10 rules to having a successful website

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What makes a quality website? What brings quality results?

Whenever I start working with a client, I can almost guarantee that the biggest hurdle standing between them and the results they want, is the quality of their website.

The conversation usually starts by “Tarek, we did SEO and it didn’t work, We did SEM and it didn’t work, we did social media and that didn’t work, can you help?”

My answer is almost always, I need to have a bigger picture, I need to understand what you have done, audit your campaigns, your site, user behaviour, speed, performance. After I do so 90% of the time I come back with an action plan, and almost always on the top of the list is the website.

I start the conversation, by saying that we can’t fix an issue by throwing money on it, we need to address it heads on, and this is what I usually do.

As a web developer and a marketer myself, I am able to link the marketing with development aspects of websites, which tends to be very helpful for the client, in phases of redesign, development, etc…

After running into this situation with multiple clients, I realized that it is best to put together 10 points that clients should remember when building a site, migrating a site, or redesigning one.

  1. Speed and performance matter, they matter not only from a user experience standpoint but also from an SEO standpoint.
  2. User flow is extremely important, a website should be easy to navigate and easy to flow through. Make sure that you are interlinking properly on the site, make sure that all the pages that you want your visitors to see are one click away.
  3. Content is very important, avoid having weak and thin content pages. You are here to make an impression and show value and the best way you can do so is by providing an abundant amount of content. Fact: the number of words on the highest-ranking pages on Google is 2000+.
  4. Websites are like cars, and are like our bodies, if we don’t constantly maintain them they will get broken, and eventually out of service. Always maintain your site. I tend to update and fix my client’s websites on a biweekly basis.
  5. Constantly update the content, having fresh content is valuable for users and search engines. The fresher your content the higher your chance of ranking and converting.
  6. Time on site is very important, when you are building your site always ask yourself if you would read the page you are creating, ask yourself if you would stay on the site for more than 2 minutes if you saw it for the first time.
  7. Value, always think value. If you are not answering a client’s question or bringing them value, then why would they trust you. I insist on embedding Q&As and FAQs on almost every page of my client’s site, which allows them to should up on top of search results.
  8. Get a good server, all my client’s sites are on dedicated servers. The advantages are massive, from speed to security to performance and peace of mind.
  9. Security matters more than ever, always watch your site’s security and performance, always update your site. This is important now more than ever. I tend to run security updates every week for all the sites I manage.
  10. Think holistic, never think that social media alone works or SEO alone works. Marketing is holistic, make sure that you are doing your best and driving traffic from all fronts.

I hope this list will help you in updating our site and improving its performance on all fronts.

If you have questions or are interested in learning more, let’s have a chat. t@rimanagency.com

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Launching a New Web Page Checklist

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12 things to do after launching a new page on your site.

Page Launch Checklist

New pages come with new errors. Every time you launch a new page there are some issues that you didn’t plan for before launch that might end up being costly by the time they are public.

As I have launched 1000s of pages in the past, I aggregated a list of steps that you should be taken after adding a page to a site. This list will help you save time, money and effort as it addresses every aspect of a page from design, to SEO, to analytics and social media.

  • Review page for UX/UI issues

    • visit your site from your tablet, PC and Mobile, navigate the page as a normal user and see if there is anything that is out of place.
    • Images, videos, and audio files are in the correct places, formatted and working on all devices.

  • Check page for responsiveness issues

    • You can do that by visiting the site on multiple devices.
    • or you can use a tool such as  https://responsivedesignchecker.com/ that will allow you to test the style & look and feel of your site across different devices and browsers.
    • Check if the page is mobile-friendly – https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly that will let you know if the page is loading properly on mobile devices and if there any design or code issues that you need to address.

  • Test the page out on Google Analytics, make sure that the tracking code has been added to the page.

    • You can either use view source and see if the code is added there.
    • You can also visit the page, and check real-time reports in Google Analytics to see if traffic is coming in.

