past few days: THE FACEBOOK IPO According to Bloomberg, Facebook is seeking a valuation between $75 - $100 billion while attempting to raise $5 billion in cash. This...
By Adam Bullock on February 1, 2012
Los Angeles Clippers superstar Blake Griffin’s dunk on Kendrick Perkins was absolutely epic (if you haven’t seen it, click here) and reminded me of a conversation I recently had with a client. The client wanted to know … When should I have media and/or advertising in the market? In essence, they wanted to...
By KerryGuard on January 29, 2012
Who should be the target? Target Audience is the users who will best respond to your brand. Who was this product made for? Who's best to drive the most revenue? For example, Box launched their product initially for anyone who wanted to access their files from anywhere. Their founder Aaron Levie...
By KerryGuard on January 5, 2012
Measurable Media is the idea that a single impression can be mapped all the way to a final end conversion. A conversion can be defined as an end action that is or either leads to a sale, for example: A final purchase Trial sign-up Product download E-mail sign-up We identify who converted,...
By KerryGuard on December 13, 2011
When talking to vendors several have said they do not pay attention to CTR (click-through-rate) as the CPA (cost-per-acquisition) is what matters. There needs to be a balance between all aspects of a measurable campaign from CTR (click-through-rate), CPC (cost-per-click), CAR (continued-action-rate), and CPA (cost-per-acquisition). It€™s a funnel. In order to help...
By Kerry Guard on December 13, 2011
€œDraconian.€ €¦ €œCensorship.€ €¦ €œUn-American.€ These are a small sampling of the adjectives that the likes of Google€™s Eric Schmidt, Facebook representatives and social gaming powerhouse Zynga have used to describe the SOPA anti-piracy bill that will be voted on in congress tomorrow. If this bill is passed, what effect will it have on ad...
By KerryGuard on December 4, 2011
What is Big Data? The phrase "big data" refers to the tools, processes and procedures that allow an organization to create, manipulate and interpret enormous sets of data. This data can represent everything from Facebook fan page activity to the number of times a user changes the color of product they are...
By KerryGuard on October 12, 2011
When talking to vendors several have said they do not pay attention to CTR (click-through-rate) as the CPA (cost-per-acquisition) is what matters. There needs to be a balance between all aspects of a measurable campaign from CTR (click-through-rate), CPC (cost-per-click), CAR (continued-action-rate), and CPA (cost-per-acquisition). It’s a funnel. In order to help...
By Mike Krass on September 21, 2011
Cost per click - no minimum, but results achieved through constant manual optimization Cost per acquisition - no minimum, but results achieved over longer spans of time Cost per thousand impressions - $25k minimum with maximum results achieved with minimal manual optimizations Cost-per-click is the most cost effective. Google Display Network is the...
By Kerry Guard on August 15, 2011
Having come from several big agencies, we realized that there was one big flaw… too many cooks in the kitchen. By having several people to go through it became whisper down the lane and he said she said. That’s one of the reasons we created MKG Marketing. We wanted to...
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