It’s no secret the digital marketing landscape has been witnessing a dramatic shift in recent years. But now that we’re in the middle of 2019, new high-tech trends and strategies like visual search and artificial intelligence can no longer be ignored as futuristic marketing.

Businesses need to use the latest digital marketing strategies to stay connected and to succeed. The methods that worked for 2018 may not be able to work this year and staying ontop of all the tech news will be essential.

That said, here are a few key digital marketing tips to help you and your business stay on the ball this year.

Update your web content

It only takes 0.05 seconds for an online user to form an opinion about your website, so it’s important that your web content is as relevant to your industry as possible. Relevant content increases brand recognition and boosts the appeal of your business overall.

You can update your website content by:

• Creating new pages to express your business’ capabilities
• Updating old pages with more recent information about your company
• Consistently updating content with fresh and relevant industry information
• Updating and republishing popular articles from years past for this year

Consider making a blog or news content section on your website if you don’t already have one. By creating new and relevant content on your website, you can boost your website’s search rankings, increase brand awareness, and reach a wider audience.

Use local SEO to your advantage

Many businesses overlook keywords that are local when they’re optimizing their website. But you can boost your search engine optimization by targeting specific areas with region-specific keywords.

Use these region-specific keywords on your landing pages and in your website’s blog to help your business rank higher in search engine results for those areas.  For example, a good keyword would be “SEO Bellingham“This will help your business grow in new communities you may not have been able to reach before.

Adopt artificial intelligence if you haven’t already

Artificial intelligence in digital marketing isn’t new, but it has seen increased use in 2019. AI is able to analyze search patterns, consumer behavior, data from social media platforms, and data from blog posts. It is largely what makes successful email marketing possible.

AI helps businesses understand how online users find their products and services. It also helps businesses adapt to market their digital marketing strategies to better market their products and services to their consumers.

According to Gartner, up to 25% of customer service departments will be using chatbot technology by 2020. That’s a 2% increase from 2017. By adopting AI, your business can accelerate growth, improve customer experience, and save on costs.

Use programmatic advertising

Businesses aren’t just using AI for chatbots and customer service. They’re also using it for programmatic advertising, which involves using AI to automate ad buying.

Programmatic ad buying makes it so your business can target more specific audiences. It’s also faster and more efficient so you can make higher conversions while also lowering customer acquisition costs.

Digital marketing trends and strategies are routinely changing as technology improves and becomes more advanced. To stay ahead of the game, your business not only needs to keep up with these strategies but also utilize them to stay efficient and successful.

Americans throw away a lot of food. In fact, dumpsters are serviced at 60% or below fullness levels on average — and an estimated 30% to 40% of the entire nation’s food supply can be considered food waste. But despite the fact that we’re getting rid of an extraordinary amount of perfectly good food, the reality is that too many people in our own country are going hungry. That includes millions of senior citizens who are struggling to find one square meal per day.

In the U.S., more than 10,000 people reach the retirement age of 65 on a daily basis. Senior citizens are the fastest-growing population in America, predicted to outpace any other demographic in only 10 years’ time. Given the growing costs of healthcare and of living in general, it’s no wonder that many seniors are forced to continue working until later in life; many even find that their retirement savings are nowhere near sufficient to cover their expenditures.

Now, a new study has revealed that many seniors are skipping meals because they can’t afford the price of food. Living on a fixed income is tremendously difficult when you’re dealing with increasing housing costs, sky-high healthcare rates, and student loan debt that 5.5 million older Americans were fund to skip meals or go an entire day without eating. The report revealed that one in 12 seniors over the age of 60 (representing 7.7% of the senior population in total) did not have enough food in 2017. By 2050, there will be an estimated 8 million food-insecure seniors living in the United States.

Interestingly, two-thirds of seniors who were forced to skip meals had incomes below the federal poverty line ($12,140 per year). What’s more, the youngest seniors (ages 60 to 64) were twice as likely to be food insecure as seniors aged 80 and above. That’s likely because many of these seniors were still in the workforce during the Great Recession, which meant that their financial losses were more substantial and their retirement plans never got the chance to recover.

The top nine states with the highest rates of food insecurity among seniors are Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Texas, Alabama, Rhode Island, Kansas, and South Carolina. The metropolitan area of Memphis, Tennessee was actually named the number one location for hungry seniors, who represent 17.3% of all older Americans living there.

