The days of reading a newspaper to find a safe place for your aging loved one to live in are gone. In today’s digital world, the best way to find a place for your aging relative—and for senior living communities themselves to find new residents—is for each community to have a strong online presence.

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The Online Senior Living Landscape

8 Elements of SEO Success for Senior Living

• Understand the Target Audience
• Conduct Keyword Research
• Create High-Quality Content
• Pay Attention to On-Page Optimization
• Know Technical SEO
• Don’t Neglect Local SEO
• Practice Link-Building
• Measure Impact

Why Trust Us?

The Online Senior Living Landscape: How It Works

The best way to create a strong online presence is utilizing search engine optimization (SEO) strategies, so that each community can show high up in search engine results pages (SERPs) on search platforms like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Each time a new potential resident visits a community’s website and fills out a form to request more information about the community, a lead is generated. These leads can directly translate to heads in beds (aka residents in communities).

Unfortunately, the online space is competitive, and some have effectively gamed the online system to steal leads from communities. Well-known organizations in the online senior living industry “steal” digital leads from senior living communities and then sell those leads back to communities. In other words, these organizations create individual pages on specific communities that outrank the official community pages in SERPs. When people interested in learning more about these communities give their information to these sites, these organizations sit on these leads… unless communities cough up money to buy leads on their own communities back. This strategy chokes out many retirement homes, taking funds away from where they could be better spent, like improving amenities for residents or increasing pay for employees.

We at Digital Strike – Targeted Marketing think this current landscape sucks (pardon our language). That is why we created the Caring Advisor network of senior living directories. In our network, we list senior living communities for FREE with accurate information about each location, including level of care offered and price ranges. We don’t just list communities for free, though. We also do not charge communities for receiving leads from our directories; we just give them back to the communities. For free. Seriously.

Listing your community in our free directory is but one way we help communities thrive in the online senior living industry. We also help our clients thrive by implementing the following tried-and-true SEO techniques to outrank lead thieves in SERPs.

The 8 Elements of SEO Success for Senior Living

Below are the 8 critical elements of SEO success that we use to help retirement communities reach their target audience online to place residents in their senior living facilities… and how we can help you do the same.

1. Understand the Target Audience

Everyone remembers when Neil Armstrong said, “One small step for senior living, one giant leap for families with seniors.”

Okay, no one remembers that because he never said it. But if he said it, the sentiment would be exactly what you need to keep in mind for your website design and overall senior living SEO campaign: aging people are at the heart of everything you do. They and their families are always going to be your target audience.

With that in mind, you need to craft messaging that resonates with the needs and preferences of your potential residents. This strategy is key to driving website traffic for your community.

So, what do older people need? Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question.

Every older adult has different needs, and that is reflected in what people search for online. Some older people, for example, are looking for independent living communities for themselves. Some adult children know that their parents with dementia will need quality memory care services. Others still may be partners to someone who needs a different level of care than they do, so they search for assisted living options for couples.

This all means that, in order to reach these prospective residents, you need to establish your brand as the answer to their solutions. Your website’s content needs to address the concerns of these individuals and offer solutions.

But how do you know what people are searching for? (Hint: it involves a little research.)

2. Conduct Keyword Research

Relevant keywords are at the center of any robust SEO campaign; they help you understand what your target audience wants, how you can structure your pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, what to post on social media, and what type of content should live on your site. You fortunately won’t need to rely on Steve or Blue to find keyword clues for your campaigns; you can find keywords relevant to your community using certain free or affordable tools.

Specifically, you can conduct keyword research using SEO tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, and/or SEMrush. We recommend starting by narrowing down search results by location, then seeing who is looking for senior living-related keywords in your area. Great starts for memory care keyword research, for example, include “memory care facilities in [Whatever Your Location Is]” and “assisted living facilities for Alzheimer’s patients.”

Once you know what terms are ranking highly, you know what people are searching for. Find the overlap between your senior living services and what people want, then tailor your campaigns around that overlap. For example, if people are searching for “memory care communities in Phoenix, Arizona” and you offer those services in this area, be sure to have at least one page on your website dedicated to this keyword. The content should detail the extensive memory care services you offer to Phoenix residents.

