Brian Meert's Blog, page 61

A 5-Step Guide to Creating a Successful Video Marketing Strategy

DEC. 9, 2020

Kushagra Kevat / Unsplash

Facebook videos are viewed 8 billion times daily. Plus, there are 3.5 billion live streams going on. These are impressive numbers that speak of the demand for video content. Here we share five steps that will help you integrate video into your company’s marketing strategy.

Define Goals

It is important to understand the purpose of your video and what you want to achieve from it. The easiest way to define goals and objectives is to place video marketing in the sales funnel:

  The beginning of the funnel: awareness. This is relevant for new brands and companies looking to increase awareness. Informational videos can help raise awareness. Campaign performance should be tracked using metrics that are not related to sales, for example, the number of video views (including three-second sessions and total duration).
  The middle of the funnel: consideration. Here, efforts are directed toward strengthening relationships and gaining interest from potential customers. Content should spark discussion. This goal is relevant for companies operating in highly competitive markets. You achieve expert status through your own knowledge. This allows you to create long-term customer relationships. Also at this stage, the number of subscribers is increased. The most important performance metrics are click through rate, video view duration, and CTR.
  End of the funnel: conversion. This is where sales take place. In order to stimulate them, it is necessary to add the most important information to the video: USP, prices, guarantees. Event performance is tracked by sales and click-through rates. If the latter is there, but the deals are not closed, then it is worth looking for the gap between marketing and the proposed product.

Identify Your Target Audience

Knowing your target audience, its interests, priorities, and communication style. Before creating a video, create an image of the target audience. Identify lifestyle, behaviors, habits, interests, and priorities. This will help you choose:

Topics, formats, and video duration
Location of the target audience
Desires and needs of the target audience

Select Sites

Each social network has its own characteristics. Different sites are used for different purposes. Therefore, it is necessary to understand what the tasks of video marketing are and which platforms can help in achieving them:

 LinkedIn is a professional social network. Suitable for communication with professionals, decision-makers, and companies.
 YouTube is a specialized video platform. It allows you to publish your hosted content to any resource, including your site. In 2006, the video service was bought by Google, so the platform’s content has a high priority in search results. For this platform, you need to create high-quality videos. The quality of sound and picture is important.
TikTok is one of the most promising social networks, popular with young users. It contains videos of an entertainment format. A feature of the platform is the exceptional unobtrusiveness of advertising, which ensures high user loyalty. Created for videos taken on a smartphone. This opens up good opportunities for companies that cannot invest in professional content creation yet.
 Instagram is a social network with over 1 billion users. 200 million people visit at least one company profile every day. Instagram is actively working to improve the capabilities of video content. The following formats are already available:


IGTV – maximum duration of 10 minutes (not verified accounts) or 60 minutes (confirmed profiles);
Live video up to 60 minutes long;
Stories – 15-second video clips;
Posts allow you to post videos up to 60 seconds long.


 Facebook is a social network with 2.4 billion users. Here people can connect with friends and family, share content and follow brands. For companies, Facebook provides a wide range of promotion opportunities, including creating a store directly on the platform. There is also targeted advertising. The target audience is determined by a huge number of characteristics. Available formats:


Video 360
In-Stream
Video for advertising in Messenger
Instant Experience
Post – here you can place a file, or share a video from any other site by simply pasting the link. The main thing is that it is accessible to users. 

Plan Content Creation and Placement

Social media algorithms respond well to regular posts. Therefore, pay attention to planning. Create a calendar for creating and publishing videos. Make sure to include organic and commercials in your plan. There should be more of the first. Also, don’t forget to create content dedicated to a particular day. If you struggle to create articles and blog posts, you can use the help of an English tutor or Grammarly to make the most out of your content efforts.

Be sure to consider the specifics of your target audience. This will determine the frequency, days, and times of the publication. When choosing them, pay attention to the time the users visit the social network.

Track and Adjust Your Strategy

Video marketing doesn’t end with planning, creating, or hosting content. To improve its efficiency, constant improvements are needed. Track your marketing campaign targets regularly. If they do not suit you, then try to improve. Experiment with video formats, lengths, and types, trying to find the one that engages your target audience the most.

Split tests are helpful, especially if you are running an ad campaign and don’t know which creative is better. Run multiple trials. Through statistical analysis, you can choose the most efficient option, thereby saving time and money.

Conclusion

Every year, users watch an increasing number of videos. Therefore, the use of this type of content by companies is not just relevant but a necessity. It’s not difficult to integrate video marketing into your promotion strategy, especially if you follow our guide. Therefore, try, implement, and discover new opportunities to promote your own business.

8 Proven Methods That Prevent Shopping Cart Abandonment

Shopping carts are essential for the success of any e-commerce business, so it is important that we put plenty of thought and consideration into how effective they are. Cart abandonment rates are almost up to a staggering 70%, and with businesses set to lose a combined total of more than 4 trillion dollars in the next year, it is vital to be proactive with your e-commerce cart features.

Tackling shopping cart abandonment effectively often means improving various areas of your shopping platform. This may be anything from the general browsing experience to website security or the fluidity of the checkout process itself.

Source: Bolt

The Most Common Reasons for Cart Abandonment

Although cart abandonment is ideally something merchants would like to completely eradicate, that will never be the case. This is simply because there are too many variables out of your control, including human behavior, a person’s location, or their income.

Furthermore, many shoppers aren’t entirely serious about buying. They may even be adding items to the cart to compare prices with other stores. But even if shopping cart abandonment cannot be completely prevented, it would be best if it could be lessened. However, to know how to reduce cart abandonment, we first have to acknowledge the most common reasons for the issue in the first place. 

According to the data below, there are a wide range of reasons for cart abandonment. Anything from a bad returns policy to being forced to create an account can deter customers from finalizing their purchase.

Source: Baymard

So what are the best ways to combat shopping cart abandonment? Here are our top eight proven methods.

1. Offer Free Shipping and Returns

Free shipping and returns can be a great incentive for someone to finalize their purchase, rather than abandoning their cart. Many of those browsing and considering purchasing will be deterred by sudden additional fees being added once they reach the cart, especially if the shipping charges are on the higher side. By offering free shipping, you take away the deterrent and actually add another incentive to complete the purchase. Free returns also add an incentive to complete the purchase, especially for those who are unsure if the product is right for them. A free-returns policy is particularly effective when selling clothing online, as people can try on multiple sizes at home, without the detrimental effect of additional cost if someone doesn’t fit.

2. Allow Guest Accounts

Allowing guest account when purchasing is a great incentive for potential buyers. Guest accounts make first purchases a little less of a hassle for the customer, but more importantly, they feel far less intrusive. This is because they only ask for the essential details to complete the purchase and deliver the product. After a guest account purchase is made, you can still offer incentives of your own to encourage the customer to sign up completely, so you don’t really lose anything from the transaction. If anything, a customer will be more likely to sign up and buy again from your brand in the future, dueto the ease of the purchasing process.

You can even take guest account purchasing one step further and allow sign up through social media. This will speed up the sign up process for the customer, as they are probably already signed into social media, and it will auto-fill the majority of the data form for them.

