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Advertising on LinkedIn in 2024

February 12, 2024

LinkedIn is one of the most efficient social media channels for advertising placements when it comes to reaching professional audiences. Whether you’re targeting prospective clients, students, or team members, LinkedIn offers a variety of ad types, helping you achieve specific goals and conversions. But with so many ad types to choose from, how do you know which one is the best for your objectives? 

At 5 Horizons, we are no strangers to LinkedIn ads and can guide you through the different routes you can take when advertising on this social platform.

Types of LinkedIn Ads

Sponsored Content

Probably the most recognizable ad type, sponsored or “native” content ads appear on the users’ feeds just like any regular content would—except the ads are labeled as “promoted.” Within this umbrella, there are six subcategories:

  1. Single image ads—the most classic and well-recognized ad format that features a single static image.
  2. Carousel ads—multiple static images displayed in succession that provide additional space for content to be swiped through and interacted with.
  3. Video ads—a format that features video content and gives you additional insights such as how far into watching your video users got.
  4. Event ads—a format that promotes your event from your LinkedIn page and is optimized for maximizing attendance.
  5. Document ads—a format that allows LinkedIn members to read and download documents directly from their newsfeeds.
  6. Thought leader ads—a format created to boost the already existing content and highlight the team members’ voices.

Sponsored Content ads are most frequently used to raise brand awareness, build relationships, and drive quality leads. Six different format options allow you to highlight the media that aligns with your company, organization, or school the most.

Sponsored Messaging

Sponsored Messaging ads let you begin conversations directly with your prospective leads. By reaching the LinkedIn members’ inboxes, you’re more likely to establish a personal connection with them. This ad type can appear as if sent by a specific member of your team, ultimately increasing the chances of your content being seen and engaged with. This customizable ad format allows you to include a lead generation form in your message, making it an even more effective route for organizations interested in gathering relevant information about their audiences. 

There are two kinds of sponsored messaging on LinkedIn: 

  1. Message Ads—format that consists of your targeted message and a single call-to-action button.
  2. Conversation Ads—format that gives you more opportunities to interact with your audience through multiple call-to-action buttons. Those can lead to your landing page, open a lead gen form, or serve as a prompt to continue the conversation.

Text and Dynamic Ads

Text and dynamic ads are other personalized formats that speak directly to your audience. Except this time, instead of appearing as a new message in their inbox, they pop up in a member’s feed, specifically on the LinkedIn right rail. 

Text ads are only compatible with desktops and consist of a small image, a short headline, and a description. Dynamic ads look very similar, except they are tailored to members based on their LinkedIn profile data and also feature a call-to-action button. Dynamic ads can be implemented in three different formats:

  1. Spotlight Ads—used to highlight a specific product, service, or event.
  2. Follower Ads—aim to increase your page’s follower count.
  3. Job Ads—hold the objective of driving quality candidates to your open positions.

All these formats act as “bite-sized” advertising avenues. With minimal copy and visuals, they’re intended to grab a person’s attention and entice them into learning more about your offerings.

Bottom Line

The variety of advertising opportunities on LinkedIn can be overwhelming, but a well-developed strategy can help narrow down the right ad format for you and your goals. As experts in social media advertising, 5 Horizons works with clients from various industries, using LinkedIn to tailor ads to their unique audiences. Contact us to learn more about how advertising on LinkedIn can help meet your objectives.

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Unlocking SEO Potential at MozCon

January 25, 2024

A Look Back at MozCon 2023 as We Prepare for the 2024 Conference

In August 2023, our technology team attended MozCon 2023 in Seattle and spent two full days learning, talking, and exploring innovative ways to implement Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and all of the facets that surround best SEO practices.

Our team arrived back on the east coast ready to share all of their ideas with the full company and begin implementing everything they learned. After spending some time putting their new education into practice, they have highlighted the greatest takeaways from last year’s conference.

