Take Your Child to Work – Virtually!

Celebrate Take Your Child to Work Day with Location3

April 22, 2021, marks the 28^th year of Take Your Child to Work Day. This celebration provides parents an opportunity to get children interested in the workforce and inspire their young minds to follow a path towards a successful career.

Here at Location3, nearly half of our teammates are parents, and we would love nothing more than to have all 35 – and counting, kids come to the office with mom or dad to catch a glimpse inside the world of digital marketing. Yet, our office is still putting safety first due to the COVID-19 pandemic and we will have to try and inspire our little L3ers from our home offices this year.

While we know that not all our kids will follow in our footsteps and take on careers in marketing, teaching young ones about digital marketing, digital literacy, and identifying advertisements can benefit them in many ways, the most important being their safety.

Digital ads come in many forms these days, and with technology only expanding for the foreseeable future, the number of ways to advertise digitally is sure to increase. Worldwide, kids are an incredibly impressionable audience to target ads to, which increases the opportunity for marketers but can also increase the risk for children and their parents. Showing your young web surfer what ads look like, where the “close” icon is on pop-ups, and how to spot sponsored and other unrelated content can be very valuable in protecting them online.

Can your child spot an ad on a webpage?

How about within an app? Sometimes even as adults, we struggle to identify ads from actual assets of a webpage. The best rule of thumb is that if something does not seem to fit in with the webpage you are looking at, the article you are reading, or the app you are using, most likely it’s an ad. And once you click on it, there is no telling where it may lead you.

Whether they are researching for a school project or enjoying free time surfing the web, be sure your child knows to look out for the term “Sponsored” beneath images or clips of text. Sponsored content is typically an eye-catching ad that directs those who click onto a new website. Most likely these ads will take users to websites that are selling something or pages that are full of even more ads. All the while, remember that data is being collected on what gets clicked to make sure that the ad experience is even more personalized the next time your child logs on.

For pop-ups and banners, demonstrating to your child how to find the “x” icon or the word “Close”, can help stop accidental clicks. These often are seen at the tops of web pages and sometimes have a video embedded within them, which may begin playing whether the user has asked it to or not. Banner and pop-up ads are usually very colorful and striking to capture the viewer, often even before they see the content they were really seeking.

Social Media is one of the fastest-growing industries and opportunities for advertising. If your child uses any social media platform, help them to differentiate an ad from a friend’s post. If the handle or username is not one that they recognize or belongs to a company or organization, chances are that content on their feed is an ad.

Cautious and conscious clicking can be taught from the first time a child surfs the web or opens an app and is a valuable tool that they can take far into the digital future. For more information and helpful tips on keeping young ones safe during screen time, we highly recommend checking out the Parent Guides from ConnectSafely!

Digital Marketing Fundamentals

Now, as digital marketers, we certainly want to keep children safe while also knowing and understanding how valuable the industry is for businesses and the economy. While it may look to our own children that we just stare at computers all day, our team is helping to drive success for our clients through display media and search engine marketing.

The whole Location3 team works day in and day out to strategize and plan the next best move for each client to achieve their greatest results. So, in more kid-friendly terms, here are the fundamentals of the digital marketing world and what we are really doing while staring at our screens here at Location3!

Paid Social

Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms allow companies and organizations to advertise on their sites and apps. This can help businesses grow by reaching a very large and somewhat “hand-picked” audience, and the cost is typically lower than many other forms of advertising.

Paid Search

When you enter words into a search engine (Google, Bing, etc.) those words become data. Using that data, digital marketing experts help companies find their audiences by determining who is looking for their product or service online.

Media Buying & Planning

Ever watch a show on a kids’ channel and notice the commercials are mostly for toys and microwave pizza? That’s media buying! When and on what channel or streaming service will a business’s target audience be watching, is a (very basic) way of explaining this service.

Local Listings Management (LLM)

You are hungry for mac n’ cheese but you have no idea where to go. So you grab your smartphone and search “mac n’ cheese near me” or use your mapping app to help you find where you can enjoy a bowl of cheesy goodness. Using the location of your phone, results are brought up and those at the top of the list are typically selling the most mac. Improving or optimizing a business’s online data for each specific location = more customers.

SEO and Content

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. That’s a fancy way of saying “words matter”. The phrases that are searched for on search engines can tell those of us in digital marketing, how people are finding a business online. The more SEO-rich content a business has on their webpage, the more search terms and keywords are pulled into that search engine data and will result in higher rankings for that business on search results.

Analytics & Data Science

Some scientists dissect frogs, while Data Scientists dissect statistics and calculations. For digital marketing, this means studying, measuring, and finding the meaning behind the data of a business’s performance on digital ads, website views, and many other important areas of their online presence and marketing campaigns. Analyzing and inspecting this data helps us make decisions on how best to improve on where, when, and how a business gains more online views and in turn, more customers.

Activity Time

Maybe your child is the next great data scientist or media planner? Enriching their digital literacy will not only help in their future careers but also in school and keep them safer during free time and social interactions online. As a fun and interactive way for little ones to take part in Take Your Child to Work Day, give these activities a try with them at home. Who knows, it might just inspire them to one day enter the fast-growing and exciting world of digital marketing!

Get them in the marketing mindset!

Have your kids find a few different items around the house and line them up on the counter or a table. Some examples could be toys, tech products, or clothing. Grab a pen and notepad and have them brainstorm their own ideas for marketing these items as you ask them the questions below for each.

1.  Who would you market this product to?
2. What platforms and locations would be best for marketing this product? Would social media and Internet ads be best? Or television ads? Both?
3. If you were to make a television commercial for this product, what time of day do you think would be best for your commercial to air and on what channels? (Who is watching? vs. Who should you sell to?)
4. If you could only write one line of copy (text) to capture your target audience online, what would it say?
5. If someone wanted to find this product online, what words would they search for?

Take it to the next level – 

1. Use your graphic design or video skills to craft an ad for your product. Use eye-catching visuals and the copy you developed to move your audience!
2. Craft multiple versions of your ad and experiment by surveying your family and friends – which resonates more? Why?

Word Search

Print off our Location3 word search for more at-home fun!

Web Development

There are a number of different skills needed in our industry – and web development is one of them! Start with Scratch, a free coding learning tool from MIT (account required). There are many activity tutorials available for all ages and skill levels. Seem too easy? You can also start from…Scratch! Learn the basics of coding and build a game at the same time with these activities.

Get the Cheese Puffs!

• Users can move the cat up, down, left, and right with the arrow keys.
• If the player touches the cheesy puffs, their score goes up by 1, and the puffs move to a random location.
• When the player reaches a score of 10, a victory image is shown, and the game ends.
• Demo (What you’re trying to build)

A Game of Cat and Mouse (Challenge):

• Users can move the cat left and right with the arrow keys.
• Users can press the spacebar to shoot a projectile.
• Mice fall from the sky at random locations.
• If a mouse reaches the bottom, the player loses a life.
• If the player shoots a mouse, the mouse is deleted, and the player gets a point.
• Once a player reaches 0 life, they lose.
• Demo (What you’re trying to build)

Sample from a fellow learner:

How to Get Started

Create a rough outline of your game and consider answering the following:

• What are the rules of the game?
• How will that translate into the coding elements in Scratch?
• What variables will you need?
• Will you need to use loops? If/else statements?
• Under what circumstances will your variables change?
• When you have a rough outline, begin the process of coding it out in Scratch.