Brian Meert's Blog, page 67

How to Use Live Videos to Grow Your Business

JUL. 29, 2020

Nathan Dumlao /Unsplash

In today’s digital era, where social media has dominated the digital landscape, live streaming is one marketing tool that has helped businesses gain more exposure while generating more leads and sales. Many businesses are inclining more toward social media platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to reach a large user base without any geographical boundaries. To survive in the competitive business space, you need to differentiate yourself in the market —  that is where live streaming can help you. 

If you are running a business that relies on people being at your physical location, you probably experienced a challenge in taking your business forward during the current coronavirus pandemic. Local businesses are seeing a dramatic decline in sales. In this situation, you may be thinking about what to do to save your business. The current pandemic is causing a significant rise in the use of live streaming tools by both individuals and businesses for different purposes. Leveraging live streaming for business purposes is a realistic way to future-proof your business and ensure you gain a competitive advantage in the industry.

Benefits of Using Live Streaming for Your Business

Live streaming offers a sense of excitement for your target audience. They make your customers feel inclusive and exclusive at the same time. Besides broadcasting live, you have the opportunity to interconnect and promote your live videos later on social platforms. 

Your viewers would be pleased to watch the richer content your live videos can produce, especially if you allow your audience to submit questions and interact with your brand. Live streaming has an unlimited range, and it opens up the possibility for a global audience to participate regardless of any geographical limitations. 

So, what are the other benefits of live streaming for businesses? Let’s look into it.

Audience Growth

The internet is a large place, and reaching out to a global audience is no easy task. Although marketing can help you grow your audience base, not all strategies are effective in crossing geographical boundaries; whereas, live streaming is capable of achieving it. 

Live videos help you reach customers who otherwise wouldn’t participate in interacting with your brand. Due to its real and authentic nature, live videos definitely get an advantage over pre-produced videos. 

Unique Interaction with Viewers

You can interact with viewers without any limits during live broadcasts, unlike other marketing tools. Live streaming establishes a personal connection your audience and gives your audience a personal experience with your brand. 

In the past, businesses were impersonal and didn’t employ strategies to captivate the interest of their audience on a deeper level. However, the audience of today and its preferences have completely changed, and it becomes important for brands to personally connect with their audience to grow their business. The audience of today loves to know the business and the team behind it. Live streaming is a perfect way to do that, by showcasing the real side of your brand to your customers. Moreover, social live streaming platforms are now coming up with many important features that make it convenient for businesses to go live.  

More Engagement

There is no better way to interact with your customers than interacting with them live. The real-time interaction facilitates a conversation with your audience, which is the next best choice to personal interaction, but much scalable than that. The live aspect also pushes your customers to engage personally with your content. During live broadcasts, viewers want to be a part of it, and they are more likely to share it, too, with their peers and friends. 

More Trust

Building trust is one of the critical success factors of every business. Your customers will only prefer to do business with you if they have trust in your brand. The interactive feature of live streaming allows customers to create a connection with you. If they like what they see, the connection will help build trust. Another benefit of live broadcasting is the freedom it offers. There are no limitations. You can choose the time to go live, based on your convenience, and the topic. The content can be educational, commercial, promotional — the possibilities are limitless. 

More Content for Marketing

If you want to create more content for marketing purposes, you can choose to repurpose your live videos afterward. Once your live broadcast is finished, you can share it with social platforms as on-demand videos, which increases the exposure and reach further.

However, not all live videos can be repurposed in the same way. For example, if you are running a live product demo with a promotion, it might be beneficial even if you repurpose it. But, if you edit it, the product demo can be an educational piece that can benefit your audience, even long after your live stream ends.

How to Use Live Streaming to Grow Your Business

Now that you know the advantages of live videos, let’s look into examples, live streaming trends, and ways to use live streaming to grow your business. 

Promote Product and Brand

You can use live streaming to showcase a product update, product release, or exclusive behind-the-scenes clip to your users. For example, if you own a fashion brand, you can give your customers a glimpse of your new product collection and demo. 

Generally, customers are used to watching post-production and edited content. If you can make your live videos more interesting and engaging, it can help with your brand and product promotion. For instance, Vogue conducted a live broadcast during the Met Gala to show the behind the scenes footage, which earned a lot of views and engagement. 

Engage with Live Blogging

Live blogging offers a great level of engagement with your brand as readers ask questions about the blog and express their feedback. You can use live streaming to continue the conversation with your readers in real time. For example, if you are doing a product review, you can broadcast live as a continuation to answer customer’s questions. When professionally using live streaming, you also need to ensure that you cover the essentials and best practices for better results. 

Deliver Brand Presentations

If you are looking for effective ways to deliver brand presentations, there is no other way than live streaming. It helps you answer customer questions live as they view your product presentation. If you are conducting a small- or big-scale event, you can stream your presentation then go backstage and respond to the questions of your followers. Conducting live streaming of such events is a great way to activate your social media following. When you are live streaming, understanding how to set up live streaming events on a big scale can help, as it requires multiple cameras and a professional setup.

Broadcast Special Sessions and Seasonal Offers

By announcing special offers on special days in real time, your business gains a lucrative opportunity to bring in quality traffic to your website and social media. A simple social media post may just engage your viewers for a very short time, but a live video can increase the reach of your message. For example, Dunkin Donuts live broadcasted a tour of its test kitchen on Valentine’s day, along with a big announcement. 

Conclusion

Compared to content marketing strategies, live streaming is one of the cost-efficient options out there. With live streaming, there are lots of possibilities to explore, and your customers will appreciate the effort. Regardless of the content you create, you must focus on your live streaming strategy to build a personal relationship with your existing and potential customers. Once you test different strategies, continue with what gives you a better performance in live streaming platforms, and ditch what doesn’t perform better. Happy live streaming!

