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If you’re active online, you likely have an email. You also probably have a social media account (or several). And, you’ve probably seen ads, promotions, and content from businesses on both. Email and social media marketing are both very popular ways that businesses use the digital sphere to market themselves to customers. And for good reason - they’re both effective. But many marketers focus on one or the other and they’re missing out on the benefits of using them both.
Much like salt and pepper, email and social media marketing are good apart but better together. To understand why, let’s first look at them separately before we explain how they can work together to strengthen your marketing efforts.
When you checked your email this morning, did you scroll through a few email promotions from businesses? Of course you did! Email marketing is the most heavily used form of digital marketing - so much so that it can sometimes become an annoyance (how many times have you clicked “no thank you” today?). But the fact is that email marketing is so popular because it works. In the simplest terms, email marketing is the act of sending marketing materials via email directly to customers who have signed up to receive them. 99% of people check their email every day, many of them first-thing, so marketing there is a lucrative and worthy activity for any business.
So how exactly does it benefit you? People subscribe to your emails because they are interested in your company and want to be kept up-to-date on the latest news and promotions. When your email marketing is done correctly, you’re providing those customers with useful, interesting information each day, directly to their inbox (so they don’t have to search for it). This keeps your business fresh in their minds and helps you stay relevant, strengthening your relationship with them. It also pushes your promotions directly in front of interested customers as opposed to appealing to the masses.
As a business, we all want new customers - but keeping the lines of communication with your existing ones open is equally important, and that is done through email marketing.
We all have a favorite social media business. They may appeal to you because they are funny, innovative, inspiring, or heartfelt; the point is, they do appeal to people, and they keep you coming back for more. This is the result of a well-done social media marketing campaign. Businesses use social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube to market themselves to the public, often very successfully. Social media has 3.2 billion daily users, making it a very big pond full of many waiting fish.
Social media is so important because it allows your business to reach new customers by connecting with your current ones. Through shares, likes, and comments (especially tags), a business can boost its organic reach and get in front of new consumers on a daily basis. It’s also one of the best ways to build your brand, as the tone and type of content you post on social media helps visitors understand and connect with your business. All around, social media marketing is a crucial part of your marketing campaign.
At first glance, it may seem like email and social media marketing are at odds. After all, email marketing only connects with current customers, while social media marketing engages new ones. How do you choose just one?! The strongest marketers don’t. The two can actually co-exist quite nicely, and when integrated they take your marketing efforts from meh to marvelous.
So how do you do it? It’s easier than you think. Think of this as a kind of fishing pole (there’s that fish reference again). Your social media account can get new customers to bite, then your email marketing reels them in and keeps them hooked. Here are a few examples.
Social media is a great place to promote your emails! Use your social media accounts to give teasers about your email content or promise exclusive email-only offers to entice followers to sign up. By promoting your email subscription through your social channels, you can increase your mailing lists and then turn those casual followers into loyal customers. It’s like having your coffee and drinking it, too!
Don’t assume that your email audience is aware of your social presence! The next time you send out a marketing email, try including links to your social media pages. You can do this by simply adding clickable widgets to your layout and pointing your viewers in their direction. Add a helpful call-to-action to point them in the right direction.
Better yet, take it a step further and encourage your email readers to tune into your social media accounts for specific or ongoing information (like promotion or event details). Letting them know that you’re active on social media and giving them a reason to tune in will both boost your social followers and increase your brand awareness.
Crafting email content can be hard, especially if you’re sending them frequently. Social media can help you decide what types of content your audience is looking for, and it also lets your content play double-duty. Use content that has high engagement from your audience in your emails! This can be facebook posts, Instagram photos, or even follower’s comments. You’ll already know that your audience is interested, and you can promote your social accounts at the same time. Win-Win!
If you aren’t a marketing whiz, this may seem a bit overwhelming. The good news is, we can help! Bis Designs helps businesses just like yours create killer marketing campaigns through email and social media (and more). Contact us today to get started!
You’ve been using social media to promote your business. Smart move! Social media marketing has taken the business world by storm. You’re making posts, sharing great content, and drawing in followers. Promotion is great, but these days it is not enough. You’ve got to share your business story to really connect with your audience. And that’s where the new story feature for Instagram and Facebook comes in.