  • Check page for loading performance issues – https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

    • This will allow you to see if your page is loading properly and fast enough across different devices, and it will provide you with different recommendations that will help improve the performance, some of the recommendations will be related to compressing code or images.

  • Double-Check Your Images

    • Check to see if they are loading properly across devices.
    • Check to see if you added the proper Title & Alt tags.

  • Double-Check Your Content is Optimized for SEO

    • Measure keyword density.
    • Check the content size.
    • Check if the content has high readability.
    • Check to see if you are using the right keywords.
    • Check to see if you are using an optimized title tag.
    • Check to see if you are using an optimized description tag.
    • Low Text-to-HTML Ratio
    • Make sure that the page has enough content (Avoid having a thin content page)

  • Double-check there are no technical SEO issues on the page

    • Make sure that the page is indexable.
    • Check the robot meta tag on the page.
    • Check to see if the page is added to the sitemap.
    • Check if the pages are using schema markup
    • Check to see if the page has the right rel=canonical
    • Make sure page is secure – running on HTTPS
    • Ensure that Open Graph and Twitter Card are debugging properly.
    • Make sure that you are using the proper language declaration – the proper hreflang.
    • Make sure that the page has no AMP errors.

  • Test form and links if any.

  • Test external links

    • Make sure external links are opening in a new window
    • Make sure external links are set to “Nofollow” if nessessary.
    • Check for broken links.

  • Test internal links

    • Click on each link and see if they are leading to the proper page they are meant to go to.
    • Ensure that you are using the right anchor text.
    • Check for broken links.

  • Make sure the text is accurate and error-free.

    • Check for spelling and grammar mistakes.
    • Make sure that you are using one language consistently.

  • Create a backup

 

Always remember that we can’t predict everything, and there are some items that are not on this list that you might run into.

That said, this is a great starting point to ensure that your new page will perform well across different devices, channels, and browsers for both users and search engines.

Learn more about how code can affect your SEO.

Learn about how digital marketing can expand your business in 2021.

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7 Ways To Expand Your Business Through Digital Marketing in 2021

So many businesses are slowly focusing on the digital aspect of their business, recognizing the opportunities that come with having a strong online presence. Big or small, digital marketing can have a big impact on your business if executed correctly, which is why I am here to help. Fundamentally, there’s a lot more to Digital Marketing than just search, in fact, Digital marketing is an ever-evolving mix of different digital channels that you can use to promote and drive value to your business. While most people think of SEO and SEM when it comes to digital marketing, and while yes, they are a big part of it, there are also other crucial channels to look at when trying to optimize and prepare your business to excel in the online world.

  1. SEO (Search Engine Optimization): The process of aligning the various elements of your site (tags, content, data, information, links, etc.) with the best practices of search engines, so that you can rank as high as possible in search engine results.
  2. SEM (Search Engine Marketing): The process of implementing search and display campaigns on advertising platforms such as Google Ads and Bing Ads, with the aim of creating relevant traffic and awareness for your brand and website.
  3. Social Media Marketing: The process of marketing your brand and website on social channels to create awareness, loyalty, retention, traffic and conversions.
    • Most common social channels: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.
  4. Email Marketing: The process of collecting email subscribers, then creating and sending email campaigns intended to grow brand awareness and sell more products and services, or otherwise convert subscribers such as encouraging event sign-ups, content downloads, etc.
    • Common email marketing platforms: Mailchimp, Constant Contact, GetResponse, SendinBlue (this is a highly saturated market, and there are many to choose from)
  5. Content Marketing: The process of creating and sharing videos, articles, images and other forms of digital content.
  6. Local Marketing: The process of marketing your product or service to specific geographical locations or neighbourhoods.
  7. Landing Page Marketing: The process of creating highly targeted landing pages and directing traffic to said pages based on a set of predetermined criteria. The main goal of these pages is to get visitors to stay longer on your site and convert (buy, signup, etc.)
    • Landing page marketing is also known as CRO or Conversion Rate Optimization.

