Do Good Spotlight
🌟 Yoga Alliance Foundation 🌟

Yoga Alliance Foundation works to bring equitable access to yoga while supporting yoga professionals. They support refugee programs, give scholarships, support the scientific study of yoga, and much more. If you are interested in their cause, check them out: Yoga Alliance Foundation.

• Google Search Ads CPC increased by 17% YOY and 9% QOQ in Q4 2023. Are more advertisers getting more confident in paid search? We’ll have to keep watching.

• Eddie the Terrible, the dog you didn’t want to adopt. In Ann Handley’s most recent newsletter, she reminded us of the brilliantly crafted, beautifully blunt dog adoption posting. The posting worked so well that Eddie was eventually adopted. It shows the power of amazing copywriting to grab the attention of the right people. She, also, reminded us that generative AI is great for getting started, but a unique human touch may just be the cherry-topper to make writing GREAT. I agree 1001%.

• Social media and the law system seem to be inextricably linked these days. Meta, TikTok, X, Discord, and Snap CEOs appeared before the US Senate on Jan 31st to address child protection. Each CEO cited multiple efforts dedicated to young user protection, while Senators posed tough questions to present their case that the platforms need to have more protections in place.

• What are the secrets of effective leadership that can be applied to your role in the marketing industry? There are some solid takeaways by Martech including:
  • Turn challenges into inspiration
  • Nurture a culture of innovation and empower your team
  • Adapting to change: Leading through market disruption
  • Influencing and collaborating in marketing leadership
  • Developing and mentoring future marketing leaders

Bonus: the article includes a shout-out and link to a sidebar interview with long-time DBE friend and referrer Ruth Stevens.

Have a wonderful rest of the week,

Natalie

What music do SEOs like? 🎵
ALT=ernative

What’s Mario’s favorite search engine? 🔍
Yahoo!

What is a popular search engine for ghosts? 👻
Ghoul-gle!

Share these jokes and our signup link with your favorite marketing friends!

Do Good Spotlight
🌟 Alex’s Lemonade Stand 🌟

This foundation is close to our teams’ hearts. The story behind the ALSF is remarkable: When Alex was 4 (she was diagnosed with childhood cancer just before her 1st birthday), she wanted to set up a lemonade stand and use the money she earned to help doctors find a cure. Her first “Alex’s Lemonade Stand,” raised $2,000 in one day. She continued to grow the program with the help of an amazing community of supporters. When she passed away at the age of 8, her stand and inspiration had raised more than $1 million. ALSF was started by her parents in 2005 to continue the work that Alex began. Their mission is simple: to change the lives of children with cancer through funding impactful research, raising awareness, supporting families, and empowering everyone to help cure childhood cancer. We are inspired by Alex’s story and donated in memory of Ronald Hogas. Here’s where you can learn more and support a wonderful cause: Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation.

• Meta and TikTok are exploring the possibility of ad-free subscription tiers in response to the EU data privacy regulations. It will be interesting to see what the future holds in the US if they roll out a similar version here.

• Did you know you can get verified on LinkedIn? Ya, it’s a thing!

• I’m a HUGE fan of the Duolingo marketing. Here’s their latest cleverness: a job listing for an Owl Trainer for their mascot, Duo the Owl. 🦉 The application process is intense – see below:

Hope you got some giggles out of that last bullet. 🙂 Enjoy your week!

Natalie

What’s cooler than being cool? 🆒😎

Sending your digital marketing friends this signup link to join the WHW party!

Do Good Spotlight
🌟 Alliance for Reforestation 🌟

Deforestation increases mudslides and devastates the soil, food security, and water sources in Guatemala. Alliance for Reforestation (AIR) has spent the last 25 years working to rebuild the land, not only through planting trees, but through teaching self-sustaining regenerative farming, rural-school scholarships, and more. They are working to be sustainable and expand their reach beyond Guatemala. Learn more: Alliance for Reforestation.

• How can generative AI drive sales in terms of lead qualification and personalization at scale? This McKinsey article includes a roadmap of “Six ‘no regrets’ AI strategies” for pushing AI transformation for your sales and marketing teams.

• We’ve talked about the over-broadening of broad match before. With the help of AI capabilities, Google has a deeper understanding of a user’s search intent. Think With Google provides 3 of the most significant improvements they’ve made to broad match. They also make it very clear that success in search advertising still needs to be driven by smart, human marketers… *cough cough* like us…
  • To counter Google’s point, Search Engine Land reports that broad match has the lowest CTR (relevance) compared to the other match types.

• Speaking of Google Ads, Alphabet (Google’s parent company) reported better-than-expected ad revenues results for Q2. Google Search was up 5% and YouTube up 4%.

The digital world is flipping on its head. While it’s exciting, it can also be draining. Take some time to appreciate the positives in your day. These things will help us when the rest of it gets a little wacky.

Keep on keepin’ on,

Natalie

Did you know?

• Hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly backwards.
• Starfish do not have a brain.
• The only mammal capable of flight is a bat.

If you did, that’s pretty cool. If you didn’t, join the club 🤪

Hey, speaking of clubs… tell your friends to join ours!

Do Good Spotlight
🌟 Charity Navigator 🌟

Looking for top, trusted charities? Charity Navigator connects people with the best charities that align with their passions. They have almost 200,000 charities rated based on measures of stability, efficiency, and sustainability. Check them out and contribute to their cause: Charity Navigator.

• Did you manage to convert to GA4 before the July 1st deadline? MarTech and Search Engine Land ran a poll: 90% of digital marketers accept GA4 is 4real and they need to adopt/adapt to it. MarTech also chose to regale us with “13 of the funniest reactions to Google’s now mandatory analytics solution“.

• You’ve been hearing a lot from us recently about the E-E-A-T guidelines for creating “helpful content” to secure higher rankings in search results. There now is reason to engage in an integrated “digital authority management” discipline not only to gain improved rankings in regular search results but to elevate valuable brand visibility (and clicks) in conversational/generative search environments like Bard, GPT, and Bing’s Co-Pilot Chat, which provide link citations in their responses. It’s definitely a concept worth reading about, if not exploring for your brand.

Why We 💗 What We Do…

One of our newest clients, Vetigel, has received FDA approval for humans. Vetigel is a plant-based hemostatic gel that can stop bleeding in seconds. We’re so happy to support them on their mission to save lives.

• Freebies can be great for both parties… if they’re done right. In the case of OpenAI’s “Browse” feature in Bing Chat, that would be a negative. People have been surpassing the ChatGPT Plus paywall and coming back with “content we don’t want”. See MediaPost for the scoop.

Just some thoughts… 💭

Speaking of AI chatbots, our VP of SEO, Marc Engelman, discussed the gap between Bing Chat and its impact on your analytics. He hosted an experiment. 🔬🥼 The question: How will Bing Chat be attributed in our web analytics? Read the blog to see what Marc discovered.

I hope your July is happy and healthy 🙂

Natalie

People actually held funerals for Universal Analytics.

Check them out for a giggle: UA dies at 11.

Oh, and send your buddies this signup link to join the WHW crew!