An image of a Google Analytics 4 dashboard.

Why You Should Utilize GA4 Custom Events

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We’re all familiar with Google Analytics 4 in the digital marketing space (or at least you should be). Most of the time, whatever user interaction information and data you’re looking for is part of one of the different types of events: automatically collected events, enhanced measurement events, or recommended events. You can then track the results found in these events in GA4 reports.

However, sometimes you need additional information not typically collected by GA4. Much like in the former Google Analytics version, Universal Analytics, you can set up custom events for the instances that do not already get tracked.

What Are Custom Events?

Custom events track valuable information about your website that Google Analytics 4 does not automatically track by itself. You can create a custom event directly in Google Analytics 4 or use Google Tag Manager (GTM); which one you need to use depends on the specifics of the custom event.

Benefits of Custom Event Tracking

Google sorts which events wind up in which category by how commonly they appear on websites. For example, every website has at least one webpage, so the page_view event appears in automatically collected events. Recommended events contain many different tracking metrics depending on what type of website you have.

GA4 automatically tracks link clicks, file downloads, and button clicks because of their commonality. However, out-of-the-ordinary metrics need custom events.

Custom events exist so you can still track anything you want to track, even if it does not fit in any existing events. This gives you a great amount of freedom, and the ability to collect data on any aspect of your website that you want, which you can then view as a part of GA4 reports.

How to Set Up Custom Events Directly in GA4

  1. First, select the event that you want to use as the basis of your new custom event.
  2. Click “Events” under Data Display
  3. Click “Create Event” once again on the next screen
  4. Fill in the Custom Event Name. Note that custom events cannot share their name with an existing GA4 event and cannot exceed 40 characters in length. They can only contain letters, numbers, and underscores, and must start with a letter.
  5. Set up the matching conditions of the custom event. Here, you set up your event parameters and the parameter values.
  6. You can choose to copy the parameters of the original base event if you so desire. If you need to, you can change the parameters to fit your custom event better.
  7. Click the “Create” button.

Now that you have set up your custom event, you need to test it to make sure that it works properly.

How to Test Your Custom Event

    1. Go to your website
    2. In Google Analytics, go to the debug view in GA4’s settings
    3. Here is where you will be able to see a view of the website and make sure that the events are being tracked correctly

How to Create Custom Events With Google Tag Manager

While there is no single definitive step-by-step guide to setting up custom events via GTM due to the vast array of events you can set up with this method, they all share a few common threads regardless.

Here is an example of one way that you can use GTM to set up custom events:

  1. Create a new tag in GTM, and select “GA4 Event” as the tag type.
  2. Name the event, and include optional parameters you need for reporting on the event.
  3. Choose the existing GA4 configuration tag.
  4. Create a trigger that will make the tag go off when the intended action is performed on your website.
  5. Save the new trigger and tag
  6. Make sure to preview changes before publishing the container.

How to Test Custom Events Made in Google Tag Manager

    1. Go into GTM and click “Preview”
    2. Fill in the URL and click “Connect”
    3. In your website, perform the trigger to the event you created.
    4. Open the debug view in GTM to see if your custom event is listed. Make sure to check both the GTM container as well as the GA4 container.
    5. Publish the GTM container to your website.

Custom Definitions

Custom dimensions are very important if you want to send specific parameters that are not dimensions that GA4 collects automatically. For example, if you have content offers on your website and want to highlight downloads, you would want to use custom dimensions.

Limitations

While small in number, and most likely irrelevant, there are some limitations to custom events in GA4 that must be noted. You are limited to a maximum of 50 custom dimensions and metrics, but in most cases this limit will not be something you need to be worried about. They also limit events to 25 parameters per event.

There are limits to the length of naming different aspects of your custom events, as well, such as event names and parameter names, which are both capped at 40 characters.

Key Events

Key Events are events that you can mark in the events tab to “highlight” them. This sets them apart from the rest of the events that you may not watch as closely on a regular basis. Typically, your key events will be form submissions, downloads or purchases, which are more important to measure at a high level.

Ready to Set Up Custom Events?

Now you are ready to set up your own custom events and gain access to all of the data you could possibly need about your website and its users. Now you can take advantage of the power that GA4 gives to business owners, and you can track custom events and work to boost your conversion rates.

We know, this all seems very overwhelming. If you need help with data tracking for your website, we at iSynergy can help! Reach out to us today, and we can handle all of your digital marketing needs.

A FAQ page, one of the major website needs for small businesses.

9 Website Needs That You Should Know

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Creating a great website for your business involves many crucial components. Building a site that is simple, clear, concise, and still includes everything you need to attract potential customers isn’t easy. Web design comes with many moving parts (much more than just choosing fonts), and it can be hard to keep track of it all. Luckily, we have compiled a list of some of the most important things you need for your company website.

