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Client Profile

VoyageDallas features Dijon Marketing

  • June 8, 2019

On June 5, 2019, VoyageDallas released a story highlighting Dijon Marketing. They profile as many inspiring stories in Dallas as they can. It was an honor to spend some time answering their questions about the business. I enjoyed relaying some success we’ve seen in the nonprofit space in and around the city. Click below to see the full article:

Meet David Fisher of Dijon Marketing in Oaklawn | VoyageDallas.com

Working with several different charities around town has allowed us to connect them to each other and to a wider audience in the DFW metroplex. This gives them the volunteers and resources to continue to improve the lives of those most in need right here in our community. That has been truly humbling and my proudest moments at Dijon Marketing.

voyagedallas.com

Thank you to the staff at VoyageDallas for providing the opportunity to tell a bit of the Dijon Marketing story! This will help us connect even more good people to people doing good!

Best Practices

Vector vs. Raster Images

  • May 21, 2019

There are two main types of images when working in graphic design – vector and raster. Knowing the difference between the two can save you some headaches when working with a graphic designer and switching between web and print assets.

Vector images use paths to describe the shapes they represent. In the example of the Dijon Marketing logo, there are a few circles, a few lines, and a solid color where they intersect. It doesn’t matter if this logo is tiny (like the favicon in the address bar of your browser) or printed on a billboard the size of a building. The image can scale and redraw the circles, lines, and fill colors crisply at any size.

Some examples of vector image file types are PDF, AI, EPS, or SVG.

On the other hand, raster images use grids of colors, or bitmaps, to describe an image. You can generally get away with sizing a raster image down, but things get tricky when trying to size up. The pixels that describe the image are fixed, and sizing them up will end up with a “pixelated” result. That is not to say that there aren’t perfect applications for raster images. Most web applications or certainly any photography will be presented by raster images.

Some examples of raster image file types are JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP.

The best thing to do when working with a graphic designer is to discuss which kinds of files you expect to receive. You can always create raster images from a vector file, but it’s much more difficult to go the other way. So ask for vector source files and you will always have the best of both worlds.

Search Engines

Moz Link Explorer for Nonprofits

  • May 3, 2019

Moz.com is one of the leading authorities on Search Engine Optimization (SEO). How well your site performs on Google, Bing, and other major search engines can directly impact how much traffic you receive. The more traffic you receive, the more opportunities you have to convert visitors into new donors or volunteers. Monitoring and managing your SEO performance is an important contributor to your organization’s success in today’s digital landscape, and Moz is just one tool that can assist you.

Moz is free to use, and has a host of SEO tools that can help you monitor and maximize your performance. Link Explorer will tell you a lot about your website’s reputation. After you’ve registered for a free account, click on “Free SEO Tools” in the header, and then choose “Link Explorer.”

A free account is limited to just 10 searches per month, but if you are just maintaining one domain, that should not be a problem. Enter your root domain (your web address without https, www, or any folders, like example.org). Link Explorer will give you a few pieces of data.

Domain Authority

Domain Authority is a unitless number from 0-100 that predicts how well your site will perform on major search engines. It is mostly a measure of how many other domains link to yours, as well as how authoritative those domains are. A high domain authority score means you are likely to rank well for a lot of different keywords.

Inbound Links

You can see exactly which domains and pages on the internet link to your content, and what content they link to. This can help you identify your most valuable content and tell you where to spend your limited time. Does your canned food drive page have the most backlinks? Then it makes sense to hire that photographer for the next event, add some picture and videos to the page. A big button calling for volunteers can tell your users which call to action you want them to take.

Ranking Keywords

If you are ranking for certain keywords – even if you’re not ranked #1 – this can tell you where to focus your attention in the future. Add more content around keywords that you’re already ranking well on to boost yourself onto page 1. It’s a lot easier to know what to target by what you’re already doing quite well and push it to great! Page 1 rankings will give you significantly more traffic than anything below Page 1.

Explore Moz’s full offering and see how the data it provides can help you direct your efforts on advertising and content. Need help interpreting the report? Contact us today!

Google Ads

AWQL Example: Pause One-Word Keywords

  • April 16, 2019

Automated scripts are the best and easiest way to comply with Google Ad Grants compliance requirements. Use this AWQL example to keep yourself from receiving unexpected non-compliance reports in your inbox. Especially if you aren’t the only one adding terms to campaigns, or have many different campaigns to monitor.

