Having a solid marketing plan is essential for every small business to get the word out about their products and services. Companies need to be cost-effective (i.e., small marketing budget) and one way to maximize your dollars today is through online social media marketing.
Social media is a legitimate business marketing avenue. People spend significant amounts of time on platforms each day and it’s a way to get in front of them where they are at. It's an important tool to promote your business and ultimately help increase income. The question needs to be not about how big your marketing budget is, but how you intend to spend the marketing budget you have. Here are some ways to maximize your budget while still getting the best bang for your buck with social media.
From the start, your focus should be on building relationships via social media - and trust - so your fans and readers ultimately become repeat customers who tell others about your brand.
Developing a target audience by defining who to engage with is critical. You don't need to talk to everyone - only the ones that are most likely to be attracted to what you offer. Who are your best customers? Figure that out and ask them what social media networks they use.
Outline your specific goals and outcome before you develop your marketing strategy. Determine what you want your social media marketing strategy to achieve. Approach things in 2 ways: goals and objectives.
Set high-level goals, although they don't have to be precise. Be sure you're always aware of the big picture and the vision that keep you motivated and ambitious. A goal can be driving 15% more traffic to your website through using social media.
You can become more detailed when it comes to objectives. Determine how many leads you want to generate, what you'd like your close rate to be, and how to accurately measure increases in brand awareness. You can run Facebook Ads and track them all the way through to ecommerce purchases so you know a particular ad generated a particular sale.
You make a promise of value when you make a value proposition. It can help you stand out from the competition. And whether you want to promote a product using Instagram or Facebook, you need to distinguish your product and company from similar ones. For your value proposition to be valid it has to be relevant, visually appealing, clear and concise and include a call-to-action.
Creating an effective value proposition on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Linkedin will motivate users to click your ad. You could offer a free eBook or offer a download to a printable coupon...or anything that details the unique value your product provides.
Creating an effective value proposition on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Linkedin will motivate users to click your ad. You could offer a free eBook or offer a download to a printable coupon...or anything that details the unique value your product provides.
Every social media strategy needs a strong foundation of well-crafted, carefully chosen content. Content adds substance to social media, and developing a content strategy that's effective for your target audience, and effective when assessing your competitors, will have the most success.
An important part of your content strategy is to develop and maintain a consistent tone of voice to guarantee the ongoing quality of your content no matter who is creating it. It's also helpful to be consistent. You need to post regularly so your audience gets accustomed to the times and opportunity to interact with you.
It's wise to create different types of content, both written (articles, blog posts), and visual (tutorial videos, infographics, podcasts, etc.), and track what content is most effective on your social media networks.
Following those overarching keys can help make your social media marketing successful. Social media is where people spend time, so it’s important to develop ways to reach them there!
Need help with your social media strategy? Contact me, I can help.
Facebook ads have quite a bit of appeal. These ads can feature your business on a social media platform that hosts millions of users every single day. When you place a Facebook ad that features your product or service, you should be able to reach more people than ever before, right?
The process of setting up a Facebook ad can be fairly straightforward, but to get the biggest “bang for your buck” you need to go deeper and drill into the detailed setup. This is where the “good stuff” is and yet also where some of the complexity can lie.
The guidelines, rules, regulations and chance of rejection for an Ad is quite high with Facebook so much so that many advertisers give up before they have an ad live. If you create an ad but forget one requirement the ad is going to be rejected.
One of the rules that is frequently forgotten is the 20% text rule. This rule has been the bane of many ad creators. Facebook would reject all ads that had more than 20% ratio of text on the image.
BREAKING….Recently, however, the 20% rule was changed! (But not completely discarded)
Until recently, Facebook had an established rule that text could not make up over 20% of the image you use for your Facebook ad. This rule resulted in high ad rejection rates. The ad creator had a grid tool that let you see the area of your image your text covered. This tool was not well liked because if you had text in any portion of a grid box, that counted as the whole box and towards your 20% max text. So often ad creators and designers had to finesse images and make multiple adjustments to work within the grid system.
This may not seem like a big deal, however, businesses that had pre-made images of products, with text found it problematic. For example, text on their shirt or coffee mug in the image engages the 20% rule.
Chances are, these businesses and marketers will be happy with the recent changes!
Facebook has made some helpful changes to the 20% rule. The former grid tool, which was helpful for many people, is now gone, and even if you wanted to use it, you can’t. Instead, Facebook offers a guideline that is a bit vague regarding text overlay.
Rather than have a “yes, the image/text ratio works,” or “no, it doesn’t work,” your image will now be classified into one of four areas based on the amount of text overlay present:
Keep in mind that all of the following will count as text on your ad image:
The good news is that Facebook ads are not limited to the amount of text on their ad images any longer. However, the rules related to text and ads are a bit vague, making it a bit more difficult to create an ad with superior visibility. The more text, the lower the visibility and reach Facebook will give to the ad! And they make the decision. It’s not a clear process a marketer can follow to ensure maximum reach other than to keep text at a minimum under the old 20% marker really.
For small business owners who need assistance with their digital marketing, this news is helpful and beneficial, but not a homerun. It’s an improvement in my opinion, to assist and can help marketers achieve greater success in the world of Facebook advertising with more ease of getting ads published.
Need help with your digital marketing or Facebook Ads? Contact Digital Hill, we’re happy to answer your questions.
Venngage is an easy to use website where the most design-inept can create stylish content for websites, presentations, ads, social media use and much more. There are templates for a wide range of projects including infographics, reports, posters, promotions and social media images.
Save yourself the frustration of learning to use complex design software, let alone understand design concepts and trends, and check out what Venngage has to offer.
At the site, sign up with your email and choose a password. You'll have access to lots of free templates but more advanced features require an upgraded membership.
