502ads Digital Marketing Articles & Tips

502ads named a Top Louisville Content Marketing Agency by UpCity

Thu, 29 Apr 2021 20:40:54 GMT

502ads is thrilled to officially announce that we have been recognized as one of the top content marketing agencies in Louisville and nationally by UpCity.

For most of small-town America, a new business opening used to be the talk of the town. These days all that buzz and word-of-mouth has shifted online, but small businesses have been left to fend for themselves as bigger companies dominate search and social media. 502ads prides itself on doing everything possible to change that by helping local businesses use content to their advantage.

The commitment to helping local, small businesses excel is only one reason the Louisville-based company has been recognized by UpCity as not only one of the best content marketing agencies in our area but also nationally in the United States .

UpCity is a resource that helps connect businesses to service providers they can trust. With more than 70,000 listed providers—from marketing agencies to accounting firms to HR consultants to IT specialists, and many more—1.5 million businesses (and counting) have visited UpCity to research and identify the best partner for their needs.

UpCity’s proprietary algorithm utilizes a variety of digital signals to measure the credibility, trustworthiness, and recommendability of B2B service providers across the U.S. and Canada. These digital data points like reviews (both on UpCity and other third-party review sites), presence in relevant search results, domain authority, website speed and experience help UpCity connect businesses with outstanding service providers like 502ads.

Dan Olson, CEO of UpCity, had this to say about the 502ads team: “502ads provides an excellent service for their area. Not only do they have experience, but a true understanding of how to partner with local clients to effectively leverage the power of digital marketing.”

“We are proud to be partnering with UpCity and thankful for the recognition,” said 502ads founder Joshua Coffman. “This wouldn’t be possible without our fantastic clients, who inspire us every day.”

ABOUT UPCITY
UpCity is a resource that helps connect businesses to service providers they can trust. With more than 50,000 listed providers—from marketing agencies to accounting firms to HR consultants, and many more—1.5 million businesses (and counting) have visited UpCity to identify the best partner for their needs.

ABOUT 502ads
Founded in April 2020 by longtime Louisville journalist Joshua Coffman, 502ads provides marketing strategies and campaign management for small businesses in Louisville and the surrounding area in Kentucky to succeed in finding customers online, particularly in the realms of SEO, social media and Google Ads management.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Contact Joshua Coffman at (502) 619-4195 or via email at josh@502ads.com .

Four Things to Know for Your Google My Business Page in 2021

thecoffmanz@gmail.com (Joshua Coffman) — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 19:53:00 GMT

Communicating with your customers, even the ones leaving bad reviews, is critical to how your listing ranks

As online search has grown to become more vital to local businesses, Google launched its Grow with Googl e initiative in 2017, offering training, support and grants among other initiatives. While Grow with Google aims to better educate the future workforce for jobs dealing with things like business analytics, the effort, including the addition of Google My Business offerings, gives local stores and service providers access to Google users and tools, ultimately encouraging those clients to build Google My Business profiles and consider spending advertising dollars with Google.

Earlier in March the Louisville chapter of the Better Business Bureau hosted a Grow with Google event with Dave Delaney of Futurefort h , discussing Google My Business creation and management, with particular focus on updating business hours, in-person options, et cetera, in light of how our communities have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. This blog post focuses on some of those bullet points, offering several things you should do when setting up or updating a Google My Business Page. Many of these tips that can also apply to a local business's web site in terms of improving local SEO, as well. Post-COVID, customers expect up-to-the-minute updates and it's your responsibility to make sure your business rises to that challenge. (Of course, we are here to help with all of this if you need a broader strategy.)

WHAT INFORMATION DO I NEED TO PUT ON A GOOGLE MY BUSINESS PAGE?

As is the case with much of local SEO, it's important for Google, just as it is for your customers, to make sure your business name, business address and business phone number are listed and consistent with other listings across the web, from Yelp to Angie's List to your local Chamber of Commerce. Known as NAP (name, address, phone) in the SEO community, it is important to keep this uniform across the web, most certainly on a Google My Business Page. Poor info could bury your listing or lead to more severe penalizations.

In addition to having consistent branding and contact info, the business overview section of your web site is a great place to not only sell yourself to current and prospective clients and customers, but you also should keep searchability in mind, using proper keywords to best describe your business and what it offers. This also applies to properly choosing a business category, as well as when listing the products and services your business provides.