While these are not the only ways to grow your business online, they are a gold standard that should be practiced with every business. The channels help build a foundation for your business to not only survive online but to thrive in it and sail the waters efficiently.


 

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5 Google Analytics Metrics Every Business Should Watch

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Google Analytics Most Important Metrics

Google Analytics (GA) is one of the most powerful tools a business can adopt, and one of the few exceptions to the “you get what you pay for” rule. It’s incredible how much valuable data you can get from a free tool. Valuable and actionable data.

However, the sheer volume of data and metrics available can feel daunting to people who aren’t familiar with analytics. What’s most important? What should you focus on? What should you tackle first? Every business is different, with different goals and markets, so what you focus on will depend on that. But, there are several metrics that can provide great value to virtually every business.

Whether your aim is to improve your search engine rankings, keep people on your site longer, increase onsite conversions, raise brand awareness, etc., these five Google Analytics metrics should be featured on every business’s GA dashboard:

Guy Typing on his mac book

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

 

Here is the list of the most important Google Analytics Metrics:

Bounce Rate

This is the percentage of visitors who arrive on your site, then leave (i.e. close their browser window or tab, or navigate to another website) without accessing any other pages within your site.

Through GA, you can check the bounce rate of your site overall, as well as the bounce rate of individual pages. Checking the stats of individual pages gives you a good picture of your most engaging content and the content that most often leads to people dropping off. For pages where people stay and decide to explore more, you’ll want to boost visibility of those pages, use them as landing pages and try to create similar (but not duplicate) content on other pages.

For pages where people are dropping off, you’ll want to investigate how to improve those pages to reduce bounce rate, and potentially reduce their visibility by no longer using them as key landing pages while you’re working on improvements.

Time on Site

There are two reasons to watch this metric closely. First, search engines are giving more and more weight to ‘time on site’ as an indicator of the value and/or credibility of a page or overall website. It’s a good measurement because people spend more time with content that’s engaging, educational, useful or entertaining. Search engines like Google want to provide users with good content, so it makes sense that they’d rely on behavioural metrics like this one.

The second reason is that it’s an indicator to you of how engaging and useful people find your content. If people are just clicking through pages then dropping off, your content isn’t doing its job. But if they’re spending time with it, it means you’re doing something right.

Again, you’ll want to look at the overall time on site, but mainly focus on individual pages to see which ones are really striking a chord with your audience and which ones could do with some strategic optimization.

Pages Per Visit

Pages per visit is another indicator of engagement, but can also tell you if your site is easy to navigate, which matters to both your visitors and search engine spiders.

If you have a consistently low pages-per-visit rate, one of the first things you want to investigate is your site’s navigation. Are the links or menu items easy to find? Are the links actually working? Are they rendering properly across all browsers and devices, including mobile? Investigate all of this and consider getting someone unfamiliar with your site to give it a try and provide feedback.

If your navigation is visible and accessible, but you’re still seeing a low pages-per-visit rate, then it’s time to look at your content. Look at what they’re seeing first, where they go from there and where they’re dropping off to determine what might need to be optimized.

Conversion Rate

What does “conversion” mean? It will differ from business to business, project to project. It could be a sale, sign up, registration, download… whatever you want people to do on your site, that’s your conversion. Many businesses have several variations of conversions, including macro and micro conversions. For example, a sale or registration could be a macro conversion, whereas a newsletter signup or ebook download might be considered a micro-conversion.

Conversions matter because they’re kind of the whole point of your website. They’re what keep you in business! This is another instance where you will want to drill it down to individual pages to determine the type of content that is most likely to convert, and for which of your conversion types, and what content does not convert well.

