September 2020

September 28, 2020

Google Ads Strategies for Real Estate: a Guide

It used to be that if someone wanted to gain more exposure through advertising, they would have to place an ad in a newspaper, magazine, or even purchase airtime on the radio. With technology improving over time, people have been looking to prepare for the future. That is where digital marketing comes in. Owners, managers, and investors are starting to focus more on social media, email marketing, content marketing, SEO optimization, and Google Ads. The real estate industry is no different than anyone else, you have to be marketing in the digital world. Here are some google ads strategies for real estate.

Real Estate Agents

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The preferred method for any Real Estate agent to make a sale is face to face. However, in current times during the pandemic, agents have to find other ways to draw more attention and sales to their business. They also have to spend time finding ways to draw more attention to potential buyers and sellers. Asides from agents having to create their landing page and setting up all the tools that they need for their business. Agents need to start advertising their inventory and have everything connected.

Once connected the process of connecting is where Google Ads comes into place. According to Jon Clark, the conservative estimate for an agent to set up google ads, generate keywords, and place bids can take 6 hours of work to put into their campaigns. That is not including the analytics either. According to the same article, the average cost per click is about $2.37.

Real Estate Agents use Google Ads to further target their audience by creating competitive ads for keywords. Similarly, by also generating keywords that would include property names, area names, types of real estate they provide service for, and other real estate keywords that would bring more attention to their business. Other words like buying, selling, and renting or commonly used keywords that agents place bids on to get ranked.

If Real Estate agents fail to optimize it correctly, then the time, money, and effort would be a waste, no question. So, if you are an agent and you are looking to create a campaign, we recommend that you make sure to approach it wisely by taking the time to go through how you want to draft your ads and what keywords.

Residential Real Estate

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Here is where it can get a bit more complicated. As tough as it is, advertising an apartment or home already has its challenges. This difficulty is because not everyone is renting an apartment or house, nor are they looking to rent either one. For a company to generate more visibility for apartments they own, it is crucial in their campaign that they target only the people who are planning on living in your city when they start their search. Even if there are well-known individual establishments in the area, keywords can be optimized around that place to create an apartment buzz for the company.

It is essential to bid on branded keywords. An example of branding can be the name of a community within a city where the prospective target lives. The idea is to create a campaign strategy that focuses more on qualified traffic by narrowing your focus and search. The broader the search, the more challenging your campaign becomes, and the business is not being utilized properly.

Commercial Real Estate

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According to an article on SharpLaunch, in 2019, Google accounted for more than 38% of the US digital ad market share and grew more than 80% of all search ad markets in 2020.

Google AdWords is very popular for virtually every business owner out there.

If you think residential is difficult, can you imagine what commercial real estate is like right now? Primarily due to the pandemic, most companies are not leasing offices. The majority of companies have their employees working for home.

But just in case, we will throw it in here.

Commercial real estate is expensive, but so are some keywords that go along with it.

According to the same article, the most expensive highest cost per click office-related keyword is “office space for rent NYC” with the cost of $74.49 per click. That’s about what it costs to pay for a nice meal and a high-end restaurant.

Companies are eager to rent out office space, and being able to advertise their available space is crucial to their success. When it comes to commercial real estate, it depends on the type of commercial real estate to invest in Google Ads. Whether it is office space or retail space, strategizing Google Ads has to be specific enough that companies can target the appropriate audience.

Our Conclusion

Creating a Google Ads campaign is challenging, and not everyone has the time. Especially if you have a specific budget, you would want to make sure that the money is.

It’s recommended to do an extensive search on keywords related to the area and type of real estate. Still, it would be beneficial to look up keywords that relate to a concept within real estate as well.

While Google Ads are a great way to market your properties and business, it is not an easy task. Have you struggled to develop the right google ads strategies for real estate? Don’t worry, Kallen media has the right tools for your success! If you need help with google ads strategies for real estate, please reach out. Kallen Media is here for you.

Client Spotlight

September 17, 2020

Company Spotlight #4: Operation Blankets of Love

Welcome to Kallen Media’s next company spotlight! Since 2008, Operation Blankets of Love (OBOL) has been working to better the health of homeless animals to give them a better chance of survival. OBOL’s ultimate goal is to eliminate animal homelessness and euthanasia.

Kallen Media is happy to do their part by helping OBOL set up their Google ad grants. We also managed their Google Ads account for over a year. The team at Kallen Media has taken OBOL from zero campaigns to over ten specific campaigns.

