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Online Ad Business Is Picking Up. Buy Twitter, Facebook and Alphabet, Analyst Says.

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By Eric J. Savitz

Social-media stocks are getting a boost from Deutsche Bank analyst Lloyd Walmsley, who raised his rating on Twitter and lifted his price targets on Facebook, Alphabet, Snap, and Pinterest.

For Twitter (ticker: TWTR), he went to Buy from Hold, with a price target of $56, up from $36. The call is part of a broader bullish report on the social-media stocks, which he thinks are positioned to benefit from a coming rebound in online advertising demand.

The analyst lifted his price targets on Facebook (FB), to $325 from $305; Alphabet, Google’s parent (GOOGL), to $2,020 from $1,975; Pinterest (PINS), to $55 from $43; and Snap (SNAP), to $32 from $28. He repeated Buy ratings on all of them.

“We are bullish on the ad names into Q3 results given a continued ad recovery through Q3 and a strong outlook for Q4 based on our industry conversations,” he said. “We are bullish on the space into 2021, where a continued cyclical recovery and easy comps will drive accelerating growth and margin recovery, with potential for more share gains across online advertising.”

He cited the large-cap companies in the group—Google and Facebook—as having a better balance of risks and potential rewards, given that investors are less enthusiastic about their prospects than they are for the midcap firms in the group: Snap and Pinterest. Walmsley said he is positive about Snap and Pinterest’s fundamentals, but noted “positive sentiment” about those stocks.

Twitter, he said, can continue to rally, driven by improving growth in the second half. and “a compelling bull case for 2021.”

“In our view, Twitter is well positioned to benefit from a big event landscape in 2021, expansion into more performance advertising on the back of its ad server rebuild and new MAP [mobile app promotion] product, and an eventual high-margin subscription product,” he wrote.

“We have been excited about the medium-term prospects for Twitter but unable to get more bullish given weak advertising channel feedback. We are now starting to hear more positive feedback in the ad channel and would take advantage of the opportunity to build a position now before a stronger ad recovery takes hold and we get into the period of 2021 excitement.”

Monday morning, Twitter was up 4.5% to $47.99, Facebook rose 3.1% to $272.67, and Alphabet gained 2.7%, to $1,550.94. Snap rose 0.7% to $27.18, while Pinterest rallied 2.9% to $44.65.

By Eric J. Savitz

Write to Eric J. Savitz at [email protected]

Sourced from BARRON’S

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5 Effective management tools to boost your online writing business

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By Ralf Llanasas.

Given the growth of social media and content marketing, there has been a visible growth in online writing businesses. The demand for writers in today’s information age will keep on rising. The success that awaits is exciting, but admittedly, it can be challenging to deal with the day-to-day pressures of managing tasks and the business-side itself.

So here’s a good question to ask: What can you do to maximize your writing opportunities? How do you improve your writing business management? Here are five tools that you should incorporate into your activities to streamline your workflow.

  1. Simul

In a writing business, you don’t handle things on your own. Your success is dependent on other writers and editors. Having different people checking out write-ups would also entail having revisions and a little back-and-forth until the client is satisfied with your output

This is where Simul comes in. This software will allow you to compare Word documents and track the changes in the document. It also allows multiple people to collaborate in real-time, showing the changes made by each party, and allowing you to choose which one was better. With Simul, preparing documents and writing articles will be so much easier.

  1. Whitesmoke

No human writer is ever error-proof. Whether you are a native speaker or well-studied in the English language, you are bound to make mistakes, so you need software to do some checking for you. Whitesmoke provides these solutions, with features like spelling, grammar, punctuation, and style checks to help you correct and enhance all your written works.

  1. BPlans 

In building a business, advice from experts can help you achieve the goals yourself and boost the growth of your brand. Bplans is a resource filled with various business know-how that can help you set up and get ahead. They offer business plan templates, guides, marketing reports, pitch templates, and other tools you never knew you needed. From coming up with a business idea to learning how to be a business manager, Bplans has a wide selection of videos, blogs, and other pieces that will serve as your digital mentor and guide.