How to Become a Digital Marketing Specialist

JUL. 27, 2020

Bruce Mars / Unsplash

Digital marketing is all about leveraging all digital channels, such as SEO, PPC, social media, and content marketing to promote businesses and their goods and services to customers. The main job digital marketing establishes through online marketing strategies is to inform, attract, and convert. The digital marketing industry is growing rapidly, and it is a field in need of skilled professionals. 

Whether you’re a beginner or you have some marketing experience, becoming a digital marketing specialist demands you to have these specialized skills:

Customer service
Marketing
Strategy
Planning 
Time management
Problem solving
Analytics
Creativity
Presentation
Knowledge of all key marketing areas
Social skills
Industry-news tracking
Ability to quickly create a social presence

These are some of the skills a digital marketing specialist should have, but it is not necessary to have all of them. Some skills can be developed gradually with experience in this field. 

Understanding the Role

To become a digital marketing specialist, you need to be familiar with the roles and goals you will be handling.  You will have to indirectly promote company products or services, increase brand awareness, and drive prospects to conversions. Instead of using traditional marketing channels, digital marketing specialists need to effectively communicate through appropriate technology platforms. A digital marketing specialist must handle the following duties:

Perform consumer research 
Acquire knowledge about consumer trends and demands
Evaluate the needs of the consumer market
Understand how and where to implement business strategies
Initiate effective marketing campaigns online
Translate business goals into successful marketing campaigns
Evaluate and analyze results
Discover other ways of reaching customers

A digital marketing specialist should also have a wide knowledge of SEO, Google Analytics, content marketing, email marketing, PPC, and Google Ads. If you know how to use these marketing tools, make a strategy first and start applying strategies in areas where it suits best. You must also possess knowledge in all the marketing strategies that will help you become a digital marketing expert. If you don’t have knowledge in any of the above-mentioned areas, getting complete training will help you brush up your skills and gain new ones. 

Choosing an Area of Specialization

As a digital marketing specialist, you  have a list of options on what you can specialize in. 

SEO and Content Writing 

To become a digital marketing specialist, you must understand the basics of digital marketing. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the area where you can start from scratch, where you can generate leads and conversions through organic traffic. It is differentiated as on-page and off-page SEO. On-page SEO is all about the activities you do within your website while off-page SEO involves all the activities outside your website, such as link building. These days the demand for skilled SEO experts is high. Therefore, you need to stay up to date with market variations. 

SEO and content marketing are closely related. You can achieve good search rankings only through good quality content. It takes diligence, expertise, and time to rank high in search engine results. Analytics will help you track the performance of your content, and based on your search preference, you must change and improve your content strategy to rank higher. 

If you think that you can manage both of these areas intelligently and creatively, choose this area of expertise. 

Social Media Marketing

Social Media is one of the most preferred platforms for most human beings. If you think you can skillfully handle social media by engaging with your followers, attracting new customers, and maintaining existing ones by generating, sharing, and updating content, choose social media as your specialization. 

You can use social media to target either a specific or a large number of audiences. Demographics and target audience selection all depend on the type of business you’re dealing with. A digital marketing specialist must learn the most advanced techniques and always try to protect a brand’s online reputation. 

PPC Specialist

To become a PPC specialist, you must first learn the art of PPC (pay per click) and paid search. There are different search engines that offer you paid search campaigns, including Google Ads (previously known as Google AdWords), which is the most popular. As a PPC specialist, you must learn how to generate paid traffic using various PPC marketing campaigns and channels.  Google offers certification for different channels and platforms. Learn and earn a certification from Google to become a PPC specialist.

Google Analytics Specialist

Google Analytics is the most critical digital marketing area, which requires average intelligence to understand but creativity to plan a strategy. Google Analytics is where you can track all the activities happening on your website.  It also enables you to track your customers’ and visitors’ behavior. It will help you make relevant decisions regarding the best suited digital marketing strategy and channel for your client’s business. 

Google Analytics helps you track and analyze reports of all the strategies and goals you have set and established. Therefore, learning Google Analytics or understanding it with the help of an expert will help you become a valuable digital marketing specialist for your client’s business. 

Stay Updated and Keep Learning

Your journey as a digital marketing specialist never stops. You need to stay updated to move against the tide. The changes in the digital marketing industry are never-ending and continuous. Therefore, if you want to be a digital marketing specialist, never stop learning. This is also one of the reasons why being a digital marketing professional is challenging and at the same time interesting. If you like all these things, simply go ahead! 

If you’re ready to become an expert in the digital marketing field, you must study the best digital marketing tips that will help you improve your career as a digital marketer. 

By Sharafudheen Mangalad

How to Track the Right Content Marketing KPIs for Your Marketing Goals [Infographic]

JUL. 22, 2020

Most businesses today have a content marketing strategy in place. Done right, content marketing can help you increase brand awareness, generate leads, boost sales, and elevate your business.

Is your content marketing strategy really working? You won’t know until you measure the results of your campaign. Tracking the right KPIs (key performance indicators) allows you to see what’s working, what isn’t, and what can be altered.

Start by Defining Your Content Marketing Goals

Oftentimes, marketers post content and jump to measurement without being clear about what they wish to accomplish. This can lead to a waste of resources and skewed results. To make the most of your content marketing strategy, you should identify your goals and then tie them with relevant KPIs. Here are two goals content marketing can help you accomplish.

1. Brand Awareness

Brand awareness represents how familiar your target audience is with your brand. An engaging content marketing strategy can increase brand awareness, subsequently leading more people to buy from you. If this is one of your goals, here are several KPIs you can track.