In Using AdWords Query Language (AWQL) for Google Grants Compliance, we detailed an AWQL script. That script finds any terms whose Quality Score falls below the required 3/10. Now we’ll look at another requirement of the Grants program – no one-word keywords. One-word keywords are too generic. Broad match (or broad match modified) amplifies this. Therefore, you are required to have at least two words in every term.

The AWQL example script below generates a list of non-compliant keywords. You can then pause the single-word keyword. By not automatically pausing them, you get an opportunity to brainstorm modifiers. Then replace the offending term.

function main(){
 	var singleWordKeywords = AdWordsApp.keywords()
	.withCondition("Text DOES_NOT_CONTAIN ' '")
	.withCondition("Status = ENABLED")
	.withCondition("CampaignStatus = ENABLED")
	.withCondition("AdGroupStatus = ENABLED")
 	.get();

	while (singleWordKeywords.hasNext()){
		var kw = singleWordKeywords.next();
		Logger.log(kw.getCampaign().getName() + " - " + kw.getAdGroup().getName() + ": \"" + kw.getText() + "\" " + kw.getQualityScore() + "/10");
		Logger.log("");
	}
}

This finds any keyword that does not contain a space, which signifies that it is just one word. It then ensures the keyword, ad group, and campaign are all enabled before adding it to the list. The console log will output a formatted list of keywords that need your attention.

To use this AWQL example:

  1. Navigate in the header to Tools and Settings > Bulk Actions > Scripts
  2. Hit the blue circle with a + sign in it to add a new script
  3. Authorize the script to run on your account
  4. Give it a name and paste the code above into the body. Save it.
  5. In the Frequency column, choose how often you’d like to run the script. Anywhere between once per day or once per week is sufficient.

If you’re running into any trouble getting the script to work contact us. A little bit of automation goes a long way.

Email Marketing

Email Marketing for Nonprofits – Getting Started

  • March 28, 2019

There is one reason email marketing is still big business to this day – it works! With everything else you need to juggle for your nonprofit – web, social, mailers, events, fund raisers – it can seem like just another task to keep track of. But with a little thought, it can be an important addition to your digital marketing strategy. Here are some tips on getting started.

Think about your goals

Don’t send email just to send email. That’s a good way to waste energy and lose subscribers. Instead map out what you’d like to get from your email campaigns. Do you want people to follow your social media channels? Maybe sign up to volunteer at upcoming events? Or donate to your cause? Knowing why you’re sending emails in the first place will allow you to judge the effectiveness of your campaigns and gauge how much effort you can allot to them.

Choose a platform, consolidate your address book, and build your list

It can be enticing to go overboard with email personalization. Thinking you need a different email platform or different email list for each and every message will leave you with a fractured and unmanageable scope. Instead, choose a single platform, manually add any email addresses you already have laying around, and then drive everyone to sign up to a single list. You can allow users to manage their own subscription settings and opt out of certain message types, but don’t try to do this by having different lists for each audience to sign up for.

Drive people to subscribe every chance you get

Without being overbearing, make sure your audience knows you have a mailing list. Drive them to sign up on your website, maybe even on a screen take over. Add it to your email footer for personal correspondence. Make sure your social channels are integrated. It should be easier to find your email sign up than not. Make sure they know you want them to sign up.

Build a campaign with purpose, call to action, and tracking

When it’s time to send an email, pause, define the campaign goals, develop clear calls to action, and be sure you are tracking the outcome of those actions. Use images to make it on brand and visually appealing. This will increase engagement from your audience. Also, send a test email and verify it looks like you expect it to on webmail, email clients, and mobile.

Nurture your base

Set up an editorial calendar so every email campaign isn’t a one-off. If every email you send is asking for money people may grow weary and unsubscribe. If instead, every fourth email asks for money interspersed between success stories, heartfelt tales from the community, and funny pictures from your last event, people are less likely to unsubscribe. On that note, make it easy for them if they do wish to unsubscribe, but give them options first to receive less email, or only certain emails. By nurturing your audience, you’ll get a higher open rate, higher engagement rate, and more impact from the emails with calls to action.

When done right, email marketing is not a separate activity, but just another avenue to spread your message to your target audience. If you need help setting up your first email campaign, or need to get your existing efforts aligned, contact us today!