  1. Choose the Right CMS

A content management system (CMS) allows you to build your website without needing extensive knowledge on programming and HTML. Building a webpage from scratch requires coding in HTML, which is time-consuming and difficult even for an experienced web developer. It also makes edits and updates a troublesome task.

With a CMS, the level of technical knowledge you need depends on the building software. With all of its capabilities, WordPress can be more difficult for beginners to grasp, whereas Squarespace is more beginner-friendly.

Many CMS softwares offer plugins that can enhance their capabilities, along with high-quality templates if you’re struggling to get started. These can be particularly useful when building an ecommerce website.

  1. Domain and SSL Certificate

There are several different ways to obtain your domain name. You have the option to purchase and register your domain name from a registrar such as Google Domains, which is usually a low-cost option.

Some CMS softwares offer a free domain as a part of your account’s plan, or a domain may be included in your web hosting plan. The easiest way is to obtain your domain from your CMS so you do not need to go through extra steps to connect your domain to the CMS. However, if this option is not available, the process of connecting your domain to your CMS should not cause too much trouble or confusion.

Once you have obtained your domain, obtain a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate. This is what tells search engines and users that your website is secure. You know a website has an SSL certificate if its URL begins with “https://” instead of “http://”.

  1. Web Hosting Service

In order for your website to be live and available to site visitors, you need a web hosting service. Some CMS softwares such as Squarespace include web hosting services in your plan, but others like WordPress require you to obtain hosting services elsewhere.

Examples of hosting services include Bluehost and DreamHost. Bluehost is designed for hosting WordPress websites since it does not offer its own hosting directly.

  1. Data and Analytics Tracking

As a part of your overall digital marketing strategy, you need to collect data from your website. Data and analytics are necessary for making informed decisions on where to take your digital strategy in the future.

Whether you are a small business owner or involved with a much larger company, analytics are vital to your success. The most commonly used analytics tracking tool is Google Analytics, but search engine optimization (SEO) tools such as SEMRush are also very helpful.

The insights these tools provide, such as website traffic, impressions, clicks, conversions, total keywords, etc., are crucial for knowing if your website and overall strategy are effective, and if you need to make changes.

  1. SEO Strategy

In order to have direction when developing your website, you need to define your SEO strategy. Determine which keywords you intend to try to rank for and understand how to utilize user experience and internal linking structure.

Your SEO strategy affects your website in many ways, making it very important to develop for your website to be successful. You need a good SEO strategy if you want your website to rank highly in search engines and drive more traffic to your website.

  1. Proper Heading Structure

Heading structure is important, not only for your website’s users but also for search engines to crawl your web pages. Whether it’s a homepage, services page, contact page, landing page, about us page, or any other webpage on your site, you need a good heading structure.

Your headers guide users and search engine crawlers through your content and help them understand the purpose of the webpage. To do this well, you need to use headers wisely.

Heading structure should function similarly to an outline. The H1 on your webpage should be the page’s main idea and set the theme for the page. Following the body text under your H1, you should use H2s. Do not skip H2s and use H3s or H4s, as this will make your page harder to follow.

  1. Call-to-Action (CTAs)

CTAs are your way of directing users to take desired actions, helping to turn clicks into conversions. Whether you are trying to make a sale, get newsletter subscribers, or fill out a contact form, your CTAs need to be clear and direct to be effective.

On your website, you have primary and secondary CTAs. Primary CTAs are prioritized and focus on your main objective, while secondary CTAs provide another conversion opportunity for users who don’t meet the primary objective.

  1. Integrated Email Marketing

For email marketing, many people manually collect contact information brought in by contact forms and import them to their email marketing platform. Instead of this, some platforms allow for integration directly into your website.

When contact forms are filled out, they are automatically imported into your platform and become part of your email list. This is a huge time saver and helps make your website and email marketing strategy more seamless and effective.

  1. Responsive Design

In order for your website to be user-friendly, you need to use responsive design. Responsive design refers to the website’s ability to adapt to the size of the screen that is being used to view it.

Responsive design is especially important for users on mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets. The majority of all searches on the internet are performed on mobile devices, so if your website is not mobile-friendly, you could be missing out on a massive amount of traffic.

Still Need Help With Your Website?

Make no mistake, there is still a lot more that goes into website building than just 9 things. If we took the time to list everything you need to know, this would have been much too long. If you are still struggling and don’t know where to start with your business’ website, now is the time to reach out to us at iSynergy! We can help you out with any of your digital marketing and website needs.

Logos of successful brands including Nike, Apple, and Amazon.

What Elements Make a Successful Brand?