Article views: In addition to looking at the number of article views, you can also understand traffic source, average session duration, and bounce rate for each article.Audience engagement: If people share or leave a comment, it means they genuinely like your content. The more they engage, the more likely they’ll remember your brand.Inbound links: Gaining high-quality backlinks can help you climb up the SERPs faster. Good quality content will be more likely to gain backlinks.



2. Boost Sales

The end goal of most content marketing strategies is to improve the brand’s bottom line. If you want to track your campaign’s success in this regard, you can track the following KPIs:

Conversion rates: Quality content can build trust, educate your target audience, and subsequently convert leads into customers. In addition to your content’s conversation rate, you can take a look at which pieces of content are driving more sales.Length of the sales cycle: The goal is not just to increase revenue but also to do this as quickly as possible. A good idea is to identify channels that help close sales faster.



Be Creative — Don’t Restrict Yourself to the Common KPIs

The KPIs you must track largely depend on your goals and your strategy. While the above-mentioned KPIs are a great place to start, you shouldn’t limit yourself to those. Some of the hard-to-track KPIs could be hoarding some of the most insightful information.

Keep Updating Your KPIs

Establishing content marketing KPIs is not a one-time event. Every time your goals or your strategies change, the KPIs must be updated, too. Besides, the world of content is changing every day, so revisiting the KPIs you once established is always a good idea. All that being said, creating good content is not as simple as it seems. If you find yourself struggling to curate content that converts, know that you’re not alone.

You can always leverage a content marketing platform and improve your strategy. To learn more about content marketing KPIs, check out the infographic below.

Image Courtesy: shanebarker.com

Written by Shane Barker

Using YouTube Keywords to Get to the Top of Search Results

JUL. 24, 2020

Christian Wiedger / Unsplash

No self-proclaimed serious content creator uploads videos on YouTube just for his or her own entertainment. People and brands create videos because they want others to watch ― they aim to grow a community or boost their marketing strategies, among other things. 

But let’s face it: It’s not easy to take your video content up to where it can be seen, to the first results on YouTube searches. You know that people don’t scroll very far down when they’re looking for a video to watch, so you need to make it your goal to ensure that the content is right up there, where they’re looking for. To do that, you’ll need a good keyword strategy. 

This is a list of the secrets that professional video companies use to get their videos to the top 10 results of YouTube searches ― use them wisely, and you’ll be part of this select club as well.

Know Your Basics : Short vs. Long-Tail Keywords

You’re probably familiar with these concepts, but let’s break them down just in case. A keyword is a word that defines the main theme of the content in a post or, in this case, a video. They’re used as a way to identify the topic of the video so that when people look for said subject online, that video is listed as one of the results.

A long-tail keyword is a longer phrase that presents a more specific match of what a person is searching for. For example, a regular keyword for a gardening vlog could be “plants,” and a long-tail keyword for that could be “best types of plants for indoor gardening.” Notice the difference?

Now that we’ve established that, let’s talk about how to choose and where to find the right keywords for your YouTube videos. 

Choose the Right Keywords

To find the keywords that best represent your content, you need to learn which phrases people are using for their online searches. As you may know, YouTube is owned by Google, and both platforms are search engines (yes, YouTube as well), so a great place to start your research is on Google. 

Google Trends

Google has a lot of free marketing tools, and one of them is exactly what you need right now: A tool called Google Trends, which shows how frequently a specific term is entered into the search box of the platform. You can use it for YouTube as well, by switching on the drop-down menu from “Web Search” to “YouTube Search.” It’s that easy!

With Google Trends, you can also compare how much a particular search term has been used in a given period, which can help you analyze whether the keyword in question is rising in popularity, and if it’s more demanded around a specific event or season.  

Now, Pick the Best Long-Tail Keywords

Google Trends is great to find regular keywords, but after you’ve done that, you’ll need to refine your strategy and choose the right long-tail keywords. The reason is, usually, generic keywords are extremely popular, and it can be hard to rank your video when there’s too much competition. So, you can start by positioning a long-tail keyword that includes your main keyword, reducing your field of action to precisely the kind of people you’re looking to reach.

With long-tail keywords, you face much less competition in SERP, and you have more chances of being among the top results. The best part: You can find the best long-tail keywords directly on YouTube. 

Trending Videos

Do you often check which trending videos are related to your niche? This will help you find the keywords that people are using so you can implement them.  Of course, you don’t have to use the same ones. Instead, look at the main keywords that featured videos are using and adjust them to create your own long-tail keywords, more closely related to your audience’s interests. You can find trending YouTube videos from the left-column bar.

Search Suggestions

If you’ve ever searched anything on YouTube, you’ve seen how the platform suggests certain terms that autocomplete your search for you. That’s a goldmine for long-tail keywords. For example, a search for “Explainer videos” suggests “Explainer videos for business,” “Explainer videos examples,” “Explainer videos for education.”

If you’re looking to position yourself on that niche, you’ll find that using one of those suggested phrases will perform much better than using the main keyword you originally entered on the search form. 

Put Your Keywords into Action

Now that you’ve settled on your regular and long-tail keywords, it’s time to use them. Start with the basics by including your long-tail keyword in the title of your video. It needs to be placed naturally, so make sure to find a nice, catchy title that contains the keyword without feeling forced. 

Another part of this is to write a good description for your video. It should be informative, concise, and it should also naturally include your keywords. Don’t even think about writing a mere list of keywords on the description because it looks robotic, and it will repel more than attract people.

You can also add up to 15 hashtags on YouTube, with different variations of your keywords. Make sure that you don’t overdo it, though, because YouTube will penalize you for that by rendering all your hashtags useless. 