  1. Xmind 

Developing ideas is essential in gaining a competitive edge in your business.  More than that, your creativity must be at its best for you to be able to write better and offer something new to your clients. Xmind is an amazing software that will help you keep track of your ideas and opening you to the possibilities that can grow from them.

Xmind offers mind mapping features, with a version that offers a more modern design and another going with the traditional route. This is perfect for people who require more organization in their projects and for those who want to retain more information in the things they are trying to learn. You can create non-linear documents, organization charts, matrix, timelines, and other

  1. Daily Grammar

As a writer, improving your grammar skills is a vital part of the job. Expanding your vocabulary and learning about the different rules can help you produce topnotch work and set you apart from your competitors. Aside from reading books and watching video lessons, you can also explore the available resources from Daily Grammar.

Daily Grammar is a teaching tool for people of all ages and English proficiency levels. You can explore 440 grammar lessons and 88 quizzes to test your knowledge. They also have a daily newsletter that will give you tips and lesson reminders to keep you on the road towards the best writer you can be.

These five tools are just a few among the thousands of apps and programs out there, but they can be a good way to start. The key to succeeding in your writing business is to do this important thing: write. By continuously practicing this skill, you’ll learn more and you will be amazed at how far you can go!

By Ralf Llanasas

Ralf Llanasas is a content marketer at Simul docs specializing topics in business technology, SaaS, and automation. His writings can be read across different online publications.  He love’s taking photographs when free. Follow him on Twitter at @IamRalf12.

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Three Things To Consider When Hiring A Social Media Influencer

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By John Turner.

You can grow your business in countless ways using social media. Influencers are one of the most common yet underutilized social media marketing tools at your disposal.

Influencers are internet personalities who promote your content to their audiences in exchange for cross-promotion, cash payment or a free sample of the product you want them to show. This strategy can help you generate more leads and sales. People who follow influencers trust them, so their recommendations are like getting a suggestion from a friend.

You may be thinking about reaching out to influencers to promote your business, or maybe you’ve been contacted by an influencer and want to know what you need to consider. Either way, we are going to take a look at several things you should think about before you sign a contract with an influencer.

Let’s get started!

Content Niche And Format

First, think about the niche and format of the influencer you want to hire. Both of these elements will play a role in deciding whether this person will be a good fit for your brand.

Always work with people who have a similar target audience to your own. It wouldn’t make sense to promote your email marketing firm with an influencer who plays video games. You would want to find someone who talks about finance or teaches subscribers about marketing.

If your product doesn’t resonate with the audience, there’s no chance that they will click your link in the description and buy your product. Your main goal should be to find influencers who work in a space where your target audience is likely to spend their time.

Format plays an essential part in the equation, too. You likely wouldn’t spend too much time promoting your email marketing business with Instagram because there are limitations due to not having a physical product to show off. But if your company sells items like clothing or pet supplies, there are countless Instagram influencers you can contact.

Audience Size

Social media influencers can be classified by their audience sizes. There are four types you should know:

• Nano: < 1,000 followers

• Micro: 1,000 to 100,000 followers

• Macro: 100,000 to 1 million followers

• Mega: > 1 million followers

Each size segment has a unique benefit that you can use to your advantage. For instance, macro-influencers don’t have the reach of a mega-influencer, but they tend to have more rapport with their audiences.

Normally, you want to work with a mega-influencer because your goal is to spread brand awareness, which can help budding businesses. Macro-influencers can help you get more eyes on your website and improve your conversions. The slightly smaller audience means you have a better chance of reaching people interested in your product.

Micro- and nano-influencers are excellent for small-scale, targeted campaigns. If you want to promote a beta test of your software, put codes out to someone with less than 1,000 followers. Sending out the code to more people than that could cause the beta to break, which isn’t helpful for consumers or developer teams.

Tracking Progress

Progress drives every business. Successes and failures are often determined by how much we can accomplish over a specific period of time. Metrics across your website, email and social media all point to the progress you’re making as a company.

