editor, Author at Mediastreet

In News

LinkedIn Sponsored InMail, Micro-Influencers and Blogging: A Winning Combination

May 29, 2019 No Comments

LinkedIn’s Sponsored InMail isn’t always seen as the most effective type of outreach method, but there are ways that it can be used to great effect.

My organization hosts several events each year, focused on best practice-sharing and helping small businesses, and I recently took the lead on marketing a new event which focused on digital marketing and how companies can use it to drive their bottom line. I was ambitious and set a goal of 200 event registrations. With two months to market the event, I had some time to drive registrations using my organization’s traditional marketing channels.

The Problem

My traditional marketing playbook was simply not working. I managed to bring in approximately 15% of my event registration goal through email and organic social media, but I needed to reach more marketers – in particular, digital marketers or those who worked in the online space.

My database of contacts simply didn’t provide the target market necessary to reach my goal, and after two weeks running social media ads on Facebook and LinkedIn, my budget was nearly depleted, and my registration numbers hadn’t moved significantly.

It was clear, at this point, that I needed to take a different approach.

The Big Idea

I not only needed to reach marketers, but I needed to establish a relationship with them, and drive enough brand trust where they would feel comfortable spending money to register for my event. I wasn’t going to be able to do this alone.

My first thought was to use influencers to help spread the word. Recent studies have shown that 94% of marketers have found influencer marketing to be effective. They would help drive brand awareness, and subsequently bring in new event registrations. The ticket price was not cheap ($55) so I needed to really focus on the brand awareness aspect.

But then I thought about the specific influencers in more depth. Simply reaching out to my core digital marketing influencers wasn’t going to do the trick – I needed over 150 people, and there was nobody within a hundred-mile radius that had that kind of pull with the budget I had remaining.

This led to a new plan – aim for dozens of micro-influencers who would each be able to bring in a small handful of paid registrations.

The Implementation

I like to think of myself as a relatively well-known digital marketer, but I don’t have nearly the network required to achieve my micro-influencer goal. I needed a platform to broadcast my call for these people.

This is where LinkedIn Sponsored InMail was useful. Rather than using it for annoying sales pitches or free e-books, I was going to use it to appeal to marketers’ egos. Most marketers like to consider themselves subject matter experts in at least one area. If people were going to respond to my call for help, there needed to be something in it for them.

Thus, I would ask them to provide their expertise by writing a blog post, publishing it with a plug for my event, and then promoting it on their top social channels. In return, they would receive a free registration to the event, and then I would also promote their blog post, giving them the byline and bowing to their expertise.

I made sure my Sponsored InMail headline would catch their eyes: “Call For Digital Marketing Experts.”

I was careful to target only the most experienced and connected digital marketers. Thanks to LinkedIn’s superior ad targeting capabilities, I was able to narrow down my search to a few hundred individuals that would help me achieve my goal.

The Results

My Sponsored InMail campaign only ran for 48 hours, and resulted in 150 delivered messages. Of the 150, 70 responded and 33 eventually became official micro-influencers.

I provided each micro-influencer with a unique link to my event page so I could track the traffic they would bring in to the event site. In total, my 33 unique links led to 2,000 unique pageviews, and 160 event registrations, giving me the numbers I needed to exceed my initial goal.

The numbers may not seem overwhelming, but they’re exactly what I wanted out of my micro-influencers. I gained thousands of new users at minimal cost, while also gaining valuable content from new connections.

Final Takeaways

If you’re considering an influencer campaign, but lack the budget for big names, consider micro-influencers instead. You may need to do a call out to attract their attention, but by bringing together the right combination of people, content and promotion, you can achieve your goals.

Most businesspeople are influencers at some level – it just requires the right type of action to activate their networks.

By Nick Mattar

Follow Nick Mattar on Twitter

Sourced from Social Media Today

In News

What to Do When Your Inbound Marketing Fails

May 29, 2019 No Comments

By Neil Patel

There’s no debate today about whether blogging works or not. Studies show that inbound marketing can deliver a high volume of leads. However, inbound marketing isn’t exactly a silver bullet. Just because it works well for one type of company with one type of product trying to reach one type of customer, doesn’t mean it will work well for you.

Here’s why problems pop up and what you should do when they happen.

Where Inbound Marketing Commonly Fails

Inbound marketing can work well for most companies in the long run, as long as you plan for:

How long it will take to pay off (years).
Knowing it doesn’t always attract the right type of buyer.

New companies don’t always have the luxury of waiting around for a few years for enough inbound leads to flood their salespeople’s inboxes.

And other content-based campaigns like blogging or webinars almost never get to hard-to-reach people that need to sign off on six or seven-figure deals (think: lawyers, CEOs, etc.). These people barely have enough time to answer an email, let alone attend a webinar for a full hour (or longer).

Blogging acts like a net, helping you to attract and catch people who may one day need what you sell. But like fishing, you’re also going to catch a lot of stuff that will never, ever convert. Instead of tossing out some bait and waiting around for a nibble, you need to go spearfishing.

Related Article: Beware the Inbound Marketing Trap

How You Can Generate High-Ticket Leads (Instead of Inbound Marketing)

In “Predictable Revenue,” Aaron Ross writes about how his team generated over $100 million for Salesforce in new recurring revenue. They did that by first qualifying the types of companies who need what they do, and then conducting outreach to get introductions to the right person inside each large organization. That sounds easy enough on the surface, right?

Call it account-based marketing or just call it good direct sales. The concept is simple: you need to directly get in touch with the right types of buyers through email, phone calls, direct mail or conferences.

The problem is most marketers don’t do enough of these activities quickly enough. High-ticket deals can take months to close. The revenue you’re booking this month actually comes from the work you did over the past three months (or longer).

The reality is you can’t just focus on increasing the top of your funnel like most marketers and advertisers do. Everyone’s familiar with reach and frequency. Reach is the number of new unique people, while frequency is the number of times you reach the same person.

