Filter bubbles are personalized query results on websites. Depending on your interest, search results and social media feed will differ from person to person. Algorithms on Facebook, Google, and many other websites decide what kind of information a user will see based upon interests, location, and other various demographics. For example, in Eli Pariser’s Ted Talk he asked two of his friends to Google “Egypt”. Eli’s friends got two very different search result pages. One search result page mentioned protests in Egypt while the other results page mentioned traveling to Egypt. Algorithms are filtering information for individuals, however this can be more of a hinderance than advantage for users.

I think that the “filter bubbles” are meant to enhance user experience on websites, no one wants to look at information they are not interested in. Users may be compelled to leave a website if content is not personalized to them. I don’t think that filter bubbles are inherently bad because as an advertising student I have been taught that personalization is a good thing, but I think filter bubbles could be causing more harm than good. Users are not being exposed to additional information or viewpoints. If people are willing to change their viewpoints but are not given the opportunity because new information is not available to them. I believe that filter bubbles are doing a disservice to those who are trying to learn new information and see viewpoints that are different from their own. For example, with the 2020 election approaching people may want to do some research on candidates. If Google and Facebook only shows users Republican and conservative information, they have not been given the chance to decide for themselves what information they want to learn and there is a possibility of their vote being swayed. Filter bubbles offer personalization to the extreme, this personalization comes at a cost where users are not given the opportunity to learn new information and decide for themselves what they want to see.

The 2020 presidential debate was hosted on September 29th. There was a total of six topics for the candidates to debate. One of these topics was Race and Violence in American cities. The unrest involving racial inequality has been going on for hundreds of years. Ethnic and racial inequality has also been very prominent in the marketing and advertising industry. The lack of representation and inclusion in advertisements and even in the industry itself has been a popular topic over the recent years. According to Forbes “only 26% of African-Americans, 10% of Hispanics and 3% of Asians feel represented in advertising, compared to 59% of whites”. With the civil unrest and injustice being done to minority groups in America it is more important now than every for brands to take action. It is important for brand to show that they care about all of thier customers. By using their platform and voice a brand can make an impact on a topic like racial injustice. 38% of U.S. consumers said that they are more likely to trust a brand that shows more diversity in its ads. If an ad shows that a brand is representing minorities as well as the brand using its influence they can make a difference in topics like race and violence in American cities.For example, when Nike decided to use Colin Kaepernick as a new face for their campaign, Nike is using their influence and platform to show support and raise awareness of a civil rights issue. Even though Nike faced a lot of backlash from those who do not support the civil rights movement, I feel like Nike gained a lot of respect and brand loyalty from those who felt very strongly about the issue. Racial and ethnic inequality is a very complicated and highly discussed topic, even within the advertising industry. By addressing issues like this advertisers can use their influence to make a difference and build brand loyalty buy representation and inclusion.

Custom audiences allows advertisers to reach people who have already interacted with a brand. Custom audiences can be people who have visited your website, engaged with a video or post on Facebook or someone who is subscribed to a monthly newsletter. Lookalike audiences are those who have similar interests as your custom audience. For example, a video game shop’s custom audience would be customers who have bought products, engaged with the shop on social media, and are interested in video games. A lookalike audience for the video game shop would have similar interests as the custom audience.

Lookalike audiences could be more valuable at times compared to a custom audience. Advertisers may want to use a lookalike audience when the custom audience is no longer purchasing products. By using a lookalike audience advertisers can reach a new target who has never been exposed to the brand or products. Because of the similarity to the custom audience there is a high chance that the lookalike audience will engage and buy products from the company. For example, the video game shop runs a facebook ad with a discount code on older video games. The custom audience could already have the old video games that the shop sells. The remaining custom audience may use the discount code but the shop expected there to be more engagement with the ad and usage of the discount code. If the shop uses a lookalike audience who has the same interest than there could be an increase in engagement with the ad as well as more discount codes used.

Custom audiences and lookalike audiences are both very important for advertisers. By knowing who your custom audience is and how they engage with your brand and their interest can help you understand who your lookalike audience is. Knowing your lookalike audience can allow you to reach new potential customers who are likely to buy your products and interact with your brand.

Chicken and Taco Loco is a Tex-Mex style restaurant located in Brandon, Fl. Chicken and Taco Loco has two location one is a taco stand and the other is a full restaurant. While the food and customer service is outstanding Chicken and Taco Loco could benefit from having better search engine optimization (SEO) to drive traffic to the website and restaurant locations. As of right now when searching for “tacos in Brandon fl” or “Mexican food in Brandon Fl” on Google the taco truck appears in the local SEO but the full restaurant location does not. The full website for Chicken and Taco Loco is the 8th option that shows on Google. There are also reviews on Yelp and Trip Advisor but those mainly focus on the taco stand. The restaurant could benefit from using keywords in an efficient way on its website. There are only 3 times the words “Mexican” is used on the homepage as well as “taco” only being used once. From personal experience when I am looking for a Mexican style restaurant I will search “Mexican food near me” or “tacos near me”, if there are not enough keyword Google will rank them lower on the results page.