Negative keywords list Google Ads

Negative keywords in Google Ad Grants

  • March 10, 2019

Negative keywords are an important optimization to perform on any Google Ads program. They help you avoid unwanted and sometimes costly traffic that can strain your budgets and not bring anything in return. But what about in a Google Grants account, when there is no direct cost? Is it still worth the time and effort to add negative keywords?

There are a few reasons your time and effort are well spent creating both account-wide and campaign-specific negative keyword lists, based on your searched queries reports.

Benefits of Negative Keywords

  1. Avoid truly unwanted traffic. It’s important to monitor searched queries for any “bad apples.” You never know what someone may search in conjunction with one of your broad match keywords. Keep an “Adult Topics” negative keyword list across the entire account to filter out unscrupulous searchers from arriving on your website.
  2. Preserve your click-through-rate (CTR). Google Ad Grants require you to maintain at least a 5% CTR on all ads. If your ads are serving for unrelated or off-topic searches, your CTR can suffer. Then you run the risk of falling out of compliance.
  3. Control your messaging. Negative keywords can help you zero in on which ads serve for which keyword groups. Occasionally, your keyword sets can overlap and you’ll lose control over exactly which ad shows for a broad keyword. Negative keywords can restore the mutual exclusivity of your ad groups.
  4. Stay off of competitors branded keywords. Depending on your services or name, you may find other nonprofits nearby with similar names showing up in branded searches. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to show your ad when people are looking for closely related organizations. But, you can avoid missing out on some clicks by purposefully negating branded terms that are not your own.
  5. Avoid running out of budget early. Your daily budget of $329 should go pretty far. Unless you have a large geographical footprint, or a lot of highly sought after programs, budgets typically aren’t a limiting factor. However, if yours are, that’s a great problem to have! You can use negative keywords to make sure you aren’t wasting your grant dollars on terms that don’t produce a high conversion rate.

Negative keywords are an important part of any ad program. This is true whether your advertising dollars come from a grant or your own pocket. If you need to optimizing an existing account, or start from scratch, contact us today!

Google+ social network is closing Social Media

Google+ is going away

  • February 23, 2019

You may have seen in your online news feed that Google+ is shutting down. Google+ failed to rival Facebook and claim a slice of the social media scene. There are two main reasons for this. First, the users of Google Plus never numbered close to other social media platforms. And second, a data security bug has made it not worth maintaining. It’s unlikely you’ve been severely compromised. However, data marked as private could have potentially under some situations not remained private.

If you’ve been using Google+, you have until April 2 to download any materials you want to save. After that your Google+ account as well as any pages you have created will be shut down and deleted.

I, for one, will miss the platform, although I’ve declined in my use over the years. It was a unique collection of tech-minded people. Staying up to date on topics like paid search advertising and SEO was fun to do through the network.

There is one exception to this, and that is business users of Google+. As of now, those are going to remain. You are only a business user if you use a paid version of Google called G Suite. If you’ve been using G Suite for Gmail, Google Docs, and Google+ then talk to your administrator . They should have additional information about the fate of your Google+ accounts and pages. The rest of us can remove one social platform from our advertising and marketing budgets/attention. Then we can refocus on reaching our audience where they are more likely to be.

Choose a new domain name Best Practices

Choosing a new domain name

  • February 3, 2019

First things first. When entering the realm of digital marketing, you need a website so people can learn about you and your mission, and that website needs an address. When selecting a domain, there are a few loose rules to abide by, and a couple of things to consider that are specific to charities and nonprofits trying to spread their messages.

Be unique

The first rule may be totally obvious, but your domain name must be unique. That means you need to make sure nobody else has already registered this domain. If it’s already taken, even if there is no website at that address, brainstorm another domain name. Procuring a taken name can be time consuming, and usually very expensive. There are a number of domain look-ups available on the internet. Just enter your desired domain name and find out if it is available.

Avoid approximating your desired URL through tricky or clever means. For instance, instead of charity.org, don’t register charlty.org (with a lowercase ‘L’). That can be confusing to your audience, and may be seen as spammy or untrustworthy.

Stay focused

Second, make sure your domain name accurately describes your organization or mission. It should do so easily without lots of explanation needed. If you have to add “but with two S’s instead of one, and a dash between the first and second word” then it’s not a great domain name. In general, domain names should be all one word, without dashes, and be as short as possible. For example, a charity named Project Inspire should register projectinspire.org. That is easy for others to link to, or share over the phone without a lot of explanation.