A story is a relatively new feature for Facebook and Instagram that can help your business connect with your audience in a personal way. Stories are pinned to the top of your followers’ newsfeeds and last for a maximum of 24 hours. Businesses aren’t penalized for stories, so they are sure to be seen (unlike posts, which are quickly lost in the newsfeed shuffle and have limited visibility due to algorithm updates).
If you’re looking to grow your audience and increase your brand awareness, then stories are a tool that you can’t afford to ignore. But how do you use them effectively? Let’s take a look at 4 ways to use Instagram and Facebook stories for your business.
Post Authentic Content To Engage With Your Audience
The stories feature is meant for...well, stories! A story is more personal than a post and it is most effective when it is used for authentic content. Remember that your stories are only seen by your followers, who are already interested in your business, so there’s not as much need for direct promotion or marketing. Instead, use candid content to give your audience a glimpse into a side of your business that they can’t see anywhere else. Making your business seem real and relatable drives engagement and instills trust in your audience - after all, you’re just like them!
Here are a few ideas for authentic content:
- ”day in the life” snapshots that show the daily goings-on of your business
- candid photographs of your team or working space
- informal interviews with staff and management
Pro Tip: Remember that the goal is to be authentic, so don’t overuse the photoshop or filters in these types of stories. Your audience can tell when your images and videos have been highly doctored, and this can hurt your engagement. Keep it simple to achieve the best results.
Use Teasers To Promote Upcoming Events Or Sales
We aren’t saying that you can’t ever use promotions in your stories. Your goal is business growth, after all. Stories are a great way to share information about future happenings in your business. Upcoming events, product launches, or sales are all great content for teaser stories that can interest and convert your audience. But keep in mind the 24-hour rule and don’t tease them too early or your audience might forget about it before the big day!
Pro Tip: Filters and effects can help make your teaser stories really pop and help you deliver the right message. Both Facebook and Instagram have story editors that allow you to insert text, graphic elements like countdown buttons or coupon codes, and all sorts of other fun designs!
Turn Articles And Blog Posts Into Bite-Sized Segments
Let’s face it, audiences today have a short attention span. That’s why social media gets more engagement than traditional websites or articles - it is a revolving door of new material. So use that to your business’s advantage by turning your website content into digestible chunks. Research your business content for pieces that can be divided into smaller sections and post them one at a time or in a slide-show story. This will help increase your website traffic if your content (and your story) is engaging.
Pro Tip: Graphic design is an important factor in these types of posts. Make sure that your images are relevant, attractive, and clean. Also be sure to hyperlink your story to your article’s URL or reference it at the end so your followers know where to go.
Use Stories To Connect Your Accounts
The goal is growth, and stories are a great way to grow your account followers. The majority of social media users have accounts on multiple platforms - that means an Instagram user also has a Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest account, etc. Referencing your various social media accounts on your stories can drive audience members who may be following you on just one app to follow all of your pages.
Pro Tip: Teasing an upcoming Facebook event on Instagram is a great way to convert your Instagram followers to Facebook, and vice-versa. Doing this will increase engagement on both sides of the aisle. And due to social media algorithms, growth begets growth. But be sure to instruct your audience on how to follow you - don’t forget to provide the handle or page name for your referenced accounts.
If you aren’t using stories in your business accounts, start today! It’s a great way to up your content marketing strategy. Using the above tips will help you engage with your audience, increase your followers, and grow your business. For more tips on using Instagram to grow your business, check out our post on 5 Tips For Instagram Success.
Still have questions? Give us a call to discuss how BIS Designs can help with your social media and content marketing needs!
Google and social media platforms (like Facebook) continue to change their algorithms, making it increasingly difficult for a company to reach its audience. Stellar Content marketing can help your company jump some of the hurdles. In fact, Google and Facebook often reward companies with great content. That’s why it’s critical for companies to provide valuable and informative content on their website and social media pages.
If you’re struggling to create killer content, follow these tips to help guide you in creating successful content for your company:
Engage with your followers. You’ve probably heard it many times: engagement is crucial for online marketing success. Here’s why:
Establish thought leadership. Position your company as a thought leader that provides valuable resources to its audience. Highlighting yourself as an expert in your industry will draw your audience to you. Instead of going straight to Google for information about your industry, people will start going to your website, blog, and following your social media pages to learn industry trends, tips and tricks, and more.