3. Retarget Your Customers

Many customers will leave their shopping carts with the intention of coming back to it at a later date. Online shopping is often used for its convenience, so this is a fairly frequent occurrence. However, customers will also frequently forget about their previous shopping cart completely. This is when retargeting is useful. By retargeting customers who abandoned their shopping cart, you may reignite their desire to make the purchase. With the help of an effective data feed optimization service, you can narrow the best options for retargeting by the value of a product or even what is on sale. This may help to increase profitability when you advertise through Google text ads, email, or dynamic ads. 

4. Optimize Your Site for Mobile and Tablet

By optimizing your website for mobile and tablet, you will not only get more customers completing their purchase, but you will also get more customers in general. In fact since 2017, around 50% of all online purchases have been made through mobile or tablet. This means having an effective mobile site is essential.

On smaller screens, the desktop version of a website can often be difficult, if not impossible to use without optimization. This deters customers from browsing through your website, which means purchases are far less likely to be completed. If you optimize your website for other platforms, each page will be suited to the downsize in screen. This will make it easier for customers to browse, enter address details, and payment details.

5. Offer Numerous Payment Methods

As many online stores attract customers from all over the world, a diverse range of payment options is essential. This is because customers will not necessarily have the same payment habits, income levels, and may not even have access to the same payment brands as one another. By offering numerous forms of payment, customers will be more likely to complete their purchase. Useful payment methods that may benefit you and your customers include

Credit/debit cards
Secure third-party payment options, such as Securepay or Stripe
Gift cards or discount vouchers 
Staggered payments via one of the payment methods (e.g. 3 installment payments of $20 instead of $60)
Apple or Google Pay
PayPal

6. Ensure the Shopping Experience Is Secure

If a customer is going to enter payment details into your website, they will want to know if it is secure. Try to make sure your security is clear and visible with an SSL seal, especially on the payment page. Otherwise, customers may abandon their cart simply because your site doesn’t seem safe, even if it is. Visual factors help to build up trust between the brand and customer, so this will also make customers more likely to make future purchases.

Source: Krishtechnolabs

7. Display Buyer Reviews and Support Access

Displaying your buyer reviews can help customers better understand the product they are buying, and if it is right for them. There are numerous platforms available where you can collect product reviews. It is important to pick the one that makes the most sense for your business.



This will ensure only customers who are truly interested in your product are adding it to their cart. It will also help customers trust the brand, and this in turn makes them more likely to complete a purchase, especially if the feedback is good. And even if it isn’t, the brand is being open about this, which suggests that honesty is a brand value. This reflects well with most customers. 

If negative feedback is left, this is still an opportunity. A good brand response to negative feedback can turn a negative review into a positive one. It can get the negative reviewer to shop with you again, whilst also convincing others that you are trustworthy. 

Good support is also useful beyond reviews, as customers can find fast answers to their questions or issues with products. Like reviews, easily accessed support such as email or live chat can help build trust, help your site demonstrate social proof, and ensure customers finalise their purchases instead of abandoning their cart.

8. Allow Easy Cart Maneuverability and Product Savings

By allowing customers to freely move between browsing and various stages of their cart (checkout, enter payment details, etc.) customers will be more inclined to complete their potential purchases. This is because it gives customers an extra opportunity to check products, information, and more, which helps them confirm their decisions.

If you also allow customers to save the products in their cart for a later date, they will also be more likely to complete their purchase. In many cases, people who buy online do so because it saves them time and it is convenient. However, some customers will abandon their cart if they get distracted by something more important or have to do something else. By allowing customers to save their cart, they can come back to their potential purchases at a later date when they have a chance.

Conclusion 

Unfortunately, shopping cart abandonment can never be completely avoided. However, by following these proven methods, it is likely that you will see an increase in customers completing their purchases. Make sure to build on customer loyalty and keep your website up to date. Customer care, security, and accessibility are all big factors in ensuring your customers are happy to continue shopping with you from choosing the product, all the way through to completing the final purchase.  

By Jacques van der Wilt 

How to Boost Channel Subscribers and Engagement Using YouTube Giveaways

DEC. 3, 2020

Almost all major YouTube channels have, at some point, hosted a giveaway. Giveaways are fun, interactive, and engaging campaigns that can produce huge growth. 

The main benefit of a giveaway is its ability to boost subscribers, engagement, and views instantly. A boost in any of those can directly translate into more income and massive sponsorships. Let’s take a closer look at a few YouTube giveaway examples.

YouTube Giveaway Examples

Everyone from Dude Perfect to James Charles is hosting YouTube giveaways. While many of these kind-hearted YouTubers may love giving away free stuff, there are some real benefits behind their actions. Here are the two main benefits of YouTube giveaways: They increase channel subscribers and engagement.

The Dude Perfect

Dude Perfect / YouTube

The Dude Perfect merch giveaway (pictured above) is an excellent example of how YouTube giveaways generate subscribers and engagement.

To enter the giveaway, users had to subscribe to Dude Perfect and share their giveaway announcement video. This means that all entrants to the giveaway will become Dude Perfect subscribers and will instantly engage with them by sharing the video.

The result of this simple giveaway is insane. Their giveaway video has more than 59 million views and  100 thousand comments. 

The giveaway was also hosted at the launch of their new series. Giveaways are excellent campaigns for creating hype around the launch of a new product or service. 

James Charles

On August 28, 2020, James Charles announced a $100,000 Giveaway in a video uploaded to his YouTube channel. Users had to subscribe to James’s channel and follow him on all of his social media accounts to enter. 

This is an excellent strategy for using a single YouTube giveaway to grow your subscribers and followers on other social media platforms.

Source: Social Blade

In the month that followed the giveaway announcement, James’s channel peaked in new subscriber acquisitions, the highest being 600 thousand new subscribers in just a week!

Now that you understand the benefits of a YouTube giveaway, let’s go over how you can host your own giveaway to boost subscribers and engagement. 

Hosting a YouTube Giveaway

The concept of a giveaway is simple: You sponsor a prize, ask people to subscribe to your channel to enter, and then pick out a random winner. However, there is a lot that can go wrong, especially without proper planning. If you want your giveaway to exceed your expectations, then you will have to carefully plan and execute these three crucial areas of your giveaway:

Your goals
Your prize
Launching and promoting the giveaway

By carefully planning the above, you will have a better idea of structuring and promoting your giveaway. Let’s take a closer look..

Determining Your Giveaway Goal

For most brands, hosting a YouTube giveaway is a means of boosting its channel subscribers. However, you can use your YouTube giveaway to achieve other (or multiple) goals, as well. Going back to the James Charles giveaway, the entry method required users to follow James on all of his socials.

Source: Vyper

His giveaway helped him grow his social media followers, as well. You, too, can host a giveaway that achieves multiple goals. Some examples of popular goals include:

Growing email subscribers: Ask users to submit their email addresses to enter your giveaway.
Increasing website traffic: Direct traffic from your YouTube video to your website to fill in the giveaway entry form.
Software or app download: You can insert a link to the Play or App Store in the description below your YouTube video and request users to download your app to enter the giveaway.

Once you have decided on a goal, you can then carefully structure your giveaway to achieve that goal.  If you want your giveaway to attract a large targeted audience, you will have to choose an awesome prize.