Direct marketing and selling place a greater emphasis on increasing frequency, instead of reach. It transitions you from mass, one-to-many tactics to one-to-one tactics as quickly as possible. Because the data is pretty clear no matter where you look:

People still prefer phone calls over lead forms.
Phone calls convert better than website conversions.
Even direct mail, which seems old and tired, converts better than email.

And anyone who’s ever had to sell anything will tell you how much easier it is to close face-to-face than through a digital alternative.

All of these activities are labor intensive. You won’t be able to reach the same number of people, as easily as throwing up a few blog posts. But instead of impressions or eyeballs, you’ll get something much more valuable in return — more sales-ready leads who can turn into new revenue tomorrow.

Feature Image Credit: PHOTO: Paul Bergmeir

By Neil Patel

Neil is the co-founder of Neil Patel Digital. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web, Forbes says he is one of the top 10 marketers, and Entrepreneur Magazine says he created one of the 100 most brilliant companies.

Sourced from CMS Wire

In News

5 Tips for Better Email Marketing Performance

May 28, 2019 No Comments

By Thomas Smale

Email is a powerful marketing tool, but too many businesses miss out on its potential. Is yours one of these?

Email is one of the most effective ways for businesses to advertise their services. While many businesses still use direct mail, their budgets might be better spent on email marketing. According to a partnership study conducted by the Data and Marketing Association and United States Postal Service, more than half (57 percent) of mail being sent at the time of the study was still direct mail.

But this strategy, the researchers said, produced a return on investment of just 7 percent. In comparison, email marketing offered an ROI of 28.5 percent. In terms of value, studies have found that email marketing offers businesses $44 for every $1 spent.

Still, some businesses fail to realize email marketing’s full benefits, so to convince them, here are five of the best ways for any business to improve its email campaigns.

1. Personalize your email content.

Most marketers are aware of the benefits of personalization, but many don’t take it seriously. Personalized email content is by far one of the best ways to increase email marketing effectiveness. According to statistics, personalized emails offer six times higher transaction rates than emails without any personalization. Other studies have shown click-through rates are 14 percent higher and conversion rates are 10 percent higher when personalization is part of the general email content.

However, personalization for many businesses means they’re just including the name of the contact in the content. This is far from perfect as a strategy, and many subscribers are now fully aware of this tactic. Instead, personalization needs to be taken to the next level.

One way of doing this is to segment your audience into groups. Then you can send more relevant content to each group. A wedding specialist website that attempted this asked one question: Are you shopping as the couple or for the couple? This simple question split the website’s audience into two groups, but the results showed a 244 percent increase in open-rates and 161 percent increase in click-through rate.

2. Avoid certain words.

Spam filters are there to stop malicious emails from reaching audiences. Of course, spammers usually use words that businesses themselves would like to use. So filters are growing more sophisticated, and allowing more genuine content to gain access into inboxes. Still, there are times when your email might be mistaken for something malicious.

Therefore, you need to minimize the use of certain words that are considered spam by these filters. For instance, words like “bargain,” “50 percent off” and similar keywords will likely send your email to the spam folder.

When you do want to use a typical spam word, because it is relevant to your content, be inventive with your subject lines. Also restrict yourself to just one high-level spam word per email within the content and email subject line. This will reduce the chance of your emails being blacklisted.

3. Change the times you send your emails.

The aim here is to catch people who are just about to check their inbox or are in the process of doing so. This will put your email close to the top of their inbox. The more time between your sending it and customers checking it, the less likely it will be that your email is read.

You also don’t want to be sending your promotional content at the same time as everyone else, so sending your emails on the weekend might be the best option. Research has shown that many businesses don’t start campaigns on weekends, so you’ll have less competition, and more people are checking their emails on the weekends now than ever before.

4. Ensure you’re building an engaged email list.

It is often the pride of some entrepreneurs to promote how many people they have on their email lists. However, long lists mean nothing if those people aren’t engaged.

There are many ways to ensure that your list is engaged. It requires removing old and inactive subscribers, but in the end, it will help you achieve more profitable campaigns. The first thing is to check for addresses that have bounced three or more times. Ensure that a simple typo such as .con instead of .com is not responsible for the error.

You can also use email verification services. Those services will identify emails that bounce or are inactive, and they can help to remove spam traps: old emails that ISPs use as a tool to identify businesses that send spam.

5. Optimize emails for mobile.

The number of people who open emails on their mobile varies depending on the study being cited. One study said that 46 percent of people opened emails on their mobiles while another found that 59 percent of emails were being opened on these devices. Very few people actually use a desktop mail client to open emails (15 to 18 percent).

To support your efforts, ensure that your campaigns are optimized for these devices. If your campaigns don’t look good on a mobile device, people aren’t going to read them and take action. Therefore, check to make sure you have great mobile templates. A few quick tips include:

Have short subject lines.
Use one-column email designs.
Keep your email design under 600 pixels.
Usie a larger font (13 or 14 pixels).

Conclusion

Email marketing could be the best way to make your business grow. For over a decade now, it has remained the most profitable form of digital marketing. Yet, too many businesses are failing to optimize their campaigns to maximize potential revenue. So, ensure that you are personalizing your emails as much as possible and make sure you avoid the traps your competitors are falling into. Most of these changes can be made without too much disruption to your current campaigns. So, why not implement them right away?

Feature Image Credit: Image credit: anyaberkut | Getty Images

By Thomas Smale

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

In News

The Death Of Mobile?

May 28, 2019 No Comments

By Cory Treffiletti

Mobile is absolutely the centerpiece for a consumer media experience, but its future is in question if it continues to be the primary means of junk, spam and general frustration in our lives. We may be witnessing the death of mobile before our very eyes.

OK, maybe that’s an exaggeration. Your mobile phone is supposed to be a tool that gives you access to people and information, and has become the primary screen for accessing video. All that’s great, but there’s a parallel set of negative issues as well.