Once you're in click on a template description which will take you to an editing page. In this view, each template is editable, and there are a multitude of tools which can be used to perfect your image. Template images are fully editable, and you can move them around on the template. Change the image size, template color and background and add it to your favorites for easy use.
Venngage has a vast collection of images, icons, charts, maps, and fonts you can use for your project. If you can’t find the image you need, you're welcome to upload your own images. Change the uploaded image's opacity to use as a background, watermark or overlay.
There's an option to embed interactive pieces like YouTube videos, field forms, tables, and polls. Design a page around a YouTube video or invite people to fill out a poll, Venngage can help with that.
When you're satisfied with the overall look of your piece preview, publish, share and download your masterpiece.
The best part of all of this is that it’s really easy, and fast to create an infographic. If you could use a little help with when it comes to creativity for graphics for your web pages and social media for your business, then this is a tool to consider! Go to Venngage.com where creativity is found right at your mouse click.
Finding a cost-effective, and efficient method of generating leads is always at the top of marketers lists. Surveys are a great way to interact with your target consumer base and gauge your brand's marketability based on its reception by the public. If you keep them simple, surveys can be a great way to learn and even grow leads at the same time.
Waftio is a convenient lead generation system that comes with a built-in function that allows you to easily create your own embedded survey app to give to your target audience.
Use a survey to connect with your viewers and get answers from your clients and prospective clients on their perspective or experience. Here're a few tips on surveys.
Here are some tips and tricks to creating a simple, but effective survey using Waftio's user-friendly interface.
You'll want log into Waftio, and locate the Add App tab. Click on either the Add App or Click Here located at the bottom of the tab.
You'll see 3 options, Survey App, Form App and Sweepstakes Form App. Click on survey app to continue this process.
This is the step in which you'll get hands-on and craft your survey according to your needs. There are several settings options on board to assist you in this process, which are:
You'll use the App Builder function to add relevant images to your survey and fill the app with necessary data to serve its intended purpose. Simply click the Add option and plug in any question you wish to be answered by your viewers.
Ideally, you will want to use questions that relate, either directly or indirectly, to your product, service or brand. Once your survey is complete, you can embed it on your webpage.
Under the Stats tab, you have the option to view statistics about your survey. You have the option to see if and when users submitted their information and what type of device they used.Deciphering the information itself can be a bit trickier. Your app could be as simple as asking the user to provide their name or email, or feedback on your web page itself.
Not getting the response you'd like? You might need to change a thing or two in your app. Waftio is an excellent, easy to use lead generation system and its ability to completely automate the process of conducting surveys can be invaluable.
How have you used surveys to get the vital info need to keep your business growing? Share with us in the comments.
Marketing personalization is a rapidly growing arena in online marketing. This applies to every industry; tech, retail, auto, etc. If you can personalize your marketing to viewers, it builds trust and rapport that can lead to sales and loyalty. According to Forbes, personalization is the key to the future of marketing. And at Entrepreneur, they have outlined in reports that marketing personalization is no longer simply a luxury, but a need.
So what is marketing personalization? It uses data on the user to then give them a more customized message/experience on the next interaction. You’ve likely been on a website, and then soon after went to another site and saw an ad from the first site. That’s an example. Or maybe you were on a site and filled out a form to get a coupon. Soon thereafter you received an email with “Hi <your name>, hope that coupon was valuable to you.” That’s another example of marketing personalization. It may seem daunting, but there are tools like Perfect Audience that help you accomplish this.
As with any other marketing activity, personalization isn’t as simple as it sounds. There are a lot of things to do before your business sounds like a person reaching out to another person in a customized way. For quicker success you need to allow a digital agency to do the work, or you need to use tools that can help you tackle the job.
Perfect Audience is one of those tools. It’s a self-service software that helps marketers personalize their marketing quickly and easily. Perfect Audience is part of Marin Software, one of the leading providers of cross-channel advertising solutions in the USA. Marin Software acquired Perfect Audience in 2014.
Perfect Audience provides marketers with powerful software tools which can be used to gather useful customer data to drive marketing campaigns.
One area where the company excels is retargeting. Retargeting identifies consumers who visit your website and after that follows these consumers around with targeted ads. Whatever websites they visit, your ads can appear on that web page.
Studies show that over 80% of visitors leave your site without making a purchase or contacting you. Retargeting will get your business/brand at the top of their minds by “showing up again for them” so if they decide to purchase at a later date; they’ll remember you and you have a better opportunity that they’ll purchase from you.
Perfect Audience offers 9 different retargeting solutions; mobile app retargeting, cross-device retargeting, partner retargeting, HubSpot retargeting, Twitter retargeting, display retargeting, Facebook Exchange retargeting, and news feed retargeting. Again, retargeting is targeting a visitor to your website on another platform with an ad after they have visited your website.
Here’s an overview of the Perfect Audience top 3 retargeting services:
Mobile app retargeting involves re-engaging targeted consumers to ensure these people are always thinking about your app. If your app is a game, retargeting may mean sending the appropriate ads to remind users to come back and play while they are in another app or game. Perfect Audience even has a tool that helps app owners track app revenue and conversions.
Cross-device targeting is exactly what the name suggests – being able to retarget users across devices. Today’s consumers own several devices. Some may have a smartphone, and a tablet, and others a smartphone and a laptop. Cross-device targeting allows you to reach any consumer on whatever device they are signing into at the moment.
The Perfect Audience Dynamic Product Retargeting service allows merchants to turn over 16.9 million products into personalized Facebook ads, driving a 200% boost in ROI.
Perfect Audience's account set-up is free of charge. That alone should be reason enough to try the services. They also offer a 14-day free trial period!
Also, there is a low minimum spend, meaning that you can start off with as little as $5 per day. They bill on a CPM (cost per metric) basis with billing done every Monday for services of the past 7 days. You can also request a demo to know what exactly you’ll be getting.