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Building brand awareness is a key part of any successful marketing strategy. Whether you have a startup or an international corporation, you need strong branding to foster customer loyalty.

Massive companies such as Nike, Apple, Amazon, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and many others, set themselves apart as some of the biggest brands in the entire world. Now, they don’t have any big secret that allows them to be so strong with brand building – they’re just a few steps ahead.

Big companies all know how to build a brand. Those who are a cut above the rest didn’t get there because their processes are vastly different. The only thing that sets them apart is that they know better ways to execute their strategy and integrate it throughout the entire company.

By utilizing these brand elements and techniques (and executing them effectively), your branding can reach the next level.

Stick to Your Brand Strategy

Everyone creates a brand strategy when they first start out. After your strategy is developed and finalized, you need to stick to that strategy no matter what. Consistency is one of the most important parts of developing brand recognition in your target market.

If you don’t stay true to your brand message, visual identity, and brand personality, you simply will not have a good brand. While there are times when rebranding is necessary (and effective), major changes early on only hurt your chances of reaching potential customers.

If you fail to be consistent in your brand identity, new customers will have a much harder time latching onto your brand. This is why research is of the utmost importance when building a brand, as you cannot afford to experiment too heavily with your branding in the midst of running marketing campaigns.

Have Strong Brand Values

Your brand’s values dictate almost everything your company does. By establishing strong values and using them as your North Star during decision-making, you will stay much more consistent and make better choices for your brand.

You will also see stronger brand loyalty among your audience when you keep consistent, strong values. When your consumers share the same values as your brand, the brand experience is heightened and attracts more customers.

Have a Unique Value Proposition

What are you giving the target audience that your competitors can’t? How are you going to enhance the customer experience through your brand? How does your new product meet customer needs and improve their life? Your value proposition should answer these questions, and your answers matter.

Everyone knows that your company needs to offer something of value to consumers to be successful. However, not many put in the extra effort to make sure that the value they offer sets them far apart from the competition.

Without differentiation, your brand means nothing to consumers. If you want your brand to succeed, you need consumers to know exactly what you can do for them — and it has to be unique compared to others in your industry.

Focus on Innovation

In order to keep delivering value to consumers, you need to always be innovating. While not an active part of brand building, innovation in your business helps you gain more loyal customers — and grow your brand.

Understand your customers’ needs and pain points then develop your company initiatives based on them. Make leaps in the industry to help meet your customers’ expectations and soar beyond them. 

Whether by your products themselves or your internal processes, innovation is the key to staying unique among the rest of your industry. Great brands do not get to where they are without changing the game.

Develop a Strong Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketing is a big piece of the digital marketing puzzle. Good content is vital for new, small businesses and established, big companies alike. Consumers love content, and it provides an excellent branding opportunity for companies.

Be mindful of the type of content you choose to create. Does it make sense for your brand archetype? Are you using your brand voice effectively in your content? Does the content reflect your beliefs and values? Make sure the content you create makes sense for your brand and shows off your expertise.

Content marketing will build your brand authority and establish your business as a credible source of information and insight in your industry. This will lead to more trust from the consumers, and improve your brand positioning as you continue to establish yourself as a thought leader.

Social Media in Branding

In the past decade, social media has become a bigger and bigger part of branding practices for businesses. Strong brands use social media as a means to connect and communicate with their audience and tell their brand story.

Especially if you have a budding ecommerce business, social media is an excellent tool to build your brand online. Reposting your content on social media and making posts with brand elements, such as your logo or tagline, are great ways to get consumers to connect with and recognize your brand.

Tell Your Brand’s Story

Your brand logo and brand name aren’t just a surface-level representation of your brand. Your name and logo have meaning because of what they represent: a company people know and trust.

So, how do you make your visual brand identity mean something? By telling a story that people resonate with. If you tell a compelling story about your brand’s history, how it started, and why it started, people will remember that next time they hear your name or see your product on a shelf.

When people connect to your brand via your story, you can turn them into loyal customers for life.

Building a Great Brand

Building a successful brand cannot be achieved at a high level using cookie-cutter methods and templates. You need thorough research on your target audience, an understanding of your business inside and out, and a well-planned marketing strategy to center your actions around.

Stressing about successful brand management? The experts at iSynergy can help you make your digital marketing strategy dreams come true with anything from branding and content marketing to SEO and paid advertising. Don’t delay any further and reach out today. 

An image of a ChatGPT conversation.

These 4 OpenAI Plugins Will Change the Way You Work

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Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing how many industries operate. This is especially true for the digital marketing industry. With a plethora of tools at your fingertips, AI has become difficult to ignore.