3. Create High-Quality Content

Senior living websites populated with helpful content perform better on Bing, Yahoo, and Google search engine rankings. What makes for helpful content on senior living community websites? The following typically helps:

• Creating engaging content about the community: Your service pages’ content should educate and engage your audience, covering topics ranging from the amenities of your assisted living communities to activities in your retirement communities.
• Answering questions with blog posting: Your service pages, where you discuss the services and amenities you provide, are undoubtedly the backbone of your site. But these pages cannot work alone. In other words, teamwork makes the dream work. Supplement service pages with engaging, regularly scheduled blog posts where you can discuss questions, concerns, and topics you could not otherwise cover in other pages. These blogs will build your authority and drive traffic to your site, a real win-win.
• Choosing quality over quantity: Focus on creating high-quality content that provides real value to your audience. Above all else, make sure your content is engaging, informative, and sensitive. Remember, making the move to senior living is hard, so treat this subject with the respect it deserves.
• Not neglecting social media: Maybe MawMaw isn’t on Instagram, but her adult children and grandchildren probably are. That means you can reach prospective residents by posting regularly on appropriate social media channels like TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram. These posts not only increase visibility of your brand to attract new residents, but they also provide peace of mind to families of current residents when you showcase fun activities in your community.

4. Pay Attention to On-Page Optimization

On-page optimization, which includes crafting compelling meta descriptions and ensuring your website’s content is rich in relevant keywords, plays a significant role in improving your senior living website’s search engine rankings.

Here are some on-page optimization elements you need to keep in mind:

• Headings: Who likes reading a big block of unbroken text? Nobody. Nobody likes that at all. So, use HTML headers and subheaders to organize your content and make it easier to read for both human users and Google bots that crawl the web and rank content. Each page should have only one <h1> tag, which should be the SEO-rich heading for the entire page that lets everyone know what the content is about. Subheaders can be in <h2>, <h3>, <h4>, and so on tags. It is best to think of these tags as section dividers and subdividers. Let’s give an example. Say you have a page about a memory care facility in Phoenix, Arizona. Your <h1> tag could be <h1>Discover the Best in Memory Care in Phoenix, AZ</h1>. Your other tags could include <h2>Services We Offer</h2> and <h2>Our Pricing</h2>.
• Keyword-rich content: Your content should include not just your target keyword, but also relevant secondary keywords, too. For example, say your target keyword is “memory care Phoenix, AZ.” You want to include other relevant terms in your content like “memory care services,” “assisted living Phoenix,” and “how to pay for memory care.” Note though that adding too many keywords into content is known as keyword stuffing, and we recommend leaving the stuffing at the dinner table. Search engines penalize the practice heavily.
• Meta titles: Each page on your senior living website should have a unique title tag that incorporates relevant keywords. The title tag is different from your <h1> headings: the title tag is in the header section of your page’s HTML code while the H1 tags are in the body section. Meta titles appear in SERPs and help people and bots know what your page is about. Let’s use our previous example and say you have a memory care facility in Phoenix. Your title tag should be 60 characters or less and could be <title>Best Memory Care in Phoenix, AZ—Starting at $X/Mo</title>.
• Meta descriptions: Just as each page needs a title, so too do they need unique meta descriptions that also include the right keywords. Like title tags, meta descriptions let both human users and bots on search engines know what each page is about. Going back to our previous example, our description for this community should be 160 characters or less. It could read “Discover the best memory care community in Phoenix, Arizona. Services start at only $X a month!”
• User-friendly URLs: Ensure that your URLs are simple, indicative of the content on the page, and contain your target keyword. For example, for a location page about your memory care community in Phoenix, Arizona, the URL should be something like https://www.SuperCoolSeniorCommunity.com/locations/memory-care/phoenix-az.
• Links: Your page should include both internal links (links to other pages on your site) and external links (links to other websites). The internal links work together to let bots know what your website is about. The external links show bots (and readers!) that you have done your research and are citing your sources, making you more credible. Having both of these link types makes your website healthier in the eyes of Google and human users.