Choosing a Prize

When a person announces a giveaway in their video, the first thing a viewer wants to see is the prize. The prize is one of the most crucial aspects of a YouTube giveaway. People can be hesitant to submit their personal information to enter. Some people will only subscribe to your channel if your giveaway is “worth it.” Offering a prize that your audience finds valuable is the best way to convince them to take action and enter.

Source: Vyper

Lew from Unbox Therapy (above) gave away 106 smartphones. This campaign has since generated more than 14 million views on the announcement video.

 

You could say that his video received a massive amount of views because of how massive the prize is. So, if you want similar success with your YouTube giveaway, you should also offer a huge prize, right?

Using a generic prize like an iPhone might seem like an excellent way of attracting a broad audience. However, it’s possible that most of the leads you attract will only be interested in the iPhone and not your brand. An iPhone may increase the number of participants, but it will also generate a huge amount of poor-quality leads.

Finding Your Audience

It’s always best that you choose a prize that will attract your target audience. For example, the popular gaming franchise, Fortnite, can attract an audience of passionate gamers by offering gaming consoles and controllers as their giveaway prize.

Source: Vyper

Such prizes are almost exclusively desired by gamers and will attract that crowd. It won’t necessarily attract other audiences, like photographers or health-conscious people. If your brand wants to target photographers, then you will have to choose prizes like drones or photo-editing software. 

Still, having trouble deciding on a prize? Perhaps you can ask your customers what they think will be a great prize for a giveaway.

Launching a YouTube Giveaway

Launching a bonafide YouTube giveaway is as easy as filming and uploading a new video to your channel.  When creating your giveaway, always ensure that the giveaway video has the following:

A thumbnail with the prize
A video that shows off the price
Dates related to the giveaway
The entry method and how a winner will be chosen
All of the above information placed into the description box under the video

Source: Vyper

Once your video has been uploaded, your current subscribers will discover it and enter the giveaway. By asking people to share your video, you will increase your chances of getting more people to watch it. If you feel that not enough of your subscribers found your video, you can create a post on YouTube to announce your giveaway.

Promoting a YouTube Giveaway

Solely relying on the YouTube platform may not be enough. Remember, Giveaways are massive campaigns that can attract audiences from any platform. Because of this, it’s recommended that you promote your giveaway on all of your existing marketing channels (social media, email, blog, etc.).

Social Media

You can share your YouTube giveaway on all of your social media channels to get your followers to come over to YouTube and subscribe. 

Alternatively, you can simply create a post (like the one above) with instructions on how to enter. If you use a Twitter automation tool, you can easily schedule tweets that will be published during the course of the campaign.

Email

Giveaways are the perfect excuse for you to email people you know. You can send out the following emails:

An announcement email informing people about your new giveaway
A reminder email to let people know how much time they have left to enter
An announcement email officially naming the winners while also thanking everyone who entered

All emails can have links to your website or a page with more information on the prize. This is the perfect opportunity to increase website traffic.

If you don’t have a website, you can always insert links to your YouTube channel to drive traffic over there. Using an email marketing service will be ideal in scheduling the above emails so you don’t forget to send them out during the campaign.

Blogs

Blog posts are excellent for giveaways because of the amount of information you can insert into a post. You can easily embed your YouTube giveaway video into a blog post.

You have more options to promote your YouTube Giveaway when hosting it on a blog. You can use chatbots, banners, and pop-ups during the campaign to inform visitors about your giveaway.

If you don’t have a blog of your own, you can submit a request to be featured on a relevant blog. Alternatively, you can collaborate with a blog to co-host your giveaway. 

The benefit of partnering up with other brands is that you can both help each other promote the giveaway. 

Source: Vyper 

In the giveaway above, Complex teamed up with Overkill and 43einhalb to host a giveaway that was featured on the Complex blog. Each brand shared the giveaway on all of their socials while also tagging each other. Tagging a partner in your post will help your audience discover and follow them. They can also tag you in their social media posts so their followers can discover you.

TL;DR

YouTube giveaways are viral promotional campaigns that can easily integrate into your channel and social media. Giveaways are fun and make for excellent content. 

Hosting a giveaway has proven to be very beneficial for YouTube channels looking to increase subscribers and engagement. Brands sponsor prizes that participants can potentially win once they have subscribed to their YouTube channel. Some brands take things even further by structuring their giveaways to generate email leads and social media followers.

By Jack Paxton

10 Instagram Marketing Tools That’ll Build Your Brand Following

DEC. 1, 2020

Kate Torline / Unsplash

According to the Global Web Index, on average, most people spend over two hours every day on social media platforms. Of these, Instagram has over 1 billion monthly active users. With this amount of active users, you must identify ways to promote your brand, and marketing tools can help simplify that process.

Choosing the right Instagram marketing tool, to a large extent, influences how fast your brand gains a following. Thankfully, most of the great marketing tools for Instagram are either free or affordable. In this post, you’ll learn about great Instagram marketing tools and their importance to building a brand following.

Why are Instagram Marketing Tools Important for Brand Following?

Instagram is a popular social network capable of driving business and brand growth. Gone are the  days when it was only for scrolling through pictures, memes, and food content. 

Instagram marketing tools provide additional features and functionalities, such as scheduling posts, suggesting hashtags, and providing performance analytics. These features help you market your brand on Instagram effortlessly, increase your following, and engage your audience. Some of these features include automated publishing, smart scheduling, and insightful analytics.

What Are the Best Instagram Marketing Tools?

According to a survey done by Facebook, 78% of the users believe that Instagram brands are popular, and 74% believe that brands are relevant. Evidently, Instagram users are very open to brands marketing themselves on the platform. Here are some great Instagram marketing tools that will help build your following. 

1. Sendible

Sendible is a well-known social media management tool that allows users to schedule images and videos to directly post on Instagram. With this tool, you can fix a schedule for your posts for certain times or add them to the queues. For just $29 per month, you can enjoy this app and its benefits. All the content you scheduled previously on Instagram and other social media platforms are displayed on a calendar. This allows you to tweak your schedule quickly. Other features of sensible include

A report builder for building client reports
A built-in social media inbox for managing mentions and comments
A built-in CRM with team management

2. Combin Growth

Combin growth is an Instagram marketing tool that helps you increase your brand’s number of followers. It has tools such as following analysis and interaction features. All of these features help you gain genuine Instagram followers while interacting with your current Instagram audience. With enhanced machine learning, this tool helps you analyze and identify the accounts and posts that are not performing well. With the Combin growth tool, you can 

Find people who aren’t following you back.
Identify your target audience on Instagram.
Identify Instagram influencers for your account.
Monitor audience activity and growth.
Style your Instagram grid layout.
Manage multiple accounts.

3. Tailwind

Tailwind is a powerful social media scheduling tool that focuses on visual social networks, such as  Instagram and Pinterest. It offers brands scheduling functions and powerful analytics features, including trend reporting, profile metrics, and benchmarks of virality and engagements. Additionally, Tailwind offers these capabilities and tools:

Direct posting to Instagram
Hashtag recommendations and hashtag lists
The chrome browser extension for regramming
SmartSchedule features that will pick the best time for you to post your content
Create a branded landing page for free                              
Easy analytics for profile performance, posts, and summary reports

4. Onlypult

Onlypult is a social media management tool with varied functions such as teamwork, image- and  video-editing. This tool can be used to post content to blogs, social media, and messengers. It enhances your functionality; allows you to create multiple links, micro landing pages, and boost sales. With Onlypult, you can manage multiple accounts from only one window at a time, without having to switch.