In particular, OpenAI has been leading the charge with its AI creations, including DALL-E, Whisper, OpenAI API, and, of course, the chatbot that started the craze: ChatGPT. If you are somehow unfamiliar with ChatGPT, go to chat.openai.com to catch up with the rest of the world. With its advanced natural language processing (NLP), ChatGPT took the world by storm upon release.

Whether you are using GPT-3 or GPT-4, it’s easy to see how OpenAI’s signature product took the world by storm. Using ChatGPT feels like using a cheat code, with its vast array of features and incredible functionality. However, as amazing as it is, there are still plenty of limitations.

This is where OpenAI plugins come in (specifically, ChatGPT plugins). While ChatGPT has diverse features, plugins allow for entirely new and different use cases not previously available.

How Do ChatGPT Plugins Work?

Starting with only a small number of contributors to ensure safety, OpenAI has slowly allowed more and more developers and users of OpenAI API to create ChatGPT plugins for GPT-4. While some of OpenAI’s code is available on Github, ChatGPT is left private until given authorization. 

These plugins provide users with far more ways to use ChatGPT with new functionality and updated artificial intelligence. More and more plugins are being developed over time, but many of the existing plugins have amazing digital marketing applications. With abilities to assist with SEO, content marketing, social media, web development, and more, ChatGPT plugins can turn the tool into an AI-powered digital marketing expert.

To access OpenAI plugins, first, you need to pay for ChatGPT Plus. After that, enable plugin access in your settings, at which point you can check your enabled plugins. If it says no plugins are enabled, navigate to the plugin store. Plugins are still in beta, but there is no waitlist to access them, so you should have no hurdles.

Now that we have gotten that out of the way, we can delve more into the specific plugins you should use for your digital marketing efforts — or at least try a tutorial.

  1. SEOPress

This AI model allows you to input a URL and a keyword, and, in turn, receive an abundance of on-page SEO information. This includes robots.txt, load time, title tags, metadata, headers, image names, keyword occurrence, and more.

This tool is excellent for analyzing your own website, auditing your on-page SEO, and analyzing and researching your competitors’ websites to understand their on-page strategy.

  1. Social Search

If you are trying to find social media trends or what a specific personality has been saying online, Social Search is the right plugin for you. This plugin API pulls data from X (formerly Twitter) based on trending hashtags, popular topics, and specific user handles based on your search query.

This tool helps you keep up to date with the trending topics on social media, which helps you create relevant and topical posts for your social media strategy.

  1. Visla

Visla is a video generation plugin. Based on the video topic that the user inputs, Visla pulls from public stock footage to create short-form videos that the user can use for content marketing purposes. It helps the plugin generate the video more effectively if the user inputs other properties such as video title, description, tone, etc.

  1. Speedy Marketing

Last, but certainly not least, Speedy Marketing is a content generator specializing in SEO-optimized copywriting. Simply provide your website’s URL to the chatbot and give a brief description of the content you want it to write to get a piece of content that can help boost your rankings in SERPs.

This plugin can help a lot if you don’t have the time to write blog articles or product descriptions from scratch.

Maximize ChatGPT’s Potential

With these 4 ChatGPT plugins, you can take your digital marketing strategy to the next level. And don’t stop here: look further into OpenAI’s plugin store and craft your own plugin list that you can leverage to maximize your potential. Remember, AI is not a replacement for your own work, it is a partner. 

Still not sure about using artificial intelligence at a high capacity? Looking for a more human partner? Look no further than iSynergy. If you need help with anything in the digital marketing space, we are here to help. Get in touch so we can get started!

A book of brand guidelines under the text “How to Define Your Brand.”

Your Branding Is All Wrong: Here’s How to Define Your Brand

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How well have you established your brand identity? What are your business’s core values? How do you define your brand personality? How detailed is your brand strategy?

If you don’t have good answers to those questions, you haven’t done enough to establish your brand. You may have a mission statement and some fonts picked out for marketing materials,  but that’s not enough for your brand to stand on its own two feet.

Having a strong brand is much more than having a good logo and being funny on social media platforms. Your brand’s visual identity is only one piece of the puzzle; putting most of your focus here is a mistake — until you’ve done your homework. 

Look at Nike or Apple, for example. These companies are juggernauts when it comes to brand recognition. Why is that? Because they understand how you develop and maintain a strong brand identity. They focus on brand story, brand image, and established brand guidelines.

Whether a personal brand, a small business, or a large company, a successful brand takes a lot of research and hard work. If you want to take your brand to the next level, you need to follow the steps to find your human truth, category truth, and brand truth.

The Misconceptions With Brand Building

A lot of people picture branding as your logo, catchy taglines, and Pantone colors. However, these aspects are the last parts of your brand that you should think about (literally, they are in the last steps).