Social media influencers have their own metrics that you should track consistently. You need to know how many people are landing on your website from the influencer’s content. Create special short links that are connected to each influencer so you can track their progress over time.

Seeing their performance as it relates to your site is vital to fine-tune your campaign in the future. For example, you should know if an influencer posted sponsored content for your brand for three months, but still never managed to get a click-through. Knowing this information means you’ll have the option to swap out influencers, look for new opportunities and steadily grow your brand.

Your decisions should ultimately boil down to your goals. Think carefully about your goals and expectations. What do you hope to accomplish by hiring a social media influencer? Do you want to spread brand awareness, or is your goal more about securing sales? Maybe it’s a mixture of both. Once you determine your goals, you can start considering the points mentioned above.

Feature Image Credit: GETTY

By John Turner,

The founder of SeedProd, the most popular coming-soon page solution for WordPress used by over 800,000 websites

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Coupon-Clipping and Printed Catalogues Fade Into History as Covid-19 Accelerates Digital Shift

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By Tim Hughes.

Another day, and another part of the old analogue world dies.  Digital transformation accelerated by Covid19.

Coupon clipping is on the way out according to this article and Argos, the stalwart of the catalogue world, has just killed it’s catalogue.

It looks like iOS14 will hammer another nail in the coffin of advertising.

We’ve already seen the demise of cold calling through the introduction of GDPR and iOS13.  GDPR also having an impact on email marketing.

So while it is a long time before “advertising”, “cold calling” and “email marketing” can be called dead.  We know that the results we get deminise each year.  The only way you can keep up the results is to spend more money on ads, send more emails and make more calls.

Which we know, adds (no pun intended) to the noise.  If every company makes the same increase, the cross industry noise just increases, which means more people will turn to ad-blockers, unsubscribe and turn on the cold calling blockers on their iPhone.

As advertising, email and cold calling go the same way as coupons and catalogues, is there an alternative?

We can present to your management team an alternative that world beating companies are turning to.

What would that look like?

Social Media Has Changed How We Live and Work

At DLA Ignite a presentation will consist of some context, so research that shows the way that social media has changed the way we live and the way we work.

We are not saying things have changed, the figures from the research show how the world has changed.  For example …

We Have Transformed In Work and Play on Social

In this report by Simon Kemp he outlines the extent that social media has become part of our lives.

Linkedin have just announced there are now 706 million people on Linkedin.

How You Can Make a Difference?

We then talk about how you can make a difference.

Using ourselves as a case study, we show you what we do to “social sell”.  We don’t advertise, we don’t cold call and we don’t send spam emails.  We social sell.

We always point out that we are presenting to the Board of the business, through our own use of social.

Explaining with examples, of how we use social, is a great case study.  Everybody who works for DLA Ignite has to be a “high water mark” of social. Why? Because if we are to stand up in front of your sales team and say “do this”, it will be a short conversation if we are not exhibiting those behaviours.

(Somebody just launched a social selling business this week by sending an email.  Would you really buy from a company that sold social selling, that didn’t use social selling?)

What are Your Competitors Doing on Social?

Next we show how your competitors are using social.  Everybody is interested in what their competitors are doing and we can show you an analysis of what your competitors are doing.  Most of them are invisible to the digital customer, so this allows you to see the competitive advantage and revenue potential.  If you move into the digital space, you are out manoeuvring and out selling the competition, which is a good thing, right?

Who’s Doing This? – Case Studies

We then walk you through the companies and the people that are doing this already.  The actual $ the people have achieved.

I often write about BMW, while this is B2C it is a considered purchase and they use LinkedIn to generate leads.  In November 2019, they got 28 pieces of inbound from Linkedin and converted 14 of them. Let’s assume a BMW is $50,000, then that’s an additional $700,000 of revenue for zero marketing spend.

This is in the same month that Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) complained they couldn’t make any sales and were closing down production.

My point being that even before Covid19 there was clear winners and losers.