Again, Perfect Audience is one of those tools that helps you customize and personalize your marketing. It’s a key trend to touch base in a more personal way and to follow-up on people that have visited your website. Are you ready to try more personalization marketing or need someone to do it for you? Let me know!
It's no secret that video is fast becoming the most effective means of publishing content and building an audience. People are watching more and more video online thanks to high-speed Internet and smartphones. YouTube is an obvious destination for video content creators seeking an inexpensive home for their videos and a chance for the videos to be discovered easily.
Google, the owner of YouTube since 2006, is the chef, cook, and bottlewasher of the content promotion, paid-discovery, and organic SEO landscape. They're able to dictate (with their algorithms) which content comes up on the first page of a Google search, and they do the same for YouTube searches as well.
If you publish videos online, on YouTube specifically, you're probably always looking for new and useful tips and tools to hack your YouTube publishing experience. You want more people to see your videos, more subscriptions, and perhaps even more sales for your product or service. TubeBuddy could quite possibly be your new best friend.
TubeBuddy offers a powerful suite of superpowers; that beef-up the abilities of the YouTube publisher's default toolset. More specifically, TubeBuddy offers a set of powerful content management and publishing tools, right in line with the regular YouTube experience. It all started with a small team building a browser plugin...and TubeBuddy was born.
By incorporating the TubeBuddy functions into a browser plugin, the new features are presented to users as if they were built-in YouTube features. In fact, once you get in the habit of using TubeBuddy on a regular basis as you upload videos, and because the process is so seamless, you'll probably forget which features are original to YouTube and which are from the TubeBuddy plugin.
For the most part, TubeBuddy is for the YouTube power user. For those wanting to add Call-to-Action cards within multiple videos. They offer a free service level, and those publishing content regularly and in large quantities to YouTube will gain the most from using it. The meat and potatoes of the TubeBuddy tool lie within its ability to bulk manage cards and annotations. Those experienced in YouTube marketing already know that cards and annotations are the gateway for bringing traffic, leads and potential sales from the YouTube video platform to your own website. Without TubeBuddy, you're left going into the card or annotation feature and making changes one-by-one, every time you want to change something, rather than efficiently doing this in bulk.
It might be a smart idea to put a card 60 seconds into each video you upload that mentions a specific call-to-action, such as a free webinar or discount you're offering. Well, isn't the date and time of that webinar going to change? Of course, it will. After the current event has come and gone, you're going to schedule a similar webinar, seminar or event and want to promote it in the same place in your videos. So, instead of having to go around to each video one-by-one to update your cards, TubeBuddy gives you the power to make a change in one spot and be done. It's a major time-saver as it updates each location you used it.
The features of TubeBuddy extend beyond cards and annotations with tools related to SEO optimization, channel rank tracking and various reporting and promotion abilities as well. It's also nice to know that it's not an all-or-nothing proposition as TubeBuddy is offered in 4 service levels, starting with a pretty solid free basic plan. If you're generating revenue from YouTube or using YouTube as a lead source, TubeBuddy could pay for itself by increasing views and engagement across your videos.
It's a difficult balance. Automating social media can save you a lot of time in your busy schedule. But social media is by nature a social, personal platform. Too much automation can cause you lose that personal feeling that's so important to social media interaction. People don't want to interact with robots!
But we understand that automation is very useful. With your busy schedule automation helps you establish a presence without dedicating hours and hours to social media. But timely, live posts have an excellent value. A mix of automated posts and live posts will help you develop an exciting social media presence. Here are some tips to help you strike that balance.
You won't have social media success if you're not posting at least once a day on each platform. Be willing to learn about social media platforms and use the ones that are best for your industry. Take some time to learn how users make their posts personal and human, and do the same for your posts to add value to the conversation. You may only need to use 2 or 3 social media accounts, which is perfectly fine as long as you invest time in those accounts.
Different platforms have slightly different tones, styles, and rules. Hashtags are very popular and useful on Twitter, but they work differently on Facebook. If you're creating content ahead of time, be sure to write each post a little differently for each platform. Twitter has a character limit you have to follow while Facebook allows a little more room for detail. Match the tone of your posts to the platform you are posting on.
If you've scheduled posts for certain times of the day, make sure that you're ready at that time to respond. The best practice is to respond as soon as you can when there is interaction. If you wait too long, you'll be out of sight and out of mind.
Auto direct messages feel like spam, and sound like robots, no matter how you word them. "Thanks for the follow, check out my Facebook." Don't do that. Auto direct messages are annoying to Twitter users.
Be flexible in your content creation so that you can add your voice to relevant breaking news or trends. People can tell if all of your posts are automated. It's also very important to do some quick research on trending hashtags to make sure you know what you're talking about. Hashtags' meanings can change, and their meanings are not always obvious.
Experiment with multiple automation apps and choose the one that works best for you and will make you sound human. Be on the lookout for new apps as well.
These are some basics to help you use automation wisely and effectively. Any questions?
Splice is a free video editing app for iPhone, and iPad. The app is easy to use and lets users edit HD pictures and videos into a professional quality video that's great for sharing online. It is one of the best editing apps for TikTok considering the range of features including transitions, trims, borders, sound effects, background music and voiceover
Videos are an excellent way to capture a potential customer's' attention with your online marketing efforts. Get the expert team of mobile app development companies in the USA that specializes in creating cutting-edge video editing apps that cater to your unique requirements.
Splice makes it easy to turn videos and pictures on your iPhone into a high-quality video that'll impress your audience.
Here's a quick overview of the app that'll show you how to make some impressive videos.
Open the Splice app. The first screen you'll see is the projects page. To begin a new video project, say for immediate connect, simply hit the plus button, and name the project. From there you'll have some settings to choose from for the project: HD or SD, border options, orientation, and a default transition selection. Hit the "done" button when you have selected your desired options.