THE IMPORTANCE OF PHOTOS & VIDEO ON A GOOGLE MY BUSINESS PAGE

Citing data from Google, Delaney noted that a brick-and-mortar business with an up-to-date profile is 70 percent more likely to get a visit to its location driven by Google My Business and that those customers are 50 percent more likely to buy something. Other noteworthy stats: 40 percent of searchers are looking for business hours (think "Pizza Places Open Near Me"), and people are 90 percent more likely to visit a business that has photos on its Google My Business profile.

In addition to photos, businesses can add short videos, allowing restaurants to highlight signature dishes, a boutique to illuminate a vintage outfit or even for a plumber to offer a snippet of expert advice. Just as with a business description or a product listing, the terminology used to describe a photo or video is helpful in promoting keywords linked to your business. The best conclusion might be to think of a Google My Business listing as a social media extension for your company and brand. It should be updated as maintained just as you would a Facebook page, an Instagram account or a Twitter feed.

At a remote conference earlier this year, focused on local business web strategy for 2021, representatives from Duda and Localogy also stressed the need for up-to-date listing information and business hours but went a step further, saying a small business web site should not be treated as a museum piece, to be dusted off and updated every few years, but rather to feed it as a living organism. That mindset should echo from your web site to your Google My Business page to your social accounts, everywhere your business can be found.

HOW TO RESPOND TO NEGATVIE COMMENTS ON A GOOGLE MY BUSINESS PAGE

Another important aspect covered by Delaney was responding to customer reviews on Google My Business. The number of reviews you get on your Google My Business page is important, but so is the depth of those reviews and the frequency at which a business responds to that feedback. While we all seek five-star feedback, with Google it's just as important, if not even more so, to give feedback to those who leave one-star or two-star complaints.

The best method is to engage the customer on what did not meet their expectations and then to offer a resolution if needed. Sound advice from Delaney is to ask the less-than-satisfied customer leaving the review to call or email your business so you can smooth things out. Just as in the SEO world for your web site, expertise, authority and trust (the infamous EAT acronym), it is important to convey those aspects in your customer engagements. When it comes to a spam review, or something that's untrue or abusive, there are tools in the review response console to alert Google staff.

GOOGLE MARKETING RESOURCES FOR SMALL BUSINESSES

Within its Grow with Google campaign, the search and advertising giant offers a suite of educational tools for small businesses. Here are some links to some of those options.

Grow with Google (Gain tech skills and earn Google certificates)
Google Small Business Marketing Kit
Google Marketing Kit for Black-Owned Businesses
Small Business Planning Advise from Google (Your Primer)
Grow with Google Quick Help (YouTube video series)
Grow with Google On Air (Tutorials, Upcoming Events, Small Business Tips)

502ads understands that not every small business owner has the time or the technical finesse to manage the nuances of keeping all aspects about your business up to date online, whether for Google or for social media. Get in touch for a free consultation to better meet your goals and needs in the digital world.

Big changes expected in 2021 for how Google ranks web sites

thecoffmanz@gmail.com (Joshua Coffman) — Tue, 16 Mar 2021 22:36:00 GMT

Mobile First Indexing & Core Web Vitals updates could shake up where small businesses rank on Google

If your web site drops in Google rankings in 2021, it likely will be due to one of a pair of major shifts that the search and advertising giant is making in the algorithms it uses to determine which web sites to list at the top of its search results. Here is a timeline of what to expect and when the changes to Google rankings will come in 2021.

WHAT CHANGES IS GOOGLE MAKING TO ITS RANKINGS FOR 2021?

One large change coming to Google rankings is what is called Mobile First Indexing. The importance of how a web site loads and can be used on a mobile device has steadily increased over the past decade, as more and more web users have relied on their phones to find information, goods and services.

Google is effectively abandoning desktop ranking factors to focus solely on how a site's mobile version loads and performs. This makes the need for having a responsive web site that can adapt to a device and browser even more important.

The other significant change expected for Google rankings is a Core Web Vitals Update. It relies on how a site provides user experience and will be critical of things like pop-up windows and large shifts in a page's layout as it loads, as well as how long it takes for the bulk of a site's content to load before a user can interact with it.

WHEN WILL GOOGLE MAKE THESE RANKINGS CHANGES?