Chicken and Taco Loco ranks lower than the first option, which is Romi’s Tacos (also a very good taco restaurant) even though it has a lower review score and amount of reviews. Chicken and Taco Loco should address the issue of its ranking on Google, especially because it is ranking lower when there is a higher review rate and score. The restaurant should also address the speed of its website, it takes about 5 seconds to load, which is much slower than the expected 2 seconds. Overall, Chicken and Taco Loco could benefit from having better SEO by using more keywords on its homepage, getting more backlinks from local bloggers and review websites, and optimizing how it uses Google and its website.

Technology is always changing and so are digital media channels. Myspace used to be the popular choice in the digital communication world. In the early 2000s it would have been important to keep up with Myspace and how people were using it. But now no one uses MySpace. Social media has evolved into Facebook and Instagram. Social media is used now more than ever and any possible demographic you could think of is likely on a social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and even Tik Tok. It is important for marketers to know what digital channels are popular and know what audience is using which platform. Imaginaire discusses several ways on how to stay up to date with digital marketing and digital channels. Some of the tips in the article include keeping up with what is trending on YouTube and keeping tabs on Hashtags. Keeping up with trends is important for marketers. Knowing what consumers are engaging with will give you an idea how to form your next ad or campaign. Digital channels can also let you keep a close eye on your competitors and how they are engaging with digital channels. Iris does a wonderful job of how keeping up with trends on digital channels can help increase the effectiveness your company can have on the digital world. Digital channels make it much easier to grasp the effectiveness of a strategy and campaigns. Keeping up with digital channels will help you track the effectiveness of your work while also keeping cost at a minimum. There is an abundance of tools that digital channels provide for marketing and advertising. Google analytics, Facebook analytics, Twitter analytics. Almost every platform gives you a way to keep tract of numbers and cost. Lastly, one of the most important reasons to keep up with digital channels is to form a relationship with customers. Digital channels allow brands and customers to communicate in ways like never before. Knowing where your target audience is and how they are using a digital channel will give key insights into how you can engage more and increase marketing objectives and strategies.

Digital strategy is the plan of action you take using digital media platforms. These platforms used for strategy can include Twitter, Facebook, blog posts, SEO and many other technologies. Hubspot mentions some of the most basic media strategies and many more. A strategy for digital media allows you to review your current media channels and optimize them and take advantage of any opportunities. To have a successful media strategy the first step is finding your target audience and identifying their demographics. Understanding your competitors can help your media strategy as well, if your competitors are doing well you can learn from what they are doing and optimize your media. Understanding how you use your existing media channels is important to creating a media strategy, understanding where you can improve your media and learn about new opportunities. There are a lot of steps to creating a digital media strategy, having a defined strategy will considerably help your company optimize its media.

Many companies understand that they are using digital media but have no strategic plan on how to implement it. Smart Insights did research on media strategy and 45% of organizations stated that they have no defined strategy. By optimizing paid, earned, and owned media your company will have the basics down. These types of media are just as important as understanding your target audience and competitors. Each type of media has a different goal. Paid is creating awareness, earned is driving consideration, and owned is increasing social presence. Depending on what your strategy is focusing on it is important to optimize your media. Having a well defined media strategy is important because you will understand your audience, the market, any trends in the market. You can optimize this information to fit into your digital media strategy and set your company up for success in the digital marketplace.

Which is better Lay’s original potato chip or Pringles original? When discussing competition among potato chips many of us think of other potato chip brands and flavors. However, that is not always the case. Lay’s potato chips can have some competition with healthy snacks like baby carrots and hummus. Companies don’t always have competitors in the same industry. Depending on what satisfies consumers wants and needs, other companies could compete with you. Sabra hummus and carrots could easily compete with Lay’s chips, depending on buyer behavior and attitude toward a brand could affect competition with other brands.

Depending on the snack occasion consumers may pick healthy fruits and vegetables over classic party treats like potato chips. A mother hosting a birthday party for her 10-year-old and friends may decide its best to have vegetable trays and fruit cups rather than sugary and salty food at the party. Alternatively, college students having a spring break party may decide having every flavor of Lay’s chips they can find will pair with their Bud Light and Vodka. By having competition between a wide variety of brands consumers get the choice of price, selection, and service. Consumer beliefs and life stage impact competition between competitors. A 25-year-old trying to be more healthy is less likely to buy a bag of potato chips to snack on than a teenager on their way home from school. Depending on consumer behavior, businesses could have more competition. Someone who eats both healthy and unhealthy snacks gives Lay’s competition with healthy and organic snacks. This is a variable that could affect what competition a company wants to consider. If Lay’s wanted to get more consumers buying their healthier snacks they would consider Sabra, or KIND bars as competition.