Last but not least, don’t forget to upload a transcript along with your video. Transcripts are .txt files in which you type what is being said on the video, and YouTube converts them to captions. It’s an easy way to help your videos get more views, as plenty of people watch videos when they’re in public and prefer not to turn on the audio. It also contributes to making your content more inclusive for people with hearing impairments or that speak English as a second language.

It’s also useful from a strategic perspective because search engines can’t listen to your video’s audio to find relevant keywords, but they can read the transcripts that you upload. So, by including a transcript, you’re also adding more keywords that will be detected by the algorithm.

Let’s Wrap It Up!

As we established earlier, brands and influencers are spending valuable time and resources to create video content, so it needs to be seen. Choosing the right keywords is essential to achieving that kind of visibility every content creator is hoping for.

Make sure to choose the best keywords to make your video shine, and when you’ve done that, narrow your selection and find the best long-tail keywords. After that, the only thing missing is to naturally introduce these phrases on your video’s title, description, subtitles, and tags.

By following these tips, you’ll be on the right track to making your video as searchable as it can be. Buckle up and get ready to shine on YouTube!

By Victor Blasco

5 Ways to Optimize Your Website for Lead Generation

JUL. 22, 2020

Halacious / Unsplash

It’s no secret that lead generation is the key to boosting your sales and growing your bottom line. One of the best ways to capture new leads is through your website, of course. But what are some of the best ways to ensure your website is optimized for lead generation?

During the dawn of the internet era, business websites had it easy. They could simply add a colorful button with a call-to-action phrase, such as “Click here to get started!”, and watch as the leads come in. But in today’s world of internet marketing, it might take a little more time and strategy to effectively generate new leads on a consistent basis.

Below, you’ll find out more about why generating leads on your website is so powerful, as well as the five best ways to optimize your website for lead generation.

How Does Lead Generation Work On A Website?

An extensive research project performed by Marketo shows that just 4% of new website visitors are actually ready to buy something. However, when you have a website that employs several lead generation strategies, you can significantly increase that 4% figure.

Why is lead generation so important on a website?

If you’re in the business of selling to your customers, your interaction with them starts on your website. It is likely one of the first places a potential customer will visit to find out more about you before making any buying decisions. As a company, it is your goal to gain that visitor’s interest and capture them as a lead before they leave your website.

The easiest and most basic form of lead capturing is through a CTA or a call-to-action. This is something we mentioned earlier with our example phrase, “Click here to get started.” This is a simple command usually in the form of a button or a sign-up sheet that persuades someone to sign up for a newsletter or enter their email address to stay apprised of deals and discounts.

Once they do that, you have successfully captured a lead!

Why stop there? Below are five of the best ways to optimize your website for increased lead generation.

1. Make a Landing Page

A landing page is a page on your website specifically designed to capture and convert leads. Rather than arriving on the homepage of your website, a visitor will first find themselves on a landing page. This landing page will have some kind of form or info box where visitors can enter their information (such as an email address or phone number) in exchange for a deal you are offering them.

Have you ever visited an e-commerce website, and upon entry seen an offer for a “new visitor” discount? All you need to do is enter your email address and click the button. Then you will receive the promised discount or promo code that will convince you to shop with them if you were on the fence about it before.

In fact, it’s a good idea to make multiple landing pages. A HubSpot survey shows that companies with more than 30 landing pages have generated seven times more leads than websites with only one or two landing pages.

2. Automate Emails

This strategy is a great follow-up to the landing page. Once visitors entered their email addresses in exchange for an offer or deal, you can set up your email system to automatically send them a “thank you for joining” message. This is also known as a kickback email.

This is proven to more than double the rates of engagement between newly converted leads and sales staff. The thank-you email shows potential customers that you have taken the time to address them personally, and you value their input. Remember to include a powerful CTA in this email!

What are some good CTAs? Here are some examples:

Click Here to Get StartedTry Us Out For Free!Subscribe and Get Updates

Keep it short and to the point, and your visitors will likely respond.

3. Add More Forms

Sign-up forms are quick and easy ways to generate new leads. The areas of your website with heavy traffic are wasted if you aren’t using them as a way to capture all of those individuals who come through.

This is a good opportunity to conduct a thorough study of your website to determine which pages have the most traffic. Where do you get most of your lead generation or outreach from? It may be from a page you usually don’t pay any attention to. 

Wherever the heavy traffic is, make sure that area of your website is doing everything in its power to generate and nurture those visitors to leads. Add forms that ask for more contact information, and make sure that each page is consistent in terms of information and style.

 4. Offer Free Downloads or Info

Encourage visitors to take a look at your blog or news update section of your website. There, you can offer exclusive downloads to e-books or whitepapers offering helpful information. This is an especially good strategy if you are a service or information-driven company, offering advice or help from experts in your field.

Giving visitors a chance to access some of your expertise for free is an opportunity too good for them to pass up. In certain blog posts, or on certain web pages, you can include download offers to information or solutions your visitors may be looking for.

Giving them a little bit for free will encourage them to come back and get a lot more for a price they will willingly pay.

5. Never Stop Nurturing

Another HubSpot study on email marketing proves the importance of nurturing leads via email communication. From the moment you send out that automated thank-you message, make sure they continue to be aware that you haven’t forgotten about them. 

Keep sending them emails that include content they will want to see. Add exclusive content or free information that your leads will only be able to see if they sign up for your emails.

Make sure each lead is given tailored information that matches their interests. Email them often, but not too often, or else they may start to get annoyed. Make it short and sweet, get to the point, and offer them something wonderful. Then sit back and watch as the leads pour in!

Boost Your Lead Generation Tactics on Your Own Website

Your website is the best place to convert and nurture leads. While most of your traffic may funnel in from your social media profiles, it’s important to ensure that this traffic doesn’t leave before giving you some of their contact information. That way, you can continue to offer them deals and exclusive information that will entice them to stick with you for the long run.