Here are the top three topics that our team highlighted as most important after MozCon 2023:

1. Google is a Digital Ecosystem

Google is only one search engine among many, but it stands out from all the rest because of its broad expanse of offerings. Google is now a social network, a business directory, a place to shop, a place to image search, an aggregator, and a personal assistant––all rolled into one.

Thinking of Google as a digital ecosystem encouraged our team to incorporate all Google had to offer into our strategy and web presence going forward. SEO is equally interconnected and needs to be woven into all layers of content, campaigns, websites, and ads from start to finish. Google is currently the expert on users’ motivations for search and data collection, making Google the key to connecting with targeted audiences.

How our team is using Google differently in 2024:

  • Not thinking of Google solely as a search engine
  • Not getting sucked into the algorithm-thinking SEO practices
  • Using Google’s offerings to find and retain target audiences
  • Exploring content beyond just web pages––especially indexed YouTube video
  • Focusing on identifying local link opportunities in addition to traditional backlinks

2. GA4 Offers Privacy Conscious User Data

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is a customizable tool our technology team uses to measure traffic and engagement across the websites that we create, optimize, monitor traffic, and study user behavior. In order to address privacy concerns, Google moved away from Universal Analytics (UA) and implemented the GA4 data structure to collect, store, and use data in a way that is compliant with privacy regulations in different countries/states while focusing on events rather than sessions. It uses modeling to estimate conversion data that can’t be observed directly without identifying users. GA4 aims to collect user web and app data  in a privacy conscious manner while preparing for a cookieless browsing future.

How our team is leveraging GA4 in 2024:

  • We are using GA4 to track user behavior and sources of traffic
  • We are using the funnel report builder to analyze flows and track conversions
  • We are customizing our team’s navigation for easy access to useful reports
  • We are building custom audiences and using them for remarketing in Google Ads
  • We are using GA4 to measure the impact of our paid media efforts 
  • We are using GA4 to create custom reports to extract key insights for decision making 

3. AI and the Rise of Large Language Models

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not new, but universal accessibility to it is. Like many, our team regards AI with equal parts skepticism and curiosity. While at MozCon our team approached new information about AI with an open mind and challenged their own beliefs to embrace experimentation.

ChatGPT is a natural language processing tool developed by OpenAI to generate human-like text based on input. OpenAI trained ChapGPT on a massive amount of text data from the internet, using a machine learning model known as a large language model (LLM). ChapGPT “learns” by identifying patterns in the data and uses them to make predictions.

After Open AI launched ChatGPT, many companies such as Microsoft and Google started to integrate ChatGPT into their search engines or created their own LLMs, such as LaMDA/Bard and Bing Chat.

How our team is leveraging AI in 2024:

  • Increasing efficiency as a digital partner and personal assistant
  • Solving problems and expanding research
  • Learning better skills for prompting AI
  • Integrating ChatGPT functionality into other applications
  • Increasing transparency when using AI and sharing it’s benefits with each other
  • Continuing to explore all that AI has to offer our company workflow

Our technology team was thrilled to learn all they could from MozCon in 2023 and are very excited to gain even more exposure to new technologies at MozCon in 2024.

Education is at the heart of everything we do. If you are looking for a partner who is constantly exploring and learning new technology, we are ready to share our knowledge with you and solve your digital marketing problems. Let’s connect!

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Celebrating Our 2023 Wins + Planning for Our 2024 Successes

January 12, 2024

2023 brought 12 months of growth for our team. We welcomed four new employees and five new clients, putting in hundreds of hours building up our offerings.

As always, education and professional development are at the forefront of our company culture. Our team attended three conferences and exhibited at two, networking with new connections and expanding our skills in design and technology.

2023 was a website heavy year––our team built over 43 websites, spending over 1,000 hours writing, designing, constructing, and testing. We created nearly 500 digital ads and worked on 228 unique projects of varying complexities. Our data and tech team completed three extensive SEO audits and got the ball rolling on six more. We also launched two new Marketing Automation systems in Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud.

As we move into 2024, we are excited for the new opportunities on the horizon––including clients, design techniques, and innovative strategic methods––all delivered with the same quality and care we’ve prioritized for the last 11 years.