Of note, older Americans who live with their grandchildren are more likely to go hungry. Roughly 15.7% (or one in six) of seniors living in multi-generational households worry about their next meal, while the percentage of food insecure seniors not living with grandchildren is about half that. Researchers say that this is likely because grandparents are going without so that their grandchildren have enough. This relates to an overall growing trend of grandparents providing care for their grandchildren: nearly 2.7 million American grandparents were raising their grandkids in 2016. Whether this trend is fueled by unemployment, incarceration rates, opioid addiction, military deployment, or a combination of these factors, it’s clear that older Americans are taking on burdens they didn’t initially envision for themselves in their twilight years.

The report illustrates the importance of awareness and education among seniors who may be eligible for SNAP benefits. Since many seniors who are living above the poverty line are still struggling to afford daily meals, it’s clear that no one is immune to food insecurity.

UPDATED 11/20/20

Bankruptcy lawyers, just like any other lawyers, act on behalf of their clients in court. This kind of lawyer also works out of the court. The lawyers advise their clients on the complicated bankruptcy laws and counsel them to reduce their debt load by paying creditors and liquidating assets. When necessary, bankruptcy lawyers file bankruptcy documents for clients.

Bankruptcy is defined as a legal procedure through which entities or individuals who cannot repay debts to creditors find relief from their debts. On the other hand, state taxes may be referred to as the direct taxes on your income levied by a state. This is the tax deducted from what you earned in or from the government. Bankruptcy and taxes owed by people differ depending on the conditions one resides in or works in.

The availability of bankruptcy articles online has proved to be beneficial. The complexity of the process of filing bankruptcy can be a hassle. Before undertaking this kind of approach, it is vital to understand what it takes to actually succeed. One of the ways can be attending a bankruptcy class before filing the documents involved in a court case. Reading bankruptcy articles also equips you with the know-how of the process. 

Taking the initiative to read bankruptcy articles and educate themselves on the bankruptcy process may have been able to help Sears. Instead, the large chain fell victim to bankruptcy as many retailers have recently. Read on to discover the tale of Sears and bankruptcy.

Although data shows that individual sales climb by 10% every time a salesperson increases their social interaction by the same percentage, the reality is that many consumers no longer want to set foot in a brick and mortar store — no matter what retail workers do. Many former mall stores have been unable to adapt to growing e-commerce demand and have consequently been forced to shut their doors. Sears was one of the most recent brands to have fallen victim to the bankruptcy trend. But even though it’s filed for Chapter 11, it seems there are many more chapters to go in this never-ending saga.

In 2013, roughly 8,990 Chapter 11 bankruptcies were filed in the United States. In 2019, it’s becoming more common for once renowned stores to struggle to the point where they require serious financial protection. Back in October, Sears filed for that protection and later sold off all its assets in February. Former CEO Eddie Lampert bought those assets to the tune of a cool $5 million; in April, the company actually announced that they’d be opening three small stores — welcome news, considering that Sears had closed more than 3,500 over the last decade and a half. New Sears Home and Life stores were opened in Kansas, Louisiana, and Alaska with a focus on appliances, tools, mattresses, and smart home services. With all new branding and a target audience of young families, it seemed like Sears could make a small-yet-impressive comeback.

But that’s far from the end of the tale. In a transition rife with controversy, lawsuits have been filed against both the new and the old Sears. Sears Holdings is actually suing Lampert (along with others) for reportedly destroying the value of the company while he was CEO, which might be responsible for driving the company to bankruptcy in the first place. Further, Lampert alleges in a suit that the Sears estate failed to turn over “hundreds of millions of dollars of assets” as outlined in the sales agreement. Further, he’s now requesting that a federal bankruptcy judge release him from his obligation to compensate $43 million in severance costs to former Sears employees — a request he says is based on the fact that Sears has not made good on their part of the bargain. That move has not made him a popular figure with former workers, who have criticized Lampert’s reported penny-pinching ways.

Former employee and leader of United for Respect, an employee rights advocacy group, said in an email statement to USA Today: “Sears always promised us one week of severance pay for every year we were with the company. But after 21 years of service, I was laid off in January of 2019 and received just four weeks of severance pay. It’s not fair that Eddie Lampert and his friends are walking away with billions and now trying to cheat dedicated employees like me from what we were promised.”

All parties involved are hopeful that a bankruptcy court resolution will be imminent, as this is what’s needed to settle the case once and for all. Compared to the average divorce cost (anywhere from $15,000 to $42,500), this will be a huge expense for the company. But considering that Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are now delving into the activities of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin — who served as a Sears board member prior to the bankruptcy filing — in order to learn more about his involvement, a quick and tidy ending to the story may not be in the cards.