These strategies take some time to develop, and they must always be updated to stay consistent with current trends. It may seem like an exhausting task, but the amount of leads you’ll gain (which translates into bigger sales) is all worth it. 

By Dan Stevens

How to Create an Engaging Facebook Post

JUL. 20, 2020

Erik Mclean / Unsplash

Since its original launch back in 2004, Facebook has grown into a social media giant with 2.6 billion active users worldwide. The company’s mission statement is to “bring the world closer together,” and indeed the platform connects people from all parts of the world, building a global community. Yet, what Facebook has also been doing all this time is bringing customers and businesses closer together. 

Your Facebook page is a powerful business tool that can help you drive results by connecting with customers and promoting products and offerings. Every effective Facebook strategy starts with creating an engaging post. 

In this article, you will discover 10 tips that will help you create engaging posts that improve your overall Facebook marketing efforts. 

1. Always Include a Strong Call to Action

The first thing you should do before writing your post is identifying your objectives. What are you trying to achieve by writing a post? Are you trying to invite more users to your website, build awareness, or get more people to attend an event? 

Identifying and understanding your goals and objectives is important because it will help you create relevant call to actions (CTAs). For example, if you’re posting an article, you can include a “check it out” call to action or “read now” call to action. If you’re boosting your organic post, Facebook enables you to incorporate different types of CTA buttons. For example, if your post aims to promote an event, you can place a “Get Directions” button to help your audience find the location where the event takes place. 

Additionally, CTAs enable your Facebook audience to engage with your content. This includes liking, sharing, commenting, and redirecting to your website. 

2. Share Relevant Visuals

To reach your audience on Facebook, your posts must include strong visuals. In fact, studies show that Facebook posts with visuals gain more than double the engagement than regular text posts. Moreover, visuals are more likely to be remembered and shared by users.

Here are some tips that will help you choose the right visuals for your Facebook post: 

All visuals must be relevant and high quality. Use visuals illustrating how other customers use your products. Include social proof (e.g. user-generated content). Use visuals that illustrate the benefits of your products. Make sure to format videos to fit Facebook’s timeline. 



3. Share Relevant Industry News

Facebook is the best platform for sharing top-of-funnel content, such as relevant industry news, articles, and updates. By sharing recent and relevant stories, you can gradually nurture prospective leads into paying customers. 

Curate a post summarizing a relevant story from the news. Make sure to use reliable sources and include a citation by embedding a link. Encourage users to share their opinions on the topic in the comments section. This way, you’ll keep your followers updated and engaged. 

Here’s a great example of how to share articles that are relevant to followers. 

Victoria Belle / Facebook Business



4. Share Behind-the-Scenes Content

Sharing behind-the-scenes content is a way to build transparency and help your Facebook audience trust you. The idea of showing how you create your products goes back to customers gravitating towards businesses that they feel like they know.

Capture the product development and manufacturing processes on camera and share the pictures with an engaging narrative describing the process. Alternatively, you can use Facebook posts to emphasize the benefits of your production. For example, you can share a picture of the manufacturing process and tell your audience about how you only use sustainable materials and why it’s important. 

Here’s a great example shared by Facebook. 

Original Coast Clothing / Facebook Business



5. Feature Your Employees

Customers love looking behind the scenes of business production. Allow your Facebook followers to learn how your business operates by inviting them to meet your team members.

Introducing your employees in your posts is an amazing way to boost brand awareness and engagement. Also, it is a thoughtful investment in future sales because customers gravitate towards companies they feel like they know, and what better way to get to know your brand than by getting to know your team members?

There are multiple ways to feature employees on Facebook. If it is consistent with your brand’s tone of voice, you can share a spontaneous picture of your team member with a funny caption. Also, you can use Facebook posts to introduce your new team members to your followers, like so: 

Facebook / Facebook Business

Alternatively, you can give a shout out to different employees from time to time. For example, you can post a picture of your team members receiving awards. You can also create a post about the employee of the month. Either way, you will show appreciation to your team members while engaging your Facebook audience.

6. Encourage Communication

By sharing posts that encourage communication, you can stay in touch with your audience and boost engagement. There is no better way to inspire communication than asking an interesting question. A good question will prompt users to answer, kicking off an active comment thread. Here are some question ideas for you to get started: 

What’s your favorite [color/product/summer activity]? How do you [complete this action]?Why do you [prefer this brand/product]?Do you agree with [a famous person’s saying]? Which product do you like better? 

“You can ask questions to gather customer feedback,” says Jared Williams, director of marketing at Essay Tigers.  “For example, you can ask users to share their opinion on your recent marketing campaign or ask them what type of content they prefer better.”

This example shared by Facebook illustrates how to ask a question that prompts communication. 

Global Voyage Air / Facebook Business



7. Share Surveys, Polls, and Quizzes

Interactive content can drive substantial engagement, especially if it’s aimed to gather opinion. That’s why sharing surveys, polls, and quizzes on your Facebook page has the potential to boost engagement.

When developing your survey, poll, or quiz, focus on the topics that are relevant to your followers. Here’s a great example by Ben & Jerry’s. The company is known not only for its delicious ice cream but also for acting on social issues, such as climate change, racial injustice, LGBTQ rights, and voting accessibility. 

Ben & Jerry’s / Facebook



8. Encourage User-Generated Content (UGC)

User-generated content (UGC) refers to any brand- or product-related content created and published by social media users. UGC is a free marketing tool that depends entirely on how users are willing to share their take on your brand with their followers. It is an effective strategy to boost user engagement on Facebook, build trust, and expand your brand’s reach. 