Visits and Returning Visits

Person looking at Google Analytics on their phone

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

In GA, new visits are people who have never visited your site before, whereas a return visitor is just that – someone who has been to your site before and is now coming back. Google Analytics does set a two year expiry, so if someone visited your site more than two years ago and is now returning, they will be counted as a new visitor.

You want to watch these metrics because a steady stream of new visitors means any marketing investments or search engine optimizations you’ve been making are paying off (in this case, you’ll want to look at where those visits are coming from to determine which of your investments are working and which are not). If you aren’t seeing noticeable spikes in new visits to coincide with campaigns, that’s an indicator that something has gone wrong. Either the content isn’t engaging enough, or there could be a technical issue like a broken link. This needs to be investigated ASAP.

Returning visits are yet another indicator of how engaging your content is to your audience. If people aren’t coming back, it could indicate an issue with your content, service or products. In this case, you’ll also want to look at where visitors are coming from. For example, are you investing in advertising that brings a lot of initial visits, but not quality visitors that come back again and again? What areas are driving traffic that converts to returning visitors? Invest in more of that and reconsider investments that aren’t driving quality traffic your way.

Takeaway

Never before in history have marketers, business owners and entrepreneurs had such a wealth of data available right at their fingertips. That brings a lot of advantages, but also this whole new problem of too much data to know what to do with it all! Instead of trying to analyze and act on all of it at once, aim to focus on a few key areas to start. Analyze reports, tweak your content and strategies, test, measure, analyze and update over and over again to continually improve your efforts, keep things fresh, respond to the market and grow your business.

 

Learn how to setup Google Analytics here. 

Get your copy of: “The Secret to Capitalizing on Analytics”

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How to Manage Google Analytics Permissions?

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Google Analytics Permissions Guide

Google Analytics structure is important when it comes to giving permissions and delegating rights to teams and individuals. For example, you may want to permit some people to view reports, but not make changes within the Google Analytics platform, whereas you may want to grant someone else permission to edit dashboards and create filters. The structure is a key part of that.

You can delegate four types of permissions in GA. Permissions can be granted at any level of the GA structure (Account, Property and View). Permission types include:

Manage Users (Permission): This allows someone to remove and add user access to the account.

This is a dangerous right to hand off, especially given the fact that if you grant this level of permission, you might be kicked off the account yourself. Ideally, only one person should be able to add and remove users. This way, you have better control over who has access, and what level of access they have, to your incredibly valuable data.

Edit (Permission): This allows someone to edit accounts, properties and views, filter data, and create goals. The only thing they can’t do is manage users. This permission level is ideal for Analytics experts.

Collaborate (Permission): This allows someone to edit shared dashboards or add annotations. This permission level is ideal for marketers, social media managers, and campaign managers.

Read & Analyze (Permission): This is a read-only level. It allows someone to read and view reports, but they cannot make any changes. This permission level is ideal for CEOs, managers, etc.

Note:

It is important to note that while you can grant permission at either the account, property or view level, that permission is hierarchical. That means, if you grant someone permission at the property level, they will automatically have access at the view level as well. Grant it at the account level, and they automatically have it at the property and view levels.

List of permissions in Google Analytics

 

Learn More about analytics and how to capitalize on it: Get your copy of “The Secret to Capitalizing on Analytics” here

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5 Tips for Setting up a Google Analytics Account Structure

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How to set up a Google Analytics Account Structure?

While setting up your account it is hard to foresee where the account will be in the future. Yet there are some factors that you should always account to, to ensure that your account is setup to grow in a sustainable manner.