Keep it fresh. Keep your content fresh by incorporating new and a variety of content for your customers to read and engage with. Consider mixing up your weekly posts with a guest post or a live product/service demo. Be sure to post on special holidays and incorporate seasonal content into your posts. Use catchy images and high-quality graphics to keep your page looking fresh and not like spam. Incorporate monthly themes, where you focus on certain topics each month, educating your audience beyond their expectations about each topic (thought-leadership!).
Be authentic. With the growth of the Internet and social media platforms, it has become increasingly important to be authentic. Advertising your product, service, or company falsely will always come to light through reviews and comments from customers. Your audience is far more informed than you think, and they will call out a scam without hesitation. One of the top influencers on the web, Neil Patel, put it best when he said, “Authentic businesses inspire and prosper”. Neil Patel advises people to be authentic by:
Engage with your followers. Establish thought leadership. Keep it fresh. Be authentic. Each of these tips will help you create a better content marketing strategy to help your company grow. In combination, these tips will help your company soar! So, give it a try, and if you’re still struggling, give us a call! We’re here to help you create content and manage your digital marketing in a way that will capture the attention of your audience.
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Should You Outsource Your Business Blogging?
Phillip Long - CISSP, CEO of BIS Technology Group, along with his team of marketing and information technology experts, will walk you through an overview of what your business should be doing to protect your data and plan your digital marketing strategies.
About BIS Technology Group
BIS Technology Group is the technology leader on the Gulf Coast and is comprised of four divisions: Information Technology, Web Design & Digital Marketing, Office Equipment and Business Consulting. Together these divisions help local businesses exceed expectations and allow them to group to their full potential while minimizing risks. To learn more about BIS Technology Group, visit bistechnologygroup.com.
You may reach out to us at: Phone: 251-405-2527 Email: plong@askbis.com
The social media marketing discussion is now dominated by algorithms – almost everywhere you engage, within almost every platform you use, machine learning and data sorting is used to decide what it is you see.
Now social platforms are in much the same position, which adds a more complex, technical element to the social marketing process.
With this in mind, what do you need to know to ensure you’re on top of the latest social algorithm shifts, and how can you best prepare yourself, and understand the focus of each platform to maximize your business page performance?
Here’s a quick overview of the current state of each platform’s algorithm, based on what I’ve studied of their workings.
FACEBOOK
The most influential social algorithm is Facebook’s. The Social Network was the first to implement an algorithm feed, in response to the flood of spammy posts and junk which had taken over the app as its popularity grew.
Facebook’s algorithm aims to show you the content you’re most likely to engage with – though obviously there’s a lot more to it than that.
To best understand Facebook’s algorithm, you first need to get your head around the basic engagement equation Facebook uses.
Facebook’s News Feed chief, Adam Mosseri, explained this in several webinars, conferences and online publications last year, comparing their selection process to choosing a meal for a friend at a restaurant:
This process, says Mosseri, is essentially utilizing an algorithm within your own head – Facebook’s system simply transfers these though processes to a machine, shifting the same core elements into more technical factors – Inventory, Signals, Predictions and Scores.
Here’s the same calculations with Facebook actions replacing restaurant options:
Facebook rates each post based on your individual usage patterns, which, along with a range of other measures, enable it to come up with a score for each post. That score then dictates where each will appear in your feed.
Sound confusing? Yes, it is. These algorithms change constantly so studying and keeping up with the social channel’s updates are crucial to any business social media marketing plan. In basic terms, Facebook measures the likelihood that you’re going to take a particular action which their data suggests is the most engaging, then shows each story to you based on that probability.
TWITTER
Twitter’s algorithm is less advanced than Facebook’s, but they are putting increased focus on their machine learning efforts to boost engagement.
Users were initially outraged that Twitter would even consider changing to an algorithm, but the data has since shown that the system has helped the platform boost performance – as algorithms have on virtually every platform.
Twitter’s main objective with their algorithm is to show you more content you may be interested in – similar to Facebook, though Twitter is more about showing it to you in addition to the other tweets you might see, as opposed to “instead of”.
Even with an algorithm in place, Twitter can still show you almost every tweet, due to the real time nature of the feed. Nowadays, when you first login into Twitter, you’ll see tweets you may have missed, which are basically the most popular tweets from the people you follow. Twitter has also been working to boost engagement by showing you tweets that people you follow have liked, too.