Visit our website for fresh ideas and upcoming trends on our Insights page, and take a look behind the curtain under Projects to see how we handled different client challenges. Follow us on social media for day-to-day updates or reach out through our contact form to chat with us directly.

At 5 Horizons we solve problems using creativity, technology, and data to help our partners grow. We look forward to being your partner in 2024.

– Pat Riley & Ben Sandman

Co-Founders, 5 Horizons

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How to Increase Return Site Visitors

January 4, 2024

As we mentioned in the previous blog, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) isn’t one and done and needs to be frequently updated to maintain your website’s credibility and ranking. Search engines view repeat site visitors as a sign that your site provides valuable, trustworthy information. So, how do you increase return visitors to your website?

Identify Why People Should Come to Your Website

Answering the question of why people should come back to your site will help you pinpoint the site’s features you can enhance or move directly to your home page for easier navigation. At 5 Horizons, we work with clients from a variety of industries but want to provide a few examples for some of our most prominent ones.

Senior Living 

People visiting the websites of senior living communities are most likely interested in the services and resources the community provides, as well as interacting with chatbots, reviewing the updated activities and events schedule, and searching for contact information.

Higher Education

Similarly, visitors tend to go to higher education websites to find resources for current, future, or returning students, look for upcoming events and contact information for various departments and offices.

Other

As the examples above indicate, the visitors’ intent is frequently similar throughout various industries. Some other reasons why people might visit your website include making a purchase, leaving a review, and using features such as a customer portal or an FAQ page.

Four Ways to Increase Return Site Visitors

With the reasons people come to your website in mind, consider implementing the following four steps into your online presence. 

1. Optimize Your Visitors’ Favorite Landing Pages

This includes improving the user experience by putting the most important information on each page front and center, making the page layout intuitive and efficient, and the content easy to follow and understand. Optimizing your entire website’s navigation can also increase visits—utilize your menu bar to funnel visitors to the most important areas of your site.

2. Start an Email Newsletter

Email is a great way of engaging with your audience and connecting them to more of your content. The newsletter can link to website blogs and social media content, allowing you to repurpose the already existing content into micro-content shared across platforms.

3. Create a Customer Loyalty Program

Customer Loyalty Programs are a great way of encouraging loyal visitors to return to your website again and again. By offering an incentive in the form of discounts or other perks, you make people feel appreciated and motivate them to not only come back to your site but also to spread the word about your services.

4. Retargeting Ads

Running retargeting ads can help remind the people who previously interacted with your website to visit it again. This type of advertising also works by displaying ads to someone who engaged with your social media pages, watched a video, or connected with your brand at some point in time. You can place these ads through Google or Facebook, using them as reminders for your visitors.

There are more strategies for increasing your site visitors out there, but these four offer a solid starting point for any community, school, or business.

Follow our Demystifying SEO series to learn how SEO is more than just content, how it requires a thorough strategy and involves intent-focused keyword research. Or contact us to discuss conducting an SEO audit to help your business thrive.

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Why SEO Isn’t One-and-Done

December 12, 2023

There isn’t a single person in marketing who hasn’t heard of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or taken steps to implement an SEO strategy into their organization’s or business’ efforts. However, most people get stuck thinking that SEO is an item you can check off your to-do list. Instead, SEO is an ongoing process––a strategy that requires continuous attention, tweaking, and improvement. 

What Makes SEO an Ongoing Process?

Changes in User Behavior

In the past, it was challenging to keep up with the most popular keywords or keyword phrases. Now, that task is made even harder by Google, which is not just looking for keywords anymore—it is also reviewing the intent behind the search by compiling a user profile. Understanding the “why” behind your audience’s search is a long process but one that will tremendously help your SEO results.

Evolving Marketplace

New technology, products, media, trends, etc. are constantly entering the marketplace, shifting the trajectory of the audience’s interests, hobbies, and likes. Anticipating these changes is difficult, but you can learn to adapt, pivot, or enhance your strategy and language in accordance with the market demands.