If you want to leverage UGC content in your Facebook posts, you first need to find a way to encourage and collect user-generated pieces. One way to do so is by running Facebook giveaways and contests. 

9. Run Facebook Contests

To host a Facebook contest, the first thing you should do is create a post describing the rules, entering requirements, deadlines, and the prize. For example, you can ask participants to share a picture of your product in an interesting place with a branded hashtag. Then, you will need to choose the winner and award them with the prize. Running such a contest is a great way to collect pictures created by users (social proof) that you can later share in your posts. 

Before running any contests on Facebook, make sure to read Facebook’s Pages, Groups, and Events Policies. There is a dedicated section that points out the rules of running contests and giveaways on Facebook. 

Here’s a great contest example by Absolut:

Absolut / Facebook



10. Employ Cause Marketing

Consumers are increasingly expecting brands to speak out and act on social issues. In fact, 72 percent of Americans say they feel it’s more important than ever that the brands they buy from reflect their values. 

Facebook is a great platform for emphasizing your brand’s social mission and responsibility. Curate posts that explain the importance of social issues you’re addressing. Share relevant visuals to make the post even more compelling. 

Final Thoughts 

Following these tips will help you create engaging Facebook posts with a good mix of content types. Now, as you know how to write a killer Facebook post, the final thing you should do is keep an eye on performance. Use Facebook’s Page Insights to understand which elements of your marketing campaign resonate best with your audience. Knowing what works well and what needs improvement is essential for any effective Facebook campaign. 

By Haley Osborne

The post How to Create an Engaging Facebook Post appeared first on AdvertiseMint.

6 TikTok Marketing Mistakes You Should Avoid

JUL. 17, 2020

Kon Karampelas / Unsplash

We hear about a new emerging social network each day, and TikTok is the latest and funniest one. It’s a popular video-sharing platform owned by a China-based digital tech company, ByteDance. Because TikTok has gained 800 million fans worldwide only during the last couple of years, it’s important to know the capabilities of this service and use them correctly to boost your business.

Although using TikTok is so easy, getting a high ROI in TikTok marketing is very difficult for many marketers. In fact, there are already countless relevant accounts on the platform, so getting ahead of them can’t be easy.

Here are six mistakes that lead to unsatisfactory marketing results on TikTok. If you want to build your brand identity on TikTok and get ahead of the competition, you need to avoid these mistakes.

Not Targeting the Right Audience

You might think that due to a whopping 800 billion users on TikTok, it’s a good place for you to share your content. This is a common mistake many marketers make: They don’t think about their niche audience on the new platform.

Remember that TikTok is not a place just for advertisement. It’s a platform mainly used by Gen Z (approximately 60% of its users are 16 to 24 years old) for entertainment and fun. So you shouldn’t expect to get results simply by posting your ads on it.

Try to first conduct competition research on the platform to recognize rivals. Then study users’ demographics and identify your target audience. This is extremely important in marketing because irrelevant followers won’t build your bottom line.

Not Being Fun

When you’re marketing on a new platform, you have to learn its overall style and tone. For example, you don’t post similar content on LinkedIn and Instagram because their purposes and styles are completely different.

TikTok is a platform for entertainment and fun. One of the most important mistakes you might make is to post serious and wooden content. Remember that this is not a platform for traditional advertising methods. You have to make your audience laugh to gain attention. Of course, this won’t always be easy because masses of funny videos are being shared on the platform.

Not Sharing User-Generated Content

Uploading a video on TikTok is so easy but not all videos can reach a high engagement rate. Of course, consistency is key to make users remember your brand, but making a lot of creative and informative videos might not be cost-effective.

It’s highly recommended that you use user-generated content and repurpose them for your account. You can ask your audience to make videos and share their moments with you. Using these videos can greatly lower your costs and also bring you higher engagement rates. This is also a useful way to gain the trust of your followers and make them feel comfortable with you.

Not Spending on Influencers

Influencer marketing is now a must for brand awareness. This is particularly important for beginners because it can boost their marketing strategy. Getting TikTok users to follow your account might be hard because a lot of famous accounts are active in each niche.

The best tactic is working with influencers to increase your visibility and reach more followers. Influencers can also bring your brand authenticity because users usually trust influencers’ suggestions.

Set a specific budget for influencer marketing, considering the fact that rates have been cut during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Being Too Promotional

Remember that Gen Z doesn’t like to be bothered by promotional content. It’s a big mistake that you constantly advertise your products or services. Instead, you have to generate content related to the benefits your products or services can bring to your customers’ lives. In other words, you have to make them believe that your offerings are a necessity in their daily routines.

Many accounts just want to make money using TikTok or even sell their accounts to beginners or small businesses. You need to know that a majority of TikTok users stop following accounts that are too promotional. In fact, Gen Z is more sensitive compared to other generations.

So you need to take a natural approach to encourage them to experience your products or services. Try to speak about the applications not just about your brand. In this way, you’ll make followers see you as a niche leader, not just a selling machine.

Not Participating in Hashtag Challenges

Hashtags are now playing a vital role in all social platforms, and TikTok is no exception. If you want your content to get good exposure, you have to make the most out of hashtags. Do thorough research to find the best hashtags for your niche and use them along with your branded hashtags.

TikTok has offered a great feature to run your own hashtag challenge. This method can increase your conversions, lead generations, and sales. Try to use this technique and combine it with  influencer marketing to reach as many niche audiences as possible.

Takeaway

This provides only a few examples of how you can improve your TikTok marketing by avoiding some simple mistakes. Of course, it will take a lot of time and effort to be able to see the results. Be patient and frequently analyze your performance to track the changes.