Nathan, Kallen Media’s founder, even has a dog named Willy, who is an animal ambassador on OBOL’s website. Willy is a 7-year-old Lhasa Apso rescue who loves morning walks and playing with his dinosaur and monkey toys. Nathan says that when Willy isn’t playing, he is the best work-from-home buddy. Nathan’s family is excited to give Willy an excellent rest of his life. And that is what OBOL and its mission are all about.

About Operation Blankets of Love

Operation Blankets of Love believes that no animal should ever be neglected, abused, or abandoned, spending its existence in fear, pain, and hunger, but instead have the right to live a life full of compassion and love.

OBOL does this charitable work by donating pet food, treats, blankets, towels, pet beds, leashes, collars, harnesses, toys, crates, medical and grooming supplies, and many other items to shelters, rescue groups, pets of the homeless, animal transporters, foster caretakers, and wildlife sanctuaries.

OBOL advocates for animal welfare through service-oriented humane education to 1,000s of children each year. They also donate pet food and supplies to homeless and low-income pet owners like veterans, the disabled, families, seniors, and people of all backgrounds.

Their Story

OBOL’s founder, Eileen Smulson, had never had a pet before her dog, Ginger. This little doggie became the inspiration for OBOL, which now offers hope to thousands of stray, sick, neglected, abused, and homeless animals.

Eileen was a school teacher and non-profit fundraiser for 20 years before OBOL. She raised millions of dollars for non-profits and won national awards. Eileen likes to help animals without a voice by thinking outside the box and using an entrepreneurial attitude.

In January 2008, Eileen saw puppies shivering on a cold cement floor at an animal shelter near her home. Eileen couldn’t bear to think of her rescue dog, Ginger, lying cold on the floor like this. She expressed her concern to the shelter manager, who explained that they didn’t have the budget for blankets and towels. Eileen offered to help, and in just a few weeks, she had collected over 800 blankets and towels.

When Eileen learned that a lot of other animal rescue groups needed blankets and other comfort items, she created 20 drop-off locations and collected over 3,000 more things in just a few months. Excited by her success, Eileen dedicated herself full time to the cause, and OBOL was born in 2009.

Programs

Shelter and rescue group support

OBOL “rescues the rescuers” by donating crucial food and pet supplies to rescue groups and animal shelters across the United States. Shelters don’t always have the budget for comfort items, and rescue groups don’t have the resources needed to provide food, bedding, and comfort items for the animals they care for. OBOL bridges the gap by donating these much-needed supplies to rescuers.

Shelters are not required to provide comfort items despite research that shows shelter pets who appear in home-like settings have higher rates of adoption. The supplies and food OBOL donates to pets in rescue settings find more forever homes.

Pets of the Homeless

When pets can stay with their best friends – their human companions – they stay out of shelters with high euthanasia rates. To help pets stay with their people, OBOL donates food, blankets, pet beds, toys, and other crucial supplies to homeless pet owners, low-income seniors, and homebound people with pets.

OBOL believes that no person should ever have their pets taken away because they can’t afford the necessary supplies for their pets’ survival and health. No pet should have to be uncomfortable, go hungry, or suffer.

Helping Veterans with Pets

There are very few organizations that assist veterans with pets, and OBOL is one of them. They help homeless and low-income veterans keep their pets safe and healthy so they can stay with them. OBOL partners with the Veterans Administration every month to provide pet food and supplies to VA locations in California.

Animal Relocation Project

OBOL helps save animals from “death row” by supplying food, crates, and other critical pet supplies to rescue groups who place homeless pets in loving homes throughout the US, Canada, and Mexico.

The comfort items such as blankets, treats, and carriers help put animals at ease on their long journeys to new homes by providing warmth and a sense of security. OBOL also partners with rescue groups that save dogs from slaughterhouses in China and South Korea.

Humane Education Learning Program (HELP)

OBOL knows that educating children is one of the best ways to end animal abuse and to promote the well-being of pets in the future so that they don’t end up in a shelter later.

Eileen’s first occupation was an elementary school teacher, so it would make sense that someday her love of education and children would coincide with OBOL’s mission. Eileen designed OBOL’s education program, “HELP,” which teaches children to be kind and to respect all animals and people.

