JMS Continues to Support Our Clients and Community
Please be advised that JMS Marketing is fully prepared to manage our workforce through this disruption. We remain ready to provide businesses with ongoing marketing and communication services as we continue to navigate this new and continually changing business environment.
That said, we have taken the necessary health and safety precautions and our office remains open as of today. Should companies within Illinois receive a mandate to close temporarily, we have the resources, technology and production systems in place to serve our clients remotely.
Here at JMS Marketing, we are grateful for your business and for the opportunity to partner with you through good times, and challenging times such as these. Needless to say, we’ve experienced several of them in our 27 years in business and we’ve come out of them stronger, more grateful and much wiser.
Stay strong, remain healthy and we’ll all work through this together.
Jean Marie Saidler
President
“The Best Laid Plans” Include Plan B
COVID-19, none of us had any inkling of what this stood for just a few months ago. Yet here we are, fielding questions about the Coronavirus that has now impacted the meeting and trade show industry. Major U.S. trade shows such as the International Housewares show have already been cancelled. Just that one event quickly drained 45,000 room reservations off the books for Chicago Hotels. A terrible hit for Chicago’s tourism industry. Even more surprising, one of the world’s biggest scientific conferences – the March Meeting of the American Physical Society – was cancelled little more than a day before it was scheduled to begin in Denver.
On a global front, the mobile industry’s largest trade show, Mobile World Congress scheduled in Barcelona this month, announced to nearly 100,000 attendees that it too would be cancelling its upcoming event. And unfortunately, the list goes on and on.
The best response in dealing with issues like this is to be prepared before problems hit, since options become more limited when a disruption is in full swing. Yet we can still take measure now to remain proactive and to identify how we can prepare for an event should a large-scale crisis take place in the future.
Study Credible Research
Dealing with the unexpected is commonplace when planning meetings and conventions. It’s part of the job. Yet it’s vitally important to monitor credible sources of information to help you in your planning process. Here are a few resources to help research the status of COVID-19:
- World Health Organization: Planning recommendations for large events
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Recommendations for traveling
Communicate Responsibly
Once you have confirmed “Plan B” for your event, it’s time to communicate those plans to your audience. Now is also a good time to review your meeting crises communication plan. The Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA), the world’s largest community for business events strategists, produced a helpful reference guide in 2018 which planners have found quite helpful.
Avoid the Hysterics
Not to play down this current issue, but we’ve gone through health scares before. Remember the Swine Flu (H1N1), Bird Flu (H5N1), or SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome)? At a time like this, it’s important to stay calm and remain informed with credible resources. Your audience is turning to you for professional advice.
Bottom line? Remain informed, proactive, and deliver clear, timely information.
Is Your Search Marketing Strategy Responsive to Your Customers?
Hold on to your hat. Google received nearly 2.3 trillion searches in 2019. In fact, sixty-seven searches are performed on Google every second!
Organic and paid search clicks across search engines can easily supply more than half of your 
website traffic. Because of this, it’s important to truly understand how viewers to your site search for results and how to optimize your website based on what you discover after viewing website analytics.
Search marketing strategies are changing constantly, yet there are three core areas that continue to remain a foundation of the process:
- Content: Can we say this enough? We all struggle to find the time to carefully craft our messages. Yet taking the time to create high-quality, relevant content that offers the best answers for people seeking answers will drive the highest return on your investment of time. An average 300-word word count is best, as long as its solid copy and not just a webpage stuffed with fluffy content and random keywords. Make sure to develop section headings and relevant graphics to add interest to the copy. Don’t shy away from using bullet points if copy is very lengthy. The key is to keep the reader on the page and interested in what you have to say.
- Technical Development: From a technical development perspective, websites should be search engine friendly. Poor web practices will hurt your search rankings. Regularly review and correct problems such as broken outbound links, 404 errors, and HTML errors such as missing or duplicated meta tags. Also make sure your website is firing on all cylinders when it comes to mobile platforms such as smartphones and tablets. Make certain your site loads quickly and renders well on all devices.
- Backlinks: An astonishing 55.24% of pages don’t have a single link leading back to it from other sites as reported by Impact. Backlinks are earned through strong content, active social sharing, email promotion, and PR. It’s actually a form of influencer marketing. The more trusted domains in your backlink profile, the higher your website ranks and the stronger it becomes.
Search is More Than Ranking High
The top three search results on the first page of Google are reported to get more than 50 percent of clicks. Source: CMSWire Yet more than a third (34 percent) of search on Google don’t result in a click at all, either because the results don’t match viewer expectations or Google provides the answer directly in a knowledge graph box.
Images receive 3 percent of all Google search clicks, and over 2 percent of clicks are directed to YouTube videos. In fact, YouTube “How To” Video Searches were up 70% with over 100 million hours watched in 2015 alone.
Search continues to grow on Mobile Devices and Responsive Reigns Supreme
It’s no surprise, 69% of all digital media time is now spent on mobile devices. Organic search visits on phones rose 15 percent for all search engines last year. Forty-three percent of organic searches were performed on phones and 10 percent on tablets. (Source: Marketing Scope)
In 2015, Google made a search engine algorithm change that we in the marketing industry called “Mobilegeddon”. Essentially, they insisted that all smartphones be user-friendly. If not, your brand would be losing out on valuable leads. This is the change that launched the birth of responsive website design. Because we’re Google Partners, we were given the “heads-up” on this change and, as a standard service, began to offer our clients this feature so websites would automatically adjust to any device being used, particularly on mobile devices.
Take a look at your website on a smart phone. Do you need to zoom in to read the text; or scroll back and forth to click on any items in your main menu? If so, your website is probably not responsive. At the very least it’s not too user friendly. To know for sure Google offers a tool that analyzes your site based on how their systems look at it here.
We Can’t Forget Search Advertising
Although Google owns about 70% of the search market arena, Bing’s LinkedIn Connection offers a healthy strategy giving businesses the opportunity to be seen across multiple marketing channels. Pay per click can be an excellent source of advertising as it can give you laser target precision on serving up ads directed just to your audience. Yet PPC will only work if you know what you’re doing. To avoid wasting valuable dollars, you need to carefully speak to the problems your products or services solve BEFORE developing any ads. A thorough review of your target audience is also required. Where are they located? What industries do they serve in? If you’re not familiar with the process, or delegate the task to someone with little time, you can easily end up paying for clicks from people who had no interest in your product or service.
Give Your Website the Attention it Deserves
Profitable results do not happen overnight. It’s a marathon…not a sprint. But it’s certainly worth it if done right. Campaigns need to be monitored and optimized regularly and patience is required. Every case is different, as are the businesses behind them. What worked in 2018 isn’t going to work as well in 2020. Changes continue to happen almost daily.
Search is a bit like herding bees. Yet it’s likely to remain among the top sources driving website traffic for quite some time. Beit organic or paid service, quality content will continue to be the essential core supported by strong “back-end” technology and careful attention to analytics.
Take a hard look at your current search strategies. It may be time for an update. Have you updated your campaigns recently or confused with all the changes in the digital world? Don’t hesitate to contact us. We’re happy to help answer any questions you may have.