Here are some of Onlypult’s features:

Onlypult provides cool features such as calendar, analytics, hashtags, image and video editor, and planner.
It lets you work with multiple accounts simultaneously.
It helps you analyze volume, growth of followers, and the best time to publish.
It has features for automatic post deletion.
This tool allows you to schedule posts and publishes them in real-time.
Gives your social media manager access to publish content without sharing a password.
Allows you to analyze  trending hashtags.
It also provides features such as scheduling posting, analytics, and hashtag suggestions, to help you market your brand.

5. Unbox Social

Unbox Social is a social media marketing tool that helps you with Instagram analytics and competition tracking. Its dedicated features provide you with insights into your brand’s Instagram following. With this tool, you can track just how well your posts and stories are performing.

It also helps you discover vital insights on your engagement, post reach, and metrics on your audience. It does this using an all-encompassing dashboard. This tool helps you track everything concerning your social media followership, from content to video posts, to all your stories while you track important metrics.

You can also get detailed insights into every marketing metric. Here’s what this platform can do for you:

Provides you with an assessment of your competitors performance.
Analytics feature provides you with highly detailed information devoid of audience sentiments.
The data obtained can be used to make insightful decisions on brand growth.
Helps you identify important Instagram influencers for your brand. These influencers can help expand the reach of your brand campaigns.

6. Buffer

Buffer is a known go-to Instagram marketing tool for scheduling posts. It ensures that the marketing of your brand and products are stress-free and as streamlined as possible. With Buffer, you can schedule posts automatically for Instagram. All you need to do is attach pre-written copies of your video and photo content to the queue.

Other features of Buffer include

Scheduling your Instagram posts and freeing up time for you to focus on other important aspects of your business
Scheduling posts using the social media calendar tht will automatically be posted on Instagram on the allotted date
Increasing the efficiency of your brand’s Instagram marketing efforts

7. LeeTags

Leetag is an amazing Instagram marketing tool that analyzes hashtag trends and generates several hashtags for analysis. The hashtags generated are relevant, special, and dedicated to improving your brand’s visibility. 

With this tool, you can track every comment related to your brand or hashtag and analyze how your audience interacts with the tags. Other features of Leetags include

Reports relating to brand followership, reposts, audience statistics, and more
A fully integrated cloud service
Tools for organizating and maintenaning your Instagram account

8. Hashtagify

Hashtags are important tools that improve your visibility and ability to be discovered on Instagram. Since hashtags are important for your brand’s visibility, you will need a reliable tool to create the best hashtag strategy. Hashtagify helps you do exactly that.

Due to the ever-increasing content pool on Instagram, hashtagify helps you automate the creation of relevant hashtags. This promotes brand followership.

Some great features of Hashtagify include

The ease of finding hashtags relevant to your content
A search tool for finding different hashtags and exploring their popularity, trends, and correlations.
Instant hashtag suggestions for Instagram

9. Later

Later is one of the few marketing tools that started as an Instagram scheduling tool. It has since evolved from merely scheduling to other functions that are necessary for effective marketing. Later allows you to schedule Instagram posts and content to be published later (hence the name) and keep track of events via the platform’s calendar.

Some cool features of later are

The ease of scheduling Instagram content
The ease of content organization
Affordable paid plans
Unlimited data download

10. InstaGrowth Ninja

This tool is best suited to small- and medium-sized businesses. InstaGrowth Ninja plays the role of a social media marketing manager. It analyses your current trends and brainstorms innovative ways to achieve a higher following. The app alsos analyses what people are talking and hashtagging about.

Here are other things InstaGrowth Ninja can do:

It is capable of sending out over 30 DMs.
It interacts with users round the clock.
It is capable of following close to 400 people every day.

11. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a scheduling tool that helps simplify the task of posting on Instagram. Your content (images, videos, text, and Stories) can be posted directly without fuss from your Hootsuite dashboard. Once the post has been published online, the tool allows you to respond to comments directly and check the post from the dashboard.

The features of Hootsuite include

Creating high-quality stories using images and videos provided
Scheduling posts and publishing them at the agreed time
Monitoring customers, trending hashtags, competitors, etc., effortlessly.
Measuring the performance of your posts and analyzing your strategy

12. Iconosquare

Iconosquare is a social media analysis tool that can be utilized for Instagram. It helps with the analysis of your Instagram posts and overall brand followership. The information obtained from the analysis provides you with insights on the best time to post, the posts with the most engagement, and more.

Aside from aiding with analysis, you can also schedule posts to publish, monitor mentions, track high-performance tags, and keep an eye on comments. Other features include

Real-time performance update
Hashtag tracking
Measurement of brand followership
Tracking of influential posts and profile spotting

Conclusion

Instagram is a well-known social media platform with an average of one billion active followers a month. To take advantage of this audience, you must select the appropriate marketing tool. Some Instagram marketing tools that help improve brand following are Combin growth, Sensible, Hootsuite, Later, and Hashtagify. These tools provide you with various features to make your marketing easier and more efficient.

By Grace P.

How to Edit Stock Photos for Facebook Ads

NOV. 27, 2020

Cottonbro / Pexels

Facebook users come across a boatload of ads daily. To stand out and attract enough eyeballs to your business, your ads need to glow with eye-catching images that would cause your target buyers to pause and click instead of scrolling away.

Fortunately, you don’t have to invest heavily in a high-end camera to take beautiful ad-worthy photos. You also don’t have to pay someone to edit or design your images every time you decide to run an ad. All you need is a stock photo, an inexpensive editing tool, and a detailed tutorial to guide you.

In this easy-to-follow guide, you’ll discover where to find high-quality stock photos for your Facebook ads and how to edit them with Colorcinch in under 10 minutes.

Where to Find Stock Photos For Facebook Ads

There are hundreds of places to find stock photos. Regardless of your budget size and the image style you seek, you’ll always find a stock photo site that meets your needs. While the list is vast, here are five best places to get quality stock photos for your Facebook ads:

Pexels (Free) 
Pixabay (Free) 
Unsplash (Free) 
Gratisography (Free) 
Shutterstock (Paid)

All the free directories above feature CC0-licensed images, which permits you to freely modify images downloaded from them without running into copyright issues.

How to Design Stunning Facebook Ad Images Using Colorcinch

 

Step 1: Choose a stock photo.

The first step to creating a Facebook ad image is to find a beautiful picture. You want to ensure that you choose a high-quality photo captured from an excellent angle.

Let’s assume that you run an online clothing store that you’d love to promote via Facebook ads. The first thing to do is to visit one of the stock photo sites listed above and search for a term related to what you intend to promote. For an e-commerce store selling clothing items, you can search for “clothing store,” “clothing,” “shirts,” or any other term related to clothing.

Once your search returns results, navigate around to reveal more photos, then pick the one you find attractive. Since Facebook has a recommended resolution of 1200 x 628 pixels for News Feed ads, ensure that your photo isn’t smaller in width or height.

Step 2: Upload your photo.