On the next screen, you'll choose what you want to be the very first part of your video. You can create a title screen by hitting the "title" button, or choose to begin with a video or photo. On the title screen, you can type in text, change its location and change the zoom on the text. You can also select how long you want the title screen to show in the video by adjusting the "duration" slider. Once you've created the title and hit done, you'll see the title you have created, along with "plus" buttons on either side and button with a pencil in the middle. The plus buttons allow you to add content before or after the title or selected video. The pencil button lets you edit the title.
Hit the plus button to the right of the title, and select the video/photo button to add photos and videos. The "albums" screen will come up. Any videos you have on your phone will be in the "camera roll" section. Select the videos in the order you want them to appear in your video, then hit "done." The app will ask if you want to use the default transition you selected at the beginning between the videos. After you choose, the videos will begin to upload into the project. Once they've loaded, you'll be brought back to the main screen where you can scroll left and right to view the project. The blank windows represent the transitions between the videos.
When you tap on a video in the project screen, you will see the "plus" and "pencil" buttons appear. To edit the video, tap the pencil and you'll be given several editing options. You can trim, adjust the speed, crop, duplicate, or delete the clip using the buttons. In the trim feature, you can adjust the starting and ending points by adjusting the points in the slider beneath the video. You can also edit the audio by hitting the audio button, where you can add background music or voice recordings and adjust the volume of the videos.
Splice has a lot of great features that make video editing a breeze. This overview is a quick introduction to the app to get you started, but the best way to learn it is to give it a try for yourself. You'll be making business product and service videos like a pro in no time! Editing on your phone has really improved. There are, of course, online video editor tools for desktop as well.
BONUS: Don't miss your favorite android apps no matter you are using which device because now you can remotely access your android applications and data seamlessly from anywhere by loading Bluestacks on citrix vdi powered by Apps4Rent.com. You can also access complete MS Office suite on the same vdi with Office 365 by O365CloudExperts.
Resources:
One of the biggest problems with work projects today is finding the right way to communicate effectively online.
Every team has dreamed of finding a way to work on the same presentations, documents, and spreadsheets without thousands of emails going back and forth.
Enter Google Apps: A powerful online suite of business software tools from Google.
With Google apps, there is no need to send files through email and deal with the pain of sorting through it all to find the single file you want. There's also no need to try and retrieve the file again at a later time if someone made updates to it.
With Google apps, everyone on the team will be able to use Google Docs, Slides, and Google Sheets with shared access to files.
This allows the team to edit the same file - even simultaneously - and talk to each other within the files. In this post, I’ll dive into some of the ways Google Apps can add value to team communication.
When it comes to working together on projects, it can sometimes be challenging to keep up-to-date on projects and schedules. Deadlines and tasks are constantly changing.
Put all your tasks and tracking together in one place with the help of Google Sheets, which is the Google version of Microsoft Excel. This will ease the pain of trying to access and makes changes to the same project plan, or update team members on status and task changes.
Create a project calendar to keep the team updated on the latest due dates and milestones using Google Calendars.
You can keep track of the availability of team members and schedule important milestones and dates by sharing the calendar among team members.
With Google Hangouts, teams will be able to work from all over the world via video meetings and chat. With this app, everyone will be able to talk face-to-face without spending loads of money on traveling.
No need to talk face-to-face? Keep the chat tool open in your browser with one or more team members so you can have quick, short bursts of communication as needed. The beauty of this option is that it works on desktop, tablet, and smartphones.
As noted, there really isn't a need for the Microsoft Office tools when using Google Apps. Create your own files with Docs (like Word), Sheets, and Slides (like PowerPoint), and store them all in Google Drive so you can access them from anywhere you log in. This includes tablets and smartphones!
Easily share files with the “read only” option, or use the "editable permission" option to make and view changes to a document. This includes the ability to revert to a prior, unedited version.
Google Apps is a great way to collaborate and to stop messing with sending files via email each time changes are made! Using Google apps for your business can bring your virtual team much closer and make corroborating easier than ever.
Instagram continues to grow in users and business uses. It’s a great visual platform and many businesses are seeing the power of connecting with their ideal customer audiences on the social network.
Running Instagram Ads is a great way to harness the power of this social media powerhouse to reach more of your ideal audience. The Ad platform is new and it offers some great potential for business marketing.
With over 400 million users from over 30 countries on the site, Instagram is a powerful medium for marketing. Creating an ad on Instagram places the spotlight on the business and enhances the reach of a brand. With a few simple steps, an ad can be published to Instagram.
The process of creating the actual ad is quite similar to that of Facebook's ad platform due to Facebook's ownership of Instagram. The benefit is that many same features can be used (provided you're familiar with Facebook's Ad setup model).
Because Instagram uses the Facebook platform for ad creation, ads can also take import user information from Facebook and use it in ad targeting (demographics, locations, interests).
The first step in creating an Instagram ad is to have a Facebook account and business Facebook Page. Then connect the Instagram account to Facebook in the Page area.
Under Facebook's settings, one can add an Instagram account by selecting Instagram ads and then clicking "Add an Account".
From there, either an existing or new account can be added or created. With Facebook and Instagram connected, ads can run on both platforms.
The next step is to select what kind of ad will be created based on its purpose and the available ad units. For Instagram ads, three objective categories can be chosen: video views, website clicks, and app installs. The major ad units are image, carousel, and video ads.
Because Instagram is an image-rich medium, ad units are designed for marketing efforts that use visual content. Each ad unit has its own effect on the style of the overall ad.
Carousel ads are more flexible than image and video ads. It's particularly effective for attracting mobile users as ad viewers can swipe to view pictures in the gallery and links to the site.
Image ads encourage marketers to use photos to tell stories and communicate brand values visually.
With video ads, short, up to 30-second videos are used instead of photos and galleries.Video ads are used by both big and small brands to add a story effect to ads.