Here are 6 factors to keep in mind when setting up your Google Analytics Account:

  • Keep in mind that GA is there to serve your marketing and business strategy.
    As much as the setup is important, it is more important to check it daily. Most successful marketers and business people check their analytics almost daily. It usually guides their decisions to be more data-driven. As you design your structure, think about how you will use it daily.
  • Don’t forget the purpose of data and GA. The main reason to use GA is to make sure visitors are doing what you want them to do on your site or web property. This could be contact form submission, sign up to a newsletter, buy a product, request a quote, etc. When setting up GA remember your KPIs and goals for the site.
  • Remember that a big strength of GA is the ability to integrate with all the other Google tools. Keep in mind that you will likely be connecting your GA account with Google Ads, Google Search Console, Google Tag Manager, Google AdSense, etc.
  • Another strength of GA is the ability to customize reports to your needs. As you go through the process of setting up GA, keep in mind how you want to view the data. Better yet, always bear in mind who will benefit from what report. When we approach the end of this book where you’ll learn how to customize data, bring these thoughts to life through the right dashboards.
  • Through GA, you can compare data across different months, traffic sources and other dimensions. As you analyze different reports, remember to make data more relevant through comparing.
  • Remember that GA can do (much of) the work for you. You are better off creating intelligent alerts to notify you of a rise or drop in traffic or any other significant change with your site data, rather than relying on manual daily checks.

Learn More about analytics and how to capitalize on it: Get your copy of “The Secret to Capitalizing on Analytics” here

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How to Properly Setup Google Analytics

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Google Analytics Structure

GA is divided into three levels.

The account level: This is where you label your group of properties. Every account can have up to 50 properties.

The property level: This is where you manage all your web properties. A web property could be an app, a website, a POS, etc. Any property that is solely yours could be here. For example, you own your mobile app, so it can be tracked as a property. You don’t own your Facebook page – that’s the property of Facebook – so it can’t be tracked as a property. Each property can have up to 25 views.

The view level: This is where you select the different ways you can view your property. One unfiltered view for every property in your account is automatically created. You can set up multiple views on a single property.

Let’s use an example to better understand this structure:

I run a business called The Camino Within. Let’s imagine it has a blog, speaking site, book site and a mobile app. These are all separate properties, meaning the blog, for example, is not embedded within the main website, but has its own URL.

The account name would be:

  • The Camino Within

The property names would be:

  • The Camino Within site – thecaminowithin.com
  • The Camino Within blog – blog.thecaminowithin.com
  • The Camino Within travel app – IOS & Android apps
  • The Camino Within speaking site – speaking.thecaminowithin.com

A good example of the views could be as follows:

  • All data view
  • Canadian visits
  • International visits
  • External traffic only
  • Backup view

With views, you apply filters so that you only see the data you want within that view. This makes it really easy to quickly extract your most relevant and frequently needed information. Just note that when you’re in a particular view, you won’t be able to retrieve any information that you’ve set to be filtered out. You’ll need to remove that filter or choose another view. Also, be sure to label your views very clearly.

Google Analytics Structure

As you will learn further along in this book, this structure is important for permissions, account management, integration and accessibility. For this reason, take care that your GA structure makes sense for you, your business and your business objectives.

Takeaway

Google Analytics account structure is an important factor in collecting and compiling the data most relevant to your business goals, in a way that makes sense for you. When setup properly, it will help considerably in the long-term planning, preparation and performance of your business online.

 

Learn More about analytics and how to capitalize on it: Get your copy of “The Secret to Capitalizing on Analytics” here

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How to Successfully Utilize Google Analytics

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SUCCESS IN GA REQUIRES 3 STEPS

Like all tools, GA is only as effective as the person wielding it. Take the time to get to know the tool and how best to use it within your business. These are 3 key steps you need to invest in to ensure success with GA:

  1. Setting up Google Analytics in the right way
  • Creating a Google Analytics account
  • Customizing the account
  • Understanding the structure
  • Understanding how you can create views and properties for your account
  • Understanding how to distribute privileges
  • Understanding how to activate features
  • Understanding GDPR, privacy and Google Analytics

 

  1. Translating your data into insights
  • Understanding metrics and dimensions
  • Understanding data hygiene
  • Knowing where to find relevant data
  • Understanding what this data means for your business
  • Understanding what is working and not working
  • Getting the most out of the data

 

  1. Acting on your insights
  • Applying learnings to your business
  • Knowing how to react to data
  • Optimizing for better results

 

Lessons from GA Consulting

When I work with companies, I always work on getting to know the client first, understanding their business and their goals.

