McBride Marketing and Drumup Media Merger

McBride Marketing and Drumup Media Merger

by | Sep 30, 2020 | News

Local Marketing Agencies Combine Forces to Help Clients Stand Out from the Herd.

Mike McBride and Adam Latham announce the merger of McBride Marketing Group and Drumup Media Group. The two marketing agencies have combined to create Cowbell Agency, a full service, digitally integrated marketing agency offering services that are transparent to clients and disciplined in strategic marketing cogency.

This is the latest evolutionary jump for McBride Marketing Group, an established and highly recognized fixture in the local and regional advertising arena having launched in 2001 as U.S.Ad & Marketing before merging with Space Coast Marketing to become McBride Woodbridge Marketing in 2005 and subsequently McBride Marketing Group in 2010.

“We took the opportunity during the pandemic to refocus the strategic direction of our agency to add scale and depth in our digital and search engine marketing services,” says Mike McBride, Partner and Chief Marketing Officer of Cowbell Agency LLC. “As destiny would have it, another local agency with amazing capabilities and experience in both local and global SEO was exploring expansion options for their integrated marketing approach.”

“Be seen. Be heard. Be more” is the tagline for Cowbell Agency while the new name itself has created curiosity in the community.

“Sure, there’s a bit of pop culture in the name but we see it as more of an analogous spin on clients making some noise and being heard,” says Adam Latham, Partner and Chief Creative Officer of Cowbell Agency LLC. “We also want to be clear that we are easy and even fun for clients to work with while making digital marketing easier for them to understand and use.”

DrumUp Media Group was launched in 2016 by Adam Latham as a digital agency to leverage his many years of executing the marketing for global technology innovator, Intersil Corporation. His 12-year experience with the Silicon Valley-based electronics company was instrumental in his development of top performing global SEO and SEM strategies that are now in Cowbell’s digital arsenal.

McBride Marketing Group, a full-service marketing agency headquartered in the Eau Gallie Arts District on Florida’s Space Coast, has been long recognized for professional leadership having earned more than 150 awards by the American Advertising Federation, Florida Public Relations Association and the Governor’s Tourism Flagler Awards since 2001.

Both Cowbell Agency principals had large-market agency experience before moving to Brevard. McBride worked with Fortune 500 clients like Coca-Cola, Kellogg’s and BASF in Atlanta and Latham worked in Nashville with clients including Alcoa and Cracker Barrel. Like Latham, McBride also boasts client-side experience for his tenure as Vice President of Marketing for a global home fashion/textile conglomerate headquartered in Manhattan.

“Clients recognize our unique perspective of having worked on both sides of marketing,” reflects McBride. “And as entrepreneurs, we also share their same concerns about running a business and ROI on all expenditures including marketing.”

“ROI is one of the biggest reasons we became a Google Partner Agency and have been building our digital marketing services over the past 15 years,” adds Suzanne McBride, Partner and Chief Operating Officer at Cowbell Agency. “As a CPA, I can appreciate how online targeting, media outreach and tracking allow clients to monitor the numbers and gauge response 24/7.”

Details about the new agency and its services including brand and web development, SMM, SEM, SEO, traditional broadcast and print media, PR and video production can be found on cowbellagency.com. Digital marketing options are also listed on the attached document.

“Exciting to hear about the next chapter in the agency’s growth to become Cowbell Agency,” says Amelia Woodbridge, former partner in McBride Woodbridge Marketing. “Mike is a well-versed marketer who has given companies large and small successful marketing programs for almost 30 years. This longevity reveals his dedication to his craft and showcases the trust companies put in his counsel.”

“I am sure Cowbell Agency will be a success, too!” added Woodbridge.

About The Cowbell Agency

Cowbell Agency LLC is a full service, digitally integrated marketing agency serving clients with local, national and global marketing. A merger of McBride Marketing Group and Drumup Media Group, the Cowbell Agency team understands that successful modern marketing is about ensuring all aspects of a client’s brand and message are integrated and working to improve your bottom line. The object isn’t to increase web traffic or get more likes, the end goal is to engage with a client’s customers in a meaningful way… to translate leads into sales. Cowbell Agency is located at 668 Law Street, Melbourne, FL 32935. Contact information: +1.321.259.1795 or [email protected].

This guy had me at slide…well, somewhere in the mid ’30s. But don’t worry, it goes quick

This guy had me at slide…well, somewhere in the mid ’30s. But don’t worry, it goes quick

by | Sep 6, 2020 | Lead Nurturing, Marketing, Messaging

This guy had me at slide…well, somewhere in the mid ’30s. But don’t worry, it goes quick

Adam Latham
The Cowbell Agency

The word “marketing” to some, leaves a bad taste in their mouth. On the honesty scale, our public perception is somewhere a little better than politicians and used car salesmen. 