Mobile First Indexing, originally scheduled to be implemented in September 2020, is now expected to roll out during March 2021. Search Engine Land , which notes that this has been a five-year-long process for Google, contends that this is already in place for most sites and outlines several things to keep in mind when planning for Google's Mobile First Indexing, including making sure that the majority of your content matches on desktop and mobile, and to consider the placement and loading of images and videos.

The Core Web Vitals Update is expected to shake up Google's search engine rankings when it rolls out in May. Having a secure site certificate (SSL) so your site is listed under https: is critical, as is mobile friendliness and the avoidance of intrusive ads.

At a remote conference in early March, organized by Localogy and Duda , speakers encouraged web developers to think of a web site for a local business as a living organism to be fed and maintained, rather than a museum piece to be dusted off and updated every several years.

WHAT WILL BE MEASURED IN THE MAY 2021 GOOGLE CORE WEB VITALS UPDATE?

The key metrics to be updated in the 2021 core web vitals update from Google will be Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). LCP should be less than 2.5 seconds; FID should be less than 100 milliseconds; and CLS should be less than 0.1.

HOW CAN I CHECK THESE RANKING FACTORS FOR MY WEB SITE?

One option is to test how your site scores ahead of Google's 2021 Core Web Vitals Update, is to run it through a test at web.dev , Google's test engine for mobile page speed, accessibility and SEO.

If you are experiencing a dramatic drop in traffic to your web site, you can also evaluate your rankings for keywords through Google Search Console . For overall volatility in Google rankings, Moz provides its Mozcast , which takes complex data and displays it like a weather forecast. The more hot and stormy it is, the more changes Moz is seeing in search engine rankings.

As always, all of this information can be foreign or overwhelming for a small business owner concerned about his or her online welfare.

502ads caters to monitoring and optimizing the online presence of small businesses and their search engine performance. Feel free to contact us for a free evaluation and consultation when it comes to the changes expected in 2021.

Web design - Why having a site map beforehand matters

Fri, 05 Mar 2021 18:15:54 GMT

Let’s agree, when you are starting something new, it’s possible to forget even the simplest aspects of

the task. Web designers find themselves overwhelmed with tasks like filling each page, fixing broken

links, and aesthetics.

When this happens, you end up wasting time on creating unnecessary pages. The result is your site can

become clumsy, making it hard to navigate not only for site visitors but also for you as the designer or

owner.

Here’s why you should have a visual sitemap before starting content creation and design.

Highlight your website purpose

Not many websites (or any business for that matter) succeed without having a clear goal and purpose.

Those without end up confusing the visitors thus leading to an overall poor user experience.

Having a visual sitemap is one of the most effective ways to chart the path of your site and to it a goal

and a purpose. By mapping it out, you can determine how the site will look, key pages to include,

keywords to target and the site structure to use. Ultimately, you will save a lot of time and resources by

just having this tool.

Avoid duplicate content

A sitemap provides an easy point of reference to help you avoid repeating the same information over

and over. Additionally, it helps you avoid creating conflicting content by showing you the various pages

to update once you’ve added a new topic.

Save on cost

Creating high-quality content for your website can be resource-intensive. A visual sitemap such as

WriteMaps.com can help you decide the most important pages so you can prioritize those for quick

results.

For example, if you intend to start an affiliate website, you could focus on creating pages that generate

revenue quickly before creating content for other pages.

Simplify the work of crawlers

You want to help Google’s spiders in any way you can. This includes assisting them to find your content

by moving it up the crawl queue.

A visual sitemap is more than just an outline list of links. It also helps crawlers know what your website is

all about and the keywords used per page to better search results. You can also use it to identify pages

that can be interlinked to make it easier for search engines to navigate them.

Improve UI

A well-functioning website is one that enables users to interact seamlessly with its conversion funnels

using the available content. If the process is lengthy and complicated, chances are that they’ll leave

before completing the conversion steps e.g., signing up for your newsletter.

A sitemap helps you identify the shortest route from the moment a visitor lands on your site to the top

of the funnel.

Conclusion

Having a visual sitemap beforehand can help you determine how many pages your site should have and

what should be included in each. Besides, it helps you identify ways to enhance navigation for both

users and search engine crawlers. Think of it as a blueprint on which your website is built.

Do you use visual sitemaps when designing a website? We’d love to hear your views in the comments

below.