After the actual construction of the ads, the final step is to add targeting to narrow your audience. Ad targeting in Instagram works similarly to Facebook. In addition to the usual targeting categories, there are options to create custom and lookalike audiences. Custom audiences consist of a business's existing customers.
Using that tool, ads can be sent directly to customers who are on Facebook or Instagram. A lookalike audience is an audience with similar interests and demographics to a business's followers and customers. This group can also be specifically targeted.
Just as the steps for creating ads for Instagram are similar to the Facebook method, the tips for enhancing ads are also the same for Facebook and other marketing platforms.
That’s the basics! It’s a new ad platform and is showing promise for driving traffic to websites. If you want to “be where the people are”, then places like Instagram should be considered by your business. However, many new programs now exist and offer to increase likes or followers with their ads. However, some like Instazood are a scam, and you should choose alternatives if you choose to use a third-party app.
In the comments below, let me know of your successes with Instagram ads.
Instagram has been on fire the past year and a half. Growing crazy fast and expanding, it’s a strong social media platform and under the tutelage of parent Facebook they’ve now opened up advertising to businesses.
Using Instagram ads to expand a business' social media presence is a great way to grow a brand, and connect with new customers. Creating Instagram ads is a straightforward process. They are created and launched in the Facebook ad platform under Pages, and there are a few tips and tricks we’ll look at today that can help a business increase their conversion rate with this newer ad option.
Before the ad starts to run, it's best to make sure there is already a solid amount of content on the account. This means previously uploaded images and videos. There is a good chance people who see the ad will visit the company's profile, especially if they are interested in becoming a customer. An account with nothing in it may look spammy, but good content that's already been posted will make visitors feel even more inclined to follow, comment, and ultimately make a purchase.
An image that draws a user in is essential since so many people browse through their Instagram feeds quickly on their phone. Making someone stop to actually look at the ad is the most important part of the advertising process. Without that initial interest, a CPM campaign will quickly start showing a negative ROI.
Instagram offers a "Learn More" button and it's helpful to direct viewers to your website. The call to action text, combined with the button seen on every sponsored post, increases the chances that visitors leave Instagram to be completely focused on a company's goods or services. That’s your main goal, engage the viewer and get them to your website.
While the call to action is important, the rest of the text plays a role in converting a visitor as well. Offering a discount for people who purchase from the ad can have a big impact on conversion rates. Everyone loves a sale, and offering a decent discount can go a long way in getting a visitor to make a purchase.
Finding the right audience is crucial for maintaining a positive ROI on an Instagram ad campaign. Marketing managers should have a good idea who the target demographic is already, and when they're most active. One idea is to take a look at what times of the day the most sales are made on your site and schedule your ads to run during those times. Another is to watch your Facebook Page Insights for active time periods and run ads to Instagram in that time period since users are often active on multiple platforms when online.
It may be a good idea to start small at first to see if a campaign will do well, then increase the budget once it shows potential. If a certain creative or audience isn't performing well, don't be afraid to stop that aspect of the ad campaign from running altogether.
Constantly testing to see what works and what doesn't can help companies determine the best way to advertising on Instagram. This includes the picture, target audience, time of day, text, everything about the ad. Figuring out the most successful elements of an ad will allow a business to run their campaigns efficiently and effectively.
Keeping these tips in mind while running Instagram ads can help companies get the most out of their advertising budget.
Today, there are many web-based apps on the market to help companies and individuals with social media management. While each caters to a specific aspect of social marketing, a rising star with top features for social media management is AgoraPulse.
AgoraPulse covers basically everything you could possibly need for social media marketing, monitoring, and management.
Focusing on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram currently with more networks set to roll out shortly, it helps small businesses that are on tight social media marketing budgets have a complete tool like the Fortune 500 companies!
AgoraPulse has tools for everything from moderation to competitions. Most importantly, though, it's sold at a price that most any business can afford. Below I’ll review some of the key aspects of AgoraPulse.
The analytics tools found in AgoraPulse are very similar to what you'd find in Facebook Insights. The difference here is that AgoraPulse's tools are a lot easier to read.
Besides the interface, AgoraPulse also includes all kinds of reports that you won't find in Facebook Insights. This includes post recommendations, average fan profiling, reach and engagement breakdown, page views, export into Powerpoint, ROI analysis and competitor analysis.
These tools allow companies to get more information on the people viewing and engaging with their business, so they can reach and serve their target audience better.
Originally the core feature of the tool, Facebook contests are still offered but have less prominence in the interface. It’s pretty easy and straightforward to setup and deploy a contest. There's no CSS editing or extensive text formatting.
Practically everything is preconfigured to make it quick to create and launch. This is great for companies that want a simple process to launch contests on Facebook.
Creating and publishing content is key on social media networks and the management of this process is important. AgoraPulse does this well. Check out some of the reasons why below:
When it comes to moderating Facebook, it can be a bit tricky. Facebook lets you block specific words (like curse words), and sends notifications when a follower leaves a comment.
This is problematic for those large companies that have a huge following. With AgoraPulse, you can switch up the moderation rules based on the user's' comments. You can assign specific moderation tasks to different individuals. This gives you a strong administration role.
You can assign an account administrator that hand's out moderation tasks manually, or you can have AgoraPulse send a notification email to the person you choose. This offers a quality way to manage comments and interactions.
One of the keys that in my opinion sets AgoraPulse apart is the powerful and slick mobile app. Available for Apple and Android users, the app has some great features. It allows easy publishing and scheduling.
As well, it offers access to on-the-go moderation and ability to enable notifications so that app users can be alerted immediately of key things such as comments and replies.
As mentioned previously, AgoraPulse is affordable for small businesses. It costs as little as $19 a month for a small business that wants to manage one Facebook Page and Twitter account. This pricing can change depending on the AgoraPulse plan you choose.