You have so much more to worry about when building your brand: how do consumers perceive you, how do you appeal to them, how do you set your company apart from the competition, where are you positioned in the market, and so much more. None of these are new concepts, they just don’t get brought up enough when talking about brand management and building.

One of the most important things to remember is that your brand is not how you want to be perceived, it’s how your customers perceive you. You do not get to decide how the world views your company. What you do get to decide is how to best play into how you are being perceived — and build an effective, strong brand around that.

Human Truth

The human truth is all about people: specifically, your loyal customers. To have an effective brand, you need to understand your target audience. Without a customer base to appeal to, your brand is pointless.

Customer Research

You need to do thorough research on your target audience to understand your ideal customer persona (ICP). Begin brainstorming assumptions about who you believe your target consumers are. How do they think? What do they like and dislike? Use these assumptions to create questions you can ask about your customers.

Start with focus groups, interviews, surveys, and other forms of research on your customers to find out exactly who you need to focus on for your marketing strategy or rebrand. If you are post-launch, use existing customer data to form your conclusions. Customer research is the key to developing a brand that fosters customer loyalty.

By finding out the demographics, psychographics, habits, and pain points of your customers, you can easily generate the idea of your ideal customer — and now you know who you’re trying to appeal to.

Ideal Customer Persona 

Once your research is complete, you should have enough information to develop your ICPs. Create two or three personas, each unique but still fitting into the data you have collected. These ICPs are who you focus your messaging and overall marketing efforts toward. If done correctly, these personas represent your perfect, most loyal customers — and are the key to fostering brand loyalty.

Get as specific as you can. The more detail, the better you can cater to your target consumers. From where they live and what they do for fun to their greatest aspirations and greatest challenges, you want to develop more than just statistics like age, marital status, and gender, so you can speak to who they are and what they value. 

Category Truth

Category truth refers to the industry you operate in — and how you fit into that industry. This is when you turn to different aspects of market research: your competitors and your positioning.

Competitor Research

When doing your customer research, make sure to take into account direct competitors, indirect competitors, and competitive alternatives. When doing this research, build out competitor profiles to organize your thoughts and the data you collect about your competitors. This makes it easier to understand their positions in your industry.

Positioning

Next, you need to understand your position in the market. Determine what your company is best at and what consumers recognize you for.

List out what is unique about your brand. What problem can you solve that no other competitor can? What is your value proposition? This is not just a pivotal part of your brand, but also your marketing campaigns going forward.

Brand Truth

Now that you know your target market and your position in the industry, you can determine your visual identity, brand voice, and brand message.

Who You Are

It’s best to start with your brand story. Knowing how and why your business arrived at this point is a great way for customers to gain an emotional attachment to you. Explain how you came up with your company name, your business’ brand values, the company’s mission, etc. These are all things that consumers can latch onto and make them feel connected to your brand.

What You Are Like

When you determine those aspects of your brand, move on to your brand personality, character, and brand voice. What does your brand sound like? How does your brand act? Make these decisions based on your target consumers and your positioning. Choose from a list of brand archetypes, and refer to some persona prompts: What motivates your brand? What are your strengths? How about weaknesses? Understanding your brand like a person is the key to having a powerful brand.

Visual Brand Elements

Finally, you can determine your brand design. Now you can create your logo, choose your color palette, typography, iconography, and anything else you need in your brand style guide. 

Choose your color scheme based on color psychology, and select colors that evoke the emotions you want your brand to evoke in consumers. 

It’s so much easier – and impactful – to determine these visual elements once you know who you are, who you’re talking to, and what they want from you.

Start Building Your Brands Better

If you want to have a big brand name, you need to build your brand more effectively — and that’s half the battle. With this breakdown, you should be well-equipped to build a strong and effective brand. When you’re looking at how to define your brand, don’t start with what people see, start with what they feel. 

Screenshot of a ChatGPT-generated blog.

AI-Generated Content Is NOT Making Us Obsolete

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For a while now, people have been afraid of the development and usage of artificial intelligence, thinking that it will one day make us obsolete. As we all know, the advancement of AI has made massive leaps in recent years, particularly in the digital marketing industry, with huge platforms providing AI-generated content, such as ChatGPT and Jasper, being easily accessible to the public.

Now that advanced AI technology is right in front of us, many are beginning to develop that fear once again. But are these fears justified? Is OpenAI trying to take over the workforce? Are those of us who use AI tools contributing to our own downfall?

No. At least, not yet.

Why Do People Think AI Is Taking Their Jobs?

For a human copywriter, the time it takes to build an outline, do some research, and actually write the words can easily add up. Depending on the length of the content, this could take a couple of hours. For something like ChatGPT, this takes mere minutes (or seconds).

