Display ads happen to be one of the most effective forms of online advertising and ALSO one of the most underutilized in the local small business market. Display advertising not only can be less expensive than Google Pay Per Click text ads, small local businesses find that display ads offer better branding, better targeting, lower entry cost and access to markets. Here are some of the main features of digital ads and how they work.

Check your Google Ads analytics. 96% of your traffic leaves without engaging. Not phone call, no email.

When a business has stalled or looking for a bump in growth, it is common for a business owner to jump to the easiest method of driving more traffic. Every time you Google, you see those ads and you see your competitors listed there. Are you about to jump on the band wagon and join what 90% of businesses in that ad space are doing wrong? Step back!

Web design should be part of your evolutional marketing strategy. In today's local markets, the guys who are beating the local competition are looking at their web analytics weekly if not daily. Businesses approach us quite frequently to redesign their websites. When I look at their existing website it says copyright 200x and the site hasn't been touched in years.

That business doesn't just need to change it's website, they need to change their entire mindset relative to how to use a website. They need to reconsider their relationship with their web designers.

"I never click those". Really? Somebody does! And those ads are not always where you think they are. The most obvious place for Pay Per Click ads is at the top of a normal search. But those ads don't just exist there. They exist in more than a half a million sites, apps, games and more. You don't even know you're clicking them sometimes.

To the outside observer, a landing page can look very simple. However, the planning behind a well orchestrated landing page could take more time and involve more hours in development than your entire website. And the reward is worth the effort. The landing page itself is really your lead magnet but what is behind the scenes is really where the magic is. To the casual observer, the landing page seems to be just a simple trade... your email address for what's behind curtain number 1. There is a reason why some companies are spending more money on landing pages than they did on their enter website.

Fishing is a great metaphor for lead generation. Most small business websites are standing on the shore without even a fish pole and they're hoping a fish just jumps up into their bucket. Seriously! If you do have lead capture mechanisms on your website, what are you using for bait? If the fish aren't biting, you're probably using the wrong bait! Or, you've got the right bait but you don't have it attached to your fish line! You're just tossing it in. Now, no fisherman fishes that way but when it comes to the average website, there's often no bait, no pole and no bites.

Website optimization is usually considered to be the process of improving how well the site or a page within the site ranks on the search engines for a specific keyword (or search phrase). 15 years ago (circa' 2005), you could type the keyword for which you wanted to rank a hundred times at the bottom of the page and voila', that web page ranked for that keyword. If you didn't want that page to look funny, the old trick was to type the repeated keyword phrase at the bottom of the page using the same color as the page background so it wasn't visible to the visitor. As optimization evolved, so too did the sophistication of search engines and their ability to understand the content of a web page. That trick stopped working. And so it goes with every trick that ignores these simple rules.

A typical first stab at website optimization begins with the simple notion that if I get more traffic I will in turn get more customers. There's nothing wrong with that idea however it only brushes the surface of true website optimization. If your website is already well established, there is one key question that begins the process of website optimization.

We'd like to challenge you with the following question: Do you need to develop a website or do you want to design a digital customer experience? Very few businesses get beyond the standard website solution. Most websites are digital brochures. Beyond that, once created, most businesses will spend very little time adding new content, updating the website and using the website as the truly amazing marketing tool they have at their disposal. We'd like to help you change that.

Website technology has evolved far beyond the static html page concept. Today's websites are plug and play platforms allowing the addition of website applications that can further enhance the customer experience and improve the marketing capability of the website. Much the way apps can be added to your smart phone, applications compatible with your website platform can be added without any programming knowledge. This increases usability and reliability and improves website owner access to these tools. Here are some of the most popular (and useful) web applications that we work with.