By Amanda Raymond

amanda.raymond@salisburypost.com

Have you ever put an item in an online shopping cart and started seeing advertisements for that product wherever you went on the Internet? Thank people like Marla Johnson.

Johnson, digital marketing expert, was the speaker at the Rowan County Chamber of Commerce’s Power in Partnership Breakfast on Thursday at Trinity Oaks.

The Salisbury-Rowan Convention & Visitors Bureau sponsored the breakfast.

Johnson is the co-founder and CEO of Aristotle, a web services company. Aristotle provides services like professional search engine marketing, social media management, web design and application development, according to the company’s website.

As breakfast attendees munched on their breakfasts, Johnson gave them some food for thought about using digital marketing to help their businesses and how digital marketing works in their own lives.

“In 2016, mobile ad spend will surpass print for the first time in history at 150 percent of digital ad spend,” Johnson said.

Johnson said digital ads will become more popular to use because companies are able to use big data to target their audience.

Companies can use things like census, behavioral, political, demographic and geological data to target their ads to specific audiences, according to Johnson. They can also target their audience by the time of day and what a person might be doing.

“You’re a mom, right? And I want to sell you detergent. I don’t want to get you while you’re at work, and I don’t want to get you when you’re running errands and you’re feeling too busy and you’re going to just ignore my ad,” Johnson said. “I’m going to get you while you’re watching the little league game because I happen to know that you have little leaguers.”

One piece of advice Johnson gave was making sure mobile websites load in three seconds.

“Forty percent of people will leave your website if it doesn’t load in three seconds. Does your website load in three seconds on a phone? On any device? It’s got to do it,” she said.

Johnson said that although targeted advertising may be a little scary, it can be a great tool for companies and organizations.

“There is a world of online media and marketing tools. Don’t be scared. If you can use them for your business, it’s the most affordable, coolest thing,” she said.

The next Power in Partnership Breakfast will be on Feb. 18 with Steve Chandler from ChandlerThinks as the guest speaker.

Contact reporter Amanda Raymond at 704-797-4222.