By Tom Siani

The post 6 TikTok Marketing Mistakes You Should Avoid appeared first on AdvertiseMint.

Google Shopping: 4 Best Ways to Improve ROI

JUL. 15, 2020

Benjamin Dada on Unsplash

Maximizing your return on ad spend on a Google Shopping campaign is imperative if you don’t want to throw away your cash. These ads can be particularly effective: They’re in a premium spot on search engine results; they’re an ideal way to draw interest in your products; and they can target relevant shoppers with high purchase intent. 

However, an improperly executed Google Shopping campaign can drain your advertising budget. If you’re not familiar with PPC best practices, or you aren’t sure how to best maximize your ROI on a Google Shopping campaign, consider these four tips.

Organize Campaigns Using SPAGs

Single Product Ad Groups (SPAGs) are the best way to organize a Google Shopping campaign. They’re also a good way to turn mass campaigns into finely tuned revenue generators. Even though the name is a bit inelegant, SPAGs are actually gorgeous tools that help you understand which products and campaigns are getting the best traffic, giving you control over an automated product listing process.

Just like the name implies, a SPAG is an ad group that contains just one product. Segmenting by product ID makes sense because each item has a different margin and cost. SPAGs let you mine some very precise data by search terms, searched products, clicks, and, of course, sales. 

SPAGs can help you maximize your Google Shopping campaign by:

Targeting your bidding. SPAGs can help you understand if you’re bidding more than what the product is really worth. It’s a scalable process that gives you the data you need to maximize clicks and return on ad spend (ROAS).Leveraging negative keywords. Since Google Shopping isn’t keyword targeted, you can take back control of your campaign with this approach. If you only want one product to show up on a search engine keyword search, you can add negative keywords to give the product stronger positioning. Increasing brand awareness. Putting an individual product in front of a customer gives you more – and more controlled – exposure to your target audience. You can show prospective customers products they’re much more likely to be interested in. This is particularly effective if you use SPAGs for multiple products, especially for related items. Over time, this repeated exposure could move prospects into the buyer category.Controlling your PPC. One best practice for PPC is to automate your bidding for SPAGs. This can and should tie to SPAG performance and help you manage SPAGs when you have hundreds of products to manage.

Using SPAGs ensures that your campaigns only focus on the products that truly make you money. They’re a performance enhancer for any Google Shopping campaign. 

Optimize Product Feed

Google Shopping campaigns do not function in the same way as a Google search ad. That’s because Google crawls your site to select the brands that fit the search query. While SPAGs help you regain some level of control of this process, you can also optimize your product feed to improve the campaign. Each product listing should include:

Product titleProduct typeDescriptionProduct categoryGlobal trade item number (GTIN)

Your SPAG can help inform some of the keywords you use in each product title and listing, which should be as informative as possible and include your brand name. Specify additional product details whenever possible, such as the age range, gender, color, size, material, and more. It is highly recommended that you manually write each ad. This may seem daunting, but if you have hundreds of products or more, the time you spend putting in this human touch will pay off. Other tricks to optimize your product feed include:

Choosing high quality product images with dynamic product views whenever possible. For clothing, add a zoom feature and 360-degree rotating views. Selecting your product categories carefully, which may seem like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised at how often campaigns are aimed at the wrong target audience.Using customizable spreadsheets with simple product naming conventions to help organize your product data feed. Tracking your campaigns and products at the granular level. There are dozens of product feed management software tools that can help with this.Using hierarchies and subcategories to organize your product feed, which will pay off in better ROI from Google. Its search engine is an organized, methodical big brain, and it loves this level of optimization.

Optimizing your product feed requires an obsessive level of detail that will pay you back in cash-filled clicks and brand recognition. Your goal is to provide Google with every product detail organized cleanly so that crawlers can better pick the right product for the customer search term.

Use the Gold Pan Technique 

As the wizened prospector once said, there is gold in Google Shopping hills, but only if you know the right technique for mining it. That’s where the gold pan technique comes into play. The gold pan technique lets you pan through and discard less-profitable search terms to find the profitable nuggets of high-intent searches geared specifically to your products. This technique lets you segment traffic by product-specific, branded searches. This is something normally missing from Shopping campaigns.

The gold pan technique requires budget flexibility to test the investment in advertising certain branded (not generic) products. The goal is to test search results against sales metrics until they yield the best ROAS.  

The technique works best with two or three Google Shopping campaigns at a time. Use your SPAGs to segment the traffic into three categories: generic, branded, and product-specific searches. This allows you to develop a negative keyword list along with other parameters to discern which ads aren’t yielding top ROAS. The goal is to determine if your customers are searching for a model number, SKU, or the name brand — or something else.

Remarket Using Dynamic Retargeting

What if you could re-engage those potential customers who looked but didn’t buy? That’s the idea behind retargeting for Facebook advertising and Google AdWords. On both, you can choose the retargeting parameters that keep your products in front of customers, making them more likely to make the purchase. Funneling the front-end traffic coming from Google into a retargeted Facebook ad is simple: Add the tracking pixel to your product pages. But to use this properly, make sure you create ads for specific products that use the same level of granularity and attention to detail outlined throughout this post.

Go Forth and Google Shop with Higher ROI

Investing in digital advertising with Google Shopping can yield some serious ROI. However, without the right controls in place, your campaigns will quickly eat up the bulk of your budget on products that aren’t selling. Optimizing your efforts with the four techniques described here will help you maximize your ad spend and get the best bang for your buck.

By Andy Beohar

The post Google Shopping: 4 Best Ways to Improve ROI appeared first on AdvertiseMint.

5 E-Commerce Digital Marketing Strategies That Drive Sales

JUL. 10, 2020

Charles Deluvio / Unsplash

Every online retailer wishes for their stores to prosper. Regardless of which e-commerce platform you are using, Magento or Shopify or any other, you will need to put in effort in order to grow customers and turnovers.

