Chances are, you've probably heard about the General Data Protection Regulation, a policy that took effect May 25, 2018, and requires organizations across the world to change the way they obtain and store customer data from citizens of the European Union. 

But, even if you're a U.S.-based local business that doesn't store information from anyone in the EU, it's a good idea to familiarize yourself with the policy because other regions may soon adopt similar requirements — which could have significant ramifications for your local digital marketing.

Here's what local businesses need to know: 

Email marketing is one of those tactics that can produce impressive results when done right, and can hurt your brand's reputation when done wrong. Send a helpful, targeted message and you just might have a customer for life; send a misdirected blast and you could see your unsubscribe rate skyrocket. 

It's not hard to see why this is the case. Just look at your own inbox and, if you dare, your spam folder. There are a lot of people trying to reach you through email, some with dubious intentions and others with a self-serving purpose. Don't be one of those senders.

The problem with most email marketing is that messages are sent purely to build awareness or make an announcement, which is unappealing to recipients who receive several such messages every hour.

Ads are designed to command attention, but sometimes the disruption can feel intrusive or overwhelming. Google realized this and in February of this year, they launched an ad filter for Chrome users that was designed to improve the user experience.

This is good news for quality advertisers, ethical publishers and irritated web users. We all want better experiences on the web and Google is taking steps to reduce annoying content by removing ads from any website that doesn't follow the Better Ads Standards created by the Coalition for Better Ads.

Google Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) can help content creators and advertisers reduce bounce rates and increase conversions with fast-loading pages. But what is Google AMP exactly, and how can small and midsize businesses leverage the technology?

In this post, we'll give you an overview of the AMP Project and actionable tips on how you can improve your digital marketing strategy for mobile.

Prioritizing Page Speed

Page speed is just one factor on a long checklist of items digital marketers need to consider when optimizing a site for search. But it's one you shouldn't overlook — your customers' time is precious and even a few seconds can mean the difference between a bounce and a lead.

A single channel rarely brings in much business for an organization. Customers just don't behave that way. Instead, they tend to engage with a number of channels and experience multiple interactions with brands before they finally make a decision.

For that reason, brands often have no choice but to embrace a multichannel marketing strategy. If your company has deployed one but is struggling to get results, some troubleshooting might be required. Start by checking for one of these common mistakes that brands make when rolling out a multichannel strategy.

As a marketer, coming up with fresh ideas is a significant portion of your job. But it takes a lot of creative energy to consistently think up unique strategies and lay the groundwork for the next winning campaign, so it's no surprise that the well runs dry once in a while. 

That's where some brainstorm tips might come in handy. The Association for Psychological Science reported that in one study at the University of Texas at Arlington, people came up with 37 percent more ideas when working as a group than when working alone. 

Brainstorming sessions are crucial to igniting creativity, but as you've likely experienced, some meetings are more productive than others. 

Amid a backlash of fake news claims online, the advertising and marketing industries are keeping a mindful eye on audience response. To maintain credibility and bolster relationships, integrity and honesty have become elevated priorities for publishers of all types. That's why transparency in advertising is the latest guiding principle for marketing pros everywhere.

In 2016, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) named "transparency" the Marketing Word of the Year and even created a Production Transparency Task Force to police nontransparent advertising agency practices and develop ways to improve. Nearly a year and a half later, it remains as important as ever.

Great content is crucial to successful digital marketing, but content alone can't take your business to the top.

Fifteen years ago it may have been enough, but today's online landscape is so saturated that it's all but impossible for content to rise on its own. Great content doesn't naturally find an audience — it requires assistance. Driving strong content ROI requires a distribution strategy to deliver your content to a relevant online audience.

Too many brands overlook the importance of distribution, and their marketing ROI suffers as a result. If this describes your business, take a step back and examine what you're doing to set your content up for success.

Integrating digital campaigns is key to building a seamless user experience, but marketing across channels can make it difficult to track which campaigns are driving conversions. When you can't pin down performance for separate campaigns, you can't apply optimizations with accuracy and ROI remains a mystery.

This is why cross-channel attribution is so important. Attribution is the process of accurately crediting separate campaigns with the results they drive on an individual basis. This isn't as easy as it seems — if one customer engages with a brand through three separate channels before converting, there's rarely a clear indicator of which channel was most instrumental.

When you attend a wedding, you make sure your outfit matches — dress with shoes, tie with jacket and the entire ensemble with the formal setting of the event. The same principle should be applied to your advertising efforts. Contextual targeting ensures the content in your ad matches the content on the page where the ad is displayed.

A Growing Trend in Digital Marketing

As publishers get smarter about ad placement, the conversation is moving beyond weighing the benefits of banners and side margins. Instead, publishers are working with marketers and advertisers to ensure that the web page where an ad resides shares common themes with the ad shown there. That's contextual targeting.