SEO + Digital Marketing + Journalism: Sometimes They Are Equal

thecoffmanz@gmail.com (Joshua Coffman) — Wed, 24 Feb 2021 20:55:00 GMT

3 worlds with 1 ruler; Content is king, residing in an inverted pyramid, and all is transparent

Most modern journalism gets funded by advertisers or sponsors. To keep the product as clean as possible from influence, editorial and sales departments almost always function apart from one another, often dubbed in the industry as the separation of church and state.

Over time, that has fostered misconceptions about the differences between techniques used to capture a story or a news event and those used to market or promote a product or a brand. However, specifically when it comes to the SEO side of digital marketing and advertising, there is enough shared DNA between the two that they should be considered, at least, as different breeds of the same species. Here are several examples of how fundamentals of journalism dictate contemporary online marketing.

EXTRA! EXTRA! NEWSPAPERS VERSUS SITE STRUCTURE

Over the past 25 years, as the Internet has grown from novelty to essential utility, the sources and amount of information out there has grown from what was once a tidal wave to settle into a global flood, with the water perpetually rising. To stay afloat, our human reliance on machine algorithms - whether it's a search engine, a multimedia app or a social media feed - has become both the life raft and the lighthouse. We type information into a search box and the bots then shine a beacon for us to find our way. Without that guidance, we drown.

One of the key features used to drive this search-and-find function is no different than it was in the days of dinosaurs and newspapers. Google is the mother of all algorithm lighthouses, and Google loves hierarchy; therefore, in general, YouTube, Facebook, Roku and Amazon also love hierarchy.

To get a solid sense of how to organize the information on your web site, whether for editorial or marketing needs, pick up the newspaper or the Yellow Pages. Imagine running them through a paper shredder, sifting the ribbons of paper all across your office and then trying to find a piece of information or a listing for a business on demand. Search bots were built to scour all of these shreds in our online world and bring them back together, for any user, at any place, at any time.

Back when newspapers were robust, a reader would find unique sections for national news, local news, business news, entertainment news, sports and so on. Further into the paper, the sequencing continues, in the local news section for Louisville, you might find Metro Government news, crime news, community and neighborhood announcements. Today, on a news outlet's site, you will find that same structure in the menu navigation.

MENU: HOME> NEWS> NATIONAL NEWS> REGIONAL NEWS> STATE NEWS> LOCAL NEWS>NEIGHBORHOOD NEWS

Think about how that reflects on business sites have been built to reflect that hierarchy, or to take part in modern-day Yellow Pages, advertising for select keywords on Google or Bing.

HOME PAGE > SERVICES > OPTIONS> PRICE PACKAGES> SALES PAGE

AD CAMPAIGN> AD GROUP> AD / EXTENSIONS> VARIATIONS/ DEMOGRAPHICS AND LOCATION

The more specific you can be with the titling of these pages and sections, and the closer you keep the important ones to your home page, the heart of your brand, the better it should impact your SEO. In many ways, any web site can be mapped like a newspaper, allowing the bots to find and correctly classify your best and most urgent content.

THE SECRET OF THE (INVERTED) PYRAMIDS - CONTENT STRUCTURE

A standard metric taught in Journalism 101 has become a currency of sorts in the world of SEO: The inverted pyramid. For the uninitiated, this is the practice of taking the elements of a news story and organizing them so that the most important information is in the first paragraph, the next-highest-level info or supporting facts comes next and that process continues downward through the story, creating an upside-down triangle of importance if you map the story out.

The same is true when it comes to SEO. Even in a title tag, at the top of your HTML code, this traditionally gets shown in the blue links on Google results for your pages, as well as on the tab of your browser for a given page, the importance of its structure matters, even reading from left to right. For instance, a properly optimized title tag for a Shelbyville-based beauty salon named "Locks N Love" trying to rank locally for the keyword hair stylist would be: Hair Stylist - Shelbyville | Locks N Love. Further down the inverted pyramid of SEO, the H1 tag - or what effectively would be a headline in a newspaper - should echo the title tag's keywords in some regard, as should the content lower in the structure's body. This also applies when it comes to naming your image files and image captioning, as well.

Imagine a news story about a major drug bust printed in the paper and how a search engine algorithm might be built to guarantee retrieval of that story if a person was looking for that info. From the newsstand to the web, the process would go:

NEWSPAPER NAME (web site & branding) > LOCAL NEWS SECTION (title & menu) > DRUG BUST HEADLINE (H1 Tag) > Mugshots of suspects with names / captions related to drug bust > Story about drug bust.