Not only is the content generated quickly, but it’s also SEO-friendly. AI writing tools are designed to pull from highly ranked sources on search engines.

AI can also come up with content ideas. While humans are sometimes plagued with writer’s block, a machine-learning program never has this issue. In fact, AI chatbots like ChatGPT can generate numerous topic ideas in mere moments, almost eliminating the need for human brainstorming.

And then there is the biggest threat of AI, which goes beyond the digital marketing industry: pricing. Even if you use the paid version of ChatGPT (GPT-4), it often costs far less than a copywriter.

Between the versatility, speed, and cost benefits of AI content writers, it sure seems like the future of the industry. However, AI-generated content still has a few major issues that need to be fixed before the threat to human content creators can be taken seriously.

AI Is Not Advanced Enough Yet to Be a Threat

Yes, AI content generators have made significant progress. The use cases of AI have expanded greatly, and now it can write product descriptions, social media post captions, ad copy, help with brainstorming, and generate high-quality, SEO-optimized new content. Natural language processing is better than ever, and AI writers can create a new piece of content in a fraction of the time it takes for the user to even type out the prompt.

So… how is AI not a threat?

What Do Human Writers Have That AI Writers Don’t?

If you are using AI consistently for content writing, then you should know that AI writing still requires a lot of human intervention. AI is versatile and can generate content very quickly. Although the content is often high quality from an optimization standpoint, there are still issues with AI’s copywriting skills.

Risk of Plagiarism

For starters, AI writing tools have been found to plagiarize other people’s work. Content writing AI algorithms are designed to learn from existing content on the internet and write content based on these sources.

Because of how these machine learning algorithms are designed, AI-generated content can sometimes be too similar to existing content and get flagged for plagiarism.

Lack of Personality

Another glaring issue with generative AI is the lack of personality compared to human written content. AI copywriters are designed to be objective and factual. Because of this, the writing can come off as bland. You can ask AI tools to write in a certain tone or voice, but there’s no guarantee that it will match what you had in mind.

While human writers use their thoughts and feelings about a subject to enhance their writing, AI simply can’t do this. AI’s content creation process differs from ours and does not allow opinions on subjects to influence their writing. (And if AI is advanced enough to hold opinions, we have bigger problems.) At the end of the day, there is no such thing as a gray area for generative AI.

Google May Punish AI Content in Rankings

Yes, AI writers are good at search engine optimization. However, Google’s algorithm cares about more than just that. Content also needs to, as the kids say, E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness), which AI may struggle to do.

Because AI pulls from existing sources, very little originality or authenticity exists within the content. When search engines see this issue, you get penalized for it. While AI text may be optimized for SEO, you still need to edit the content itself so that Google is satisfied.

Made-Up Statistics

At this point, you get it. AI pulls from what it finds on the internet and spits it back out in whatever fashion you asked for. So what if it can’t find the right information on the internet – or if it finds too many varying responses? Not to worry, it will just make something up!

Yes, AI tools are doing their best to answer your prompt quickly. And we all know that misinformation is rampant on the internet with multiple answers to the same question. That’s why you always need to fact-check any statistics or numbers that AI provides; you never know where the source of that information is (although maybe we will get sourced information in the future) — or whether that information is correct or not.

AI Still Requires Humans

Did you notice how many steps of the AI content creation process need a human’s input? When AI has incorrect (or straight-up plagiarized) content, a human needs to go in and fix it. Due to unoriginal content being punished in search results, a human needs to edit the copy to make it suitable for rankings. When copy is generic and uninteresting, it needs a human touch.

AI has made great strides as far as what it is capable of doing. The thought of AI generating comprehensible long-form content was unimaginable just a few years ago. Now it can help with the creation of many different types of content.

But in order to generate truly high-quality content with AI, a human still needs to help out. That’s why AI content generators have not replaced human copywriters; they just can’t quite hit the target on their own just yet. 

As language models and machine learning algorithms become more advanced, AI might do more on its own. However, with the current levels of functionality, there is nothing to be worried about. AI tools are still just that: tools. You can use them to help write the copy for your landing page or LinkedIn post, but it is not replacing you.

AI Image Generation

Another trend on the rise is AI-generated images. While there are plenty of great use cases for AI image generation and, for the most part, it works great, it has not replaced the need for human graphic designers, illustrators, or photographers. AI tools can create images or expand them but that doesn’t mean they are totally accurate or useful. Most notably, it can’t get humans quite right. A lot of AI-generated images of humans have extra appendages or other offputting features.

Looking For a Non-AI Digital Marketing Partner?

AI certainly has its place in content marketing strategy, there is no doubt about that. However, the expertise and abilities of experienced and talented copywriters are not easily replicated by AI-generated content. You still need skilled content creators to help shape and execute your content strategy.