5. Know Technical SEO

Technical SEO refers to the technical elements of SEO that make the website easier to read for bots and more enjoyable to explore for human users. This aspect of SEO includes:

• Site speed: Fast-loading pages improve user experience and are favored by search engines. One major component of websites that can slow down page speed? Images! Don’t let massive images weigh you down. Compress files to reduce lagging (and no, that doesn’t mean setting your image size to “small” on the WordPress backend). We recommend using free online tools like TinyPNG to compress image files to save site speed while still maintaining good image quality.
• Mobile optimization: With the increasing use of mobile devices, ensure your website is responsive and mobile-friendly. In other words, do not just design your website to look good on a laptop or desktop PC. You need to make sure your layout looks attractive for mobile users, too.
• Duplicate content: Search engines hate this one thing: duplicate content. What does that mean for you? It means that each page on your site needs to be unique. What does that mean? It means 1.) no plagiarizing from other sites and 2.) each page on your site needs to be different from each other. If you cross-post your content, however, make sure you establish which one is the canonical URL with the right tag (rel=canonical element). Establishing a page as canonical means you are telling search engines that the page contains the original content that should rank in SERPs.
• Sitemap submission: Google and other search engines need to crawl your website in order to display it in SERPs. Google has a lot of sites to crawl. Like. A lot a lot. Make everything easier for Google to crawl (which could boost your SERPs) by submitting your sitemap. The preferred sitemap structure is XML, but Google also accepts text, Atom 1.0, HTML, RSS, and mRSS.

6. Don’t Neglect Local SEO

Local SEO is vital for any organization that has a brick-and-mortar location, like a senior community. Local SEO is SEO specific to local search. Local search is important because it means that people living near your senior living community can find it in SERPs rather than a location 200 miles away.

Critical elements of local SEO success for senior living communities include:

• Creating and optimizing your Google My Business (GMB) listing: A well-optimized Google business profile helps a community appear in local search results. A GMB listing is what appears on the right-hand side of Google search results when you type in a business in the search bar; it lists easy-to-digest information for users, like community hours, senior living services you offer, pictures of your community, and a link to your site.

• Listing your community in local directories: List your community in local directories (like Caring Advisor) with consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) information. Having inconsistent NAP information can tank search engine rankings. For example, do not list your address as “123 Geriatric Ave” in one directory and “One-Two-Three Geriatric Avenue” in another. Decide on one spelling for your community and stick with it every single time your community’s address appears on the web.
• Engaging with the community: Highlighting local events and partnerships can boost your local SEO efforts and reach online. For example, when you post on Facebook, be sure to tag community partners or employees (if they consent) in the post. You can also engage the community by responding to individual comments on your posts, responding to online reviews and testimonials, or sending newsletters to residents’ families.

7. Practice Link-Building

A robust link-building strategy is a cornerstone of any senior living SEO strategy, impacting both local SEO and overall search engine rankings. That means that building quality backlinks from reputable sources within the senior living industry enhances the authority of your community’s website.

Keep the following in mind when building your community’s link-building strategy:

• Quality over quantity: Aim for backlinks from reputable sites in the senior living sector and healthcare industry. Think CDC, not a site made by some guy from his parents’ basement.
• Guest blogging and partnerships: Collaborate with authoritative sites for guest posts and content exchanges. This way, you can get backlinks to your site and build working relationships with other industry leaders.

8. Measure Impact

Measure the effectiveness of your SEO campaign using key metrics like bounce rate, click-through rate (CTR), and organic traffic. By regularly analyzing these metrics, your senior living communities can fine-tune their marketing strategies for better outcomes. Namely, you can figure out what works (and keep doing that) and what doesn’t work (we can’t tell you what to do, but you should probably stop doing that).

The core components of measuring your campaign’s impact include:

• Regular analysis: Utilize tools like Google Analytics to monitor website traffic, user engagement, and conversion rates. Do so regularly so that you can stay on top of your campaign and never get blindsided.
• Adapting strategies: Be ready to adapt your strategies based on the data and trends you observe. Don’t just double-down on bad strategies or throw your hands up and blame the intern. Pinpoint what went wrong and then pivot your strategies. Ask yourself: Are your keywords the right ones? Are you bidding competitively for PPC campaigns? Is your site friendly for mobile users? Always be willing to question every part of your campaign and work with your team to develop a course-correction strategy.

Why Trust Us to Help You?

Digital Strike – Targeted Marketing is the world’s coolest former gas station turned SEO agency (and we aren’t just saying that because we might be the only SEO company that used to be a gas station). Based out of St. Louis, Missouri, our experts have years of digital marketing experience that we have used to support over 1,500 senior living communities.

The numbers speak for themselves. We typically generate 20 to 60 new lead opportunities per community on a monthly basis from our efforts. Of these leads, communities should be able to convert at least two into heads in beds over time. That all means that we can get roughly 24 new residents for each community we work with annually. The rough (like, super rough) lifetime value of a new resident for a senior community is $180,000. In total, that means we create roughly (again, super-duper roughly) about $4,320,000 in gross incremental revenue for our communities.