AgoraPulse has a free trial option so individuals can try out this system before purchasing a plan. The trial lasts 15 days and allows you to try all the features so individuals get a true feel.
I’m blessed to count AgoraPulse founder Emeric Ernoult as a friend of mine. In the past, we’ve had friendly competition in the Facebook contest space with TabSite but I’ve got to say that the transformation of AgoraPulse to a complete social media management tool has been impressive.
They are a small team going up against big firms like NapoleonCat, Brand24, Hootsuite and Sprout Social and they’ve done a great job carving out key user features that set them apart. The whole user interface makes all tasks quick and easy. Everything is laid out well. It's also very quick to duplicate required posts and then edit if needed.
One of the best features is having the ability to adjust copy between platforms without having to start a new post. I learn new things about this program all the time. It has really helped my productivity in the way that it saves me time.
"The whole user interface of AgoraPulse makes all tasks quick and easy. Everything is laid out well. It's also very quick to duplicate required posts and then edit if needed. One of the best features is having the ability to adjust copy between platforms without having to start a new post. I learn new things about this program all the time. It has really helped my productivity in the way that it saves me time."
Neal Taparia, of Imagine Easy Solutions, a portfolio of educational software services that reached 30M students annually. He sold the business to a public company, Chegg, where he was an executive for three years. His new initiative, spider-solitaire-challenge.com
Asana is a project management tool * designed to boost productivity and efficiency while eliminating unnecessary features such as a heavy reliance on communicating solely through emails.
Developed by a former Google employee (Justin Rosenstein) and a former Facebook co-founder (Dustin Moskovitz), it was originally created for use in Facebook's organization. The developers of Asana decided to take it out of the walls of Facebook, simplify it, and let anyone use it.
Instead of having Asana be a bloated tool with many extra and irrelevant features, it was stripped down to the bare essentials. The theory is that a software with only the essentials would be easier and more efficient to use. Users get the features that they need and desire without the hassle of a bunch of features that they may never use.
Working with that theory in the workplace, it is easier to see why the developers designed Asana to be a great website tool for the whole organization. It is designed to reduce the time spent on emails while assisting project managers and organizing communication across the entire company.
Asana's features are geared toward ease of use, the ability to customize, and the organization of information. To do this, it makes an active distinction between tasks, projects, and workspaces.
Typically, workspaces are the broadest category of organization. Within a workspace, you can have projects. Within projects, you can assign tasks.
Asana makes the everyday issue of to-do lists and task assignments easier. Asana's task feature is an area where emails are reduced substantially.
Instead of having emails sent as the primary form of communication between workers, tasks can be created, communicated, and kept track of within Asana. Users can add details and comments about a task that everyone connected to the project can see and review.
Asana's task section is easy to use. Users can see what tasks are outstanding, who been assigned to them, and when they are due. Once in "Your Tasks", a user can organize tasks further by "intentions" (when the user plans on completing a project, for example) and they can then archive tasks as they are completed.
Tasks can be scheduled to repeat on a schedule, or certain day and time. They can also be cloned.
Like many other tools, one can assign characteristics to a task through tags. Tasks can then take on additional, multiple tags.
Multiple tags may signal that the task may need more time and may need to be turned into a stand-alone project. While a nice feature, I find in our use that tags are not often needed.
Workspaces in Asana are not the same as projects. Rather, work spaces are areas where related projects and tasks can be assembled.
In a work space, multiple projects can be placed inside of it and organized. Work spaces can be organized to the user's discretion as well as the needs of the project. For example, projects in work spaces may be organized based on whether they are individual or team-based.
Work spaces can be reordered, and members can be assigned to a project through an email invite. A workspace could be designated for a client or it could be for a department within your company.
Projects are not considered tasks in Asana, and as such can be organized and customized differently. Projects can be viewed by tags, priority, or to whom it was assigned.
Projects inside the work space can be public or private, and members of the work space can see them. Like tasks, a new project can be created by duplicating a project.
Many users have had positive experiences with Asana as it assisted them in their project management needs. A common thread in user experience is the enjoyment of it's simple nature and easy customization.
Some users appreciate Asana as it fits in with the workflow of the individual company without forcing organizations to accommodate to a specific order or set of procedures.
Through the comment system, it can simplify complex projects and make collaboration faster and simpler, while keeping communication organized.
I’m a believer in Asana and use it daily to help our team keep track of key details!
*affiliate link to Asana used in this post
Strong images are an important part of any marketing strategy. The old adage, "show, don't tell", rings doubly true in the realm of marketing strategies that are tailored towards social media platforms.
Most people are visual, and images can project a feeling or message instantly. So use images to increase engagement:
Images can sell a story to a potential customer more succinctly than words, especially on social media platforms. Thanks to the folks at
Thanks to the folks at Red Website Design for this helpful infographic on social media strategy.
If you're looking for an awesome way to give your images the appeal they deserve, Visme is the perfect place to go. Quickly and easily create professional looking infographics and post images yourself in a fraction of the cost of a professional designer.
Visme is an online graphics tool for bloggers, businesses, and other professionals with limited to no design skills. So what does Visme have to offer you?
Visme helps create stellar infographics and images that will help you promote your website and social media content to bring in more visitors. Even if your industry is considered boring by most people, Visme shows you how to visually stimulate interest and successfully engage readers by providing them with the best presentations to represent the content you are displaying.
It's easy to sign up for Visme's free service, and it's video tutorials and help articles explain how to create infographics or presentations well.
Have you noticed that many visitors come to your website and leave right away? According to Visme, it is not your content. The number one reason people leave your website is because of non-stimulating and outdated images.
The first step is to grab the attention of the visitor, and one way to do that is with one of the many infographic templates they teach you how to customize. This is Visme’s strongest area. They have over 50 great looking templates that give you a beautiful finished product. For me, their instructions were easy to understand.