If you’re struggling to find the right people to help content flourish, look no further than iSynergy! We have experts in all facets of digital marketing, including content creation. Reach out today and let’s get started.

A social media account that practices content curation.A social media account that practices content curation.A social media account that practices content curation.

How to Use Content Curation to Boost Your Content Marketing Success

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Content creation is a great way for large and small businesses alike to share great content with their target audience. But it’s not the only way to put forth quality content! Social media marketing is a key strategy for content curation.

You may already utilize a content curation strategy, but are you doing it effectively? Strap in, and discover tips for sharing content like all the trendy influencers out there.

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A robot writer representing AI tools for content writing.

Tips for Using AI Tools for Content Writing

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As technology advances, it’s increasingly clear that artificial intelligence will continue playing a significant role in content creation. Many content creators already utilize AI to assist them in their tasks, including copywriting and brainstorming. Almost anything can be streamlined thanks to tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

AI writing tools (such as ChatGPT, Copy.AI, Jasper, Rytr, and Writesonic) have been released to great fanfare, with many lauding them as the future of copywriting. Thanks to machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), and language models, AI writing tools have grown exponentially into what we now see today.

But you can’t just trust an AI writer to do all your work for you. Even the best AI writing tools can’t effectively replace human writers — yet. AI text generators create short-form content fairly well but struggle more with long-form content. While they are great at paraphrasing or summarizing information in a user-friendly format, they tend to lack personality and tone of voice.

This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be using AI copywriting tools for content marketing – just that you need to use them the right way. Know which types of content an AI content writing tool can help you with, and when to leverage it for help when you are struggling. While using AI helps streamline the writing process, it doesn’t eliminate it.

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The Importance of Data Privacy and Ethics in Digital Marketing

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Customer data is crucial to many digital marketing strategies – but the collection and use of data needs to be done with care. It’s important to have a thorough understanding of data privacy and ethics when you’re collecting all this sensitive information.

Ethical data management helps you establish a good reputation in the digital age by protecting your customers’ sensitive data, but how do you develop ethical practices and appropriate safeguards?

If you’re worried about the ethical considerations of data collection or how to protect your data sets, look no further. Learn more about major ethical issues and best practices to follow when using data collection as a part of your marketing strategy.

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Icons of different marketing automation platforms, including MailChimp, HubSpot, and Salesforce.

Diving Into 2024 Marketing Automation Platforms

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Whether you’re a small business or a larger company, there just never seems to be enough time in the day. That doesn’t mean you should let your business’s marketing strategies fall by the wayside. Look to automation platforms instead.

Marketing automation platforms have become one of the most important tools for digital marketers, especially with the rise of AI-powered marketing tools. They allow you to create automated messages, schedule emails, and much more.

Understanding Marketing Automation Software

There’s a lot of repetition in marketing tasks; finding the best marketing automation software is a great, or possibly even essential, move for your business.

Marketing automation tools are perfect for saving your marketing team time. You can also keep customer data, lead management, and follow-up correspondence in one place — you can even utilize these tools for email marketing campaigns and automatically send out emails.

On top of saving yourself from repetitive tasks, marketing automation software helps you effectively leverage data and metrics, giving you a competitive advantage.

Marketo Engage

Owned by Adobe, Marketo – a multi-channel example – is the world’s largest marketing automation tool that helps marketers create, manage, and optimize campaigns, especially for businesses marketing to other businesses. 

  • SEO
  • A/B Testing
  • Email Marketing
  • Landing Pages
  • Social Media and CRM Integration (Customer Relationship Management)
  • Website Personalization
  • Lead Nurturing and Tracking
  • Campaign Analysis

Marketo is built on the Google Cloud and pricing depends on your database. You have to talk with their sales team to find out the cost.

Salesforce

Salesforce (formerly Pardot) is a comprehensive marketing automation platform for both B2B and B2C businesses. Salesforce is a Cloud-based CRM tool that offers many features, including email marketing, landing pages, and social media marketing.

The platform integrates with other Salesforce products so that all your data is in one place. This American-based software also has AI capabilities to help you manage leads, opportunities, and contacts.

Services

There are different services that Salesforce offers: 

    • PaaS – build your own websites and apps
    • SaaS – use built-in software
    • IaaS – use the cloud 

There are various pricing plans depending on what you need from your system. Customer support can be difficult, along with purchasing add-ons and a confusing interface.

Oracle Eloqua

Geared toward B2B marketing, Eloqua is a jam-packed marketing automation platform that helps you build, automate, and measure campaigns across all your marketing channels. It also has integrations with many apps and services. 

