Website cookies are small text files that internet browsers store on your computer. They are used to identify you and remember certain information about you, such as your preferred language for a website, whether you are logged in, and what you put in your online shopping cart.

Did you know your computer hides a jar of cookies deep inside its folder structure? If you’re using Google Chrome, go to “C:Users[your user name]AppDataLocalGoogleChromeUser DataDefault” and search for “cookies.”

There it is. A small file that websites use to figure out who you are, how you behave online, what you search for, and more.

Different types of website cookies

Just like in real life, there are many different types of cookies. Firstly, you have session cookies and persistent cookies. Session cookies are stored in your computer’s memory and permanently removed when you close your browser session. Persistent cookies are stored on your computer’s disk and have an expiration date. These cookies are only removed from your disk once they’ve gone past their expiration date.

Secondly, you have first-party cookies and third-party cookies. First-party cookies are placed by the website you’re on at that moment and are often essential for the proper functioning of that website. They remember language settings, log-in settings, customer analytics data, etc.

Third-party cookies are placed by a website other than the website you’re currently on. Much of digital advertising relies on these types of cookies. Ads that follow you around as you browse the internet rely heavily on these third-party cookies.

Protecting online privacy

Cookies serve an important role in digital advertising but are increasingly seen as a breach of user privacy. In the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), websites must gain “informed consent” from users before storing non-essential cookies.

If your website uses cookies, you must do the following:

1. Let users know that your website uses cookies.
2. Provide users with information on how you will use their information.
3. Provide users with a way of accepting or refusing the use of cookies.
4. If users refuse, ensure that you won’t store cookies on their computer.

If you’re unsure whether your website uses cookies, visit your website and go to your browser’s developer tools. If you’re using Chrome, visit application, storage, cookies, and select your website. There’s a high chance you’ll see at least a few cookies there.

The problem with regulations like GDPR is that websites have implemented cookie banners that users have to agree to if they want to gain access to the website. This trend has worsened the user experience of the internet and, similar to Terms & Conditions, people tend to just click agree as fast as they can.

Toward a cookieless future

Although regulations have largely been ineffective, users increasingly care about their online privacy. That’s why browsers are taking action against third-party cookies:

• Safari limits the lifespan of persistent cookies to only seven days.
• Firefox and Edge block third-party cookies by default.
• Chrome is gradually phasing out third-party cookies.

Chrome is by far the biggest browser in the world, which is why they’re a bit more careful in phasing out third-party cookies. Many digital advertisers still rely on them. Nonetheless, it won’t be long before third-party cookies are gone from the internet.

This doesn’t mean that digital advertising is over. If you’re a digital marketer, you’ll just need to find other ways to advertise online. For example, you could turn to contextual advertising. While you might not be able to follow users around anymore, you can place your ads on websites that are relevant to your product. Advertise your beard oil on a male grooming website.

Additionally, you can focus more on content marketing. Become an authority in your respective field by creating stellar content coupled with the right SEO practices. Let the customer find you, capture their email, and create a strong relationship with them. This requires more effort, but it’s more sustainable than creating an ad that follows people around wherever they go.

While a cookieless future might sound scary at first, it’s a win for consumer privacy and a great incentive for companies to focus on better user experience and more sustainable advertising practices. Ultimately, this should lead to a more private, better internet.

With cookies on their way out, you’re going to need another way to reach your target audience. Enter: content! Talk to a content specialist at ClearVoice about getting a content marketing strategy — and high-quality content — created for your brand today.

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What is brand equity? Brand equity refers to the strength of your brand in the minds of consumers. Positive brand equity means that consumers think and feel positive about your brand, while negative brand equity means the opposite. Strong brand equity is essential to the long-term success of your company.

Have a break, have a … what do you think of when you read these words? That’s right. KitKat. It’s a good example of the sway certain brands have in our minds. The same goes for the Nike swoosh, the Coca-Cola colors, the McDonald’s jingle, and many more.

Companies can live in our heads rent-free because of the brand equity they’ve built up over the years.

Why build brand equity?

Brand equity is hard to build and easy to lose. It’s about planting a seed in someone’s mind that can take years to blossom but can be destroyed with a single negative experience. Nonetheless, the benefits of positive brand equity far outweigh the effort you need to spend building it.

Here are only a few of its benefits:

• Charge higher prices. Apple can charge over $1,000 for their iPhones because of the power of their brand. Strong brand equity allows you to place a price premium on your products.
• Spend less on ads. Zara spends almost nothing on ads because it can lean on its brand. Once you’ve built brand equity, you don’t need to remind the consumer about your brand as much anymore.
• Increase customer lifetime value (CLV). People order pizza from Domino’s over any other pizza joint because of the company’s brand equity. The stronger yours is, the more loyal your customers are and the higher their CLV.
• Higher stock prices. At the time of writing, Tesla has a market cap of over $650 billion despite having only $31.5 billion in revenue. They trade at a significant premium because of the brand they’ve built. If you’re a publicly listed company, strong brand equity will increase the price of your stock.

How to build brand equity

The most comprehensive way to build brand equity is by following Kevin Lane Keller’s model. In his book, “Strategic Brand Management,” Keller explains that brand equity is a pyramid with four levels. You start at the bottom and move your way up as your brand grows stronger.

The first level is about brand salience.