Upload the stock photo you just downloaded to Colorcinch (or any other photo-editing tool). You can do this on Colorcinch by clicking on the upload button.

Step 3: Crop your photo.

There are several recommended Facebook ad image dimensions, depending on the type of ad you intend to run. And it’s most likely that your stock photo’s size won’t fit Facebook’s recommendations perfectly. So, to ensure the image isn’t stretched or squeezed when your ad goes live, you have to crop it.

To crop an image on Colorcinch, navigate to Edit > Crop.

To run a News Feed ad, you’ll have to crop the photo to 1200 x 628 pixels. To do this, choose Freeform (from the drop-down options under Aspect Ratio), disable Lock Aspect Ratio, and then input the width and height as shown below.

Decide on what region of the photo to crop, then click APPLY.

Step 4: Add filters.

Photo-brightening filters perform much better than color-dampening ones when creating Facebook ad images. Remember, the goal is to transform your stock photo for better visibility.

To add a filter, navigate to the Filters tab and try out a couple of options. Colorcinch has loads of unique filters, so settling for one might be somewhat of a (good) problem.

For this guide, we’ll be applying the Simple filter. You’ll find it in Filters > Simple. 

Step 5: Brighten things up.

To brighten your stock photo, go to Edit > Enhance > Exposure.

After adjusting some settings under Exposure and Details (following the instructions in our previous tutorial), we are now left with a glowy and sharp photo, as you can see below:

Step 6: Add text.

For a while Facebook restricted the number of text advertisers could use on their ad image. But with the recent change in the ad policy, you no longer have to calculate your ad’s text-to-image ratio every time. Just ensure you don’t choke up your ad photo with large, intrusive text.

Colorcinch text tool allows you to add text of different sizes and beautify them by choosing from the more than 50 fonts available. You can also modify text color, add a shadow, an outline, and even a custom background.

To include text, navigate to the Text tab and click on Add Text. Once the textbox appears, clear the default auto-generated text, add your new text, and then modify other settings as you desire.

Here’s what the image looks like after enabling Shadow and Outline and applying the Comfortaa font:

Step 7: Include a CTA button.

A call-to-action (CTA) button can make your image more attractive and attention-grabbing, and therefore amp your ad’s performance. Fortunately, you can easily add CTA buttons (and other graphics) to any image. Here’s how to do it: Go to the Graphics tab, type in your desired graphic (e.g., “shopping cart icon”) in the search bar, and then hit ENTER. You can also click on the square icon (circled in the image below) to search by category.

To add a square or rectangular box (which will serve as the CTA button), search for the shape (or navigate to the Shapes category). Once you find the shape you need, drag or click on the graphic to add it to the image, then stretch, shrink, or move it however you like.

After merging some square boxes and adding extra text, here’s what our final ad image for the online clothing store looks like:

Additional Tip: You can also add a logo to your Facebook ad image. To do this, go to the Graphics tab, click on the blue button, then import the logo from your PC.

Step 8: Save and download the image.

Once you’re done editing, click on Save > My Computer on the right top-corner to download your final image.

Grab Your Prospects’ Attention with Your Irresistible Images

One of the major components of high-converting Facebook ads is an eye-catching image. So whether you edit your stock photo using Colorcinch or other online tools, ensure your final design is bright and super attractive, so your ad won’t drown in the busy News Feeds of your prospects.

How the “Task Assassin” Founded the Biggest Facebook Ad Agency in Hollywood

NOV. 25, 2020

In an interview with Native Influence, AdvertiseMint CEO Brian Meert goes deeper into his background: what inspired him to start his ad agency in Hollywood, the challenges and successes he’s faced in his career, and how he got the nickname “task assassin.”

When asked how Meert got into the marketing industry, the CEO talked about his first business in college:

I first began running Google Adwords campaigns after I started a business in MBA school called Pocket Goals. I used the cafeteria money my school had given me to run paid ads to increase sales. Some days were great, other days had no sales, and I immediately feared not being able to eat. I’ve always taken that approach with all accounts we manage at AdvertiseMint — we spend each dollar like it’s our own. Ten years after MBA school, when Facebook launched Ads Manager and Business Manager, allowing ads to appear in News Feeds, I decided to quit my job as a marketer for a financial company after seeing Facebook’s ad targeting options. I knew it was going to be big. When I left, I started to build my agency, AdvertiseMint. That’s how I got into Facebook advertising.”

Meert also talked about how he transitioned from Google Adwords to Facebook ads:

I was inspired to build an agency focusing on Facebook ads because when the ad platform first launched, I was very impressed with the ad targeting options available. You could target virtually anyone from any demographic, background, interest, and location. At that time, I thought it was incredibly revolutionary. I saw the future of advertising. I knew it was going to be big, so I quit my 9-5 job and created an agency focusing on Facebook ads. I knew there was a market for it because the platform was still so new at the time, and there weren’t many experts in the industry. Although my agency focused solely on Facebook ads, I did envision covering more advertising platforms. We’ve since expanded our services to Amazon advertising as well.”

In the interview, Meert also reveals what’s in store for the ad agency, advice to young entrepreneurs, and the emerging trends he’s most excited for.

You can read the full interview of Brian Meert at Native Influence.

10 Instagram Stories Examples to Inspire Your Marketing Campaigns

NOV. 19, 2020

Alex Bracken / Unsplash

Just how effective is Instagram as a marketing medium? With more than 1 billion users as of January 2020, Instagram is one of the largest social networks worldwide. Half of these users, around 500 million, use Instagram Stories every day. 

Stories has now surpassed Snapchat as the most popular short-form content-sharing platform. With Facebook (which owns Instagram) throwing its full support behind the technology, the feature won’t be going away any time soon.

Businesses have now made Stories a crucial part of their marketing strategy. Around one-third of the most-viewed stories come from business accounts. Advertisers are now spending 23% more on IG-focused content compared to two years ago, and much of this growth is driven by Stories. Because Instagram allows businesses with 10,000 followers or more to post links to e-commerce sites, customers can now make purchases directly from an IG Story. 

Instagram Stories are effective because they are non-intrusive, and users can choose when and if to interact with them. Unlike channels such as email, where spam filters determine what a user receives in their inbox and what doesn’t make it, Stories are more targeted and generate more purposeful clicks. 

If your brand’s marketing strategy doesn’t include using Instagram Stories as a marketing channel, you might be missing out on a lot of potential revenue, especially among younger consumers. As long as you follow IG Stories best practices, you will improve your user engagement rates significantly. Here are some examples of brands that have gone all-in with their IG Stories ad campaigns.

Prada: Catering to Target Audience

Luxury fashion brand Prada (@prada) doesn’t always post Stories on their global Instagram account, but when they do, they’re bound to be mysterious and enticing. In fact, when Prada announced its 2020 Holiday collection, it set the bar high for all other fashion houses’ IG campaigns.

@prada / Instagram

The brand’s announcement was low-key but elegant, starting with the first few Stories images being shot in monochrome. Each succeeding story had a bit more color in it, and some panels had polls to engage the audience. There was no need for a fancy soundtrack or celebrity endorsers. The brand and the products spoke for themselves. 

Prada succeeded in maintaining its air of luxury and exclusivity through its IG Stories campaign. While Instagram is an open platform, Prada’s marketing language spoke directly to its elegant, stylish, and affluent customer base.