Great for large enterprises, other features include:

  • Social Media Management
  • Email Campaigns
  • List Segmentation
  • Email Content Database 
  • Real-Time Lead Scoring
  • Drop Sequences
  • Reporting
  • Custom Security Roles

A free version can be used to create campaigns using email templates in a drag-and-drop editor or by using the APIs. Packages begin at a high price point, making this tool only a viable option for larger businesses.

Hubspot

HubSpot is a marketing automation platform that allows you to create and send emails, set up landing pages, and track your leads. The free trial lasts 30 days, but there’s no limit on how many contacts can be added during the trial period. Whether you’re a conglomerate or a smaller business, Hubspot can accommodate your needs.

HubSpot also has free virtual classes on different aspects of marketing, like lead generation, customer behavior, social media management, and other marketing efforts.

The free plan includes all of the features of their paid plans except contact management (a maximum of 1,000 contacts) and social media monitoring. Pricing is a pain point for smaller businesses, and there are limited designs for email marketing.

Brevo

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is a French omnichannel email marketing platform. It offers both free and paid plans. The free plan is limited to 2,000 subscribers and 300 emails a day but comes with unlimited contacts.

Along with email marketing tools, this SaaS can also manage SMS messages and conduct A/B testing while getting real-time reporting. Some users have listed contact management as a frustration with this platform.

While they offer a free trial and plans start at $25, you can also customize your plan to fit your needs.

EngageBay

You can streamline your marketing, sales, and customer engagement with EngageBay CRM. It’s a marketing automation software that allows you to send personalized emails, automated emails, templates, and more. Segmentation options and drip campaigns are also available.

Integration with Xero and Zapier allows for easy third-party app usage. You can also use it on Apple, Android, and Windows devices. 

Try a free demo before scouting out their packages, starting at $15 a month. While this is relatively inexpensive, you may also have to purchase other instruments, leading to additional costs.

Customer.io

Customer.io is a customer data and marketing automation tool that helps companies manage their customer lists. Their platform allows you to create detailed customer profiles, conduct lead scoring and A/B testing, and much more (like real-time behavior data). You can even send push notifications.

It also has a large user base with over 5,000 companies ranging from small to large businesses. Integrations include, but aren’t limited to, Slack, PayPal, Google Analytics, and Shopify.

Functionality on the mobile app and CRM integration can be challenging, taking away from the customer experience. There’s also no AI option within the software to help create content, nor a spam blocker. While there’s no free version, Customer.io has a free trial. Subscription pricing starts at $100 per month. 

Constant Contact

Constant Contact is one of the most popular marketing automation platforms for small businesses, thanks to its simple and easy-to-use features.

It has a wide range of integrations with other services, like Salesforce and Hubspot (and even social media), as well as its own CRM system. There are also email templates for each stage of the customer journey. Keep your customer lists organized by tagging them, and uploading them from Microsoft Excel, Outlook, or Salesforce.

It is important to note that if you need extensive and advanced automation, their features may not fulfill your business needs. For example, A/B testing is limited to email subject lines.

There’s no free plan, but pricing begins at $10 a month for folks just getting started and increases on services you need. 

Omnisend

Omnisend is a marketing automation platform that helps you manage email campaigns, landing pages, and social media marketing. It’s a popular inbound marketing option for ecommerce, with integration into apps such as Shopify, Magento, and WooCommerce.

The dominant traits of Omnisend are workflow automation, email marketing, and SMS marketing, and they have great customer support.

While there’s a free plan for email and SMS marketing, pay plans begin at $16 a month. If you want unlimited user accounts and emails, those are offered in the Enterprise-level planning. Templates are also limited.

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a great all-in-one marketing automation solution. Offering email marketing automation, CRM, data tracking & reporting, etc., ActiveCampaign satisfies a vast array of marketing needs.

While the price can be a dealbreaker for some, as even the lowest tier costs $29 per month, for many it is justified by the sheer scope of marketing automation features offered. 

Stacking Against HubSpot

While HubSpot offers many different tools, ActiveCampaign has a lot of the same features, but at a lower price. These tools combined with an ease-of-use interface can make ActiveCampaign a favorable alternative.

MailChimp

MailChimp is excellent for sending newsletters and emails. It allows for audience segmentation by various criteria, offers campaign management, and you can optimize with AI. Many of its users say MailChimp is user-friendly, has great analytic capabilities, and favorable email templates.

MailChimp is good for both large and small businesses, and a free version is offered. Plans start at $13 a month after a free month.

Deciding on Your Marketing Automation Platform

As you can see, there are a ton of marketing automation platforms out there. Which one is the best for your business? Well, choosing your automated marketing software depends on your marketing strategy needs and goals. 

If you still need help managing your marketing strategies, give us a call.