We do have NDAs in place with all of our clients, as you can imagine this is a massive competitive advantage, but there are details, like the one above, we can share.

If anybody tells you there is no Return on Investment (ROI) from social selling, they don’t know what they are talking about.

Next we talk about the opportunity and show a list of target accounts … companies that you currently don’t have relationships with, you could sell to with social and digital.

Target List and Accounts and People

In this meeting it ended up with us giving a presentation on Sales Navigator.  Not a technical presentation, but focused on your business.  Using certain search criteria, we pulled up a list of 800 people all of whom are possible target people / companies.  They are all are people that could buy from you.  It surprised this business, that they were not connected to any of the people.  Again, this gives you some idea of the potential you have.

Where Do We Go From Here?

At the end of the meeting the MD stood up and thanked our person and said “We went into lockdown analogue, but we will come out of it digital”.

Obviously at this point a company needs to decide how they implement this.

We think that having being do this for 4 years, we are no fly by night company, it gives us a great track record.  We have a proven methodology and all our customers get results.  The methodology is repeatable and predictable as to the results.  We are giving people a life skill, so they and you get these results, forever.

And finally, it’s all we do.

If you went for knee surgery and found the best knee surgeon in the world, then that would be perfect.  If the knee surgeon said they were also a ini cab driver and a gardener.  In fact, the longer the list of “services” he provides the more likely you won’t use him.  The same goes for your “full service marketing agency”.  I’m sorry, but they are not experts on social.  But all you have to do is look at their social profiles and compare them with ours.

How We Experienced 10 years’ Worth of Digital Growth in Just Three Months

We all know the world has changed and the fact we have “experienced 10 years’ worth of digital growth in just three months” just proves you cannot be doing the same as you were, pre-covid.

You have to stand up in your organisation and tell people that things have to change.  You need to raise as sales meetings, management meetings, leadership meetings and board meetings that you need to be social selling.

And you need help from a reputable company that understands change and is totally focused on getting results, though social, for it’s clients.

By Tim Hughes.

I’m contactable here

https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothyhughessocialselling/

Sourced from dla

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Bringing Your Offline Brand Online

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By Tony Pec.

Many people become known within their own communities. They establish a name for themselves and build an “offline brand,” something that benefits them and helps create local opportunity, influence, leverage and longevity. They may have built a successful and well-known brand offline, but times are changing, and it is important for every business and entrepreneur to build their brand online.

In today’s world, social media has become a platform for individuals and businesses to build a national or even international brand. There are no limitations to what you are able to build because of social media’s power and scope. You can connect with individuals all around the world with the click of a button and generate more leads and sales than ever before.

Although it sounds amazing and simple at first, it is not. Taking your offline brand online is one of the most difficult things you can do because it requires true authenticity, vulnerability and consistency. Many, if not all, are very comfortable with their offline brand because those around them know who they are and their story. When bringing it online, you are starting from the beginning because you are putting yourself out there to people who may not know anything about you at all. Therefore, you are completely leaving your comfort zone and putting yourself in an uncomfortable situation.

You must present your accolades you’ve achieved offline in your online presence. You should aim to showcase all of your reviews and testimonials to present your proven track record. Building an online brand requires you to be who you are offline. There is no changing your persona for the online public because if those who follow you meet you, they will be able to tell if you are the same person or not.

Trying to change who you are is one of the biggest things that can negatively impact your brand when taking it online — so much so that it could be a death sentence for your brand. You must be you always. Your audience is going to correlate who you are to your business, and authenticity is pivotal to the success of your online brand. Your goal should be that when people from online you meet you for the first time in person, they say, “You are exactly who you are online!” This confirms you are building a strong online brand that properly depicts your offline brand.

One major component to building that successful online brand is true vulnerability. This is something that most people and businesses struggle with. They are under the impression that they need to be closed off and keep it “strictly” business. Don’t be misinformed. The way you act with those around you, the things you like, your personality and the way you dress should all be portrayed on your online social media platforms. Talk about why you’re in business. Show why your company makes a difference. Detail what makes you different.