HELP lessons provide a sense of kindness, empathy, compassion, responsibility, community spirit, teamwork, self-respect, and respect for all living things. OBOL inspires others to answer the call to action by incorporating these critical values into their lessons.

Students of HELP can achieve a feeling of accomplishment when they participate in an OBOL drive by collecting gently-used and new pets items for homeless shelter animals. Children even make blankets and toys for stray dogs and cats. They can choose to deliver donated items to local shelters personally or to have OBOL take the things for them.

HELP teaches students why animals end up in shelters in the first place and how to take care of pets. The program has even inspired several of its students to grow up and become animal welfare advocates.

Just some of the HELP’s curriculum topics include Pet Care and Responsibility, and adoption is the Best option, Animal & Human Bonding, Puppy Mills, Compassion for All Living Creatures and Animals Have Feelings, Too!

Coloring book for kids to teach them how to be kind to pets

Anti Cruelty Campaign

OBOL works to raise public awareness about homeless animals. They have created their campaign titled “We Dream of Justice, Too.” OBOL has campaign flyers that educators, animal shelters, and humane organizations can use to emphasize the importance of reporting animal abuse and neglect.

The goal of their campaign is to raise awareness that animal abuse and neglect is a crime, to encourage people to report animal abuse and neglect, and to make people think twice before harming an animal.

OBOL raises awareness at adoption events and pet expos. They give presentations to schools, youth, and civic groups and organize a collection of pet comfort and care items for shelters.

Ways to Give

One Time and Monthly Donations

There are many ways to give to OBOL, and because they don’t receive any state or federal funding, that means your contribution and support is incredibly important.

You can donate just once or join their monthly giving club. Financial donations help OBOL to continue helping more than 12,000 homeless animals every year. Donations help OBOL give food and life-saving supplies to rescue groups, shelters, pets of the homeless, and struggling pet owners all across North America.

Pet Item Donations

OBOL urgently needs new and gently used pet supplies such as blankets, pet beds, towels, pet food, collars, leashes, bowls, crates, toys, and kitty litter. Shelters have zero budgets for comfort items for their homeless animals, so comfort item donations help tremendously.

Comfort items help shelter animals become more adoptable. Shelter animals tend to relax when resting on a bed, blanket, or towel. They appear more alert, and they become more affectionate towards other animals and people. A more home-like setting because of comfort items makes it easier for potential pet owners to imagine the animal in their home.

These much-needed comfort items also keep shelter pets off dirty and cold floors and cushion their joints. By donating just one blanket, you save two lives. One life you save is when a pet is adopted, and another when that vacancy becomes a temporary home for a new animal.

Donate while you shop

When you sign up for Amazon Smile, 0.5% of eligible purchases go to your favorite charity – and you can choose OBOL! There are no fees and no extra cost. Ralph’s Community Contribution Program also has a donations program. A lot of Kroger grocery chain stores will donate a portion of your purchases to OBOL at no additional cost.

How to get involved

There are a couple of ways to get involved in helping Operation Blankets of Love. They have been a recipient of proceeds from volunteer-hosted events. You can contact OBOL for more information, and they are more than happy to provide you with graphics, guidance, and more.

Volunteers are always at the heart of any charity or organization. As a non-profit, OBOL heavily relies on volunteers to help with many different activities, such as administrative tasks and fundraising.

One of the many ways to volunteer is by hosting a collection drive. Get your school, church, temple, workplace, civic, and community groups involved by collecting pet supplies. You can also volunteer at an OBOL fundraising event like their wine and paint nights, pet adoptions, animal expos, and bingo nights.

Kallen Media is proud to help Operation Blankets of Love with their mission to end animal abuse, homelessness, and euthanasia. If you’re looking for help with your Google Ad Grant or any of your digital marketing needs, please contact Kallen Media.

Blog

September 14, 2020

Design For Color Blindness

Design for color blindness is essential. There are around 300 million people worldwide who are color blind. Therefore, a good chance of more than one person who views your site will have this impairment. Furthermore, the design of your website will determine if you gain a new customer or give them away to the competition.

Equally necessary, it is also a legal issue. Organizations such as the ADA and AODA require that websites provide equal access or accessibility for those with disabilities.