INSTAGRAM
Instagram is one of the hottest social platforms at the moment for social engagement. They have now also implemented a Facebook-style algorithm. Facebook actually owns both platforms now, so the algorithms are almost exactly the same now. Like Facebook, Instagram’s algorithm is based on your likelihood to engage.
LINKEDIN
Like Twitter, LinkedIn’s algorithm is not as advanced as Facebook’s. A good example of how LinkedIn’s feed algorithm works is their comment sorting tool – LinkedIn recently published an update on how comments are displayed on each post, based on engagement.
In my opinion, and the opinion of many other LinkedIn users, their algorithm needs some work. You’ll often see posts from weeks ago in your feed but they are refining their data, and working to show you more relevant content, slowly but surely.
PINTEREST
The last platform has a constantly evolving algorithm to uncover more relevant Pin matches. Their goal is to keep you searching and their system has been upgraded from its initial matching efforts to better highlight relevant content.
Do you have ideas of how these social platforms might improve their algorithms in the future? Tell us in the comments!
Why Your Business Needs A Paid Facebook Ad Budget
Author: Stephanie May - smay@askbisdesigns.com
If you’ve been keeping up with the national news for the last two weeks, you’ve heard the reports of political campaigns acquiring private data on millions of Facebook users. It has now sparked new questions about how the social media giant protects user information.
First of all, as a business advertising on Facebook, we are all thankful for the data which identifies personalities and buying trends of users. This doesn’t mean people’s personal information like credit cards, social security numbers and other secure information was ever shared via Facebook.
What does it mean?
This all plays a big part in Facebook’s algorithms, which have changed drastically in the last two years. The algorithms now only allow content that you are interested in to be in your newsfeed. To me, this isn’t a bad thing at all. It is a highly intelligent way of keeping users happy and engaged. For businesses, it also makes it more difficult to advertise because you need to pay attention to what users want to see on a daily basis and tailor your content to that audience. Otherwise, your content will go unseen. This is what I do on a daily basis for dozens of business accounts, study trends in order to make sure the business pages are reaching the most customers.
Now, back to Cambridge Analytica. What’s the big deal? The firm offered tools that could identify the personalities of American voters and influence their behavior. This behavior was then, allegedly, used to target voters for the election. This app has since been removed from Facebook but there are reports that the data still exists, so this is why Facebook is being scrutinized.
What kind of information was collected and how was it acquired?
The data included details on users’ identities, friend networks and “likes”. The idea was to map personality traits based on what people had liked on Facebook, and then use that information to target audiences with digital ads.
Researchers in 2014 asked users to take a personality survey and download an app, which scraped some private information from their profiles and those of their friends, activity that Facebook permitted at the time and has since banned.
Facebook has always prohibited this kind of data to be sold or transferred “to any ad network, data broker or other advertising service” so the question everyone has been asking is, was Facebook hacked? No one really knows for sure.
What is Facebook doing to fix the situation?
Really, there isn’t much they can do about it at this point. Once the data is out, there isn’t really a way to recall it. They can conduct all the forensic audits they want, but the information will remain out there in some form, and will likely remain useable and indicative. For damage control, Facebook needs to show users that it is improving, learned its lessons and their systems are actually now better for it.
We’ll see in the next year whether or not users pull away from the social giant or whether it will blow over and everyone will go back to using Facebook as usual. As already stated, no sensitive information was really obtained but it is simply a matter of users trusting Facebook to keep up with their social habits without exploiting it for political reasons.
What do you think? Does it bother you that Facebook tracks your likes and, in turn, creates a personality profile of your daily habits in order for businesses to advertise to you? We want to know! Let us know on Facebook!
12 Reasons Why Your Business Needs A Content Marketing Strategy
When it comes down to it, email marketing is all about getting the basics right.
Yes, you should be segmenting your lists and yes, paying attention to those open rates and conversion rates are important but you also want to invest time in strategies like positioning, voice and value of your emails. These 5 tips may seem basic but you’ll find that many of your favorite emails coming through your inbox, the ones you open every day, employ the tips in a single email. For best results, apply liberally.
Create an exclusive club.
Making your email subscribers feel special is a great way to generate excitement for the content or offers you send them. It’s also a powerful community-building tool.
Exclusivity can be subtle, like the Apple example below. Whenever Apple launches a new product, customers camp outside their stores to get their hands on the latest device. By offering a pre-order, Apple can cash in on that excitement without putting additional stress on their retail stores. With free shipping as an added incentive, these emails will no doubt drive huge sales before the next iPhone is even released.