I lived in both the B2B and B2C world. I came across this presentation and something spoke to me. 

If I’m going to be completely honest, I think I like the B2B world a tad better. Although all of marketing is about making an emotional connection with any customer, in the B2B world, those emotions are about ease of use, simple to use, or better functionality. It rarely diverts into that B2C weird world where wearing a certain type of underwear will of a sudden make you “cool.” 

Or about cringe-worthy moments where Kraft cheese uses a backdrop of Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get it On” with third or fourth graders in their cafeteria. Let’s face it, you have to sell your soul to the devil sometimes in B2C. And we do it, because it is the right thing for our clients.

Here’s what I know about the company’s I’ve had the pleasure of working for in the B2B world. Their products make my life better. Period. Whether making my. phone smaller, or the battery last longer, or getting more power out of a solar panel, or, making sure my brakes are working on my car. And the type of marketing I do is about trying to figure out the exact value proposition that truly differentiates that improvement to the customer…who is making cars, phones, computers, etc.

In short, there is a higher level of honesty because the person doing the buying isn’t going to be fooled. They aren’t pimply faced, self-conscious teen agers trying to fit it. They are competent, confident buyers who just want to know the product will make their product better.

That isn’t exactly a purpose in life, but when the satellite places itself safely in orbit, and I know some of the products I’ve marketed helped it get there, I feel good about that. Is that wrong?

Anyway, hope you enjoy this slide deck.

 

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A cool content marketing overview to help you get things started

A cool content marketing overview to help you get things started

by | Sep 6, 2020 | Lead Nurturing, P.R. & Social, SEO

A cool content marketing overview to help you get things started

Adam Latham
The Cowbell Agency

Although it is a couple of years dated now, this presentation posted in 2016 is a good starting point for understanding the type of content that should be part of your content marketing program. 

https://www.slideshare.net/CMI/content-marketing-playbook-and-ideas

 

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How to write great SCHEMA markup to optimize your site for local search

How to write great SCHEMA markup to optimize your site for local search

by | Sep 6, 2020 | SEO

How to write great SCHEMA markup to optimize your site for local search

Adam Latham
The Cowbell Agency

Use schema.0rg to improve your SEO and capitalize on the mistakes of others

According to all the trial and error testing being conducted by SEO marketers and consulting companies

, Schema Structured Markup is vital for any company. However, recent data shows that over 50% of Fortune 500 companies do not use it. Their loss should be your SEO gain.

In this post, I’ll walk you through some of the best practices for adding structured Schema.org markup. We’ll discuss:

  1. which format to use,
  2. what information to provide
  3. why you provide that information, and finally,
  4. some tips and tricks to put you ahead of your competitors

All companies should add schema.org “organization” markup to their web sites

It is vital to add schema structured markup to your company “About” or Home page. With this markup, you are confirming to a machine what it has almost certainly correctly understood concerning who you are and what you do. Here is Google’s official stance.

Do we really need schema markup?

I hear your question. You believe that the search engine crawlers have gotten so sophisticated, and my site’s content makes it SO abundantly clear who and what I am. But never forget that all those bots and crawlers are still just machines. And, if there is one thing the search engines love is information in a structured language. They don’t actually look at your page, they just read code.

While it may not be the most important thing you do for your SEO, it isn’t trivial or something you should forget to take care of.

In search engine’s structured language Google wants to:

  1. Confirm your type of business, name, your address, your social media accounts, your official website
  2. Identify what image, logo, description you want them to show when they mention you (and more often than not, they will use what you provide).
  3. Provide proof of who you are, and create credibility through third party confirmation in the “sameAs” field (Crunchbase, Wikipedia, etc.).

There is no reason not to help them, especially as they specifically ask you to.

What format should I use?

Use JavaScript notation (JSON-LD) rather than embedding the markup into your HTML. The most important reason is because Google recommends it (why should not listen to them when they are trying to help) and it will be much easier to maintain.

Your content goes here. Edit or remove this text inline or in the module Content settings. You can also style every aspect of this content in the module Design settings and even apply custom CSS to this text in the module Advanced settings.

Google’s recommendation is JSON-LD

You can place the JSON-LD markup anywhere in the page. In fact, it doesn’t even have to physically reside on your site’s pages. Google and Bing can also read your markup if it is in an external file that loads after  your page has loaded. This solution might make managing schema data easier for really large websites.

Most websites put it in the <head> section. If your CMS isn’t able to do that, you can put the markup in the body of the content or the footer.

Here’s the nitty-gritty: the correct markup for a company

Come on. Don’t be afraid. Let’s look at some code in Google’s handy Structured Data Testing Tool…

The above is a bare minimum of content that should be in your Schema markup.