After that, I aim to create a Google Analytics account setup that is fully aligned with their goals.

To go the extra mile, I also help them with reporting, insights and dashboarding.

So, the process goes like this:

  • Understanding who you are and what you want to achieve;
  • Customizing your account to gather and compile data that’s relevant to who you are and what you want to achieve;
  • Creating reports and dashboards that give you easy-to-interpret visuals of what your data means.

But here’s the crazy part: even though the client is the person in this equation who best knows the business, they always want me to be there to act on their insights, data and reports.

What this taught me is that data is more than just marrying our minds with numbers. In fact, it’s not a marriage at all. It’s more of a master and machine relationship. YOU are the master. You need to make the machine work for you.

Every time I sit down with a client’s team to go over their data, we always end up with more than just the sum total. We always end up with genius ideas and actionable next steps. The data becomes an impetus to launch creative new ways to market and cater to customers.

The ability and drive to interpret and act on data is there, but for whatever reason, many people need to be led to the water, so to speak.  Don’t ever play the passive or reactive role to data. Be involved at every level. Data will not act alone. It needs you in the driver’s seat. Get yourself in that mindset.

To bridge this gap between gathering the data and acting on it, I divide analytics consulting into setting up, researching and recommendations. For this, I like to use the metaphor of producing a Broadway play.

 

Prepare. Practice. Perform. Here’s how it goes:

Prepare

  • Get to know the structure of your GA account.
  • Learn how to create a Google Analytics account.
  • Learn an alternative way of adding GA through a tool called Google Tag Manager.

Practice

  • GA uses some terms you may be unfamiliar with. Learn the most important metrics and dimensions so that you are able to read the data on GA reports.

Perform

  • Navigate the platform.
  • Read and analyze GA reports.
  • Act on the knowledge and insight they provide.

 

Takeaway

Having data without interpretation is like trying to perform in a play without a script.

Don’t ever play the passive or reactive role to data. Be involved at every level. Know the tool, learn how to wield it, then do it.

 

Learn More about analytics and how to capitalize on it: Get your copy of “The Secret to Capitalizing on Analytics” here

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What Can Marketers Learn From the Movie Industry?

The movie industry is one of the most competitive and engaging industries when it comes to marketing.

This industry requires quick adaption, seasonality, buildup, a lot of preparation and planning, which makes it a learning ground for marketers who want to get better and want more challenge.

Here are 12 things marketers can learn from this industry:

1. Do something that is worth talking about

Creating quality content, visuals and videos. Most of us tend to create OK content, and then pay for ads that will send people to this channel and wind up. While the right way to do marketing is to create amazing things and amazing content and then market that content.

2. Capitalizing on “Build-up marketing” 

Most consumers check a product or a service before it is released. Based on a Google study, most customers look for a movie a month before its release. The same thing happens for new product releases, as a marketer you should capitalize on both pre-release and post-release moments.

3. Local targeting, Geo-targeting and I-beacons.

Most promotions associated with movies are mainly done using geo-tools, this helps marketers reach certain areas with higher theatre density and denser population with more ads.

As for I-beacons, marketers are now creating location-based games and mobile apps, associated with movies themselves, that viewers can play while in the theatre, making the promotion more native and in-place.

4. Language tailored creatives and promotions:

Due to the fact most movies contain different languages and subtitles. Marketers make sure that the right creatives reach the right group, in the right area, with the right creatives.

5. Creating engaging and compelling landing pages

We are more willing to stay on a page if we connect with something familiar. Marketers need to capitalize on this, emphasizing logos and brands.

6. Creating interactive social campaigns

Smart marketers create campaigns that rotate around the audience and concentrate on their involvement while using all social channels with the same theme.