Ask for Feedback.
As long as you’re not too pushy, it’s okay to ask for feedback. Find a way to ask without making it sound like the feedback is for the company’s gain but rather to help you, as a business owner, find ways to make their service better. Here is an example:
Get personal.
Email is a great way to humanize your brand. The inbox is an intimate place, mostly used for personal conversation. Your presence there is a privilege, so do your best to write like a human. It’s okay to talk about challenges, obstacles and even failures. Readers can relate since they are likely facing similar situations, whether in business or in their personal lives. Even quotes from your company’s CEO can go a long way, like the example below.
Tell readers what to do next.
One big mistake people make with conversion is failure to make the next step completely clear. How can someone convert if they aren’t sure what to do next?
Conversion rate experts stress this over and over again: “Be clear and direct with your users, telling them exactly what you’d like them to do.”
The idea is simple: just add the webinar to your calendar. Not only does this reinforce the behavior pattern of clicking the emails, but it also increases the chances that the registrants actually attend the webinar. Once it’s on the calendar, they will get alerts from their phone and/or computer…it’s like free marketing!
Keep readers on their toes.
This tip is unconventional, but it’s proven to work.
On one hand, you want your readers to know what to expect in your emails. In our case, here at BIS Designs, that means a new blog post every Wednesday. Our readers know there will be a new blog post each week but they don’t know what topic will be covered until they receive an email once the new blog has been posted on our website.
Conclusion
There are plenty of tips out there about how to increase your open rates but you also want to concentrate on becoming and remaining valuable to your clients and customers. If you have any additional tips to share with us, feel free to share in the comments!
5 Ways to Get Creative with Email Subject Lines
Author: Stephanie May
Whether you’ve noticed or not, organic traffic on Facebook has dropped – and it’s likely impacting your company in a big way.
There are a few reasons that you need a Facebook advertising strategy and budget. Let’s start with the basics – because Facebook’s algorithm does not make it easy for business pages to succeed on Facebook.
What does the term “Facebook algorithm” actually mean? And how does it work?
Facebook’s algorithm controls who sees the content that you share. It’s not as simple as you posting a status update then Facebook pushing it out to all of your followers. That’s a thing of the past. Not everyone who follows your page will see your posts. Facebook is way more intelligent now. And, there’s a reason for that, but we’ll get into that later.
Adam Mosseri (VP, News Feed at Facebook) puts Facebook’s algorithm in layman’s terms for us. He says he thinks about it like he would when ordering his wife something to eat at a restaurant.
The Facebook algorithm process goes like this:
This process happens on millions of devices countless times each day. And, it’s also the reason why your Facebook business page’s posts aren’t getting as many views as it used to.
This makes a lot of sense when you think about it from a business perspective. The reality is that Facebook is a business. And how does a business like Facebook make money? You guessed it – paid advertising.
So why isn’t your Facebook business page making you money? Because the only way for company pages to succeed on Facebook is through Facebook paid advertising. Facebook’s only real concern is to find ways for more business pages to spend more money. You can’t blame them. Any CEO would do the same thing.
The truth is that social media doesn’t work the way it did in the past.
This is because posts were served in reverse chronological order. In 2009, Facebook changed the algorithm to be based on popularity.
As you might’ve guessed, the Facebook algorithm is changing more frequently than ever. Simply posting on your page every day without a Facebook advertising strategy or budget is a waste of time.
Here’s what you should be using Facebook for –
Facebook Paid Advertising
The new reality is that businesses on Facebook are unlikely to succeed without putting a budget toward Facebook paid advertising. In turn, this requires a Facebook advertising strategy similar to how you would strategize for billboard, radio or TV ads.
When creating a Facebook ad campaign, there are a few key things that you need to consider – like your goals, target audience and the content of your ad. Unfortunately, this isn’t as easy as it sounds. Facebook ad campaigns can get incredibly detailed and complicated, and the platform itself isn’t exactly user-friendly. We’d love to dive into the specific best practices for executing a Facebook advertising strategy, but that’s a whole other blog.
Its Database
What you’re really doing when you create a Facebook ad campaign, is using Facebook for its extremely extensive database. In other words, you’re using Facebook paid advertising to buy an audience.
Think about all of the millions of people that use Facebook. In fact, Facebook has more than 2 billion monthly active users according to the company’s website. That’s a lot of people – a lot of people that may be interested in your product or service.