The value of infographics is that they make complex data or instructions easy to understand. Studies show that people comprehend more and faster when viewing visuals as opposed to large amounts of text, so adding engaging images along with your data or complex concepts makes the content easy to comprehend and connect with.
Try adding an infographic you've created with your next case study blog post. You'll get a better response and more shares & engagement for the post.
Visme.co is a decent as far as presentation templates. Similar to what you can do with PowerPoint, it’s easy to create professional business presentations. The interface is drag and drop, so, in my opinion, it’s even easier to use than PowerPoint.
Visme excels with banner ads. They have lots of templates so you'll be able to find the perfect fit for your product or service. This can save you significant time when trying to create ads.
Every template I saw was quality and professional. No one will ever know you had some help making the banner ad yourself!
You can also create a banner ad for your email newsletter to add to your website. This visual prompt can help catch attention and gather you more subscribers than a plain old sidebar subscription form.
When you create infographics, presentations and banners Visme.co gives you the added option to add animations! Use this bonus feature to easily attract even more attention to your image and message. It can add that extra little pop needed to set you apart and capture the eye of the viewer on social media or your website.
Visme.co offers a free plan, but if you want to use more of their advanced features, there is a monthly charge. The monthly prices are on par with Canva.
Visme.co is a great tool for creating infographics and banner ads. It's drag and drop interface is easy and fun to use. It has a big supply of free templates, images, icons and fonts so you can create a professional looking graphic easily. I can recommend it as a solid source for the non-designer to up your visual presence online.
At some point it happens in all businesses. In order to grow, you need to hire and you want the best people for your roles. The hiring process often lands upon managers and small business owners who already have many tasks on their plate.
In the past job postings were handled mostly by newspapers. Over time, services like Monster.com and others have added to the options. Today, the best way to find qualified candidates truly is online in many cases.
With so many options to choose from, it can be a bit overwhelming to decide which site to use, but one service we’ll review today handles all of that for you.
After recognizing the need to make online job posting an easier process for business owners, a group of entrepreneurs got together to start ZipRecruiter.
The primary goal of ZipRecruiter is to allow hiring managers the opportunity to post their job to 100+ of the leading job boards, including key sites like Monster and LinkedIn, as well as social media networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, with just one click.
The process is pretty painless: Create a job, add the title, details and requirements, and then post it live. Pricing options determine what sites and how many sites the job is posted too.
It’s an efficient way to get posted to all the major online job boards where potential candidates are spending time searching. The interview process will become more streamlined once you know you have the right candidates to choose from.
In addition to making the posting process a one and done format, ZipRecruiter offers many other features to help business owners reach their target candidate market:
Finding the right candidate doesn't have to be a complicated process of utilizing numerous job sites. Thanks to sites like ZipRecruiter.com, posting a job to hundreds of sites, and attracting the perfect new employee, can be accomplished with only a few clicks.
Since its conception, the online digital landscape has gone through many changes. Businesses need to keep up with theses changes by developing an integrated marketing strategy, improving website design, and utilizing social media tools.
I'll outline 5 keys I believe every business owner should be investing in for success on the web:
A website with a fixed width is no longer sufficient for today's needs. The use of so many mobile devices requires sites to adjust to fit their specific screen size and reorder content for easier reading.
Mobile phone users constitute a large percentage of internet users. Currently, up to 80% of smartphone users utilize their mobile phones to shop online. Also, the conversion rate for mobile users is three times higher that of traditional laptop and desktop users.
For a business, having a responsive website grants access to an important, vital segment of consumers. Not investing in a responsive website is likely to lead to a significant loss in web traffic and ultimately sales as visitors move on to a competitor.
The new landscape also requires new ways of marketing. Because a website is vital to marketing, it's the first component of a good marketing strategy.
A website is a hub for information about a business. It's where customers go after viewing marketing campaigns. Customers often sign up for newsletters and provide contact information through the site.
Having a proper SEO strategy is an excellent way to market a business and its products or services. SEO helps a site rank in the search engines.
SMM or Social Media Marketing allows you to connect directly with the customer. It also allows a company to spread by "word of mouth".
Many potential customers search for products through social media. In response, those platforms have introduced expanded search engine capabilities.
Having a business's brand on social media provides the business with important exposure - and having quality, resource-rich content on your website is the second ingredient that together provides your business the engine it needs to gain steam online.
Converting website traffic to leads is important for generating sales. There are many ways to capture leads. An engaging way to capture leads and email addresses is a freebie form.
Freebie forms offer an incentive for customers to leave their information with a business. This opens up the way for businesses to contact potential customers for future purchases. The incentive can be a coupon or free, downloadable resource guide as simple examples.
As explained before, social media can get the word out about a company. Social media assets such as a Facebook page or YouTube channel make connecting with customers easy. It also provides a friendly platform for people to learn about the company.
Social networks often come with an option for using campaigns to market products or events. Businesses can use these campaigns to generate more leads. Share your new website content for starters.
Advanced website tools make your business's processes more automated and efficient. It also makes marketing content and business products and services easier.
An online CRM software gives one the ability to group leads and customers, and the business can analyze their preferences and market to them more effectively. Make sure to compare a few CRM software options to find what fits your business needs. As well, a great resource for comparing the best small business CRM systems can be found in this post by Cloudwards.
For example, tied with lead capture on your website, a CRM with email marketing can automatically send a follow-up sequence of emails to “drip” information to a prospect and even trigger different emails based on links clicked in a prior email. It's about developing smarter online business processes and this means investing in technology and software, or finding a solution provider to discuss your custom embedded hardware development needs with.
Together, these keys are critical to a business serious about making the web work for them. Are you maximizing each of these for your business? Contact us for some help.