My phone rings as much as 10 times a day, but 75% of the calls are robocalls and spam. I get text messages that are unsolicited. I access email on my phone and the majority of that email is spam. I get alerts and notifications all day and most of them are abused by the publisher or platform that I opted into.

Case in point: If I get more than five notifications a day from the same news app telling me there’s “breaking news,” how is any of it considered important?

My phone is a way to access the world, but it has also become a way for the world to access me. I’m relatively in control of the technology on my device, but my number is a direct line int to me and an invasion of my attention span. It’s desensitizing me and making me question the usefulness of the phone that I carry around everywhere I go.

I don’t really pay attention to notifications in the moment. I rarely answer the phone unless I know exactly who it is. I get annoyed when too many text messages are sitting there awaiting my response.

The carriers need to become more involved in protecting their customers from unwanted intrusions. I read recently that they are starting to wade into the waters and test some new tools, but they really need to dive in and help us. Call Protect is a great step in the right direction and I use it every day, but there needs to be more to block unsolicited robocalls and help clean up the piping for texts and emails.

Spam by itself is probably tolerable and companies like Google have taken steps to help here, so now it’s time for AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile to take a leadership position on this issue.

The cellphone manufacturers could probably help here, too. Apple and Google, along with Samsung and any other companies, should work together to remind consumers about settings for notifications and ensure that app developers don’t overdo the notifications systems. When your phone is buzzing 40 or 50 times a day with new notifications, but you only access a small percentage of the apps on your phone, they could determine if there is a correlation there and help consumers turn off notifications from apps they don’t use.

It’s not about censoring or stopping the apps from being there. It’s about ensuring that the notifications are truly valuable to the user. If they had some tools in place that alerted users regularly and suggested updates to their setting, then users could be more in control of the experience.

Mobile is certainly not going away any time soon, but it does have issues if it continues to decline into a frustrating user experience.

I hope the carriers, the manufacturers and the operating system companies can figure this out. Otherwise, I might be digging out the Treo and the Razr for reintegration into my life!

By Cory Treffiletti

Sourced from MediaPost

In News

What is display advertising?

May 27, 2019 No Comments

By Poppy Mortiboys-Harrison

Many successful marketing strategies are built on banner advertising – but why? Find out the secret to banner ads, and how they work, in our dedicated guide.

Display advertising is everywhere you look. Splashed across social media, bordering that blog you like sat atop the headlines on the Sky News website – it’s the paid, digital marketing tactic used by most businesses, without you even knowing it.

That said, we’re so used to seeing adverts that we habitually flick the anti-ad switch in our brain. In fact, approximately 200 million internet users have installed ad blocking software for this very reason.

The modern marketer is now faced with a new kind of challenge: make a display ad campaign that both stands out from the crowd, and sticks in the mind – which, considering the competition, is easier said than done.

Read on to learn what display advertising actually is, how it works, and for examples of display ads designed for a variety of online platforms.

On this page, we’ll cover:

What is display advertising?

A visual form of advertising that incorporates both text and graphics, display advertising appears on specifically designated areas of a website or social media platform in the form of a banner ad.

The internet’s answer to billboard advertising, display adverts (otherwise known as banner ads) are designed to increase the click-through rate to a landing page. This is done by cleverly combining striking imagery, attention-grabbing copy, animation, and even video content – using more than just words to create a stand-out, snapshot ad.

Display advertising is most commonly used to increase brand awareness, and to re-engage with customers who have previously paid your site a visit. It can also be used, to generate new customers by leading them to a landing page via a click-through path. The point of a display ad is to engage the potential buyer, and develop their interest in your product or service before going in with the hard sell.

If you’re thinking of making a display ad yourself, be sure to consider the format. JPEG, JPG, PNG, and GIF images are all accepted by any network, but not all networks accept HTML5. Animated banners come with their own technical specifications, while image banners only need to be under 150kb in size – and of course, be compliant with regulations set by the ASA.

Top-performing display ad sizes include:

Ad size (measured in pixels):	Description:
300×250	The medium rectangle ad – at it’s best when embedded within text, or at the bottom of an article.
336×280	The large rectangle ad – also performs well when embedded within a block of text.7
728×90	The leaderboard ad – does well when placed at the top of content and is a popular choice on forum sites.
300×600	The half page ad – more space means more content, but it also means more money. Highly appealing visually, and highly clickable.
320×100	The mobile banner ad – can be used as an alternative to the medium/large rectangle ad, and provide twice the height of the standard mobile leaderboard size.

Types of display advertising

Display advertising can be separated into three broad categories:

1. Retargeting

Delivers highly relevant ads to your audience based on specific user behaviour and interactions.

For example, creating specific adverts targeting users who have reached your pricing page, but do not complete their order is an example of retargeted display advertising. This works by using the data generated from their visit to your site to then direct adverts containing similar, or same-category products. This can be done automatically using dynamic remarketing display adverts, which are popular on e-commerce sites.

Dynamic remarketing works by pooling information from the data feed regarding the product or service that the customer has been viewing. This information is then used to automatically create a customer-specific banner ad based on a premade template.

To do this yourself:

Link your Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) account with your Google Analytics account.
You’ll then need to add a small bit of code (provided by AdWords) across all pages of your site
Next, create remarketing lists. These are specific website visitors to be targeted on account of their previous interactions with your website, ie: those who have seen a particular category collection.
Finally, within AdWords, make a remarketing campaign with different ads targeting different customers based on their interest in the product or service.
All done! Now, when your customers visit your website then leave again, they’ll still have visibility of your brand via online marketing. This recurrent visibility will help to build trust with your audience, as brand familiarity increases brand trust.

2. Acquisition

This type of campaign focuses on driving direct sales and acquiring new customers, doing so via in-market audiences, affinity audiences, and interest targeting.