Think about Facebook’s database as an untapped market. You may not have their email or mailing address but you have their Facebook profile.
When you use Facebook paid advertising, you are purchasing access to advertise to millions of people that you otherwise would have had no access to. Even better, you can segment your audience to the specifics of your ideal customer by choosing preferred age, gender, interests, etc. to give you an incredibly high customer value.
Organic Posting 2-5 Times a Week
Just because you realize that Facebook paid advertising is more lucrative than simple sharing updates on your company’s page (otherwise known as organic posting), doesn’t mean that you can give up organic posting altogether.
There’s a huge difference between social marketing and social selling. Social selling is where you can really see the return on your investment, and it includes your Facebook paid advertising strategy that we talked about in this blog post. However, social marketing is also essential.
Other than running Facebook ad campaigns, it’s still very critical to be active on your company page.
Think about this scenario – a highly qualified lead that saw your Facebook ad in their newsfeed now visits your company’s Facebook business page to learn more about you. But, you haven’t posted an update in months because you focused all of your efforts on your Facebook advertising strategy. That scenario isn’t exactly ideal because the customer doesn’t get any added value, in turn stopping their customer journey.
This is why it’s extremely important to pay attention to your Facebook advertising strategy as well as organic posting. It may seem like a lot to balance, which is why marketing companies like us (BIS Designs) are here to ease you into the process.
Fun Fact: Did you know that the average person will spend over five years of their life on social media. WOW! That’s a lot of time spent on Facebook!
5 Benefits of Business Blogging
Facebook is continually using updating their algorithm to help their users see more relative content and less of what they don’t like. If you have a Facebook business page, you have probably noticed that it is more difficult to get engagement than it does on your personal Facebook page.
Why? Facebook sees your business page as a business. Essentially, you’re a business so you should pay for exposure. Before you start running Facebook ads, try these 5 Facebook marketing tips:
Share images of real people. As a social network, people want to see people, especially people they know, like, and trust. Lose the sales pitch. People are turned off by continuous product images.
People want to win free swag, free product, or free/discounted services. Contests with the right prize will organically boost your traffic. You’ll increase your fan base, page likes, and grow your email list. You’ll increase your chances of going viral with the right product and right response.
Facebook is very proud of this feature. It took quite a long time for this to roll out to all of their users, so those that Go Live – get seen! Going Live allows you to interact with your audience, increase your overall reach, and increase your page likes. A lot of people are afraid to go live, but the ones that do are heavily rewarded.
You’ve probably seen the response time to messages on your Facebook page or another page. The better your response time, the more Facebook will show your posts to your followers/fans. Engagement is key. When you have a private chat with one of your Facebook friends, you’ll start to see them more in your newsfeed, and vice versa.
When you are consistent, your audience will expect it. They will look forward to your engaging posts and Facebook live videos. Make sure you are posting 3-5 high quality posts per week. Create a hashtag, not only for fun, but for tracking purposes. Eventually, your followers will start using your hashtag. Be consistent, but remember, to have fun! Facebook is meant for socializing and having fun. Re-evaluate your social media plan and determine what it is your audience responds to the most. Use the tips we suggested and just remember to lose the sales pitch and stay consistent! If you need assistance with creating a social media plan, contact BIS Designs at 251.405.2542.
BIS Designs is an internet marketing company serving the Mobile, Alabama area. Our content, development, social media marketing and search engine optimization specialists have years of experience in targeting custom audiences for the B2B community and would welcome the opportunity to help your business grow.
Phillip Long, CEO
Facebook is a popular way for companies to market their products and services to consumers like ourselves. In the past, it hasn’t been as helpful for businesses looking to market to other businesses. However, that’s no longer the case. Facebook is now proving itself to be a successful marketing tool for business-to-business (B2B) marketing.
LinkedIn has long been the most effective platform for businesses to market on social media to other companies. However, Facebook has over 1.4 billion monthly users allowing businesses to get their message in front of the right audience through paid advertising. Businesses are five times more likely to engage with a sales rep who shares a mutual connection. This is one reason why it’s important not to ignore Facebook. We have seen success with this social media strategy with our clients in Mobile, AL.