Think deeper, not wider. When you are your true self, you will build the audience you want and connect with those individuals deeper than if you put on a fake persona just to attract who you think you want to attract. Do not try to build an online brand by putting out content and information you think others will like. Put out content and information that is authentically you and your brand.

The best way a business can build their brand online is through consistency. Just as consistency in working out and eating healthy will get you the results you want on your fitness journey, the same applies when building a brand online: Businesses that stay consistent will win. In my experience, the Instagram algorithm also favors consistency on the platform and will reward you with more reach.

When building an online brand, it is paramount to consistently show up day in and day out. Business leaders need to show as much of their day-to-day as possible so consumers can feel part of the journey and process behind the brand’s products or services. Business leaders need to consistently put out content that is educational, shows the behind the scenes, tells a story, highlights the team, recognizes the customer and engages with their audience. You can create unique content, engage, grow your reach and audience, and have a strategy, but if you’re not consistent, you won’t build a brand.

Your offline brand must be the same as your online brand. No changes — strictly you.

Feature Image Credit: GETTY

By Tony Pec

Co-Founder of Y Not You Media, helping businesses and brands grow with content, strategy and attention. Read Tony Pec’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

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How to Leverage Paid Social Media With Retargeting

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By Amanda Robinson.

The more people engage with your ad and post, the more likely it is to be seen by people outside your target audience.

The following excerpt is from Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing by Eric Butow, Jenn Herman, Stephanie Liu, Amanda Robinson and Mike Allton, available now via Entrepreneur Press. Order from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Apple Books.

Boosting your Facebook Advertising efforts is an investment you might want to consider if social media marketing is a big part of your overall marketing strategy.

When you decide to advertise with Facebook, you can either create a new ad or use a status update you’ve already shared.

The ad fee structure is similar to Google in that you can set a daily budget, but you don’t set a bid per click. Instead, Facebook will begin showing your ads; the more interest people show, the less per click you’ll be charged. So it’s in everyone’s best interests to create Facebook ad posts that are interesting and compelling.

In addition to driving traffic, you can use Facebook ads for brand awareness and simply pay for engagement — in other words, likes, comments and shares. The more people engage with your ad and post, the more likely it is to be seen by people outside your target audience.

Unlike Google search ads, which are 100 percent text, Facebook ads can be links, images or even video. You can use a single image or a carousel of images. You can even upload multiple images and let Facebook test which one resonates best with your audience.

You can also set up a remarketing pixel (a snippet of code installed on your website) so that Facebook can track users who have been to your site and allow you to “remarket” to them with an ad specifically targeting them.

Here’s how remarketing works. Once you have a Facebook pixel installed on your site and are driving targeted traffic using Google Ads (and, of course, other means), you are equipped to amplify the illusion of frequency.

With a pixel in place, you can now create Facebook ads targeting people who have visited your site, or even specific pages or posts within your site. This is referred to as retargeting or remarketing.

You’ve doubtless experienced this yourself. Spend a couple of minutes looking at cars on an automotive site, and suddenly every site you go to is displaying ads for that brand of car. Because you showed interest in a brand or product by visiting their site, advertisers smartly wish to capitalize on that interest and keep themselves top of mind.

You can now do exactly the same thing!

When your Google ads effectively capture someone as they’re searching for you or information you have published, they register as a visitor with the Facebook pixel. If Facebook recognizes them as a user and you are running a remarketing campaign that includes someone like them, you can layer brand-awareness or added-benefit advertising on Facebook or Instagram, which will potentially be seen by someone who was already demonstrating search intent and is familiar with your brand. This is extraordinarily powerful and effective.

Couple this technique with problem-solving content, and you now have a means to reach people who you know have an issue and may need help to solve it. That help might include:

  • How-to guides.
  • Answers to frequently asked questions.
  • Case studies.