There is good news; plenty of resources are available to help evolve your site to accommodate those who are color blind. Today we will review:

What is color blindness
How to design for
Tools to use to create an accessible site

What is Color Blindness

Color blindness is a term that many correlate with not being able to see any color. This complete lack of is one form of color blindness. However, there are other types of color blindness. You should be aware of what they are to design for color blindness:

Red-Green Blindness: Most typical type of color blindness, hard to tell between red and green.

Four Types:

Deuteranopia: Blindness to green
Deuteranomaly: Milder form of deuteranopia, makes green look redder
Protanopia: Blindness to red
Protanomaly: Milder form of protanopia, makes red look greener

Blue-Yellow blindness: blue-yellow is a Less common type of color blindness. It is hard to tell the difference between blue and green, and between yellow and red.

Two Types:

Tritanopia: Unable to tell the difference between blue, green, purple, and red, and yellow and pink
Tritanomaly: Milder form of tritanopia, harder to distinguish blue from green and between yellow and red

Monochromacy: scarce type of color blindness. See’s no color, only shades of grey.

To learn more about color blindness, the National Eye Institute is a useful resource.

To illustrate how color is viewed by those that are color blind, refer to the color theme below. As can be seen, one color can look different based on who is viewing it.

chart of how people with different types of color blindness view the same color theme. — This graphic shows how people with color blindness would see a color theme.

Color Blindness and Web Accessibility

Next, we will look at a term that you will hear a lot when referring to color blindness and the web, which is web accessibility.

Web accessibility means that websites, tools, and technologies are designed and developed for those with accessibility issues such as color blindness. As a result, your website will be easy to navigate by everyone.

Building an accessible website or updating a current website, there are many ways and tools available.

Design for Color Blindness Standards

Where to start, as mentioned above, organizations such as the ADA and AODA require that websites are accessible. Standards for website accessibility are available through Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Below are three levels of accessibility that the WCAG grades on:

A: Bare-minimum level of compliance
AA: Target compliance level according to the ADA
AAA: Highest level achievable and complies with all requirements

Using the WCAG levels of accessibility, as shown above, let’s talk text. If the text color and the background color have low color contrast, then it is difficult for someone with color blindness to read. What you want is high color contrast. An example of high color contrast is a black font on a white background or vice versa.

However, if you want to use a colored type or background, you can. The WCAG has a contrast ratio scale:

AA: Contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text (at least 14pt) and 3:1 for large text (at least 18pt) or bold text
AAA: requires a contrast ratio of at least 7:1 for standard text and 4.5:1 for large text or bold text

Breaking down the contrast ratios shown above will take some time and math. Instead, there are some very easy to use online tools that will check the font and background color contrast.

Image of the WebAIM Contrast Checker to check for color contrast to better design for color blindness. — WebAIM Contrast Checker.

Color is Not Everything

Equally important, make sure to design all icons, buttons, messages, etc. with the colorblind in mind. They need to be able to see what to click on or update.

The first step, when starting to design or update your current website, is to turn it too grayscale. Why in grayscale? If you build a site that looks great and is easy to use in grayscale, it will be accessible for those with color blindness.

Example of designing a button in grayscale first, can ensure that the buttons actions are easy to distinguish between if you are color blind. — Design in grayscale first.

Second, when showing CTAs that are blocks of color, add in text. For example, if your site requires your customers to select a color, add the name of the color. As an example, refer below, only looking at the gray boxes is it easier to choose a color with or without the text?

Example of why to add text to a color box that is a CTA to design for color blindness. — Add text to describe colors.

Third, important messages, such as error messages, need to be more than a colored text. Of course, keep using color. Colors such as red are impactful for those of us who see color. Also, for those that are colorblind, add another queue such as a symbol, and adjust the text.

Example of why you need to add a symbol and/or adjust the text when communicating an important message for those that are color blind. — An important message, the text is larger & symbol added.

Tools to Design for the Color Blind

As mentioned above, there are a lot of tools online to help you design for those that are color blind. Below we will go over a couple of additional tools you can use.

First, let us look at the tools to use when starting to build your website. Designing in Figma, Adobe XD, or Sketch, these tools all offer plugins that can help check your font and background color contrast. WordPress, which we use at Kallen Media, also offers plugin options to add to your website.

Second, Adobe Color provides a tool to help select color themes for those that are color blind. Furthermore, it shows what the color theme looks like for those with different types of color blindness. Similarly, this Color Accessibility Tool is free.

Show how Adobe Color Accessibility tool works to see how your color theme will look to those that are color blind. — Adobe Color Accessibility Tool.