Get creative

Last, consider the top level domain (TLD) name. This might be .com, .org … or even .ninja. In general, reserve .com for commercial businesses. For nonprofits, the better designation is .org, as originally intended. Other TLDs like .edu, .gov, or .mil carry firm restrictions. But there are a whole host of new TLDs to choose from, so if it makes perfect sense for your organization you can explore these, or use them to get around the preferred .org being taken. Take an organization called Kids Camp. They could snag kids.camp as their domain. Just prepare to add to the end of every conversation, “Nope, just kids DOT camp, that’s the whole address, no .com on the end.”

In the end, don’t agonize too long over the perfect domain name. It is just one piece of a larger tapestry of digital marketing strategies and even a poor domain name can make it to page 1 of organic results with the right mix of tactics. Need help choosing or registering a new domain? Contact us today!

When to use a subdomain Best Practices

When to use subdomains

  • January 20, 2019

There are two main ways to subdivide content – subdomains or subdirectories. I will henceforth refer to “subdirectories” as “folders” to avoid confusion between two similar “sub” terms. Folders are easily understood. They appear as slashed organizational groupings on your domain, just like folders on your PC. If you have several events to share, you might group them all under an events folder.

Content organized by folders

  • www.mycharity.org/events/food-drive
  • www.mycharity.org/events/car-wash
  • www.mycharity.org/events/fund-raiser

Is there ever a time when you wouldn’t want to use folders, but instead a subdomain?

Content organized by subdomains

  • events.mycharity.org/food-drive
  • events.mycharity.org/car-wash
  • events.mycharity.org/fund-raiser

The short answer is: No. I never advocate for the use of subdomains. Subdomains divide your domain in the eyes of Google. You must monitor and maintain the authority for each subdomain separately. Your ranking can suffer as a result. Most small non-profits already struggle to gain authority with limited content and backlinks. Dividing it even further makes no sense.

There are times, however, that require a subdomain. Subdomains are configured easily across different platforms or technologies. That is typically the #1 reason they are used. It usually stems from someone wanting to create a new or different web experience for a particular program or event. They might go out and purchase a dedicated (different) domain. Instead of having a different domain, subdomains can bridge the gap between them while maintain your branding and identity. If WordPress hosts your site, but Squarespace hosts a new event page, placing them side by side on your domain only requires a single DNS setting.

The best thing you can do is anticipate these needs, get in front of rogue web activities, and concentrate all of your content and users onto a single platform and domain. Your audience easily finding your content more than makes up for the small sacrifice in autonomy!

Google My Business optimization Search Engines

Optimize your Google My Business listing

  • December 28, 2018

If you haven’t claimed your address on Google Maps yet, take a look at an early blog post titled Claim your address on Google Maps. There you will find instructions on how to set up ownership of your address. But once you do, what should you do to make the most of the opportunity?

Steps to Optimize Your Listing

  1. Make sure your information is correct. This includes:
    • Name of your business
    • Service categories
    • Address and service area
    • Operating hours (including any holiday exceptions)
    • Phone number
    • Website address
  2. Add a profile photo, cover photo, and long-form description of your business. This is a form of free advertising so make sure your brand is consistently applied across your web, social, and My Business listings to users can easily find and recognize you.
  3. Check your Insights to see how customers are finding you. Since 2013 Google has basically stopped sharing searched queries for organic search, but this is one of the few opportunities you will have to see what terms were googled that led to your listing being shown. You can then create or adjust your content to better serve your top queries.
  4. Check your reviews and reply! Users increasingly rely on online reviews for decision making. Even a scathing 1-star review can be an opportunity to attract more business. If you do have a couple of bad reviews, think about your brand’s tone when replying. Are you factual and defensive? Sarcastic and funny? Deferential and apologetic? Replying to a poor review shows that your business is active, online, and cares about customers. Offer some more information, an apology, and invitation to let you do better next time. You might be surprised how quickly you can turn public opinion with sincerity, but only if you are monitoring and replying.

Google My Business as an extension of your website

Think of your Google My Business listing as an extension of your website with serious draw for organic search. Offer the most requested information through your listing, but also in a very easy-to-find format on your website. A lot of users, especially on mobile devices, will click through the map listing to see your website. Whether it’s business hours or address, make sure that is prominently displayed (and double check it on mobile). Need help claiming your address or optimizing your listing? Contact us for help!