I think most marketers today have a puppy problem. Everyone loves a puppy – they're fun, cute and playful. Just look at the above picture of Asher (aka, the world’s cutest dog). 

I had the opportunity to puppy-sit Asher, and he actually taught me a lot about marketing. I would pull out a toy and he would get super-excited. I could almost hear him say, "OMG!!!! That's my favorite toy! I love it, I love it, I love it!" Different toy, same reaction: "OMG!!!! That's my favorite toy! I love it, I love it, I love it!"

Too many marketers have this puppy problem. So often, we miss the big basics because we’re chasing the next trend – Pinterest, Vine, Reddit, etc. For CMOs, this can mean getting seriously off-task, wasting time and, potentially, your company’s money. So what’s really important for CMOs when it comes to technology?

1. Know your audience.

Women are more likely to use Pinterest. Instagram has a younger audience. It's simple: different audiences use online tools differently. Find out where your customers are and start there. Quantcast.com has a lot of great tools that provide demographic information about visitors to specific websites (the image below shows such data for Facebook users).

Or take a look at how visitors are getting to your website using Google Analytics. If you're more likely to get a sale from Facebook than Twitter, it's a no-brainer to spend more time with Facebook. But you should also do it the old-fashioned way: talk to your customers. If you have a brick and mortar store, ask people that come in. If you have an email list, send out a small survey.

2. Test, measure and adjust.

This should seem obvious, but it's VERY often overlooked. I've met with several clients who were enthusiastically trying out QR Codes, without implementing any way to evaluate their effectiveness. You can track traffic from QR codes (and Facebook ads, digital ads, etc.), using Google's URL builder.

3. K.I.S.S.

In the trite but true category: Keep It Simple, Stupid! Just because technology can be complicated, doesn't mean that it should be. Too often, brands try and accomplish too many goals with one campaign or initiative. Focus on one main goal, instead of having a convoluted campaign that no one can follow. 

4. Do something!

The most successful CMOs are the ones that can identify long-term trends, such as social media and mobile, experiment personally (for example, don't expect massive results from Pinterest if you don't have an account set up for yourself) and test professionally.

When it comes to marketing technology, no one wants to be left behind, which makes it easy to be puppy-like -- and ultimately unproductive -- in how we approach the many tools out there. You can avoid chasing your tail by remembering the Big Basics:

• Know Your Audience
• Test, Measure Adjust
• K.I.S.S.
• Do Something!

I had the opportunity to speak at the UNT PRSSA’s meeting last night in Denton (they’re a very fun and bright group of students who are about to hit the job market *wink wink employers*), and thought I’d share a few of the talking points with other prospective graduates.

1. Do your research

This goes for anyone in the industry, not just jobseekers. The key to success as an ad pro or employee is knowing people. Do whatever it takes to understand who you’re selling your product, service, or self to.

2. Don’t be that guy (or girl)

Nobody likes the embarrassing co-worker who tells weekend stories too loudly. Similarly, nobody wants to hire a “frat bro” with the ol’ shirtless beer chugging Facebook profile picture.

3. Don’t stop learning

You’ll soon find that your formal education leaves you unequipped to manage the day-to-day changes of the marketing world. Keep up with blogs like Mashable, TechCrunch, Buzzfeed, follow the news (both global and local), and you just may want to keep up with those Kardashians so you actually hold conversations with the highly intellectual people around you.

4. Hustle

Do what you have to in order to get the job done for a client, employer, teammate, etc. If that means making copies, cleaning the fridge, or videotaping a someone else’s child’s ballet recital... do it. Don’t forget to smile the entire way through, because guess what - everyone’s watching.

5. Everyone loves a good story (and to tell their own)

Not only is this extremely relevant in the advertising world (Facebook’s transition to the Timeline layout is an excellent example), but in our personal lives. Asking other people about themselves is the most successful way to make them like you. Fact. Make sure you have an interesting story to tell too, which leads me to our final point...

6. Be memorable

Whether it’s in a campaign you’re designing, an interview you’ve landed, or a conference you’re attending, make them remember you (in a positive way). Being different isn’t always bad, and being loud isn’t always good. Find a part of you that is important and unique, then build your brand around it.

Have questions about post-grad life or career goals and expectations? We’ve got plenty of Bs who’d love to help you out! Give us a shout in the comments below, or shoot me an email personally at ali@balcomagency.com. Good luck!

Is your website easy come, easy go? You may have optimized your site to get great organic search engine results – and lots of visitors – but if people don’t like what they see when they get there, they’ll bail. The bounce rate indicates how often that happens by giving you the percentage of visitors who view only a single page of your site before leaving. Deflate your bounce rate by making sure you have valuable, relevant content that encourages visitors to stick around – and keeps them coming back for more.

AdWords is Google’s paid search advertising program. Through AdWords, you identify keywords that describe what you’re selling, then write short text ads that include those keywords. When people search using those keywords, your ads show up in the paid ad section on the search engine results page. With AdWords, you bid on keywords to determine the placement of your ad (versus your competitors’ ads) and how much you’ll have to pay when people click on it.

Think of local search like you would the yellow pages – only without those annoying tissue-thin pages. While you want to make sure you include geographic information so that your site shows up in organic searches, you also need to pay attention to local search engines like Google Places. Local search engines automatically create listings, but it’s up to you to “own” your business and add as much detail as possible. Things like photos, hours of operation, even videos will all help you show up higher in the directory results.

If you boiled the web down to one simple imperative, it would be, “Help people find what they’re looking for.” That’s certainly what search engines are intended to do. But once you land on a website, the same rule applies. And that’s where Information Architecture comes in. It’s the art and science of organizing a website’s information in ways that make sense to most people, always keeping in mind a site’s goals and its users’ needs.  Good information architecture can mean better site engagement, improved search engine optimization and higher conversion rates.

In the simplest terms, conversions happen when your Internet marketing gets people to do what you want them to do, such as make an online purchase, “like” your Facebook page or sign up for an email newsletter. What counts as a conversion is up to the marketer, but it’s usually something that will generate revenue. This can be short-term – someone clicks on a paid search ad and immediately buys the product through an e-commerce site. But it can also be more long-term – when someone downloads a white paper, they’re usually added to an email database and can be marketed to further.

Think of rich media as web banners on steroids. While your basic banner ad will generally have one way you can interact with it – click and be sent to a web page – rich media ads offer a much higher level of interactivity. They are often expandable to include more content and can feature audio and video clips, contact forms, even click-to-call functionality. Rich media ads can be highly engaging and are a good way to cut through the clutter, plus they can offer sophisticated tracking and measurement tools so you see exactly how people are interacting with your ads.

Pay-per-click (PPC) refers to those paid ads you see at the top and to the right of search engine results pages. In PPC campaigns, advertisers usually bid on relevant keywords to get their ads served to people searching with those words. The more popular a keyword or keyword phrase, the higher the cost. The advertiser only pays when a user clicks on the ad. PPC is a quick way to get your brand in front of users (as opposed to SEO, which can take time to build).

Everyone wants their website to rank number one in search engine results. But to even get close you’ve got to find that intersection of what your company offers and what people are looking for. That’s where keywords come in. These are the terms that you weave throughout your content so that search engines will deliver your site to users who are searching for those terms. There’s definitely an art to it – most search engines have a sophisticated proprietary algorithm that determines search engine results, so you can’t just include certain terms over and over. In fact, so-called “keyword stuffing” will get you banned from Google and the like, so be careful. Keywords also play a prominent role in pay-per-click advertising.