In-market audiences are those looking to make an immediate purchase. Google will be able to know who these people are based on search history.

For example, someone reading mattress reviews, searching for local bed shops, and looking at different supplier sites is probably on the hunt for a new mattress (and maybe some funky new pyjamas too).

Affinity audiences are a little harder to pin down. This term might refer to those who aren’t in ‘research mode’, but might – in light of their online profile – still be in the mood to buy. These people are categorised as ‘long term interest’ prospects by Google.

The affinity marketing audiences in Google Ads are split into the following ‘long term interest’ categories:

Banking
Beauty
Food and dining
Home and garden
Lifestyle and hobbies
Media and entertainment
News and politics
Shoppers (bargain)
Shoppers (value)
Shoppers (luxury)
Sports and fitness
Technology
Travel
Vehicles and transport

Once the affinity audience member has been categorised, streamlined display adverts will appear on the sites they visit that support display adverts.

To illustrate: someone who avidly reads the interior design blogs they subscribe to, and regularly listens to a ‘how to decorate’ podcast, would be categorised into the ‘home and garden’ affinity marketing group (available in Google Ads).

3. Brand Awareness

Focussing on reach rather than conversion, an awareness campaign requires careful planning. In order to be effective, it will also need to run for quite a long time, which is costly in both time and resource.

The aim of the awareness game is to reach as many people as possible whilst sticking to your budget. Likes and shares will help to further your reach, but securing these in the first place can be tricky. Some businesses will even pay for more visibility and followers, but this can be obvious to the reader, so we recommend sticking to organic, SEO-driven methods.

Whilst a brand awareness campaign won’t have the same clear ROI as one that focuses on acquisitions, it will have possibly unseen benefits in the long run. Brand familiarity can do wonders for your business, as the more the customers see the brand, the more they’re likely to they are to trust it.

How do display ads work?

Using the same basic principles as print advertising, display ads are designed to inform, engage, notify, and increase awareness. They work by generating traffic to your website from an external source.

The point of a display ad is to encourage the customer to click on it. Simple. To increase the chances of being clicked, display advertising targets people with specific internet habits that are linked to the product or service being advertised.

Rather than just appearing in the customer’s search results, , display ads differ from normal ads in that they appear on different websites in a variety of forms. They can be static or animated, contain text, an image or both, and can appear on social media platforms in the form of Facebook banners, Snapchat geofilters, or Instagram sponsored ads.

Banner ads also appear on regular websites in the reserved advertisement space, ie at the top, bottom, or down the sides of a page.

Display ads work by targeting customers who have already expressed an interest in your product or service, which is detectable through their previous site visits or browser habits. This increases the ad’s chance of being clicked, and your chances of getting a conversion.

Don’t worry, though – it’s not all left to Google guesswork. You can have a say when it comes to the placement of your Google ads, and can opt for either automatic or managed placements.

Automatic Placements
Google will determine the placement of your ads based on the sites it deems relevant to your business.

Managed Placements
You can decide on the placement of your ads based on customer search trends and business relevancy.

Of course, the way to gain complete control over who sees your advert is to buy advertising space on a specific website. That way, you’ll already know the tone of the site and the type of audience likely to see the advert.

Display advertising examples

To properly describe what different display ads might look like would take quite some time. So, as pictures speak a thousand words, we’ve put together some display ad examples to show what display advertising really means.

Example one:

LinkedIn banner ad – This is an example of brand awareness display advertising that is specifically designed for LinkedIn, and made to get the brand name ‘out there’. The reference to ‘work’ in the slogan makes it clear that the ad is designed for LinkedIn – the pun is intriguing, but there’s no hard sell here. An ad like this would feature in LinkedIn’s paid advertising space.

Note: LinkedIn banner ads are: 1400×245 px.

Example two:

A medium-rectangle ad, designed to be an acquisition display advert on a search-appropriate website, such as an interior design blog. This captures the user intent – interior design – and subtly displays an advert that is in-line with that intent. This display advert would appear in a paid ad slot.

Example three:

Large-rectangle ad – designed as a retargeting display advert to be used on any site the targeted prospect is likely to use, ie: social media. The discount offer and code are larger than the brand name, as prior brand familiarity is assumed.

The same background image as other display adverts is used for consistency. However, the slogans have been replaced with an enticing offer, which encourages the customer to click through to the website and use the promotional code.

All three of the above display ads are marketing the same company, using the same principle, but targeting different customers at various stages of the user journey.

The time and placement of the adverts is determined by the audience’s search habits. If they’ve never searched for ‘beds to buy’ on Google, they’re likely to see example one (the brand awareness ad); if they have Googled ‘beds to buy’ but never visited the Start-up Bed Co’s site, then Google will assume they’re interested in buying a bed, and will show them example two (the acquisition ad); and, if they’ve previously visited the Start-up Bed Co’s site but didn’t purchase a new bed, then Google will show them example three (the retargeting ad) to lure them back with an exciting offer they can’t refuse.

Overall

Display advertising is a type of paid marketing that grants access to a variety of online platforms, and targets customers and prospects according to their search intent.

An efficient and effective method of digital marketing, display advertising gets your business’ name out there and keeps it in the mind of the buyer. Using social media ad space, as well as related websites and organic searches, display advertising is everywhere – and now you’ve read this article, you probably won’t be able to stop spotting display ads in your day-to-day online activity.

For properly targeted social media campaigns, a social media management system can streamline your approach – maximising efficiency and your profits. Keen to find out more? Pop to the top of the page, and we’ll put you in touch with reputable suppliers.

By Poppy Mortiboys-Harrison

Sourced from Startups

In News

How To Use Instagram To Power Your Business Blogging

May 27, 2019 No Comments

By Dave Schneider

You might have heard it already…

Instagram has recently surpassed 1 billion users and has taken the social media industry by storm.