Sounds pretty good, right?

Right!

Don’t be left behind while other folks steal your own leads. Work with the SEO experts in the senior living industry and get the leads you deserve.

Contact the Experts and Get Heads in Beds

We understand the intricacies of general and local SEO services for assisted living communities, independent living communities, skilled nursing care communities, and memory care communities. Our tailored approach boosts your online presence and ensures your community’s website content ranks prominently in SERPs, effectively reaching potential residents or their loved ones and letting them know that your community is the best place to spend their golden years.

Contact us today so we can get started helping you get lead opportunities.

If that sounds appealing to you, then let’s talk about which digital skills are in demand that you can easily learn online, the jobs (and salaries) they prepare you for, and where you can learn many of these skills for FREE.

14 In-Demand Digital Skills

There are countless skills you can cultivate for exclusively online or digital-focused jobs. The following, however, are some of the most useful, in-demand skills that digital industries are looking for.

1. Web and App Development and Programming

If you’re reading this article, then you can thank a web developer. These professionals know how to create and maintain websites and apps so that the Internet (and your favorite mobile games) can run smoothly. 

A crucial part of being a web developer is learning programming languages. The most in-demand programming languages include:

• JavaScript
• PHP
• SQL
• CSS
• HTML
• Python

These languages tell software and websites how to operate and communicate with other software and websites. The Internet wouldn’t work without them!

“Web dev” skills are vital to our modern way of life, which is reliant on our gadgets, apps, and web services. As such, web developers are paid well for their necessary skills. The median salary of web developers in 2020 was $77,200, with the best 25% being paid well over $100,000 annually, according to U.S. News & World Report. This same report found that even the lowest-paid 25% of web developers made well over $55,000. For reference, the median annual wage across all positions in the United States that same year was just $34,612.04.

To get started in this field, you’ll need to learn web development basics, including learning at least one (preferably more) programming languages. One way to get started is with LaunchCode, which offers free tech training and help with job placement. All you need is a laptop to get started.

2. Data Analytics

Making sense of a mess of data will always be in demand, whether you have an in-person job or work online only. To succeed in data analytics, you need to not only be good with numbers, but you also need to be good at telling stories. Namely, you need to know how to convey to your audience (employers, clients, investors, etc.), in a compelling narrative, just what this data means.

Data analysts typically earn between $87,500 and $126,250 annually, according to Robert Half Technology’s 2022 Salary Report. That said, data analytics is sometimes not a job unto itself, but merely part of a different position altogether. That means that learning data analytics can help you succeed in a wide range of well-paying jobs.

One way to get started with learning this in-demand skill? Grow with Google. This program is offered through a partnership of Google and Coursera. In this program, participants take a course through Coursera and receive a professional certificate from Google upon successful completion of their course. One popular certification from this program is the Google Data Analytics Certification, which you can use to start a career in the rapidly growing field of digital data analytics.

3. Graphic Design

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and that is never more true than on the Internet. The reason? Human beings are incredibly visual: according to some research, our brains process images up to 60,000 times faster than text.

How logos, brands, and websites look and feel can influence how we navigate online shopping experiences, brand loyalty, and so much more–all making people with great graphic design skills a valuable asset for any business or brand. And while graphic designers may be artists, they certainly don’t earn “starving artist” wages. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average wage for graphic designers is $59,970 and the median annual wage is $50,710.

If graphic design is your passion and you want to make it your career, you can start learning the skills you need with any number of online courses, including this Graphic Design Specialization course from CalArts (California Institute of the Arts) on Coursera. You can take the course for free if you only want to read and learn the course content. If you want a certification, however, you will need to pay a fee. Fortunately, financial assistance for this certification is available.

If Coursera isn’t for you, you can also explore the basics of graphic design for free from Adobe.

4. Data Visualization

Websites and brands aren’t the only things in need of a digital makeover; data oftentimes needs to be presented in a visually compelling manner, too. Businesses need professionals who know how to turn mounds of seemingly gibberish data into attractive, easy-to-understand graphics like pie charts, shareable infographics, and more. This way, it is easier to share and understand research and company data in a way that leads to real insights and actionable next steps.

