Insights by Justin Downey

June 2012

GE Study Shows Shared Trumps Paid Content

For the longest time, it was assumed by marketers and social media gurus that shared content by friends and influencers carried more weight than self-serving paid ad placements According to a study by GE, people exposed to content via sharing had a significantly higher positive attitudes towards the Brand the content was from. There you …

1,312 Views

May 2012

PPC vs SEO – Pros & Cons

Generally speaking, boosting traffic to your website means you have two basic options: pay-per-click (PPC) advertising or organic search engine optimization (SEO). The question is, which one is the right one for you and what are the Pros & Cons of each? Take a look at any search engine results page (see the slider above) …

1,973 Views

May 2012

Service Exchange is for Suckers

JDM Digital has roots in small business marketing and as such we’ve long offered service exchanges as a deal structure for small, up and coming businesses which need a digital leg up — until now. For the second time, a client on a service exchange agreement has refused to actually exchange their services for our …

1,227 Views

May 2012

Chrome Gives IE a Run for Their Money

By at least one measure, the browser battleground is changing. According to data released yesterday by StatCounter, Google’s browser, Chrome, narrowly exceeds world-wide usage of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer by a few percentage points. That was yesterday. Today is another day and the debate over the StatCounter data continues. Skipping the skepticism, what does this all mean to you and your business website?

1,505 Views

May 2012

CSS or Table Layouts more SEO Friendly?

This is such a common question (from other web developers) that Google’s Matt Cutts weighed in. Although we don’t usually disagree with Matt, in this case we ABSOLUTELY do! For those of you who don’t know the difference, CSS-based layouts use a Style Sheet to set widths, heights, alignment and more for a series of …

2,643 Views

May 2012

4 Tips for a Better Business Website

To a small company, customers aren’t just another cog in the mechanism, they’re the lifeblood of the business. Here are 4 simple tips for “going the extra mile” with your website to save your customer’s time and make your site more enjoyable and more productive. 1. Go mobile Mobile is no longer the future. It’s …

1,479 Views

May 2012

A Call for Summer Interns

This summer, JDM is offering students a chance to step inside the loopy world of a digital agency with our Summer Internship program. The program lasts 6-8 weeks, is paid (though not very much) and allows interns the chance to complete real, client work — not busy work.

1,223 Views

May 2012

Marketing the Value Matrix

I know that using words like “Value” and “Matrix” automatically make this sound like a bunch of meaningless industry jargon, but hang in there. I’ve been using the following Value/Innovation matrix for some time with clients and I think it’s time I share it with you too. Originally used as an explanation for the Dot-Com …

2,152 Views

May 2012

The Limits of Drawing the Dot-to-Dot

It’s critical in a digital marketing world to know what in your media mix is giving you the biggest bang for your buck, be it Social Media, organic search, paid search, direct mail, TV, smoke signals, whatever. Here’s the problem. Most agencies and their clients don’t (or can’t) track all the touches that precipitated that …

1,106 Views

May 2012

Trade Show Do’s and Don’ts

As we approach a break in the trade show season, here are the Top 10 Do’s and Don’ts we’ve learned over the years from numerous trade show exhibitions. 10. DON’T be afraid to ask questions A lot of first-time exhibitors are shy about asking the trade show staff questions prior to and during the show. …

963 Views

May 2012

Calculating an Adwords Budget

First off, I heart Google Adwords — big time. After all, it’s this cash cow that pays for the Google party. However, while working with a new client recently, we found their super-handy tools a bit lacking when it came to a simple and common question: “How much should I budget for Adwords?” So we did a little mathematical experiment with some surprising results.

2,557 Views

April 2012

Lockdown WordPress

Over the last few weeks, we’ve noticed a considerable uptick in WordPress CMS site hacks (even GoDaddy got hacked). Although we’re not sure what might be causing this, we do know a few quick ways to get your house in order thanks to the security pros at Sucuri. 1. Scan & Buy Sucuri If you …

1,498 Views