For the blogging community, it works as a gateway to find new followers and like-minded people in their niche. It has become one of the top social media marketing platforms not only for many influential bloggers but also for many major businesses.

In this post, you’ll learn why Instagram is important and how you can use it for your business to complement your blogging strategy.

There was a misconception about Instagram’s importance being limited to businesses like retailers, restaurants, or travel companies.

Not anymore!

Now, it’s increasingly important for all kinds of businesses looking to build their brands online. Despite the surprising fact that it’s been underutilized by many, Instagram is one of the best ways to use visual marketing for your business.

Industry bloggers are consistently leveraging the power of Instagram marketing to promote their brands and grow their business on a large scale.

Why?

Because Instagram is all about visual content, and visual content makes it easier to grab their audience’s attention.

After all, 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual!

Image Source: Kissmetrics Blog

Why You Need Instagram For Your Business

Think about this for a moment, bloggers are always using Instagram to connect with peers and colleagues, influencers and readers.

How do you think it affects their brand and their business?

It’s simple.

Their network evolves and grows, their brand is exposed to millions of followers, all thanks to the influencers they network with.

According to Brandwatch, “48.8% of brands are on Instagram and by 2017 this number is likely to rise to 70.7%.”

Surely, you don’t want to be left behind, do you?

There are many reasons why you should consider Instagram for business. One of the main reasons is the level of user engagement you get.

The number one goal of your social media marketing strategy is to be where your target audience is engaging and spending their time.

Research suggests that the engagement on Instagram is 10 times higher than Facebook, 54 times better than Pinterest, and 84 times greater than Twitter.

So if your business is not active on Instagram, you are missing out…big time!

How To Use Instagram For Your Business

Using Instagram to promote your business is pretty straight forward, but you need a solid strategy to get your desired results.

Remember:

Like any other social media platform, you must have a strategic plan for marketing on Instagram to gain traffic, get leads, and generate sales.

Instagram Marketing Strategy

First, you need to establish your marketing goals.

Do you want to increase your product sales?
Do you want to increase traffic to your website?
Do you want to increase your brand awareness?

Each social media network has its own features and advantages. You have to determine which of Instagram’s features match best with your marketing goals.

Next, you should be asking yourself –

Who is my target audience?
Having a well-defined target audience is critical. You cannot say that your target audience is “anyone who is interested in my products or services”!
Your target audience should be a specific market that is more likely to engage and buy from you. For example, single moms over 30 who speak English as their first language. This is a more effective and efficient way to reach your potential clients.Check out this detailed guide by Neil Patel to understand how to define and reach your target audience.
Which part of my audience is most active on Instagram?
After you have a clear idea of who your target audience is, next you need to find out which part of your audience is most active on Instagram; men and women of different age groups, college students with different taste and styles – who is actively using Instagram?
What kind of content do they love to engage with?
Find out what kind of content your target audience is mostly sharing, liking, and commenting on. This will help you create content they’ll love to engage with.

As you can see, doing market research is an important part of your Instagram marketing strategy.

You need data to find out what other brands, businesses, and competitors in your niche are doing on Instagram.

Use this data to evaluate what is working for them, and to find things they are missing out on, as well as things you can implement better than them.

High engaging visual content is the key for Instagram marketing so your goals and strategy should reflect that.

Your Instagram marketing strategy should involve –

Strategizing what you should post on your Instagram.
Finding out how often you should post.
Creating a well-maintained content calendar.
A strategy to get more engaged followers.

Instagram Marketing Tips

Tools: You can use tools like Hootsuite, Later, ScheduGram to schedule your Instagram posts in advance. Schedule your posts at your audience’s most active times.
Hashtags: They play a very vital role these days in social media. It’s the same with Instagram too! Using hashtags the right way will allow your target audience to discover your content easily. So choose them wisely!
Tagging people: This is a powerful technique and can play a huge part in your Instagram marketing strategy. Tag influencers, brands, or businesses featured in your posts and it will show up in their profiles.
Following influencers on Instagram: This will keep you updated on the latest industry trends. You can also find interesting, engaging and inspirational content ideas for your own posts.
Monitor and Analyze: Monitor and analyze your marketing strategies and see what is working and what is not. Adopt new tactics when necessary.

Image source: Social Media Examiner

Use tools like Iconosquare to measure your performance and optimize your strategy. Some other tools similar to Iconosquare are Dash Hudson, Simply Measured, and Sprout Social.

When you are setting up your Instagram marketing campaigns, pay very close attention to your target audience and what they are interested in.

Make sure you are engaging with them by liking, commenting, replying to their mentions and direct messages in a timely fashion.

Eventually, you will find what types of content and strategies are working for your business.

By Dave Schneider

Dave Schneider is an expert on Blogging. Dave is the cofounder of NinjaOutreach, an innovative new blogger outreach software for marketers based in Boston, Massachusetts. He writes about blogging for businesses, entrepreneurship, and has a love for travel, having visited over 40 countries. Dave can be found at lesschurn.io and daveschneider.me.

Sourced from Neal Schaffer

In News

3 Blogging Best Practices for Business

May 24, 2019 No Comments

By Laura Hill

An essential part of an effective content marketing program, blogging is a great way to accomplish several of your marketing goals at once.

Need fresh content for your website? Post a blog. Want to establish yourself as a subject matter expert? Write a blog that demonstrates your mastery. Need high-quality content for social media that drives traffic to your website? What about writing you can repurpose for email marketing? Yep. Blogs.

Aren’t there already a ton of blogs out there? Well, yes. But that doesn’t mean you’re too late to start leveraging this very effective tool. Here are some helpful guidelines, so the time you spend on your blog will return the highest return on your investment!

Our top 3 tips for business blogging

1. Provide value

Give prospective customers a real reason to make the jump to your content on the website. Write about topics that are relevant to your audience, whether they are timely or evergreen. A good place to start is with questions you are frequently asked about your services or products. These are questions people will be using on search engines, using keywords that relate directly to your business, making it even more likely you will be found online!