1. Expand your audience. Reach past your current audience through advertising on Facebook and targeting people that meet certain qualifications. 2. Target work categories. Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram advertising allows you to go past general demographics to drill down to specific interests, job titles and income levels. 3. Offer incentives for lead generation. Using ads to target the audience you want, you can bring prospects to your website looking for access to the content you’re offering. By directing them to a landing page that asks them for their email address, you’re able to generate leads by giving them access to a free trial of your product or service, or access to an ebook or webinar.
4. Create custom audiences.
Custom audiences can be set up in Facebook by:
• Importing a list of emails from your contact database. • Upselling to customers that purchased a particular item or service (making recommendations). • Retargeting lost customers by putting a Facebook pixel on a certain web page to track if users completed your call to action. If they didn’t reach the ‘Thank you for signing up/purchasing’ page, then you can retarget your ads to those who missed out.
• Increase awareness, connections and leads. • Set you apart from your competitors. • Strengthen your company’s credibility. • Keep your business’ name at the top of potential customers’ minds.
Contact us for a complimentary marketing evaluation and let’s get your business back on track!
By now, you’ve probably heard that video marketing is all the rage. It’s evidently more impactful and can engage many more people on social media networks than a post with an image alone could. You may be saying, “Yeah, that sounds great, but I don’t have the time and the resources to make a video!” Well, don’t throw the idea away just yet.
What if we told you that within just a few hours, you could have enough video content for almost a whole year to dole out each month? There are many styles of videos for marketing and some will take much longer to make. However, a simple Q& A style video can be done relatively quickly and provides numerous beneficial results to your marketing.
Before you take your first stab at making a video, keep in mind the following pointers to get the most out of your work:
Ideally within 1st 10 seconds or less, appeal to the viewers’ emotions by addressing particular pain points, concerns, or other impassioned viewpoints.
Determine what your ultimate goal is for the video, i.e. visiting your website, sharing the video, etc. and incorporate that into a straightforward CTA usually toward the end of the video, such as “Learn more at (insert url).”
What you write about in the text for the video post is very important and should be used as the bait & hook to the video. Be sure to not spam it with hashtags.
One study found that 85% of Facebook videos are watched without sound. The video needs to be able to attract attention without sound, meaning an aesthetically pleasing background and camera quality is important, but so is the need for subtitles. Facebook offers this as an option now. Contact us if you want more specifics!
Depending on the platform the video is posted on, make sure you know how to read the metrics, i.e. the number of shares, the amount of engagement, and the number of clicks to your site.
Make sure you have a good audio (lavaliere wireless microphone), a clear and aesthetically pleasing, but not distracting background, and that you’re discussing something that you are passionate about.
While it would certainly be easier to share the same link across all channels, Facebook’s algorithm favors videos placed directly onto their platform more than links. Doing it this way will create greater organic reach, especially on Facebook.
The text you include in your post about the video won’t be searchable, but the headline and descriptions you post with your video will. Try to include those keywords or phrases you think viewers would be searching for to help them find your content, and include a couple relevant hashtags on platforms like Twitter and Instagram to boost search results.
It’s important to keep the video short, so if it’s a visual “How-To”, use the speed-up feature in your video editing software to shorten the duration.
Give brief answers to a few of the main questions you know your audience is interested in. This is a great way to establish your business’s expert credibility.
This is a powerful brand-building tool as users on social media follow companies typically because they have an affinity for the business and want to learn more about what the brand really is and what it stands for. Show viewers how something works or how something is made and this can lead to major increases in brand loyalty.
By creating a story with a beginning, middle, and end that fits into a 30-second video, you’re bound to easily connect with viewers. Telling stories about real people is ideal, but even telling a story about your customers, your business, or a cause you want to raise awareness on are dynamic tools to build and sustain loyal relationships.
If you’re pressed for time, but feel video marketing is an excellent strategy you want to give a try, start out with the Answering Questions format.
If you schedule a day on your calendar that you can sit down and record 20 videos back to back, you can have 10 months of videos ready to go that get posted online every two weeks. Pretty efficient, right?
BIS Designs is more than happy to come to your location or schedule time in our studio to record video tutorials, testimonials, or any such video as described above. Our comprehensive marketing services can integrate your video marketing with your website, social media, and print marketing endeavors, all the while ensuring your videos are efficiently optimized to help your search engine rankings. Contact our Designs team to learn more about our video marketing services and how we can increase your brand’s recognition, reinforce your business’s credibility, and boost both your search rankings and social engagement.