People whose primary job is to create such graphics are often known as data visualization specialists. However, data visualization is oftentimes not its own job, but rather just one part of it. Either way, having data visualization skills can make a big difference in income. According to PayScale, jobs that require data visualization skills have salaries, on average, of $77,000 a year in the United States.

Becoming competent in both graphic design and data analytics can help you get the data visualization skills you need to work as a data scientist, analytic manager, and more. You can also take online courses that specialize in data visualization, such as this Data Science: Visualization course on edX through Harvard University. Auditing the course is free for a limited time, while taking the course to earn credit and certification requires a modest fee.

5. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

You’re not the only one who enjoys reading content; so too do search engines like Google and Bing! And how much these search engines like a piece of content can affect whether or not anyone will ever read it.

It works like this: the Internet is an unimaginably vast place filled to the brim with content. But not all of the content is good, and search engines like Google only want to show the best content to their users. That is why search engines use algorithms to read or “crawl” web pages to both learn what each page is about and rate it accordingly. That way, when someone searches for something online, Google can almost instantaneously pull up a list of high-quality content that is relevant to that specific search query.

This all means that, when you write content, you need to keep search algorithms in mind as much as you do your human readers. The ability to optimize your content for search engines is known as Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. SEO is constantly evolving, which means SEO experts need the ability to think fast, problem-solve, and more to meet the ever-changing demands of search algorithms.

SEO specialists earn an average of $57,196 a year, according to Indeed. If that sounds like a good salary to you, then you can take advantage of online classes to learn the basics of SEO. Free or reduced-cost SEO courses are available from Yoast Academy, HubSpot Academy, and more.

6. SEM (Search Engine Marketing)

SEM, or Search Engine Marketing, is a form of digital marketing that boosts the visibility of web pages on a search engine results page, or SERP. While SEO focuses on improving organic (non-paid) traffic to a web page, SEM concentrates on paid traffic through advertisements. An SEM specialist therefore needs a strong understanding of SEO, advertising, keyword research, data analytics, and more.

Because SEM specialists wear so many hats, they can expect a decent salary in return for their hard work. According to ZipRecruiter, the national average salary for this position is $58,262 annually.

To learn SEM fundamentals, you can explore courses like SEM Online Course on Intellipaat or Google Ads for Beginners from Coursera.

7. PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Marketing

Closely related to SEM is PPC, or Pay-Per-Click, marketing. When using a PPC model, advertisers pay their publisher (whoever published the advertisement, such as Google) when someone clicks on their ads. 

PPC marketers have it all–advertising skills, keyword-researching skills, data analysis skills, writing skills, budgeting skills, and much, much more. It’s therefore no surprise that these professionals often receive ample compensation for their work. According to ZipRecruiter, the national average base salary for PPC managers is just over $67,000. Many PPC managers also receive regular bonuses or incentives based on the success of their PPC campaigns.

To get started with PPC, you can enroll in this free PPC Fundamentals Course with Joel Bondorowsky through SEMRush Academy.

8. Digital Research

Keyword discovery for successful PPC campaigns, audience insights, staying on top of industry trends, content creation, and more all rely on digital research skills. Learning where to look for information, how to search for it, and how to weed out bad results is critical for industries like digital marketing.

Oftentimes, digital research is not a complete job in and of itself; rather, it is a critical skill in a wide variety of other jobs, such as PPC managers and content writers.

The Florence Digital Research Academy offers a Digital Research Certification that can help you become a better digital researcher, no matter what job you end up pursuing.

9. Google Workspace Familiarity

As full-time work from home and hybrid work become more popular, online workspaces are increasingly important to ensure that everyone can work together smoothly, no matter where they are. One of the single-most popular and accessible digital workspaces is Google Workspace. Formerly known as G Suite, this collection of software and online tools includes:

• Gmail, Google’s email service
• Google Calendar, a calendar and event-tracking software
• Google Docs, a word processing program
• Google Sheets, a spreadsheet software
• Google Slides, a presentation software
• Google Meet, a voice-chat app
• Google Forms, a survey software
• And much more!

Anyone looking for an online or hybrid job will need to learn how to use Google Workspace (or similar) products at some point, as will most in-person office workers. Fortunately, learning the ins and outs of these products is relatively simple. Google offers a free-to-use Google Workspace Learning Center to help anyone learn to use these tools with ease.