2. Keep it interesting

Make the text easily scannable by breaking up large blocks of text with attractive white space, and adding pictures, videos, and links. Need quality sources for free or low cost images? Create your own using graphic design tools or try free photo sites that provide a natural range of people in current and realistic settings.

3. Connect your blog to your website

Hopefully, by sharing links to your blog through social media and email marketing, and by being found during online search, you will be driving traffic directly to your blog. HubSpot recommends making sure your blog is directly connected to your business website, either as a subdomain (blog.yourdomain.com) or as a page (yourdomain.com/blog) so visitors can easily access additional information about your company.

Reviving a blogging program or starting a new one?

Beginning a blogging program (or restarting a dormant one) can be intimidating and overwhelming. Listen to your customers and clients to learn what topics they are interested in, and follow these best practices to make the time you spend blogging more rewarding and effective.

By Laura Hill

Sourced from BreezyHill

In News

The Key to Profitable Blogging Is to Find a Niche

May 24, 2019 No Comments

Sourced from Inc.

Approach it the right way, and your blog can be a revenue centre.

Blogging offers an amazing opportunity to build authority and earn income. You can create a blog about anything you know or in which you have experience. The key is to choose a niche–serving a specific audience is better than writing about a jumble of topics.

Whether you want to focus on a business topic like growth marketing or a personal passion like a sport, choose a vertical and dive in. With effort and time, your blog can generate income and position you as an authority in your space. It may even help you make a profit.

You can use your blog to position yourself as an expert in any field. Take Facebook marketing, for example. Facebook Messenger marketing and Messenger chatbots are on the rise, and the marketing possibilities are endless.

If you’re a digital marketing or social media consultant, leverage the buzz surrounding Facebook chatbots, and create a blog that’s all about using Facebook Messenger chatbots for businesses. Potential topics could include things like why chatbots are great for business, how to set up a chatbot, how to use it to capture leads, the lower cost for click-to-messenger ads, etc.

Over time, you can use your blog to build authority as a Facebook chatbot expert. With a blog as your base, you can successfully add a chatbot consultancy to your business.

Feature Image Credit: CREDIT: Getty Images

Sourced from Inc.

In News

How do I get my Website on the First Page of Google Search

May 24, 2019 No Comments

By Richard James

There is no denying the power of Google. The search engine has become so popular that the term “Googling” has become synonymous with the very idea of looking something up. The only problem is that while people look to Google for answers, they do not look very hard.

Most people never look past the first page of results. This means that falling to the second page is almost as bad as being on the tenth page. Given that the vast majority of people begin online by using a search engine, this is not something any successful website can afford.

Search Engine Optimisation (or SEO) is the key to landing a prime position on the front page. However, competing with big businesses who have monopolised all the most popular words and phrases can be more than a little intimidating. That is not even mentioning all the other businesses and blogs out there who are fighting for the same position.

Not to worry though! There are several relatively simple tips and tricks that can give anyone the edge they need. The reason why everyone is not taking advantage of these techniques is that they are not the most intuitive since it involves working with the inherent disadvantages rather than trying to get rid of them.

The Disadvantages

In order to turn these so-called weaknesses into strengths, the first step is to understand what they are. To begin with, no-one is going to be able to compete with big industry names when it comes to popular phrases from the start.

Websites have a domain authority score rated out of 100. This score is heavily influenced by how many external links there are to that particular site. The big-name popular sites will have tens of thousands of links meaning that their domain score is often 70+.

So competing directly is very hard. Achieving that kind of domain score would require years of work and a huge monetary investment. Fortunately, there are other ways to make it on to Google’s front page. All that is required is a little creative thinking.

Long-Tail Keywords

Since no-one can fight the big names for popular phrases, the next best thing will have to be used instead. Long-tail keywords are longer and more precise phrases used to search for items.

Take this guide for example. The popular “head” keyword would be “ First Page of Google “. A long-tail search might look something like “ How do I get my Website on the First Page of Google Search “. The thing is, that the majority of Internet users search with phrases that are long-tail keywords. People want answers to their specific problems. So, if these searches can be predicted then there is no need to fight over head keywords. It is like casting ten smaller but more accurate nets instead of one larger one.

The great thing about this strategy is that when a relevant website appears when someone has searched for a long-tail keyword, people are more likely to stick around. This is because they asked for something specific and got a result so they believe the thing they are looking for must be somewhere within the site.

While it is true that head keywords are searched more often than any long-tailed keyword the difference does not matter that much. Long-tailed keywords have a much higher conversion rate which is the truly desirable result. It is better to have 20,000 users with an 80% conversion rate than it is to have 60,000 users with 20% conversions.

Write More Posts

The problem with utilising a strategy focused on long-tail keywords is that it requires a lot of content to back it up. A good blog post will feature a couple of keywords at the most. To capitalise on all the different keywords that will bring a website to the front page require a lot of different posts to catch a lot of different search terms.

So how many posts is enough? The industry standard is to write at least 16 posts per month, probably a little more. This means that the competition is averaging a new post slightly more often than every second day.

These are not low-quality, short-form posts either. Most posts that turn up on Google’s front page are over 2,000 words in length. Write guides with lots of useful details to help people fix their specific problems. Again, being specific is better since it allows for more long-tail keywords to be spread out across multiple posts. It is also harder to run out of things to talk about if the topic is not exhausted quickly.

Still, a brand new 2,000-word article every 2 days in 3 is a lot of content. At that point, it may be worth finding a dedicated content creator. Fortunately, content marketing is the cheapest form marketing available right now and it generates the most leads.

As well as being informative, the content needs to generate the highest CTR possible. This means optimising both the headline and the meta description. Then, as CTR increases the search engine ranking also increases.