National Geographic: Partnering with Like-Minded Brands

With travel restrictions in place over large swathes of the globe, more people are staying home and working from home than ever in 2020. Unfortunately, this can disrupt our mental and physical health. This is why National Geographic (@natgeo), which is known for excellent nature photography, recommends that people spend plenty of time outdoors, whether walking through a forest or climbing up a peak.

The magazine has a long history of partnering with brands that share its values. The print version of the publication, for example, used to carry ads for cameras and all-terrain vehicles. This tradition of collaborating with like-minded brands carries over to its IG Stories campaigns.

@natgeo / Instagram

This November, National Geographic partnered with Ford Bronco to encourage people to submit their nature photographs for a contest judged by famed nature photographer Jimmy Chin. This contest is not only intended to collect fine nature photographs. It’s also a way for NatGeo and Ford followers to enjoy life a bit more despite the current health crisis by going out into nature. 

Nike: Championing Diversity

While most sports brands have just one IG account, Nike chooses to segment their Instagram presence according to the product line. There’s one main Instagram account for Nike, then there are separate accounts for Nike Basketball, Nike Running, Nike Sportswear (@nikesportswear), Nike Women, and even Nike Skateboarding.

With such a diverse product line catering to everyone from weekend warriors to some of the greatest athletes on the planet, one would expect Nike to be vocal about ethnic and cultural diversity. The brand does not disappoint in this regard as it chose to feature historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in its #YardRunners campaign.

@nikesportswear / Instagram

The term “yardrunner” is closely tied in with HBCU fraternity and sorority culture, and for its October campaign, Nike featured alumni of Howard and Dillard universities who have achieved greater heights thanks to the support systems they developed in college. This was the brand’s way of paying tribute to the institutions that helped shape Black culture into what it is today.

Nintendo: Cultivating Customer Loyalty

For Nintendo (@nintendo), the customer journey doesn’t end when a customer purchases a console or a game. In fact, when done right, it’s just the beginning of a long, fruitful relationship. 

Let’s say you bought the Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit game. As a beginner, building a good AR-enabled kart course might be tricky, and your first few courses might not be able to support faster cars. Nintendo’s IG Stories help Mario Kart Live users create more challenging circuits, even suggesting a course in the shape of an infinity sign.

@nintendo / Instagram

With the continued success of the Mario Kart Deluxe game (26.7 million copies sold to date), it looks like Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit will continue to be loved by fans, especially with the course suggestions above.  

Disney: Engaging Followers

While entertainment giant Disney (@disney) has diversified into other fields such as broadcasting, theme parks, sports, and independent films, it is still best known for its iconic cartoon characters, including Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Pluto, and Goofy. Almost everyone has a favorite Disney character, and most people associate Disney with good childhood memories.

It shouldn’t surprise us that even Mickey Mouse has his own Instagram account. Did you know that the first words he ever spoke on screen were “Hot dogs”? Neither did we — we only learned about it when we took the Mickey Quiz on Disney’s IG Stories!

@disney / Instagram

Aside from Mickey Mouse, Disney’s Instagram account also has IG Stories quizzes about their other iconic characters and feature films, such as Pluto and Coco. Taking these quizzes is like taking a trip back to childhood and Saturday mornings spent watching Disney cartoons. It looks like Disney has found the perfect way to mix classic content and Instagram Stories to keep its fans engaged.

NBA: Generating Buzz

The National Basketball Association (@nba) features some of the greatest players on the planet today, and each year players, teams, and fans experience new highs and lows. Will the Warriors recover from their disastrous season? Was the Lakers’ “bubble” championship the beginning of a dynasty? 

The new season kicks off with the annual NBA draft, where teams pick from a pool consisting of the most talented young players from the National Collegiate Athletic Association and leagues outside the US. 

@nba / Instagram

For fans watching out for the 2020 NBA Draft, the NBA’s IG account is also counting down the days, hours, and minutes with them. The countdown builds up the anticipation and promises some stability in what has been a topsy-turvy year for sports fans everywhere.

Stephen Colbert: Stories Takeover

Stephen Colbert has successfully stepped out of his “Colbert Report” persona and settled in as the host of a late-night show. Even if the pandemic has kept A Late Show (@colbertlateshow) from packing in the crowds, Colbert is still actively producing and publishing content across different platforms.

For instance, just a few weeks back, Colbert featured country music legend, Dolly Parton, on one of his episodes. There couldn’t be a more unlikely crossover, but the duo was able to pull it off and entertain fans of both Parton and Colbert. 

@colbertlateshow / Instagram

A Late Show promoted Parton’s guest appearance by letting her take over the show’s Instagram Stories for one day. Parton walked the show’s IG followers through her daily schedule, starting with her makeup routine and ending with an invitation to watch the show. Colbert is fond of IG Stories takeovers, and it’s been working out splendidly for both him and his guests.

Forever 21: Promoting Other Platforms

Gone are the days when brands placed all their bets on just one social media platform. People have learned that it’s important to have a consistent presence on at least the three major networks (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter), then explore other networks in addition. 

Forever 21 (@forever21) is no exception to this rule. Aside from publishing content for more than 15 million followers on Instagram, it also generates content for TikTok, which is one of the fastest-growing social platforms today. Despite threats of a U.S. ban on the app, its user figures are expected to continue rising as it gains popularity among younger people. 

@forever21 / Instagram

Forever 21’s latest campaign, featuring southern Californian influencer Chyna Le, showcases its upcoming fall and winter collection. But instead of attaching a link to its online store, the brand invites followers to follow Chyna’s TikTok account as well. It’s a sign that Forever 21 is really serious about boosting its presence on that platform, where the brand already has close to 22,000 followers.  

The New York Times: Featuring Diverse Voices

When it comes to politics and divisive issues, people need to hear different voices in order to form an educated opinion. The New York Times (@nytimes) recognizes this need for diversity, and one of their advocacies is featuring people from all walks of life across America in their Instagram Stories. 

Their post-election IG Stories campaign, for example, asked voters about their hopes and dreams in the next four years. While the people they featured included Democrats and Republicans, city-dwellers, and people from the rural areas, they all agreed on one thing: they all wanted to get along together and start working for a better future.

@nytimes / Instagram

When your brand is trying to expand its reach (as the New York Times has successfully done far beyond New York and the northeastern US), you need to listen to people who don’t necessarily agree with you. In fact, as you share your thoughts with them, you might find out that you have a lot more in common than you think.

Taco Bell: Featuring UGC

Brands love Instagram Stories because it is one of the most interactive platforms out there. Users can send direct messages and reactions from IG Stories. However, by featuring user-generated content, you take your engagement with your followers to a whole new level.

We saw something like this from Fast food chain, Taco Bell. The brand (@tacobell) is particularly good in featuring content created by its followers, which falls under their well-designed marketing plan. Every Monday, it posts fan art submitted using the hashtag #TacoBellMuse to its IG Stories. Aside from showing Instagram how much everyone just loves Taco Bell, the brand gives these up-and-coming artists exposure to more than 1.5 million people who follow the Instagram channel.

@tacobell / Instagram

Taco Bell might claim that it seriously has the coolest fans, but we think the way the company promotes fan-created content is just as cool.