Algorithm Updates

To avoid search engine results page (SERP) manipulation, search engines frequently update the way they evaluate and rank websites when it comes to search results. These updates can have an immediate effect on your strategy’s performance, heightening the importance of promptly incorporating the current best SEO practices into your efforts.

How to Keep Up with SEO Over Time

Generate High-Quality Content

Populating your website with content that is relevant to your audience requires constant content generation. Uploading a few blogs to your site when implementing an SEO strategy and never writing another one again will make you rank lower on the SERP and prevent people from engaging with your website. That’s why it’s necessary to keep creating content that your prospective customers, clients, or students would want to interact with on a regular basis.

Maintain Your Website

On-page SEO is easy to keep in mind when you start optimizing your website. But as time goes by and you create new pages, you might forget to write meta titles and descriptions, making it harder for search engines to index your content. Continuously keeping your site organized will help your page rank higher.

Monitor Trends and Competition

Staying in the know of the new approaches search engines and your competitors take when it comes to SEO will help you adjust your own strategy if needed. Learning from the victories and mistakes of others is just as important as learning from your own, and it will help you stay afloat when search engines inevitably release updates that can affect your rankings. 

It is vital to keep your SEO fluid and flexible to help your operations thrive and gather as many viable leads as possible. At 5 Horizons, we offer continuous SEO services that ensure your organization, business, or school reaches your target audience. Contact us today to learn more and follow along on our Demystifying SEO journey.

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The Benefits of Focusing Your Strategy on Local SEO

Local SEO is a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy that helps increase search result visibility for local businesses. If you rely on local customers, have a physical location, and serve a specific geographic area, local SEO is a strategy worth implementing to optimize your reach.

Benefits of Local SEO

1. More new and returning customers

With modern life being so fast-paced, people tend to add “near me” to their search engine inquiries or look for local businesses directly in Google Maps and other map apps. With successful local SEO, your business will appear in the top three results, increasing the chances of customers selecting it among your competitors. 

2. Increased website traffic conversions

You can include the link to your website in directories such as Google My Business, which will result in highly qualified traffic. Site visits that come from local searches are from customers in the area who are ready to engage with the products or services your business offers.

3. Improved brand awareness

Having your business appear in global or local trustworthy publications and review sites (such as Yelp) can help generate more feedback, helping you take control of your reputation. Also, through high-quality link building, search engines and customers alike will feel more confident about your products or services, amplifying your business opportunities.

How to Implement Local SEO

Your strategy for implementing local SEO for your business stems directly from what you hope to achieve. Taking the above local SEO benefits as a guideline, here are some things you can do to rank higher in Google search, get noticed by more customers, receive better leads and targeted website traffic, and manage your reputation for increased brand awareness.

1. Perform a website SEO audit

Keeping local SEO in mind, check how well your website is performing. Does your website feature SEO elements that help ranking? Do you mention the specific geographic locations you want to target? Are your URL, meta titles and descriptions, and headers optimized? Do you have a location page on your website? Do you offer local content that could attract a local audience? These are just a few of the questions worth asking when performing an SEO audit.

2. Optimize your online presence

Create a Google My Business page and encourage your customers to share authentic reviews. Keeping this page active and updated will help your business rank higher in search results. But your online presence doesn’t stop with Google My Business. You have to make sure the content about your business continues to appear in online directories and citations. Reach out to local online publications to feature your business and link to it, which will help your website gain credibility for search engines and prospective customers alike.

3. Stay consistent

It is your responsibility to make it easy for people to contact you and find out where your business is located. Ensure your name, address, and phone number are the same everywhere online, and optimize your website for mobile to guarantee website traffic conversions for people who are on the go.

By implementing a local SEO strategy, you’ll increase your business recognition and gain more customers. Though the benefits of this approach are undeniable, building a successful local SEO strategy takes time. To streamline your journey, contact us to discuss conducting an SEO audit and other steps we can take to help your business thrive. You can also learn more about SEO by reading other blogs in our Demystifying SEO series.

