The supreme goal of advertising is to capture someone's attention and engage them in two ways; sell them a product or service immediately, or continue to follow them and target them until they make a decision, and in turn, a purchase or conversion. 

Seattle Digital Marketing , a data-first marketing agency based in Bellevue, Washington, has always kept the numbers at the forefront of strategy and execution for clients. The firm has worked with its sister company, Seattle Advertising, to develop a revolutionary new way for brands and businesses to track and target consumers and turn them into customers. How? 

Ad Shadow

Ad Shadow is a new way that the firm is helping clients maximize their advertising and marketing efforts by tapping into already-existing data and talking about cutting edge, listen to this. 

As approaches to effectively reaching the consumer change on such a rapid basis, the software they developed is revolutionary as it finds people who are already interested in what a business has to offer, opening countless new doors for advertising methods. 

What Ad Shadow is and how it works

With Ad Shadow, Seattle Digital Marketing targets geolocations and draws out the Internet Protocol addresses, or IP addresses, from every person who was at a specific location. Every phone and computer has an IP address, which serves as an identifier for the specific device and they grab this based on a 5 foot radius of where the consumer visited. 

With Ad Shadow, the person remains anonymous, but their IP address is captured, whether they were just at a location or a specific event. Taking it a step further, the firm can also capture the IP addresses of the person's household members, too and hit them with an ad at the exact time they are most active on the mobile device. 

"Ad Shadow gives us a way to get personal with the audience by tracking people wherever they work, go to school, shop, or attend events and use all of those areas to tap into what their interests are," said Phil Anderson, Vice President at Seattle Digital Marketing. "We can see in real-time the products and services they're looking for and then send advertising to them."

Once the IP addresses have been captured, the firm can target each IP address with a specific ad and this is a game changer because clients can now directly advertise to people who were interested in products in their industry or IP addresses that visited their competitors.  

"This wasn't necessarily able to be done in the past," Julian Valentine, VP of Digital Marketing added "Usually, you had to wait until someone clicked on a site or looked at a competitor."

Since IP addresses are unique to their corresponding devices, Ad Shadow can serve as a sort of interest tracking system. Although the interests per IP are being logged, Phil Anderson, Senior Vice President at Seattle Digital Marketing said the data is only used in ethical ways. 

"We don't target anybody under 18 or anybody over 65 with ads," Anderson said. "We also don't use it for any type of prescription medication or drugs or adult stuff, we only use it for products and services that are available and things the customers would be interested in." 

Helping clients achieve better results and more sales

The first and main way Ad Shadow helps clients is that it enables them to send ads directly to people who are interested in competitor products. Although they can't pull the person's name, they can pull the age and sex of the user of the IP address and once Seattle Digital Marketing knows that data, they hit them with ads at the right time of day that they are most likely to engage. 

"One of the greatest features of Ad shadow is that once you get the IP address, then they go home and it grabs all the IP addresses that have been in the home over the last 30 days, and can also market to them as well," Valentine said. 

The agency began using Ad shadow earlier this year and has seen tremendous success with online purchasing increasing by as much as 38%.

"We started our first tests using the software during the pandemic," Anderson said. "and we ran tests using a local Thai restaurant by pulling all of the IP addresses that had lunch there over the last 60 days, and then we sent a targeted ad from a competitor to all of those consumers about a 10% discount for takeout orders for a competitor Thai restaurant and our client's sales went up 28% percent only 24 hours."

Valentine and Anderson both said that the ads have to include a call to action and are most effective when there is an offer attached to it, as opposed to just a generic ad about a particular business. 

"No one else is doing this because no one else has figured it out," Anderson said. "We've got the Mac sauce but were still testing it daily based on industry and product to find that sweet spot, and we're close to getting it down." 

What this means for the future of advertising

As digital marketing and the landscape of advertising continues to evolve, Anderson said that in today's SEO environment, it's all about content, press and reviews, and targeted ads.

"SEO as we know it is dead and it has been since 2012," Anderson said. "Now, it's all about content, content, content and targeted ads directed to the target consumer and when we find a sweet spot for a client, it's game over. Well, of course there is still some some old school tricks" 

When it comes to broadening awareness for a business, and in turn increasing sales, there's two sides to this equation according to Anderson; there's the branding side and the advertising side and if you don't brand a business before you advertise that business, you are making a mistake. 

Anderson recommends all types of clients that plan to launch a new business should first brand that business with press articles and social media content. After 90 days, they should see a result on Google that will make them happy but it's a never ending process.

Once the branding is done which usually takes 90 days, Anderson's team hits the consumer with ads using Ad Shadow which is so targeted it guarantees engagement which for the advertising industry is years beyond old school technology. 

Ad this branding system to Seattle Digital Marketing's proprietary 'Pro Metric software' which is a software that takes consumer spending habits data and categorizes it by age, race, and Geo location, the agency and its clients can then examine consumer patterns and behavior instantly, and in turn, be more proactive with targeted ads. 

"The first thing the consumer does is hit the ad and then within 5 seconds they are on Google checking out the business or product to see what kind of rating they have" Anderson said. "With Ad Shadow, it's on-demand. It's in real-time, but you gotta look good first." 

As far as evolving the program and creating new iterations, the agency is looking at separating it into two categories: medical and everything else. For medical, it would be more about branding and designing ads for the plastic surgeon or the dentist.