While it is important to keep all competitors in mind, competitors in the same industry are more important to focus on. For example, even though Lay’s offered healthier options of their snacks like baked organic chips, there are some consumers that are extremely health conscious and would never even consider buying Lay’s products. Competing with a direct competitor should be a businesses primary focus because there will be similar target consumers that are already considering the brand. When a consumer is considering making a purchase on a product and there are several brands to choose from you will want to focus on the consumer that is already in this process.

There is a large pool of marketing terms and concepts out in the world. Sometimes it feels like there are too many terms that seem to have the same meaning. However, here is a list of 5 marketing terms and concepts that have been redefined and clarified.

1. Key Performance Indicators or KPI is a term that businesses use to measure the performance of a campaign. There are various KPIs and depending on the campaign goals you will want to focus on a specific one. For example, if you focus on reach as a KPI you can see how effective your message is and how many individuals have seen it. KPIs analyze the way consumers interact with your brand and the outcome of that interaction. Based on that data you will know what works and what needs to be improved for the next campaign.
2. Reach is a marketing term for how many individual people have seen your brand content. Reach is important because if you are making amazing content and no one is seeing it, then why make the content? As content creators we strive for our work to be seen. Knowing how many people have seen your message lets you know where you can improve and which media channels your audience is using. Reach recognizes if your content is working or not. If you have high reach and no conversions, then that means you may have to reevaluate the ads or campaign. If your reach is wide, then your audience is growing and being engaged with.
3. Impressions is the number of times your content has been shown on a feed. This means one person can see your ad 10 times and the impressions on that ad are 10. The repetition of an ad could encourage someone to purchase the product they are continuously seeing. As an example, I ended up buying a pair of pajamas from Shien because every time I went on Facebook I would see an ad for cute dinosaur pajamas. The first few times I saw the ad I would just scroll past and then I stopped on the ad and just look until eventually I clicked on the ad and ended up on the website. I checked out what other items were on the website. I did that a few times until I eventually spent $50 on three pairs on pajamas. Impressions are important because they can encourage a consumer further down the marketing funnel.
4. The marketing funnel is the consumers journey starting from awareness and ending with purchase. The basics of the marketing funnel is AIDA, Attention, Interest, Decision, and Action. Attention is when a potential customer becomes aware of your brand. Interest is when the potential customer researches your brand to see what more you offer. Decision is when they are considering where to purchase a product or service after careful consideration the customer will move into the action phase. Action means they are ready to buy. The marketing funnel is useful for knowing what buying stage a customer is in. Depending on that stage you will know what kind of message to send to customers. If a brand wants to target people in the ‘Attention’ stage, ads on raising awareness of the brand will be the next step. The marketing funnel is an important concept that lets marketers know what kind of message they need to send to consumers based on which stage of the funnel they are in.
5. Buyer personas are a fictional persona based on ideal customers for a brand. The first step in creating a buyer persona is research on psychographics and demographics. Information such as gender, age, income, education level, and behavior are taken into consideration when creating buyer personas. Buyer personas are important because it lets you understand your target market and how to make engaging content for that target. Content for 21-year-old college students can vary vastly from content for a 30-year-old mother with toddlers. Buyer personas allow marketers to look at their target better and make personalized data that can increase awareness, and engagement of brand content and messages.

Knowing all of the marketing terms and concepts can seem overwhelming but getting a good understanding of the basics can help you. These terms are here to help us understand when something goes wrong and how to improve for the next steps in the brand’s strategy! Many of these concepts may be confusing but they are important in having a successful brand and campaigns.

A media mix is a different combination of media channels that a business uses for marketing objectives. Different channels include newspapers, magazines, television, radio, billboards, websites and social media such as Twitter and Facebook. There is a plethora of media channels, all of these are important in having a good media mix. A digital media mix does not include channels like billboards, radio or television. Having a good digital media mix includes the channels where your audience is most likely to spend their time. The media mix changes depending on which buying stage a customer is in. If a customer is aware of the product, the media mix may be to raise awareness through ads, reviews, or product placement. If a customer is in the decision stage, then sending personalized ads or information on the product may lead to conversion.

It is important to have a good digital media mix in order to get the right message to the right audience. Knowing your audience will help you optimize your media mix. The first step is knowing which media channels your target audience uses the most, then utilizing those either by owned, paid, or earned media. Owned media is social media accounts like Facebook and Twitter where the channel can send out a message for free and reach a specific audience. Earned media are reviews either by customers or news coverage. and paid media includes ads and Pay Per Click. All of these are important in having the proper media mix. Other major components of a good digital media mix include Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and Pay Per Click (PPC). SEO is the manipulation of websites through organic search engines. PPC allows you to get a better understanding of your target audience with demographics and geographics. Having a good digital media mix will cover the entire consumer journey and end in conversion. Having the right kind of content on the proper channels will send just the message a consumer needs to purchase a product.