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Demystifying SEO

November 22, 2023

A new blog series for understanding the ins and outs of SEO.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process and strategy of increasing search result visibility for businesses. With technology changing and evolving every day, SEO strategies are constantly in flux.

In our new series Demystifying SEO, our team is doing a deep dive into the complexities of SEO and how you can begin implementing best practices into your own marketing plan.

The Basics 

In the first section of the series, we’ll cover the basics:

How We Implement SEO

In the second section of the series, we’ll address the challenges surrounding SEO:

Where is SEO Going Next?

And in the third section of the series, we’ll cover where we think SEO is headed next:

Follow our Demystifying SEO series to learn how SEO is more than just content, how it requires a thorough strategy and involves intent-focused keyword research. Or contact us to discuss conducting an SEO audit to help your business thrive.

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Content Marketing is Modern Marketing Evolved

November 10, 2023

Our Greatest Takeaways from Content Marketing World 2023

Content Marketing World (CMW) is a must-attend event for the writers on our creative team. From keynote speakers and breakout sessions to workshops and networking events, CMW provides insight on a diverse range of topics and new technology.

CMW 2023 took place in Washington, D.C. and delivered multiple days’ worth of professional development. The hottest topics fell into three distinct categories:

1. Artificial Intelligence (AI)

From day one, AI dominated the conversation, with panelists asking and answering poignant questions related to the emerging medium. Ann Handley, the Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs, delivered a keynote address alongside Andrew Davis, professional keynote speaker and best-selling author, who boldly declared that AI is not a tool, but is instead a partner. 

Handley claimed that AI will never be enough on its own and companies will always need exceptional writers to command the AI and finesse the output. Davis further emphasized Handley’s point in his session on AI, describing the technology as a cognitive collaborator for content creators.

Davis also introduced the concept of digital doppelgangers: content created at the crossroads of humans and AI. Davis suggested learning, training, and implementing AI practices that are ethical and transparent to create your own digital doppelganger. By improving your prompting skills, you can train AI to write like you––in your voice, for your audiences. Treating AI content like your rough draft (because it will be rough) can speed up your process and allow you to edit, rearrange, and expand the content until you develop your final draft.

AI is here to stay, but the industry of content creation is still identifying the boundaries of how and when AI should be used. Best practices should include being transparent about the use of your digital doppelganger. Honesty and transparency are key to integrating AI into your work with an ethical perspective.

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was the second hottest topic at CMW 2023. With the expansion of AI comes the evolution of traditional SEO. A variety of speakers spoke to the importance of audience intent when searching for information. 

Google is not just looking for your keywords anymore—it is reviewing the intent behind the search by compiling a user profile. Understanding why your audience is looking for your product or service will help your SEO ranking rise.

For a long time, SEO and blogs have been tied together tightly, but the speakers at CMW talked heavily about evidence-based SEO. SEO needs to be more comprehensive than just content, link building, and technical optimization; SEO needs to be evidence-based and fluid, able to pivot and change with every Google algorithm or technical update. At its core, SEO needs to be in tune with the motivations of the audience you’re trying to reach.

3. Video Content

Perhaps in response to the popularity of video-heavy social media apps such as TikTok and Instagram (Reels), video content was a popular topic at CMW. 

Video content has long been known as a medium that can inspire and captivate. Ann Handley and Andrew Davis both declared video as content that can fit anywhere in the customer journey, though the beginning of the journey is an ever-important placement. Video is about emotion, but it is also a great opportunity to show your audience who you are as a company or organization.

However, one speaker warned of the pitfalls of a “video page” on your website. In a humorous presentation, Tony Gnau, the founder and chief storytelling officer of T60 Health, claimed, “A video tab on your website is the Florida of videos. That’s where your good videos go to retire.” Instead, he encouraged the attendees of his session to spread video content throughout their website without oversaturating one area, and use videos as a supportive tool for delivering complex or dry information in an attractive and digestible format.

Our writers enjoyed attending Content Marketing World 2023 and came back inspired to try new techniques and implement new practices into their workflow. Our team attends conferences such as CMW all year long to stay up to date on the latest trends because education is at the heart of everything we do. 