Of course, digital information has no page limit, so you can go beyond all the news there is to fit in print, to paraphrase The New York Times, linking at the bottom of your story other related news of interest, further deepening what in the SEO world would be known as page authority.

When it comes to a business web page, this is one of those different-but-same events. So how would it apply to a web site for our fictional Locks N Love? A savvy site developer would create a keyword rich section, perhaps of hairstyles offered, along with photos and descriptions and even prices of each, following this hierarchy. In the worlds of local SEO and social SEO, similar content would be developed to provide brick-and-mortar-specific information on a Google My Business page and would be crafted to be visually engaging and inviting enough on Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram (and every other relevant island that you can fit it onto, in this ever-expanding tide) to spark engagement.

Social buzz and the freshness of content are increasingly important factors in feeding search-ranking algorithms. If your site is not generating compelling content and your competitor is, you very well could be miles behind in the marketing race.

THE SIN OF BAD SYNTAX

THIS IS A GREAT DEAL!!! DON'T WAIT!!! CLICK HERE!!! At the risk of angering the Google gods, I use these examples of bad marketing to also show an example of bad writing, period. Yellow Journalism, Supermarket Tabloids, Spam. Stay away from it. A simple command, yes, but how does a robot recognize a bad sentence? For starters, we have moved lightyears beyond the skill level of Clippy's office assistance in Microsoft Word.

As much as the worlds of journalism, digital marketing and SEO collide when it comes to best practices, rules of thumb also apply when it comes to critical mistakes in written content. Many things that are absolute no-no's in a newsroom also should not be done on a business web site or in online advertising, and Google's guide of best practices agree.

Strunk & White's canonical guide of proper writing, The Elements of Style is just as at home in a marketing agency as it is a newsroom, and its lessons apply in SEO just as well. The phrase above at the top of this section, 'click here,' is a perfect example. It's barred from Google Ads practices, because as Google guidelines spell out, you can ask a person to click anywhere without guaranteeing anything. (Insert the voice of a Seinfeldian comedian: 'Click here? Where's here? Where will here take me?) Generic phrases and lifeless calls to action say nothing about your brand or your product.

Just as Strunk & White warn against the use of proliferation of exclamation points ('Dinner was great!' versus, 'Halt!'), Google Ads guidelines ban excessive and incorrect punctuation, gibberish and generic ad text. Be specific to your brand. Be specific to your product and service. Be specific to your customer's expectations. As they say in the world of news reporting, get the name of the dog.

Use of emojis differ, but user beware. While you will not see them in a Google Ad, they're allowed in advertising on Facebook. As far as using them in print news, just no. But it's been tried. USA Today printed a sad-face emoji headline in 2015 and was widely panned on social media. Moral of that story: If you take such a risk, make sure it fits your brand and tone. If you're using icons of money bags to promote financial advice, for instance, you might as well use a few clown emojis, too.

Some grammatical hairs to be split are just that - and are not the type of hairs that a place like Locks N Love should worry about when it comes to online ad copy. For instance, the Oxford Comma: While the AP Stylebook long ago shrugged it off to its grave (all the news that's fit to print, saving one blot of ink at a time), there is no concrete standard in SEO on whether you should write 'one, two, and three' or if 'one, two and three' is preferable. Same with nuances like whether to capitalize Internet (you do), whether to spell out numbers or write numerals (always use numerals in headlines; write out one through nine in the body of a story; however, there is a rat's nest of caveats) or whether to use canceled or cancelled.

There are some things that a marketer will not bat an eye at that would make a newsroom copy editor lose sleep. Most of those technicalities are not technical enough to have SEO value, positive nor negative, but you should always keep your potential customer base in mind and how people write and speak, as it influences the words they use to search and ultimately the language associated with your brand.

SEO, DIGITAL MARKETING & JOURNALISM ALSO MERGE WHEN...

It's not only the core, tangible areas where we can take lessons from journalism and apply them to digital marketing strategy and SEO efforts. Ultimately the common thread between the three, and ultimately all forms of art and communication, is the human condition, a singular expression of feeling that resonates universally; one person experiences it, while any person can feel it. Captivate your audience with an amazing tale that they cannot resist sharing. Find ways to bring them into that story. The best brands evoke emotion, think Coca-Cola's Santa Claus and Polar Bears, A Coke and a Smile.

