Ahmad Kareh

The death of the newspaper industry hasn’t occurred as predicted. In actuality, it has picked up steam, with nearly 70% of the population reading newspapers on the regular, according to Nielsen research. While this is certainly good news for publishers, it hasn’t been the rise in revenue the publishing industry was banking on. Ad revenue hasn’t met the circulation surge, as reported by Pew Research Center, leaving many publishers scratching their heads.

Even the best-laid plans can come to a crashing halt when a PR crisis rolls into town. Customers can be fickle and take a successful brand to the dust if they aren’t authentic in their offering. Struggling sales, changes in formula or even a name they can’t relate to can make customers turn up their noses and walk away.

From email marketing to automation, data analytics and innovative uses of artificial intelligence, marketing technologies are helping brands become stronger by engaging and communicating with their target audience on a whole new level.

Working with a public relations agency is a great way for your business to increase exposure and engage with its target audience. If you build a strong partnership built on honesty and clearly articulate your expectations, a PR agency can help you communicate the right message to your audience, build a strong public image for your brand and achieve all your PR goals.

Even if we live in an age of enhanced interconnectivity where an online presence is crucial to a business’s success, many organizations are still far behind when it comes to using the internet in their favor. Nearly half of all small businesses don’t even have a website, according to Clutch research, and those that do fail to optimize it properly for a mobile audience.

As users interact more with a company or brand, their purchasing habits and interests become more apparent. This is particularly true as artificial intelligence makes gains in the ability to sift through raw data in order to create larger pictures. This growing data footprint offers brands a chance to engage with users, drawing more interest not only from people who have purchased before but from the general public, in the form of shared infographics or videos.

While global search engine optimization is important, the importance of local SEO can't be ignored. According to one source, 50% of consumers who conduct a local search on their smartphone visit a store that same day. And if your business's visibility is not ranking highly in your area, your brick and mortar location could be losing out to competitors.

Generating traffic and quality leads are high priorities for many companies. Unfortunately, generating traffic and leads are also a serious challenge for a majority of marketers. According to Hubspot's State of Inbound 2017 report, 63% of those surveyed reported this as their biggest marketing challenge this year.

Whether you're starting a new company or overhauling the image of an existing one, building a brand is a big undertaking with extremely high stakes. Getting your brand wrong as a startup means failing to resonate with your target audience. Messing up a rebranding effort could mean alienating and ultimately losing your loyal customer base.

Google's announcement about adding a built-in ad blocker to Chrome presents an opportunity to advertisers. Aggressive advertising, such as pop-ups or auto-playing videos, have annoyed website visitors for nearly as long as they've been in existence. While such advertisements can be used to success, they can also drive away traffic and damage user impressions of a company or product.