Let’s say you’re a local attorney specializing in family law. You can write a series of blog posts that answer common questions about divorce, child custody, estate planning and so on, and then use Google Ads to help people who are searching for those answers find your content. You can then place Facebook ads that encourage those people to call you for more information and assistance.

Or let’s imagine you own a wedding dress shop. Same scenario: Create content that answers common questions brides have about their special day, use Google Ads to drive intentional traffic, and then leverage Facebook to make sure those brides know about your gorgeous dresses by placing ads showcasing your latest offerings and retargeting your website traffic.

Whatever products or services you have to offer, this technique can be implemented, tested, refined and then scaled up.

Feature Image Credit: Image credit: Kornburut Woradee | EyeEm | Getty Images

By Amanda Robinson.

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

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How can marketing change the world for the better?

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By Jenni Baker.

Does marketing have the power to change the world? The year 2020 has forced us all to redress the net result of the industrial revolution, which spurred mass consumption and throw-away consumerism. So, can our industry – with the abundance of talent, skill and creativity- champion for a better future for all?

The Drum and Facebook have partnered to bring together teams from brands and agencies across the globe to provide some answers to this very challenging question. The idea is to get together experts from the industry to find solutions to business and societal challenges to help create value for the people and the communities it impacts.

The creative brief

Uniting three markets under the theme of ‘stakeholder capitalism’ – with attention to inclusion and diversity – three separate teams in North America, EMEA and APAC were put together to answer the brief that involves a rethink of how small-to-medium size enterprises (SMEs) that are run by minorities operate, and how as an industry we can help create more resilient businesses especially in these unprecedented times.

Each of the three regions were given three separate briefs – The US (North America) team’s brief is to focus on women run SMEs. So how to overcome systemic social and financial challenges while starting and sustaining female-led businesses? Do they need to approach entrepreneurship differently?

For the London, UK (EMEA) team the theme was immigrant-led small business. Are immigrant-owned businesses the untapped potential? What are the challenges and opportunities of migrant founders and their businesses?

The theme for the APAC team is silver start-ups. A growing number of over-65s are now delaying retirement by starting their own firm, fueling a ‘grey business’ boom. What are their challenges, can we identify the most pertinent ones and solve those problems?

The first meet-up

Each of the teams kicked off their first virtual brainstorm session to find a campaign solution that would positively impact the lives of minority groups operating in the SME market. Each of the teams were also given mentors to help guide through the process.

Following is the list of the three teams:

Team US

  • Tom Spaven, brand director, Bombay Sapphire, North America (mentor)
  • Stephanie Walker, innovation marketing manager, Pepsico
  • Cassie Begalle, strategy and innovation brand Manager – U by Kotex, Kimberly-Clark
  • Iyanni Callender, junior art director, Strawberry Frog
  • Paola Ortega, associate strategy director, DDB Chicago
  • Michael Rodriguez, content strategist, 3 Leches Creative

Team UK

  • Arjoon Bose, marketing head- culture & brand experience (Europe-Australasia), General Mills (mentor)
  • Andre Campbell, partnerships lead, Mercedes-Benz
  • Fatima Diez, head of marketing, MunchFit
  • Shannie Mears, co-founder & talent chief, The Elephant Room
  • Jade Nodinot, former creative associate, BlackBook London
  • Emma Luxton, former senior account executive, Avantgarde London

Team APAC

  • Erica Kerner, SVP, marketing strategy & partnerships, ONE Championship (mentor)
  • Triveni Rajagopal, global digital director, skin cleansing and BPC, Unilever
  • Chandini Malla, senior manager, Diageo
  • Bryan Martin, social media executive, Reprise Digital
  • Adrianne Pan, planner, Havas Singapore

Team US: A fact-finding mission

Gender equality is at risk of being set back decades in the current climate – not just minorities in general, but especially women in it. In the US, the focus is on women-owned SMEs, looking at how female-led businesses can overcome systemic social and financial challenges, as well as addressing the different approaches that this cohort might have to entrepreneurship in order to succeed.