Also, remember truth in advertising. Stick to the facts. When it comes to First Amendment law, there are more protections for a sensational news story than there are for what is said or written in your advertising. Go no further than a law firm's web site to understand that THIS IS AN ADVERTISEMENT. Defending a business site as a news outlet in a libel case or a similar tort makes for a trip down a very deep rabbit hole that might be worth its own post on another day.

Finally, applying to all three realms of reporting-marketing-SEO, is transparency. While smoke and mirrors grab eyeballs, customers have to buy into the magic, lest they end up believing they were merely tricked. As information comes from even more places and angles, the water level rises and the tub expands to keep it all contained. Now more than ever people want integrity; they want trust; they want truth - whether in marketing or in journalism, and the programmatic gatekeepers that rank and order the merits of information will continuously be fed tasty new algorithms to ensure as best as possible that consumers find exactly what they seek.

Having an SEO expert that can bridge the gap between robot and human, and who can also deliver powerful content, can be the difference in sinking or swimming as we dive deeper into the 2020s. As always, we're happy to help you.

A small business can learn from this year’s Super Bowl ads to boost goals in 2021

thecoffmanz@gmail.com (Joshua Coffman) — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 18:57:05 GMT

Marketing firms spent millions; Here's our 2 cents

OK, so maybe you will never afford to have Jason Alexander on your company sweatshirt like in Sunday night’s Tide ad, and you’re not quite ready to shell out for Will Ferrell to drive your company car to Norway, or Sweden.

However, even without the celebrity endorsements, you can afford to learn a few lessons from the ads in Super Bowl LV and readily apply them to your business’s marketing goals.

At nearly $187,000 per second, the return on investment for a Super Bowl commercial in 2021 would price out many companies from the moment the director yells action. Even more mind boggling, the cost of securing that actor, the cost of developing that concept and script and modeling it to fit the exact demographics you’re trying to move, amongst the 100 million+ watching, and making sure it drives the needle. Just like football itself, there is a league of losers in the marketing world who end up watching in awe as the champs celebrate.

So how do you take plays from that field and apply them to your game plan? Start by looking at the overall messaging.

SHOWCASE RELIABILITY

Yes, alcoholic seltzer is hot. Yes, that leads to a joke writing itself about 2020 giving the world lemons and Bud Light getting the world drunk on them. But, aside from that, how did companies advertising during the Super Bowl reflect on cultural sentiment in delivering their messages? In many cases they used a cornerstone of advertising: Reliability.

Tracy Morgan – a hot ticket on the night, also co-starring in the above-mentioned Will Ferrell GM EV spot – made clear, with snakes and PB&J parachutes, that certain is better when securing a mortgage. And whether it was Gwen Stefani ending up on a date from hell with Blake Shelton, or Samuel L. Jackson giving a locker-room speech to an army of in-app game characters, T-Mobile and Version boosted the signals in their ads to ensure you that their 5G coverage will not let you down.

Carvana competitor Vroom spent millions to do the same, reminding you that safe at home when buying a car also means avoiding a trip to hell and back, haggling with the boys at the dealership. So how should local small businesses apply these methods into their own playbooks?

Again, the scope and budget of the absurdity of a Tracy Morgan might not be in your marketing budget. You may not be able to get a celebrity to mutually benefit from the shared exposure both of your brands would get in front of 100 million viewers. However, whether you offer an auto tow-and-repair service or you’re in mortgage lending, you can explain that your brand is reliable. Whether it’s a message of ‘We’re there when you need us,’ or ‘Don’t get left stranded without us,’ let your customers know of your importance and speak to their need of security directly.

GET NOTICED

I once had a dream, back when Mountain Dew had only one color and flavor, that I was staring at a gas station cooler, with the Dew being done in all shades of the rainbow. Fast forward a couple of decades and there has been Code Red, Live Wire Orange, Baja Blasts, and probably a blue and a purple or two, alongside a scope of multi-flavored Kick Starts – all with their own Super Bowl rollouts – all taking over the soda shelves.

Now 2021 births to us Mountain Dew Major Melon, complete with the illest hot-pink-and-lime-green Geo Metro droptop in automotive history. Long ago, Pepsi-Frito Lay demanded that Budweiser hold their beers when it comes to insanity in a Super Bowl commercial. This year, we took a ride with John Cena and were implored to count the bottles falling out of the sky, the trunk, wherever, taking the commercial from TV and onto Twitter with a million-dollar contest. A Marketing 101 side note here: Use incentives to invite your customers to move across advertising platforms with you.