If you’re looking for a partner who lives and breathes modern marketing, we are ready to share our knowledge with you and continue the discussion. Let’s connect! 

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How to Write Effective Alt Text

November 9, 2023

Alternative text (alt text) is an important part of website optimization. But how do you write it effectively, for the people with visual impairments and for the search engines? Follow this step-by-step guide to writing good alt text.

Examine your image closely 

What is happening in the image? What information is it conveying? What would a viewer be missing if they couldn’t see this image? 

Mention the specific image medium

Your viewer’s screen reading program will tell them that it is an image, but not what kind. Is it a photo, an illustration, or an infographic? This detail will help your audience understand your content much better and take action if it calls for one. When writing alternative text, be as specific as possible, instead of simply stating “image of…”

Include all important elements 

Consider everything, even what is being implied. Is the image conveying a mood, activity, etc. not mentioned elsewhere? 

If the image has text, write it out

Graphics, posters, and other designed image content frequently feature copy. Make sure to write it out when working on your alt text.

Consider the image’s layout

If the layout is essential, include details about it in your alt text.

Consider uX while writing alt text

Keeping user experience in mind will help you determine which elements add to the website experience and which don’t. For instance, decorative images that serve no function beyond aesthetics do not require alternative text. 

By following these steps, you can ensure that your visual content is accessible to everyone and helps your site rank higher in search results. Learn more about Alt Text Best Practices.

Need help reaching your digital advertising goals? Connect with us to learn more. 

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Alt Text Best Practices

What is alternative text (alt text) and how to use it effectively? 

Although a picture is worth a thousand words, it may be worth nothing to someone unable to see it. Without the proper parameters in place, disabled or visually impaired people may not be able to access the content from images inserted in webpages or posted on social media. This leads people to miss out on vital information about you, your company, and content. A solution to this issue? Alternative text. 

What is Alternative Text? 

Alternative text (or alt text) is a form of descriptive text used to detail the appearance and function of an image. This text is then read aloud to visually impaired or disabled users. It also can be utilized in place of an image if it fails to load, as well as indexed by search engines to understand the contents of your page, making your images appear higher in related searches. 

The Benefits of Using Alternative Text 

Accessibility

The biggest benefit of using alt text is the accessibility aspect. The inclusion of an image on a webpage, an article, or wherever it may be, denotes some level of importance or relevance to the information being conveyed. In the case of infographics, charts, and images with texts, such information could be vital to a person’s understanding of content, and if they’re unable to see it, they won’t process the information and/or take action as needed. By implementing the use of alternative text, any viewer, regardless of disability, could access all of your material, helping them access your content in its entirety. 

Search Engine Optimization Ranking

Alternative text is also beneficial for SEO purposes. Having alt text on your photos allows search engines to determine what your photos portray, which can lead to enhanced ranking, and images/content appearing higher in search results.

Alternative Text Examples: Good and Bad 

Some people fall into the trap of using alternative text for “keyword stuffing,” or trying to bring their image higher up in search results by applying as many words as they think will appear in a related search. This approach does not take into account the purpose of alt text for the visually impaired and therefore does not fit the accessibility standard. 


An example of keyword stuffing is alt text that looks like this: 

“Young child smiling at the camera, sitting in a snowy frozen plane of snow and ice during winter or Christmas with their arm around a husky dog. Mountains, skiing, snowboarding, sledding, hat and gloves, snowball fight, blue ski jacket, yellow or green snow pants.”

Good alt text is quick, to the point, and describes the image at hand. For example: 

“A young child wearing winter gear sits in the snow and smiles at the camera with their arm around a husky dog.”

Alternative text is an integral part of making your content accessible, as well as a helpful way to make your content appear more relevant in search results. Read this blog for a step-by-step guide to writing good alt text, and take advantage of this tool to help your content reach a broader audience.

Learn more about How to Write Effective Alt Text. Need help reaching your digital advertising goals? Connect with us to learn more.