One common trick is to figure out a headline that is the opposite of common wisdom. For example, if someone is searching “How to do X” and they see a headline saying “Learning How to do X is a Bad Idea!” they are going to stop and read a little more. Subverting expectations is a great way to stand out from the competition.

Become Featured Elsewhere

Generating all that content is a lot of work so it’s time to supplement it with something that requires far less effort. As mentioned before, all of the competition, including the big names, rely on content generation. This can be turned into an advantage.

A lot of these sites write content round-ups and features about other sites and blogs. All that is required is to be featured in their work. It is like advertising, except without the fees attached. Both sides win since one needs content to feature and the other needs to be featured. The result is essentially free advertising.

The thing about sites dedicated to ranking other sites and services is that people trust them. Customers believe that their work has been done for them and so they are free to choose the site from the ranking that suits them the best. For anyone who makes it on to these lists, it means competing with 4 to 9 other websites instead of hundreds.

This method requires very little time or effort. All that is needed is to reach out to the site ranking hosts with a pitch. It does not cost anything at all and there are huge returns for every successful attempt.

The key factors to ranking in Google are;

Quality and depth of your content

You need to cover your subject in an in-depth way and provide users with quality content and answers to their search queries.

Quality and number of inbound links

You need to get other quality website to link to your website, which can be done by content distribution to other high-quality website from within your niche. Always focus on quality and not quantity.

Fast Loading

Make sure your website load quickly for users, as nobody likes to wait for slow loading websites. You can test your website speed with Google. Click here

Mobile friendly

With the majority of users now using mobile devices it is imperative that your website is optimised for mobile use, and they can find the content they require quickly.

Domain Authority

You need to build the authority of your website using both content you publish on your website and by having external links to your website from high authority and related websites.

Security

You should ensure your website is free from any viruses or malware, and make sure it is hosted on a secure server and is accessible from https and make use of a SSL certificate.

Paid Advertisements

Paying for AdWords is probably not the first thing that comes to mind for anyone thinking about trying to reach Google’s front page. There is a strategy here and as always, it is about building an advantage from an unusual angle.

Results from AdWords are typically irrelevant to most searches. This is because the people who pay for it are not interested in being part of the organic search. Conversely, most people who want to be part of the organic search are not thinking about the ads that everyone has to scroll past to reach their search results.

Take a search for “best car insurance” for example. Someone entering this term is likely looking for a list comparing different insurance providers so that they can make an informed decision. There is no way any insurance provider is going to appear in these search results. Still, the insurance providers want a chance to capture some customers who are searching for this term and so they pay for AdWords.

A well-positioned advert that is actually relevant to the searcher’s intent is going to generate traffic. Also, because the adverts appear before the organic search results it is a little like skipping the line to be top of the list. So long as the advert is built to look like one of the results the user is actually looking for it is going to work. The more focused your ads is and the landing page you send them to the better results you will get. For example if you users was searching for “bmw 5 series car insurance, and your ads says “Best price BMW 5 Series car insurance” the users is much more likely to click on the ad and if the landing page is about BMW 5 series car insurance the user is much more likely to convert into a customer or enquiry.

Summary

No-one is going to make it on to Google’s first page of results immediately. A lot of the best keywords have long since been eaten up by the biggest names. These companies have long reputations that make competing directly extremely difficult.

There are ways to get around the limitations and still make it with enough time and hard work. First, use long-tail keywords. Finding the right ones takes some research but it is well worth the effort since they boast a much higher conversion rate than shorter phrases anyway.

Next is content. Content provides the platform for the keywords to come into play. Make sure to produce constantly and make sure that the posts are detailed with a narrow focus. Once enough has been produced it can be submitted to review sites. Making it onto a top 5 or a top 10 list is always going to generate a lot of attention.

Finally, it is always possible to utilise ads. AdWords results that look enough like organic search results will generate extra traffic. It is simply a matter of being creative and doing the proper research beforehand to make sure the advert has the correct look and feel.

These tips are not conclusive but they are a good place to start. The thing they have all have in common is creative thinking and with enough imagination, it is possible to go much further. Any site can sit right beside the biggest names with the right approach.

By Richard James

Has worked for many Internet marketing companies over the years, and has contributed to many online publications. If there is a story, he will find it.

Sourced from The Tribune World

In Uncategorized

What is PPC?

May 24, 2019 No Comments

By Poppy Mortiboys-Harrison

PPC is the advertising hack that makes sure your ads are in the right place at the right time. Learn how it works, and how to implement it, with our dedicated guide

PPC (Pay Per Click) is a type of online advertising that requires advertisers to pay each time a user clicks on one of their online ads.

The most common type of PPC advertising is the paid search ad. These ads appear when people use a search engine like Google to perform commercial searches, meaning that they’re specifically looking for something to buy.

The following goes into more detail about what PPC actually is, how it works, and the steps you can take to get your own PPC campaign up and running today.

On this page, we’ll cover:

What is PPC?

PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising means that each time a customer clicks on the PPC advert, the advertiser pays a fee to the search engine displaying it.

A good advert will generate a lot of interest, encouraging customers to click-through and hopefully make a purchase. The business running the advert will then be charged for this ‘click through’ process.

Sometimes referred to as Cost Per Click (CPC), PPC comes in a variety of forms – the most common of which is the paid search ad. Paid search advertising presents customers with adverts that the search engine operator deems most relevant to their search.

For example, someone searching for ‘beachwear’ will see adverts for bikinis and flip flops – rather than bobble hats and ski goggles – because the search engine has already filtered out the content that’s irrelevant to their search.

But it’s not just a case of “throw money at it, and the ad will appear” – oh no. Search engines are nifty, and will place adverts into what’s known as the ‘Ad Auction’.

This rather exciting-sounding process is used by Google and other search engine operators to determine the relevance of ads, and automatically assesses an advert’s applicability in relation to the customer’s original search.

If, after the Ad Auction, an advert is deemed ‘relevant’ by the search engine, then it will appear in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page).