You need to create a brand that stands out. Who are you, and why do you do what you do? This means you need to understand your brand’s values, but also more concrete things, such as its colors, its slogan, and perhaps even its jingle.

Before you can build brand equity, you need to understand what your brand embodies. That’s what you do at this level.

The second level is about brand meaning.

This means two things: how your product meets the customer’s need, i.e., its performance, and how your brand meets the customer’s needs psychologically and socially, i.e., its image.

iPhones are easy to use and perfectly engineered (performance), and they have the Apple brand that distinguishes the consumer from the rest (image).

The third level is about brand response.

Now we’re getting into the consumer’s mind. How do they judge your brand? What do they feel? Keller says that a consumer’s judgment will fall into one of these four categories:

• Quality. How qualitative a consumer thinks your product is.
• Credibility. How credible a consumer believes you are.
• Consideration. How relevant your product is to a consumer’s needs.
• Superiority. How superior a consumer thinks your brand is compared to the rest.

The final level, and the hardest level to get to, is about brand resonance. How strong a connection does your brand have with its consumers? Burger chain In-N-Out has such a loyal following because they’ve built a strong connection with their customers based on their ethics and values.

Examples of companies with strong brand equity

Brand equity is a relatively abstract concept, which is why there are many ways to measure it. Doing so isn’t easy either. Entire companies are dedicated to brand valuation!

For good measure, this is how much some of the world’s biggest brands are worth (as taken from Forbes’ annual list):

• Apple: $241.2 billion
• Coca-Cola: $64.4 billion
• Disney: $61.3 billion
• Louis Vuitton: $47.2 billion
• McDonald’s: $46.1 billion
• Toyota: $41.5 billion
• Nike: $39.1 billion

Build brand equity through high-quality content that gets your business noticed. Talk to a content specialist at ClearVoice today.

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What is Google AMP? Google AMP, short for accelerated mobile pages, is a web component framework meant to improve the mobile browsing experience. Pages built with AMP load significantly faster on mobile than their non-AMP equivalents.

Mobile has knocked desktop off its pedestal. Back in July 2019, Google switched to mobile-first indexing.

Google now predominantly uses the mobile version of your website for indexing and ranking. However, now that Google has switched its focus to Core Web Vitals, AMP is not as important as it once was.

As long as you focus on improving your Core Web Vitals, your site should do well with or without AMP. Still, let’s take a look at what accelerated mobile pages are and who should still consider using them.

What Is Google AMP?

Google AMP, short for accelerated mobile pages, is a web component framework meant to improve the mobile browsing experience. Pages built with AMP load significantly faster on mobile than their non-AMP equivalents.

This makes sense, because nearly 60 percent of global web traffic is now mobile (up from only 31 percent in early 2015). But it also means that websites not optimized for mobile browsing will suffer in the SERPs.

AMP is an open-source project with an open governance model, but Google initially created it. The company announced the framework in 2015 and started serving AMP pages to mobile users in 2016.

If you have a news site, you might want to consider still implementing AMP. Otherwise, Core Web Vitals should do the trick.

The AMP framework consists of three main components:

• AMP HTML. A subset of HTML meant to improve the performance speed of mobile pages. Although most HTML tags can remain as-is, some are replaced. For example, the <video> tag becomes <amp-video> in AMP HTML.
• AMP JavaScript. A JavaScript library that makes sure the AMP HTML pages render quickly. It does so primarily by disallowing synchronous JavaScript rendering. Any custom JavaScript can only be rendered asynchronously.
• AMP Caches. An AMP cache validates and serves AMP pages. Most AMP pages are currently delivered by either Google or Cloudflare’s AMP cache. This being said, any company can create an AMP cache if they so wish.

How to implement AMP

If you’re not a programmer, the above might sound a little scary. But it needn’t be. If your website is mostly static with little to no custom JavaScript, it’s not that much work to implement AMP. If you have a WordPress website, there’s even an official AMP plugin that makes the transition very easy.

If you do not use WordPress, the AMP website has many thorough, clear guides and tutorials that walk you through the transition. Making your website AMP-ready requires much fewer resources than creating a native mobile app would.

As a marketer, it’s in your best interests to use AMP for your website. In August 2019, Jun and Bustamante published a paper that showed AMP pages are significantly faster than their non-AMP equivalents.

How much faster? Two and a half times without pre-rendering and a staggering nine times faster with pre-rendering. The performance increase that comes with AMP will help your website’s SEO and rank it higher in the SERPs.

AMP success stories

• CNBC saw a 4x decrease in mobile load time when they switched to AMP. They also saw a 22 percent increase in mobile search users returning to their website within seven days.
• Times of India saw their pages load 3.6x faster load time when they switched to AMP. Indirectly, this led to 1.5x more revenue.
• BMW saw between 3-4x faster load times with AMP and a 30 percent increase in clickthroughs to their national websites. They also saw a 26 percent uptick in mobile users.
• Wired AMP’ed over 100,000 pages and saw a 25 percent increase in clickthrough rates from search results. This led to a 63 percent increase in clickthrough rates on their ads.
• Gizmodo now loads 3x faster on mobile because of AMP. They now have over 100,000 AMP page visits every day and have seen a 50 percent increase in impressions.

From email marketing to blog posts, let ClearVoice handle all of your content needs. Talk to a content specialist today to get started.

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