Looking for your next business investment opportunity? Investing has really become important over the last few years. Franchise Info have a range of weird and wonderful franchises for you to choose from, check them out. I'm sure you won't be disappointed.
As a business owner you will have to invest in many things that you wouldn't think you would need to, and, depending on what your business is, telecoms consultants can be essential to some businesses, and Soniza is one of the best.
Building the perfect backlink to your website is a powerful way to achieve higher page rankings and web traffic. Use these tips below to get higher traffic to your site:
Hope these help! Good luck!
Thanks to our friends at Red Website Design for this great inforgraphic:
Increasing productivity can be overwhelming for small and medium-sized businesses. Customer Relationship Management tools may be feature-rich, but also overkill for a 3-10 person team.
But what if a tool a team is already using could be transformed into a workflow and customer support system?
Introducing Hiver for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses. It’s a web tool leveraging Gmail to turn a team into a Super Team Management tool.
Let's face it, many small to medium sized business owners already rely on Gmail and Google Apps for communication and collaboration.
The challenge? Gmail doesn't come with an intuitive workflow and process for getting client work done. It’s simply loads of email.
Anyone who's had a client email or project task fall through the cracks via email inbox holes appreciates the danger of that black hole. But a solution is at hand: Hiver.
Hiver lets users embed crucial collaboration and team management functions right into Gmail. Now business owners can seamlessly communicate with clients AND their team, and keep track of projects...all via email.
They can simplify their workflow by adding these functionalities to their Gmail capabilities:
Today any business can leverage remote employees or hire virtual assistants. While it frees up business owners to concentrate on more important tasks, staying coordinated and effective can be a challenge.
Leveraging Hiver's built in process-streamlining functions keeps it coordinated. Here are key features:
Gmail labels are nothing new. Gmail already allows users to create new labels for an email. Each label effectively "files" the email into one or more categories.
An example of a user's labels for business could be "New Leads" or "Task: Peter." But without Hiver, only one person has access to the Labels.
Hiver takes Gmail Labels a step further. After creating a label and assigning the label to the appropriate emails, the label can be shared with one or more users. Users can also create email templates.
For example, Bob on the sales team or perhaps the employees in charge of on-boarding a new client.
Simply add the Hiver Extension to the Chrome Browser from the Chrome Web Store. Hiver walks new users through the entire process in a couple of minutes with a step by step tutorial.
Share and sync contact information between team members automatically. Hiver adds a layer of functionality to Google Contacts.
Create a contacts group within Gmail, and the group can be shared through Hiver. No more searching through emails or text messages for a prospect's information.
Hiver means an office-based team AND the mobile team in the field have up-to-the-minute prospect and client contact data.
An effective sales team appreciates speed - getting back to clients with the right information quickly and accurately can be crucial. A team can have a lightening-fast response time with email templates.
Create one email template in Hiver and share it across an organization with Hiver. Standardize a template email reply and a team's accuracy and speed in answering common questions increases.
Sometimes email isn't enough. For those moments requiring internal coordination or information about a particular email, Shared Notes fits the bill.
Imagine a digital post-it note right next to an email. Only the people the note has been shared with can see shared notes. Hiver allows a team to coordinate around an email without accidentally team notes to the client. No more hunting for notes that have been emailed back and forth.
Hiver gives anyone's Gmail a higher IQ, and a team the ability to respond to clients' needs faster. It’s a tool to consider for keeping your team aligned and flowing in the same direction!
When building a business, every customer contact counts.
Your website is the easiest and quickest way for potential customers to find and learn about your business. Your website tells people what type of products and services you have, where to find you, and what hours you're open.
While this might seem like a simple task, it can be challenging to stay visible online. One of the best ways to be found on the search engines is to create and post more original content on a consistent basis that drives organic traffic.
Organic traffic is when the search engine sends potential customers to your website for free. Google looks through the content on your website when it matches what the searcher is looking for and your site is served up in search results.
Content can be blog posts, infographics, videos, and images. The goal is to create an information base that people find interesting and informational.
Your site becomes the resource for people trying to find specific answers online. Then they will come back or share your site with other people. This is content marketing and the foundation of organic traffic.
To have a successful content marketing program, you must put new content on your website on a regular basis. Content can be as simple as regular weekly blog posts, infographics, and videos.
The more varied your content, the more potential customers you'll attract. Varied doesn’t mean any type of content, but content that is connected to your industry or services. Learn more about how to create shareable content that will increase organic traffic.
For example, a real estate agent can blog about the community they live in and local events rather than simply announcing the next open house.
People love images, and when you want to educate your viewers, infographics are a great tool. An infographic is basically content that educates developed in the form of an image. By using images and text, you can clearly explain even the most complex subjects. Here's a great resource on how to make an infographic.
Successful infographics on websites are frequently shared via social media sites which further increases your chances of more people seeing and coming back to your site. Thus, more organic traffic!
Videos are great at creating organic traffic as well. Most people will take the time to view a 1 to 3-minute video, but not everyone will read a blog post.
Videos should be well made and just long enough for an explanation or to summarize a product feature. How-to videos are often very popular for content marketing.
One quick idea is to create a short “how to” video, load it to YouTube, then grab the embed code and create a blog post where you quickly outline what the video is about and have the video as the main feature of the post.
Learn more about the different video options available to you and choose the right platform for your brand.
Content marketing gives you opportunities to connect with potential customers anytime and anywhere. Not everyone will want or need the same type of information, so having a variety of content helps attract people to your site.
Infographics and videos help break down information into digestible bits. Blog content helps create a knowledge base on your site online.
Together, these tips will help you attract traffic which means more viewers and ultimately more customers.
Staying at the top of the search engine searches takes work. By using a variety of content, infographics, videos, and blog posts, you can increase your visibility on the search engine. The higher you are in the search engine, the more visitors and traffic you'll receive.