How does the Ad Auction work?

You may or may not be surprised to hear that there is some bidding involved. Not in the ‘flog-it’ sense complete with block, gavel and auctioneer, but digitally.

Advertisers will bid on keywords that they want to prompt the display of their advert. Keywords shouldn’t be confused with search queries: the keyword links to the advertised product, whereas the search query is what the customer puts into Google.

For example, if a customer types the search query ‘pizza near me’ into Google, the keyword here is pizza. Therefore, Google will show ads for local pizza shops (as the query was ‘near me’, showing local intent).

The auction is automated and runs off a set of predetermined metrics, taking into account your budget, target market, and the keywords you’ve decided to bid on. Those keywords should be relevant to your product, and be search-engine friendly – if you’re looking for some helpful tools to carry out your keyword research, take a look at this list.

The bidder’s position, known as the Ad Rank, is determined by combining the PPC bid and the quality score of the advert itself. Low quality ads are not looked at favourably, so the winner isn’t necessarily the highest bidder.

Now, if your advert has won the bid – and is judged to be a suitable fit with the search intent of the customer – your PPC advert will appear at the top of the search page. If the customer clicks on your ad, you will then pay a fee determined by how much you bid on that keyword.

What is Google AdWords PPC?

The most popular form of PPC advertising, Google Ads (formerly known as Google AdWords) is a platform that allows businesses to create ads which appear and rank on Google.

Google Ads operates on a Pay-Per-Click model. Every time a search term is entered into Google, Google then dips into its bank of ads relevant to that search, and selects some to appear in the ad space on its search results page.

This selection process is based on:

The relevance of the advertiser’s chosen keywords
The quality of the ad itself
The size of the keyword bid

These factors combine to form what’s known as the advert’s Ad Rank (calculated by multiplying the PPC bid and the ad’s quality score).

The Ad Rank is designed to keep advertisers within their budget, as the system itself operates on a Pay Per Click basis. This allows the winning ad to reach the right customer at a cost that fits their budget.

But, how much will it cost?

That’s entirely dependent on how much you want to spend. In Google’s own words, “you’ll never pay more than the monthly cap you set”.

Google allows you to set a monthly budget cap, and there’s no minimum spend! Google will give you advice based on how much other businesses similar to yours spend on their PPC ads, and what the estimated results from that figure might be.

It takes around a month to start seeing results from a Google Ad, so there’s no need to panic. If you do feel that you’re really not getting the desired ROI, then you can readjust your budget at any time, with no strings attached.

What you choose to spend will depend on the value of the keywords themselves, as well as your own budget. But we can offer you the wise words of James Munro, PPC advertising expert at digital marketing agency, MVF: “A bid should always be what a click is worth to you.”

How to do PPC

PPC can be implemented in lots of ways, but the simplest, most popular method is to use Google Ads. It’s free to use, and relatively simple to get yourself started.

The steps it’ll take you through are detailed below, so you know what you’re getting yourself into before you get stuck in.

Step 1
Google Ads will ask you to set your goal

You can set your Google Ad account to have a certain focus, and Google will then help you achieve your targets. Your goal will have one of three focuses:

Calls – get customers on the phone to book appointments or close a deal.
Store visits – if you business relies on foot traffic.
Website action – if you want people to use your online shop, join your mailing list, or fill out a form.

Step 2
Decide where to advertise

Global or local. You decide where you’d like to show your ads, and Google will put them in front of the right people at the right time.

Step 3
Your ad’s reach

Finding the right audience is key to your ad’s performance. With Google Ads, you can choose the location of your ad’s appearance, from encompassing a certain radius of your shop to covering entire counties or countries.

Other variable metrics include:

Demographic (based on gender, age etc)
Device (mobile, tablet, PC)
Time (am/pm – working hours or weekends)
Location (local or global)
Audience (based on interest)

Step 4
Create your message

Use some compelling copy to get customers excited about your business, or create exciting banner ads by adding images. Pop to our helpful guide on display advertising for more banner ad information.

Step 5
Set your budget cap

With no minimum spend and no commitment, the Google Ads budget cap allows you to spend within your means on advertising. You’ll never pay more than the monthly cap you set, while Google will also show you the estimated results for your budget, helping you make an informed decision.

Step 6
Go live

Google will display your ads when your product or service is relevant to a search. Your ads can appear on Google Search, Google Maps, and a network of partner sites. You’ll pay for results when people click on your ad, call your business via Google, go to your landing page via the ad, or get directions to your shop.

Step 7
Keep track of your progress

Google Ads will help you audit your performance by providing reports, insights, and ongoing tips on how to make your ads even more successful.

Choosing your keywords

Keywords allow you to target your advertising based on what people are searching for. You can judge the intent of the customer based on their search query – for example, someone searching ‘where is my nearest coffee shop’ probably wants a cup of coffee immediately.

If you’re keen to do some of your own keyword research, then here are some helpful sites and plugins that’ll make optimising your keywords a breeze:

Google Ads also has an inbuilt keyword planner to help you figure out the value of each word you want to bid on. This helps inform your bid budget, and shows the value of each individual keyword.

In a nutshell

PPC is a process that sees users bid on keywords and pay for each click on their advertisements. Favoured over traditional advertising methods due to its measurability, accountability and flexibility, PPC is perfect for a small business looking to create a targeted ad campaign on a budget.

Giving you the freedom to choose how much you’re willing to spend at any one time, PPC is adjustable to any budget or requirements, providing useful metrics for you to constantly streamline your approach.

If PPC sounds like something your business could benefit from, but you don’t have the manpower to run such a campaign, there are marketing specialists who can help. To be put in touch with a marketing specialist who’s just right for your business, pop to the top of the page, fill in the online form, and we’ll help you find the answers to all your PPC needs.

By Poppy Mortiboys-Harrison

Sourced from startups