How to Create an Instagram Stories Campaign That Works

You might be feeling inspired after seeing all the IG Stories campaigns above. If you’re still not using Stories and would like to start somewhere, you need to know the things that go into a successful IG Stories campaign:

Create content that is made for Stories. The dimensions should be correct, and video clips should be 15 seconds long at most. This means you should also keep text to a minimum. Less is more!
Use either a video or several slides to tell a longer story. Single static images don’t work as well as they normally would because your audience can only view them for a few seconds. 
Make your campaign interactive. Whether you’re asking your followers to respond to a poll, swipe up to go to your landing page or an affiliate page, or submit fan-created content, always go for active engagement. 
Keep it real. Use the voice your brand normally uses. If your brand is serious and luxurious like Prada, go ahead and follow your branding. But in many cases, nothing beats a healthy dose of humor.
Your Stories must provide something of value. If your audience sees that your Stories just repeats something you’ve posted previously, your brand won’t get the traction it needs. However, if your IG Stories campaign offers something you haven’t offered yet, like a special discount, a giveaway, or a chance to get involved directly, your audience will get involved. 

Instagram Stories is one of the best channels you could ever use to reach out to younger audiences. If you want to get a glimpse of what will work with a younger market, try looking at the accounts that your target audience follows. Keep pushing your creative boundaries and don’t be afraid to try new things. Best of luck with your campaigns!

By Owen Jones

Twitter Rolls Out a Stories Feature, “Fleets”

NOV. 17, 2020

Twitter is joining the bandwagon by rolling out its own version of a Stories-esque feature called “Fleets.”

Much like Instagram Stories, Fleets, which appear on top of the Twitter Feed, are 15-second ephemeral photos or videos that last for only 24 hours.

To create a Fleet, users can click on their profile image from the left side of the Fleets bar.

Unlike Instagram Stories, however, Fleets have limited capability. There are no Polls, face filters, or Boomerangs to be seen here. For now, users can only post text, a video, or an image.

Twitter is the latest social media platform to adopt the Stories feature. LinkedIn, too, debuted its own version last month but with a surprising twist: Users can see the people who viewed their Stories, a feature that even Instagram doesn’t yet have.

Before LinkedIn, Pinterest also was trying its hand with the Stories feature.

Although ephemeral clips of images and photos originated from Snapchat (“Snaps”), Instagram Stories is currently taking the lead in terms of popularity and usage, and it seems like competitors want a slice of that pie, too.

By Anne Felicitas

6 Important Marketing Theories and How to Apply Them on Social Media Campaigns

NOV. 16, 2020

Campaign Creators / Unsplash

Whether you’re a veteran marketing professional or you’re transitioning to the industry for the first time, your campaigns need to have a solid foundation in marketing theories. Based on customers’ desires and motivations for taking action, these concepts help us understand basic fundamental truths about the impact of marketing. 

The most effective marketing theories are based on real-life observations and are useful not just for marketing but also for many different aspects of business. Agencies, such as a custom design web agency or an advertising agency, usually uses a multi-pronged approach for campaigns, influenced by different marketing theories and personal experiences with marketing. 

Today, we will discuss six theories that can help you understand your customers and create campaigns that address their needs. 

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Some of you might remember this one from your college psychology class. The five-stage Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs classifies needs according to five categories: biological, safety, love or belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. This theory states that humans need to satisfy the most basic needs of survival before moving on to higher-level needs. 

Source: professionalacademcy.com

In social media marketing, this means you need to understand the level of hierarchy your customer is likely to be in when they’re interacting with your brand. There’s no point marketing through the lense of self-actualization to people who are trying to achieve a sense of security. In other words, which of the five needs are your customers looking to fill when they interact with you? It’s likely to be one of the top three in most cases. 

The needs people are looking to meet with social media usage can be different depending on the platform, and you should tailor your content accordingly. For example, many people use platforms like Facebook and Instagram to connect with friends and family, fulfilling the “belonging” need. LinkedIn, on the other hand, tends to be used by people trying to find jobs, build their professional networks, or check out new solutions for work-related concerns. This could fit anything from “safety” (needing a job to pay the rent) to “self-actualization” (achieving a dream).

Decide which one applies to your target audience on each particular platform and plan your content to reflect that. 

Seven P’s of the Marketing Mix

The concept of the marketing mix has been around since 1960, when the original four P’s — product, place, price, and promotion — were first used to analyze and create marketing campaigns. 

This marketing theory has since been expanded to seven P’s, with the addition of people, processes, and physical evidence. This expanded version allows marketers to use the theory to create campaigns for services. Some digital marketing specialists even add an eighth P, productivity and quality, to reflect how businesses pass on productivity and value to their customers. 

Shopify / Facebook

Shopify, pictured above, offers more than just a way for merchants to sell products online (product). It also produces guides and resources for its customers to help them improve their e-commerce stories (physical evidence). 

This social media campaign works because it does not only promote the brand and product, but it also adds value to the product (promotion, price) by giving its readers ideas to increase sales and make more money from their Shopify stores. This campaign ticks off at least four of the seven P’s in the Marketing Mix theory. Always aim to hit at least three of the seven P’s in each of your social media campaigns — the more the better! 

SWOT Analysis

If you’ve ever worked in a role that required strategic planning, you are probably familiar with the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis. This theory can be widely applied to almost any marketing campaign, and we recommend you use it periodically to assess how things are going and where your efforts could be fine-tuned. 

At its simplest form, you identify the strengths and weaknesses of your product, service, or campaign, and then identify the opportunities and threats it faces. The first two factors are internal while the last two are external. 

Aim to identify the following: 

Strengths: what your product or company does well
Weaknesses: what your product or company doesn’t do very well
Opportunities: what new technologies or markets are in the pipeline for your brand
Threats: what your competitors have that you don’t

Remember that opportunities, threats and strengths, weaknesses are not mutually exclusive. Something can easily fall into more than one category.

Let’s look at this example: 

Waze / Shopify

This Facebook ad for Waze presents an opportunity for local businesses to list themselves on the platform, bringing more new users to Waze. Many businesses have closed due to COVID-19, and those that have stayed open have had trouble attracting customers. This could be identified as both an opportunity (more businesses will be doing delivery, putting them in the market for Waze’s services), and a threat (many companies are tightening their budgets and losing money). 

Whenever you start and finish a big social media campaign, run a SWOT analysis to project how you think it will go and then analyze how it actually went. 

Consumer Decision Making Process

Marketers use the Consumer Decision Making Process to understand how a buyer makes decisions, from the moment they are first exposed to a brand or product to the point of purchase. It can be divided broadly into five sections: 

Awareness: The customer becomes aware of a problem they need to solve or a need they want to satisfy. 
Interest: The customer starts looking around and researching potential products or solutions. 
Consideration: The customer has trimmed down their choices and is debating the pros and cons of each choice. They eventually make a choice based on factors like quality, price, or previous experience with the brand.
Purchase: Armed with enough knowledge, the customer is now able to justify making a purchase. They go to the sales platform for the product, add it to their cart, and click on “Buy Now.” 
Loyalty: Many customer journeys end with the purchase stage. However, providing an excellent post-purchase experience is crucial to ensuring that the customer will make another purchase in the future or will recommend your product to others. This is where loyalty begins. 