They also ensure the story rotates around the viewer by capitalizing on social competitions and quizzes.

7. Using interesting partnerships aligned with their brand

8. Utilizing paid media across search and social channels

It is important to use the search and social channels in an integrated manner, ensuring that all creatives and promotions are aligned perfectly.

9. Capitalizing on YouTube :

4 out of 5 movie lovers go to YouTube (source: thinkwithgoogle)

10. Looking at the big picture, and understanding their viewers:

Knowing and using the interests of their viewers, and targeting them accordingly

11. Using online and offline marketing in a parallel and integrated strategy

12. Using exclusivity in state of the art email campaigns:

this helps in maintaining brand advocacy and loyalty

Conclusion, there is always something that marketers can learn from other industries, especially the ones that are more seasonal and versatile. As a marketer, keep an eye out, dare your industry guidelines in the name of innovation.

Sources:

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How Do You Explain Digital Marketing to a 92 Year Old?

I was recently invited by a networking group to give a presentation on how digital marketing is impacting the way we market and do business.

As I began the presentation, I introduced myself and what I do, then moved into an explanation of search engine optimization, search engine marketing and the ins and outs of this constantly changing market.

About 25 minutes into the presentation, as I immersed the crowds in details of digital marketing and how I use it to make brands and businesses grow and increase their online presence, I saw a shaky hand emerge from the audience.

I assumed the hand indicated a question about my current slide. I welcomed the question.

The gentleman attached to the hand took his time standing up. He looked at me with a blank face, seeming hesitant to ask his question.

He then uttered these 4 words: “What is digital marketing?”

You had to be there to see the surprise on my face. I wasn’t expecting this question at all, especially not so far into the presentation. And not because the question was wrong to ask. In fact, this 92-year-old gentleman was brave to ask it.

I was surprised because, while I have answered this question many times, for many different people (even an 8-year-old!), I was not prepared to answer it for a 92-year-old.

There I was, onstage, trying to put myself into a 92-year-old mind. What kind of marketing has he been exposed to in his lifetime? What kind of marketing would he be seeing today? Where would he go when looking for a product or a service?

With more than a 60 year age gap between myself and this gentleman, it was a challenge.

I decided to start answering what I knew – comparing traditional marketing to digital marketing and explaining the difference.

“As marketing throughout the 60s,70s, 80s and 90s was mainly through TV, radio and newspapers, that is considered ‘traditional marketing’. Digital marketing is done through more recent technologies such as mobile phones, computers and tablets, while utilizing different channels such as search engines and social media.”

The blank stare persisted. Except now, it looked even blanker.

I was trying to find something in my mind that this fine gentleman could relate to.

Suddenly, I had an epiphany.

I remembered helping a friend’s parents move. I clearly remembered seeing stacks of Yellow Pages as we moved boxes of books and magazines from their basement. I asked why they kept them, to which they replied that they wanted to ensure they had the numbers and contacts of everyone from year to year, as advertisers tended to vary annually. To them, it was a coveted database of contacts.

Back in my onstage moment, I took a deep breath, smiled and said to the gentleman,“Remember in the old days when you wanted to find something or someone, your first instinct was to look for them in the Yellow Pages book? Nowadays, all you have to do is search them up on search engines such as Google.”

As soon as I said this, he smiled. His whole face lit up.

To him, digital means that the coveted Yellow Pages book and its wealth of information are now online. Advertisers that once used the Yellow Pages as a channel to increase their presence now use search engines and social media to do the same.

You see, the game hasn’t changed. Only the field. Marketing has always been about getting your message where people will look for it, find it, see it, consume it.

So the next time you are sitting down with Grandma and Grandpa and, out of nowhere, they throw you an unexpected question on any digital-related matter, you will know exactly how to answer them. Start with the playing field they know.

Follow Tarek Riman on Twitter @tarekriman

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