  • The type of company
  • The company name
  • Official website
  • Address
  • The official logo
  • The preferred description
  • The social accounts
  • The unique identifying URL

Are there other values for : “@type”: “Corporation”?

Yes. Quite a few. While the most general is “Organization”, the subtype to choose from under Organization include:

  • Airline
  • Corporation
  • Education Organization
  • Professional Service
  • Medical Organization
  • NGO
  • Sports Organization
  • Performing Group

The rule of thumb is that you should use the most specific value possible to best define the essence of who you are. Companies should use Corporation and not the more general Organization. Most Local Businesses will find a category that suits. Ideally, you should choose the same category you have in Google My Business. Choose the closest match. There are well over 100, so you can get pretty close. Here are a few examples:

If you want to see examples of good Schema markup, I recommend you go straight to the authority on what search engines want: Google. If you go to https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool you will see a dialog box to enter the URL of a website.

You simply enter a URL and click “RUN TEST.” We’ll use a site that we know will have a well written Schema markup: schemamap.com.

The tool looks at the code of their site and returns what schema data they find. You’ll notice that their “Organization” actually has two errors in code.

But, if you click on the button labeled “Organization” you’ll see the schema data the google crawler actually sees.

Just look at all the data about this organization the search crawler actually sees. And this data is attached to every page of their website, without having to find ways to fit into the content of each page. Is it as valuable as the content on the page? No. But that’s not the beauty. A lot of this data would be awkward in content. It allows you to narrow the focus on individual pages. If this data were actually in the content, it would be seen as “stuffing” or “duplicate content.”

Shhhhh. Here’s a super secret trick

Here’s a little tidbit that not everyone knows. Let’s say you want to define what type of business you have even more granular than current schema tags allow. You can actually create your own. That’s right, at least for awhile, you could be the only one identified in a such way online. As an example, the identifier for “physician” currently exists under “MedicalBusiness” and “MedicalOrganization.” But that’s where it stops. Let’s say you want to make it very clear to the search engines that you are a podiatrist. Let’s do a quick wikipedia search if see if a page exists for “podiatrist.”

Ta Daaa.

Since you know the URL of the wikipedia page that defines what a podiatrist is you can create your own schema identification. Here’s how it works.

First, let’s look at the wiki address: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podiatrist

Next, you need to combine the part after /wiki/ with this address: http://www.productontology.org/id/

That creates this:  http://www.productontology.org/doc/Podiatrist

You simply add a line with the tag “additionalType”. Your code should look like this:

“additionalType”: “http://www.productontology.org/doc/Podiatrist”,

Schema markup on steroids

Below is an example of just how much valuable information you can add through schema markup.

This simple code delivers this level of detail:

Here we have added nine different “sameAs” references.

Going the Extra Mile

We could also have added information such as the founders, the management team, sub-organisations, area served, client rating, etc. The list is pretty extensive.

The more ACCURATE and pertinent information you can provide, the better.

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The 5 most important things to instantly improve your local SEO

The 5 most important things to instantly improve your local SEO

by | Sep 4, 2020 | SEO

The 5 most important things to instantly improve your local SEO

Adam Latham
The Cowbell Agency

Local SEO can seem like a mystery. Gone are the days when business names were chosen to game the Yellow Page listings. You remember how there were a plethora of companies like “A Plus Brake Service” only to be one-upped by “AA Plus Brake Service.” 

The reason for this was simple. If you weren’t going to pay for a yellow page ad, you wanted to be listed first in the alphabetical listing of local businesses.

Now, relevancy has replaced the alphabetical placement. If your primary business is servicing brakes, your company name hopefully addresses that.

But just how do you make sure your business comes up higher on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) than your competitors?

Well, there are far too many variables than I want to address here. I want to focus on 5 things that you, or your marketing company, can quickly do to make a difference.

  1. Make sure your Google “My Business” listing is up to date, completely accurate and verified.
  2. Make sure your web site has content that makes it easy for Google to understand the nature of your business. Every type of query that you think is important to you should be addressed in the content on your site.
  3. Try to get listed on as many local directories as possible. There are over 50 that Google actively indexes and seeing the same exact data on each and every one of them, helps Google know who you are and what market you serve.
  4. Add Schema structured data or code to your site. This structured data is a language format specifically designed to talk directly to Google. Within this structure you can add all kinds of pertinent information about your company.
  5. Add the type of content Google likes to promote, such as videos ane question/answer content.

Now, all of these steps have different levels of complexity and are all time consuming. In fact, you probably haven’t done these things because actually running your business takes up the bulk of your time and effort.

With that in mind, you can of course reduce this down one, much simpler step: call the Cowbell Agency and talk to some of our local SEO experts.

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