Website Accessibility for All

If you already have a website, there are online tools that check site accessibility. Two free tools are Lighthouse’s website accessibility and performance tool and WAVE’s website accessibility tool.

In addition to visual accessibility, it is essential to look into other types of accessibility issues:

Visual – Accessibility issues such as blindness
Auditory
Motor
Cognitive

As mentioned throughout this article, if you have a website, put in the time to make sure it is accessible. If time is not available, look into outsourcing your site’s web design. If you choose to outsource, ensure the company addresses website accessibility.

In conclusion, you need to design for color blindness as well as those with other accessibility issues. For more information on how to make your website accessible to all, check out WCAG standards. Making some simple changes can change your website accessibility and allow everyone to use your site entirely.

Blog

September 5, 2020

Creating Blog Engagement: Connecting To Your Users

By now, everyone knows how essential blogs can be to SEO practices. But some people struggle to get their users to interact with their content. A professional blog will foster an active connection with a user. But this process isn’t easy. Creating blog engagement is a difficult but necessary step in your success.

But how do we create engagement as writers? And what kind of strategies produce the most results? Today we will describe some of the engagement practices we use every time Kallen Media writes a blog post. So let’s get started! The first step is to have topics your readers care to read.

Standard Topics

The odds are your blogging because it will help your website grow. But if your writing isn’t a topic your users are interested in, you won’t get many readers. When a company outlines the issues they want to explore, they can focus on what the consumer is trying to see. By tailoring your topic selection to your audience, your blog will begin to draw in your targeted market.

Similarly, it would be best if you are a qualified expert in the fields you write about. Expertise will not only improve the quality of your writing but your engagement too. When you write from a place of knowledge, people will want the information you have. An excellent example of this is our recent digital marketing blog. We’re a digital marketing agency, so logically we’re going to talk about what we do!

Blog Consistently

A schedule for blogging and posting can help both sides of the engagement process. A business will benefit by gaining an exact time content has to go out. Plans can help writers with deadlines and make sure you have things ready to go. The consistency also helps establish you as a content provider. And if users come to rely on this, your engagement will boom.

pencils

Users benefit from a schedule by gaining consistency. Just like the morning paper, your blog can become a staple in customers’ everyday life. When people begin to adapt your content to their daily life, your business becomes a household name. But be careful. You have to uphold it once this schedule is established. Breaking from the program might upset some users.

Use Visual Aides

Not everyone takes in media the same way. While some people prefer written media, others want images. And it is essential to recognize this when you’re creating blog engagement. By adding visual supports to your blog, you create a more wholesome experience for users. This balancing of media will help make more engaging posts for everyone.

Images also help to break up your text. By using images strategically, you can make a blog seem more straightforward to read for users. Because it is easier to read, breaking up blogs like this can help keep users engaged for longer. Images can slow down loading times, but WordPress updates and photo resizing makes this delay shorter every day.

Team Up

One of the best ways to make engaging content is to team up with other businesses or creators. Crossposting relationships can help expose your website to already-established audiences. And if your topics and goals are similar, odds are a lot of those users will also engage with your content.

Crossposting is also an incredibly powerful SEO metric. Having your blogs referenced in other blogs tells Google that your content is trustworthy. While SEO metrics don’t always indicate engagement, more users’ sheer value will naturally result in more engagement. Crossposts are an efficient way to reach out to new users with confidence in your target market.

Promote Action

keyboard

The last tip is a relatively common one in all forms of engaging writing; You should always add a call to action. A call to action will offer users a clear and outlined path for what they should do if they are interested in engaging with your content. While it may seem obvious to some to ask, not all writers do this. A great example of this is the Mashable blogs; These blogs all include some call to action!

Creating Blog Engagement

Creating blog engagement is all-important to your SEO success. And there are a few key ways to foster that kind of user experience. One way to do this is to have topics you are qualified to write about regularly and cover them regularly. Another way to help your engagement is to add visual aspects to your blog. Visuals will help make your blogs more attractive and comfortable to read. Our final unique tool is crossposting; these posts will help expand your audience and improve search results’ placements.

We hope these tips help you with your blogging and improve your website’s engagement. But if you’re still struggling to get the results you want, Kallen Media is here to help. Our professional services cover all areas of digital marketing, including blogging content. If you’re looking for help increasing engagement and strengthening your SEO strategies, reach out to us.