10. Project Management

Strong organizational and leadership skills can make life easier for everyone, especially when not everyone works in the same office together. That is why project management is such an in-demand skill for digital jobs. Project managers, as the name suggests, manage projects. That means they have to know how to allocate resources, communicate effectively, lead a team, budget, analyze data, and document everything.

According to Indeed, the average base salary for project managers in the United States is nearly $78,000 a year. Cash bonuses are also common for these professionals.

Do you enjoy taking the lead in team projects? If so, project management could be a great career fit for you. Grow with Google offers a Project Management Certificate, where you can learn all the skills needed to become a successful project manager.

11. Social Media Management

Social media currently dominates the online social sphere, from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok, and more. It’s not just young people that are on social media platforms, either. According to Statista, 70% of Baby Boomers used YouTube and 68% used Facebook in 2019.

There is no doubt about it: social media is popular. That popularity can work to any brand or organization’s advantage, if done well. From spreading brand awareness to facilitating sales, businesses use social media every single day… and the people who can use social media for business are highly sought after.

Social media managers often have a wide range of skills that include copyediting, a good sense of humor, effective communication, graphic design, SEO knowledge, advertising expertise, and more. It’s therefore no surprise that employers are willing to pay well for employees that can wear so many hats. According to PayScale, social media managers in the United States most often make a salary of roughly $53,000 a year.

To learn more about social media management, you can take the following certification courses: Social Media Marketing Course: Get Certified in Social Media Strategy through HubSpot Academy (free) or Social Media Management course from Meta on Coursera (free to enroll for a limited time with financial aid available).

12. UX (User Experience) Design

People interact with thousands of products every single day, from apps to websites to physical items. The professionals who ensure these products are accessible and work well for users are known as UX, or User Experience, designers. In other words, their job is to use data and other types of evidence to improve a user’s experience with a product. Successful UX designers therefore have skill sets that include data analysis, visual design, and research.

Businesses are always looking for ways to improve user experiences, which means that UX designers are in high demand. But don’t just take our word for it. LinkedIn listed UX design as one of their five most in-demand hard skills in 2020; that demand translates to good pay. According to Indeed, the average annual base salary for UX designers in the United States is $93,070.

Want to get started in UX design? Grow with Google currently offers a UX Design certification course.

13. Cybersecurity

The need to protect organizations from cyber attackers has created a rising demand for cybersecurity professionals across various industries. According to a McKinsey report, there are currently 3.5 million cybersecurity job openings worldwide, and this demand is expected to grow further as technology continues to advance, and our reliance on it deepens.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts an impressive 35% job growth for information security analysts in the next decade, positioning it as one of the fastest-growing job sectors in the market. Moreover, cybersecurity engineers in the U.S. enjoy an Average Base Pay of $1,31,637 per year, making it an exceptional and lucrative career opportunity.

These compelling reasons provide strong motivations to consider learning cybersecurity online!

14. Problem-Solving Skills

All other skills on this list rely on good old-fashioned problem-solving skills. That’s why the World Economic Forum listed “complex problem solving” and “critical thinking” as the top two job skills in 2020. No matter your job, you can be sure that robust problem-solving skills will make you an invaluable asset to your company.

Want to improve your current skill set? You can boost your problem-solving skills through a number of online courses, such as this Develop Critical Thinking, Decision-Making, and Problem-Solving Skills learning path on LinkedIn or Critical Thinking & Problem Solving course from Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) through edX. The LinkedIn learning path is free with a LinkedIn Learning subscription while the RIT course is free to take but has a fee for exams and certifications. 

Learn Job-Ready Skills for FREE with Digital Strike – Targeted Marketing

At Digital Strike – Targeted Marketing, we believe in investing in the future and our community. That is why we started our Growth Initiative in 2021. Our Initiative’s mission is simple: to provide free job training and tools to St. Louis-area students who don’t want to take the traditional college route after high school.

Specifically, our program accepts students graduating from high school in the St. Louis area each year. If chosen for our program, participants will enroll in one of Grow with Google’s five career certification courses through Coursera:

• IT
• Data Analytics
• Project Management
• UX Design
• Digital Marketing & E-Commerce
• Cybersecurity

We cover course fees AND provide participants with a free laptop to take these courses. We also make our office available most days of the week to participants, so they can have access to a reliable Internet connection and meet other program participants.

But we don’t stop there.

We also mentor our Growth Initiative participants so that they have other skills needed to land a job after they complete their chosen course, such as interviewing skills. We also connect current participants with program graduates from previous years, so they can learn from their peers while also growing their professional network.