These five digital marketing strategies outlined here can help boost your e-commerce store, brand, and business.

1. Personalize Your Communication

Current trends are drifting toward giving up the general one-fits-all approach. In fact, giving each client separate attention is the tactic that’s proven to work. This can be done in many ways. For example, you can include a personalized product selection block on your website, such as the “You may also like” block.

This is how a “You may also be interested in” section looks like on the Lacoste website. It automatically generates picks based on the customer’s earlier purchases.

By including a personalized block, you not only raise the chances of customers buying more than planned, but you also show them that you understand them, that you can cater to their tastes.

Another scope of information you can make use of is the items placed in abandoned carts or wish lists. An example of how Pandora allows users to add items to their wish lists can be seen on the screenshot below.

After incorporating wish lists to your website, you can offer customers specific items that they want at reduced prices. This is possible via email marketing campaigns. By offering your prospect an opportunity to get a discount for the very thing he or she wants, it becomes more likely for you to close the deal.

2. Sell on Instagram Shops

If you haven’t already taken advantage of Instagram Shops as an extra opportunity to sell your products, embrace it as soon as you can.

Selling on Instagram Shops is quite simple. You need to connect your inventory with your official Facebook account that in turn is joined with your Instagram business account. After verifying your Instagram business account, you may tag the products that are visible on your posts and Stories. The user can then get all the details about the item and even buy it when tapping on the website link to your store that appears.

Here’s an example from Converse.

3. Feature User-Generated Content on Your Website

Furthermore, make sure to use social media and get a hold of user-generated content. By showing not only branded images but also real people enjoying your products, you build trust and can urge your potential clients to make purchase decisions. That said, you can, for instance, use Instagram as a powerful tool to engage your customers, or you may allow users to upload pictures to a gallery section of your website. Invite your followers to make posts of themselves wearing or using the product, put the specified hashtag in the post, and tag your account via “@.”

Once your buyers start making posts on social media, you should link the channels to your website so that the feed can be seen on the homepage or wherever else you’d like such a block to be visible. The linking procedure will differ depending on the e-commerce platform that your store is running on. But in most cases, this could be done in the admin panel of your e-commerce store (for example, if your store is based on Shopify, this setup is added using a third-party plugin such as Shop Instagram Feed & UGC).

Take a look at how such a section with the #LiveInLevis harmoniously fits into Levi’s website.

By taking a step toward paying the needed attention to cross-linking your channels and engaging customers across those channels, you win since

These customers could get featured on your website or your other official social media channels. (This can make many of your customers ultimately happier.)You grow brand loyalty.Your brand gets additional coverage and promotion, as it will flash before the eyes of each of your customers’ followers.You make your website more appealing and trustworthy to your shoppers.



4. Mend Your SEO & Analyze Customer Needs

Using SEO to your advantage is a strong ace up your sleeve. The better you do at search engine optimization, the higher the chances that users will find your store and the products that are offered.

SEO strategies should be applied across all the channels you are using, not only your website. If the channel clicks well with your business, invest the time in creating that channel and having it SEO-powered (regardless of whether it’s YouTube, LinkedIn, Tik-=Tok, or anything else).

Make sure to use keywords in your product descriptions, use bullet points, have proper tagging, and include the ratings of your products. Take time to fill out all the meta information and image alts. Optimize every page in terms of not only headings but also speed — this is twice as important with images and pictures.

What’s more, don’t overlook the side of analytics. You must be on the same wavelength as your target audience; therefore, it’s crucial to speak the same language with your customers: Give them what they want and predict the trends. You can find out their needs by

Using simple, concise surveys Keeping an eye on items placed in wish lists and abandoned cartsTracking the most often purchased items



5. Encourage Customers Reviews

Another great point to take is generating more customer reviews — this means real feedback from customers who have truly done business with you. The major reasons why reviews are important include

They build trust and credibility to the brandThey are read by those who are planning to buy something from your online storeThey cultivate product ratings, vital for customer persuasion and SEO.

When a customer is debating whether they should buy an item or not, they turn to the experience of previous buyers. By having many reviews from actual customers who obtained the item to share their opinion or experience, you help potential customers make a faster decision in your favor. For instance, this is how the reviews on a product page look like on the MAC Cosmetics website.

Yet, how do you get your customers to leave reviews? To be fair, yes, not everyone likes spending his or her time writing reviews on an item or sharing opinions about a used service, especially if this involves filling out many fields, verifying the purchase, and uploading images. A couple of things that can be done here:

Encourage those who have bought something from you to write a review in exchange for some sweetener. This could be a coupon, bonus points, or free delivery on the next order.Make it as easy as possible for them to leave a review. Provide a direct link from the email confirmation and narrow down the number of fields.



Final Word

Digital marketing and e-commerce fit so well together like a hand in a glove. This is why it’s essential to put in the needed resources and effort into various cross-channel strategies. This way, you’ll make a big step towards increasing your sales and making your online retail business thrive.

By Alex Husar

The post 5 E-Commerce Digital Marketing Strategies That Drive Sales appeared first on AdvertiseMint.

New on Instagram: Pinned Comments

JUL. 9, 2020

Instagram / Twitter

Once in a while, you see a comment on your Instagram post that resonates, a comment that you wish you could bold, underline, and highlight. The social media company is rolling out a feature that provides a similar experience. 

In a Twitter post, Instagram announced the roll out of pinned comments to all users. 

“Today we’re rolling out pinned comments everywhere. That means you can pin a few comments to the top of your feed post and better manage the conversation.”

Today we’re rolling out pinned comments everywhere.