Innovation has always been at the forefront for Seattle Digital Marketing

Ad Shadow and Matric Pro are just one of many instances in which Seattle Digital Marketing has proven to be a leader in the spaces of advertising and marketing. The firm has always put data first and makes it a priority to hire the best of the best in terms of engineers and web designers. 

"We're the best because we're grounded in software and coding," Anderson said. "Our offices are in Silicon Forest and we hire only Google and Microsoft people. Our ecosystem internally is all about the tech, which is the future of advertising." 

Leading the charge in this and other successful brand-building avenues, Seattle Digital Marketing continues to innovate and provide white-glove client service to its impressive roster of business by creating a comprehensive audit system, assigning dedicated teams and using business pillars in every tactic of strategy. This combination of client dedication along with a passion for staying on the cutting edge has taken the agency to new heights. 

Because Seattle Digital Marketing puts the digital footprint first in its strategy and approach, it can innovate and be ahead of the curve and its competition. While many traditional advertising agencies focus on old-fashioned tactics like billboards and TV ads, Seattle Digital Marketing is innovating software to use it for targeted ads. 

"We focus on the digital arena," Valentine said. "This way, we can have a more granular and refined approach. It's much more strategic than blanket tactics like billboards or television." 

Building a brand and using data to broaden awareness

When Seattle Digital Marketing begins work with a new client, the first order of business is getting coffee and educating the client about the brand. Building a solid brand serves as a foundation for all other marketing and advertising tactics, and it's a main priority for the firm because so many consumers are Googling clients before purchasing. 

The agency assesses a business's current state and believes that how one looks on Google and social streams guides all the advertising and content messaging. The brand is what people associate products with. 

Taking this approach, the agency works to retool the search engine and social media presence so that customers know immediately what a business is, and in turn, this promotes lasting connections to the business's brand and its services. 

Once that brand is established, the agency falls in line with its tried-and-true approach of looking at the data. 

This means using the agency's engineers to study their client's competition using data research which grabs search criteria from several social media streams and search engines. This provides a snapshot of where customers are spending their time online. Once this information is gathered, Seattle Digital Marketing uses it to customize content specifically for the consumers. 

Next, it's all about the content. Having content living on multiple platforms gives businesses an edge, so the agency will work to develop content such as blog posts, social media posts, and press articles. This helps a company rise to the top and rank higher in the search engines. 

Gaining a team and a lasting business relationship

When clients sign with Seattle Digital Marketing, they not only will see the services and results they desire, but they'll also gain an extension of their team. The agency makes client service its first priority and prides itself on building strong, lasting relationships with clients that last years. 

For the agency, the team sees a client as more than only a transactional relationship or another load of work - it's truly viewed as a strategic partnership.

Milena Rodriguez, Seattle Digital Marketing's Project Manager says "We want to build lasting, long-term relationships with clients. We want to see them succeed and we want them to know that we're here for them." 

In typical cases, a client will have a senior project manager, project manager, content writer, photographer, videographer, designer, SEO engineer and a social ads manager on their Seattle Digital Marketing team. That team is dedicated to evaluating data, building the client's brand and developing premium content for them. 

The first step is a strategy meeting to discuss business goals and where the company is at in terms of branding and content. Next, the team puts together a thorough action plan in regards to website ideas, page optimization, content calendars, campaigns, promotions, reporting, analytics and overall strategy development and implementation. 

Through every step of the way, the agency team is there for clients to ensure the success of the strategy and the satisfaction of the client. 

Evaluating the digital footprint and generating content

As part of its strategic approach, the agency's search engineers take time auditing various factors of a company's brand to evaluate and study its imprint on social media platforms. In this stage, search engineers typically look to see if a business's content is interesting and engaging, if the content is serving the brand, if the content reads well on mobile devices and if the brand has a personality and distinct voice.

Once the audit is complete, a project manager will pull the results together in one streamlined report, along with feedback and recommendations from the team on how best to proceed. 

Next comes the content push, as the social engineers come into play and use the results from the audit to determine what kind of content and voice works best for the business. This also bleeds over into photo and video assets, and what is going to best engage a business's audience. 

"It's also about making the brand and its personality lovable," Rodriguez said. "Consumers need to feel a connection and affection toward the brand." 

A solid foundation in software and a futuristic mindset

Because Seattle Digital Marketing works under the parent company Seattle Software Developers, everything is rooted in software and data. Seattle Software Developers built the algorithm code that runs most platforms that are used, so it makes the agency an ideal partner when it comes to widening that digital footprint and making more noise as a brand. 

As for the future of Seattle Digital Marketing, and its parent company Seattle Software Developers, it's all about examining trends and continuing to evolve in both software development and brand building. 

"We are continually editing and developing the software and improving our algorithm to allow our engineers to make snap decisions on what is working best for your brand," Valentine said. "We use data directly from our buyers so your advertising dollars are not wasted."

Anderson also said he sees the company focusing more and more on apps, which seem to be positioning themselves as possible replacements for digital platforms. As the needs of consumers are changing rapidly, so must advertisers and their approaches to marketing and reaching those consumers.

"We ride along with the changes," Valentine said. "But whatever you do, it has to be designed with a better consumer solution and ready to adapt to the ever-changing marketplace. It has to be created with the future in mind, which is moving quickly."