The neon bling of the Mountain Dew spot is in line with other food spots from the night. You can’t help but look. The same was true with Hellmann’s tapping Amy Schumer as Fairy God-Mayo and Jimmy John’s mashing up Godfather and Scarface to sell you lunch. A sandwich is just a sandwich, of course, to turn a phrase from Madison Avenue, but just what is it about these ads that are worth $5 million-plus a slot?

For starters, they flat out bend the rules backwards. Take what’s palatable and make it a little bit cringeworthy. We all know soda makes us fell a little hype, that mayonnaise tastes better than kale and that Jimmy John’s is a balance of speed, cost and quality. Is it worth the big Super Bowl spend to create buzz, merely in order to cement this sort of brand awareness?

I will get to, in a moment, the cold, hard research that shows the balance of delivering the expected along with delivering a surprise twist, but in this context also take notice of what it takes to get noticed. Color, noise, a giant curveball. If you’re not using at least a little bit of this in your social media advertising efforts to break through the clutter, you might as well turn your Facebook business page over to your competitor. Why even post something that will never get noticed? Cut through the noise with noise, but only go a couple of decibels higher than the fray. And make it at least somewhat tasteful.

BE HUMAN

Coming off a year of emotional overload, perhaps the largest challenge of a brand is how to position itself into the chaos with at least a hint of sensibility while not overdoing it and coming off as pandering. Anheuser-Busch/InBev might have run away with the prize by morphing the phrase ‘Let’s grab a beer’ into ‘We need each other,’ (And after a year like that, boy do we), but other brands took this zeitgeist and ran with it to mostly positive results.

Bass Pro/Cabela’s/Tracker implored us to get back to nature, while Toyota rolled out the tearjerker “Upstream,” combining Olympic feat with open heart.

Most controversially came Jeep, with a never known-as-a-centrist Bruce Springsteen introducing us to a church in Kansas while noting that the dirt beneath our American feet is common ground, rallying for us to once again find the middle of a Reunited States. Such sensibility seems dangerous in a time of polarization, yet the writing and the conclusion it draws are hard to argue with. However, coming from the same agency, it falls short of the fire forged by the Eminem-tracked “Imported from Detroit” spot Chrysler aired in the wake of the Great Recession and fails to invoke the most American moment for Jeep’s history, hauling GIs in WWII.

Patriotism was also caroled by Weathertech, highlighting its workers in a pair of ads, “We Never Left” and “Family.” However, one does not have to be serious in a Super Bowl ad to capture the moment (and the attention) while also being part of the larger story.

Of all the heroes of 2020, among the most unsung were the food delivery drivers. A couple of companies who depend on those workers went for a lighter note, while also waxing nostalgia. DoorDash traveled back a half century to a generational standard, using Muppets from Sesame Street to show the power of the people in your neighborhood and how their app can connect you with them, while rival Uber Eats set its sights on Gen X, as did much of the night’s advertising, recruiting its own SNL alum for a We’re-Not-Worthy performance from Myers and Carvey, as Wayne and Garth, modifying a scene from their 1992 movie mocking corporate sell-out and subliminal advertising, leveraging their local-access show to promote local eats, with a hipness twist from Cardi B.

The lesson to draw from all this to apply to your small business: Whether drama or comedy, evoke emotion. If we’re all in this together, why not tie your message into what your company is doing to keep it all from unraveling? Do you support a youth sports team? A local charity? Other good causes? How do you bring your customers into that mission? Convey it through your marketing.

WHAT MAKES A GOOD SUPER BOWL AD?

In a nutshell, how do you fit all of this into your own brand? Be unique but also be true to your own message. A study to soon be published in a journal of advertising science looked at a decade of Super Bowl ads and found that the most effective spots stood out from the other ads around them while also adding onto the aspects that already worked for that brand.

Perhaps no better example can be found than Anheuser-Busch/In-Bev bringing back everyone from Bud Knight to the bottles from the Bud Bowl to help turn a beer truck upright and ensure that a few cold ones remained on the shelves. And after a year of empty shelves, one must wonder, among all the spots for household goods, why were brands like Charmin squeezed out of the Super Bowl shuffle? Maybe some parts of 2020 are best left in the past.

WE ARE 502ads

If you’re running a business in Louisville and you have yet to find out who we are, we recommend you get in touch. Are you doing all you can not to lose, or are you trying to win? Don’t let the play clock run out on you.

Put us in the game and let us dial up your next play.