If you’re interested in this opportunity, we recommend that you apply for our Growth Initiative. We would love to help you learn valuable skills for a fulfilling, well-paying career.

That’s true—it isn’t brainstorming how to overcome problems, creating unique campaigns, or closing big deals. But what reporting does do is target campaign goals, easily identify campaign performance, and save you time understanding where improvements need to be made.

Reporting is taking all of the information associated with a campaign and compiling it in one, easy-to-digest place, ready to hand off to a client or your team to understand wins and opportunities. 

Whether you’re in an agency or running campaigns in-house, you know all too well the importance of reporting. One problem we see in the industry is that people often overcomplicate their reporting process and end up spending too much time on it. When you have an efficient reporting process in place, you’ll actually have more time to focus on campaigns!

And that’s where we come in. We’re here to help give you some key points to follow when creating or refining your reporting process that will help you create the best possible way to analyze your campaign’s performance!

Keep it simple.

The first key thing to keep in mind come reporting time is to keep it simple!

As we all know, reports are often created not just so we can analyze performance, but to hand off to someone else to analyze that performance as well.

Whether we are handing the report off to a client or another team member, they will want an easy to understand, concise report that gets to the point.

Remember: More words equals more opportunities for information to be lost in translation.

You want to make sure your reports are not data dumps. You can give someone all the information in the world, but at the end of the day people just want to know if the campaign is working or not working, and why.

The best way to avoid this is to discuss your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)—what will best show the success of your campaign?

Is your campaign designed to get eyes on a brand or sales? Do we want phone calls or PDF downloads? Identifying this will allow you to measure those KPIs and get a quick understanding of campaign performance.

You also want to make sure you have a consistent reporting cycle.

We have heard horror stories of reports only being put together when asked; as you can guess, that leads to catching problems too late. Depending on your business and your industry, setting a consistent reporting cycle will help keep a close eye on performance. One example may be compiling a report once monthly, and a more in-depth deep dive every quarter.

Visualize your data.

If you want to keep your reports simple, you should create a way to visualize the data for easy interpretation.

Visualizing data typically means turning hard data (i.e. the numbers) into graphs or charts.

Graphs and charts allow you to compare data sets or check performance over time.

Pictures tell a thousand words and graphs explain a thousand data points. 

Depending on what KPIs you are reporting on and the information you want to display, your choice of graphs and charts is going to be an important part of the process. Each one will

• Line graphs help show trends over time.
• Column graphs help compare data.
• Pie charts show percentages of a whole.

There are tons of possibilities, but you want to be aware not to oversaturate your graphs with information. It is better to make a second graph before making one too complicated.

Automate your process.

The goal of these reports is to provide all the information needed to decide the success of campaigns—and to do so in a time-efficient manner.

If you spend hours per week creating and adjusting reports, you end up defeating the purpose of reports in the first place. Ideally, your reporting process should be as automated as absolutely possible.

Whether your reports come in a simple Excel sheet or a complicated Tableau dashboard, spend the time to find a way for your reports to automatically import all the necessary data to show trends in your KPIs.

There are endless amounts of reporting tools out there like Tableau, Sisense, TapAnalytics, and NinjaCat, to name a few.

Find one that has the necessary connections with tools you currently use and take the time to create the perfect report for your needs. It will save you countless hours in the future, I promise!

Tell a story.

We’ve talked about the importance of making your reports easy to understand and pretty, but maybe the most important function of our reports is to tell a story.

We’ve mentioned how almost always, our reports are going to end up in someone else’s hands. We want that person to understand the campaign goals, campaign performance, and what changes need to be made.

Think of your reports like a short story. You can hand someone Red Fish, Blue Fish or hand them a Tolkien-level masterpiece. Both meet different goals but when it comes to campaign management, time is of the essence, people.

Just like a story, our reports should have a beginning, middle, and end. It should follow the story of your campaign and align with the campaign goals, displaying things in an order that makes sense.

For instance, you can follow a typical buyer’s cycle: Measure impressions of your campaign, share how many leads you got, and document how many sales you closed. Follow up with a recap of the data and end with recommendations for adjustments.

Put together an outline of what needs to be explained, just how you would when writing a book, and you’ll have a masterpiece of your own in no time!

Tired of building those reports by yourself? Sick of managing campaigns without seeing progress? Let us take over. Contact us today to find out how we can help.