If this seems familiar, that’s because these stages are similar to a typical customer marketing funnel. 

The content you put on social media serves different purposes at different funnel stages. For example, the way you’ll engage with your audience when you’re trying to attract brand new customers is different to how you’ll interact when you’re aiming to build loyalty with existing fans. Customers just becoming aware of your product need a different approach to those who are almost ready to buy. Therefore, you must be crystal clear on which step in the decision making process you’re targeting with each social media post. 

Here’s an example: 

Facebook / Optimonk

This Facebook ad for Optimonk acknowledges that Shopify sellers need help with driving traffic to their stores (i.e. the customer is aware of the problem they need to solve). It then suggests the Optimonk pop-up tool as a solution and invites ad viewers to learn more about the tool. This ad is an example of great top-of-funnel content, as it raises awareness then gives the user an inside peek into the tool’s capabilities. 

Porter’s Five Forces

The Porter’s Five Forces model is one of the marketing theories that are most widely taught in professional marketing courses. Just like the SWOT analysis method, it looks at various forces that can affect a brand and its marketing. However, it differs from SWOT in that it focuses solely on external factors. Let’s look at each of the five forces: 

Competition: This includes the number of competitors in the space you’re trying to gain a foothold in, the resources they have, their customers’ loyalty, and your own competitive strategy.
New Entrants: This is particularly important when you’re trying to introduce a new product or maintain your leadership spot. You will need to consider barriers to entry, government policies (such as franchising laws), and industry monopolies.
Substitution: While “substitution” normally means replacing a product with something similar, it actually refers to an entirely different product in this context. For example, instead of buying a traditional gas-guzzling car, you choose to buy a Tesla. This means you will have to consider the cost of switching (such as installing a charging station at home) and whether there are any real differences between two or more products (in this case, performance and emission levels).
Suppliers: Your product won’t exist without suppliers. With the pandemic disrupting logistics and supply chains all over the world, the essential role of suppliers has become even more apparent. Don’t forget that you can shop around between suppliers and negotiate the best prices. 
Buyers: Your buyers are the single most influential of the five forces. They will determine whether your product is too expensive or if it’s worth what it costs. You will need to study your buyers’ preferences, their ability to pay, and the things they consider before they make a purchase.

You can apply Porter’s Five Forces even if your product isn’t quite like anything else currently on the market. That’s because someone will eventually find a way to make a cheaper product that serves the same or a similar purpose. But how does this apply to social media? 

Since Porter’s Five Forces is all about external pressures, you need to find a way to position your product as a uniquely beneficial solution for your audience. Here’s an example: 

Facebook / eToro

A trading platform called eToror has a business model that revolves around removing barriers to entry when it comes to investing. This company’s ad emphasizes the ease of getting started and the ability to learn the art of trading by copying what top investors do. In other words, would-be investors can get started right away instead of spending a lot of time studying the stock market. This is good news for the user and good news for eToro. 

When you think of Porter’s Five Forces, you should be considering your unique selling proposition (USP). What makes your company or product different from anything else on the market? Identify your competitive advantage and make the most of it. 

Market Segmentation

Though you might want to claim that your product is “for everyone,” if you find yourself saying this then you might want to revisit your marketing strategy. Nothing is for everybody! This implies that your product lacks something to make it appealing to a specific audience and therefore is likely to be very generic. While focusing on a smaller market section might seem counterintuitive, market segmentation will help your business get the most out of its marketing dollar.

This process has three steps: segmentation, targeting, and positioning. The first one is pretty straightforward: It involves finding out who your customers are and dividing your potential customer base into different segments based on demographics, location, topics of interest, or behaviors. Targeting involves choosing the market segment that is most likely to respond to your marketing, while positioning involves looking for gaps in the market that your brand could fill. Many CRM systems allow you to segment your audience for email marketing purposes. But did you know you can use segmentation on social media, too? 

Performing market segmentation will help you identify the best content for your audience and the platform you’ll be sharing that content on. HostGator, for example, maintains a presence on both Facebook and LinkedIn, but the content the company posts on either platform couldn’t be any more different. Here is its Facebook ad:

Facebook / HostGator

HostGator clearly did its homework with market segmentation and discovered that its audience on Facebook was a younger and less serious crowd. Using a meme-style cartoon strip and informal language worked perfectly for that demographic. Meanwhile, the company took a far more serious, technical approach to appeal to LinkedIn users, who tend to be business people and senior-company decision makers: 

In other words, use market segmentation to determine who and where your target audience is, then choose the tone and theme of your social media posts accordingly. 

Wrapping up

The marketing theories discussed above will help provide insight into your target audience, your competition, and the threats and opportunities facing your company. All of these can help you create social media marketing campaigns that result in more clicks, leads, and conversions. As you grow into your role as a social media marketer, using marketing theories to underpin your campaigns will become second nature. 

By Ian Loew

Using Facebook Ads to Increase Black Friday Sales with Christian Sierra

NOV. 17, 2020

In this episode of Duke of Digital, podcast host and AdvertiseMint CEO Brian Meert is joined by Christian Sierra, digital marketing manager at AdvertiseMint, to discuss Black Friday strategies, including targeting the right audience, crafting an effective offer, and anticipating high advertising costs. 

Who to Target

With several years of marketing experience and a Facebook Blueprint certification under his belt, Sierra has a few helpful tips in store for advertisers. He begins the conversation with insight into the ideal target audience for Black Friday ads. According to Sierra, advertisers must place 90 percent of their attention on customers in the middle and bottom of the sales funnel. These are customers who have interacted with a business in the past, whether that’s initiating a check out, visiting a website, or interacting with the business’ social media pages. 

When serving ads to high-interest customers, Sierra says advertisers should prepare those audiences for the upcoming Black Friday sale. To do so, he recommends encouraging audiences to register for newsletters so that they may be notified when the first deals drop. 

How to Craft Black Friday Deals

According to Sierra, to run successful Black Friday campaigns, advertisers must create explicit, competitive, and attractive offers. 

“We’re all looking for the biggest deals. If it’s not over the numbers of 20 percent, people aren’t even looking. They’ll look for the next one. Give them a compelling offer.”

Advertisers should offer the most significant deal of the year, since consumers are expecting irresistible offers during this time. 

In addition to offering the best deals, instilling a sense of scarcity is also an effective tactic — a product is more attractive to customers when they believe it to be in limited supply. 

Of course, offering the biggest sale of the year could result in revenue loss. However, with those losses come new customers for the new year and an increase in customer lifetime value. 

Black Friday Advertising Costs

Because Black Friday is a popular day to sell, a day when many businesses are serving ads to Facebook’s platform, advertisers should expect costs to rise at this time. For this reason, it’s important to target warm audiences. Cold audiences are not likely to purchase from a business they’re unfamiliar with. If targeting cold audiences is a necessity, separating cold audiences form warm audiences and allocating more of the budget to the latter group is an effective tactic.

Sierra reveals more of his Black Friday tips, including creating the most effective campaign structure, setting the right bid caps, allocating the correct budget amount, and fixing under-performing ads. To learn more about these tips, listen to the eighth episode of Duke of Digital.

By Anne Felicitas, editor