One such challenge was posed by keynote speaker Victoria Monsul Singolda, owner and creative director of Iris & Virgil, who discussed that though it might be true that for women-led businesses, their vulnerabilities as women and as small business owners are compounded, there needs to be a gender-smart approach because not all women-led businesses are the same.

“I never really thought of myself as a female business owner, I’m just a business owner. Maybe because my mother was very dominant in the household, she was a student, she was a business owner, she was a mum, we always saw her, we were always together. Maybe that’s why I never thought that there was something different or special being a girl.”

Headed up by mentor Tom Spaven from Bombay Sapphire, the team immediately honed into “resilience” and “impact” as the insights towards this gender-smart approach.

The team delved into discussions to align on common goals and objectives. The first step was to focus on the challenges in order to find the most creative solution – with three key take-aways that these women are lacking: Knowledge and resources to tap into; a community to help them venture into this new world; and platforms available to really share and have people learn more about.

The team then decided that the initial insight-led approach would begin with a fact-finding mission to assess the situation and the scale of the problem that the campaign needed to solve; followed by the consumer insight to understand the deep motivations and needs of the target to ultimately give the barrier they need to start to push against in order to solve the problem; and finally, culture listening around this topic – all of which would help to get a clear, sharpened brief about the real problem they are trying to solve.

Team EMEA: Move from ‘pivot to evolve’

On the other side of the Atlantic, Team EMEA, led by mentor Arjoon Bose from General Mills, tackled the untapped potential of ethnic minority and immigrant-owned founders, their challenges and opportunities.

“The last few months have been testing and I think we’ve all come up with a ton of learning. But I think we’re at that stage right now where we’re needing to move from pivot to evolve,” said Bose. “A growth mindset is what we’re going to have to need as we come out of this and prepare to get stronger and accelerate.”

After hearing from keynote speakers Sharon Jandu, director, Yorkshire Asian Business Association and director, Northern Asian Power List; and Steph Douglas, founder, Don’t Buy Her Flowers, it was clear that a heavy emphasis on networking, relationships and experiences, along with access to digital technologies, were key in bringing this community together.

“For an SME, they are so busy doing what they do that they don’t have the time or the capacity to think about what they can do – or they don’t have the networks to enable them to get the contacts to get investments or to get ideas. They are constantly running on a treadmill, trying to do and keep what they are doing alive. How can we stop them becoming so absorbed in their business that they can actually distance themselves and look at it from an aerial perspective?” asked Jandu.

The team identified the need to listen and learn directly from migrant-led business owners themselves to understand their experience, their struggles and challenges with direct feedback through focus groups and on-the-ground research. This would allow them to narrow down into one or two sectors that need the drive and support. They identified Facebook’s own small business community as a great place to start to create a questionnaire in order to gain invaluable insights to help shape their strategy.

“The opportunity that digital gives us to connect these immigrant-owned businesses with each other and provide each other with their own experience and their own knowledge can be a very valuable thing that we could leverage if it’s relevant to their challenge,” said Fatima Diez.

Team APAC: Reinventing and re-energising culture

With a growing number of over 65s now delaying retirement and fuelling a ‘grey business’ boom, the focus for Team APAC was on overcoming the challenges faced by the silver start-ups, particularly when it comes to navigating through the coronavirus pandemic.

Mentored by Erica Kerner from ONE Championship, the team was presented with a keynote talk by Jeremy Nguee, founder, Preparazzi Gourmet Catering; Batu Lesung Spice Company; who helped his mother set up Mrs. Kueh, a local sweet treat business. They touched upon some of the unique experiences and challenges of their business that they ran from home.

Hoping to learn from this experience and translate these lessons to help support silver entrepreneurs and home-based businesses through his volunteering role in the Hawkers United Facebook community, Nguee said: “I think this is going to be a very, very big market. There are a lot more home-based businesses coming up because of high unemployment in the market.”

Inspired by the talk, the team decided to focus on Singapore food culture and food service industry run by silver entrepreneurs, that has an international dimension throughout much of its history but continues to retain features firmly rooted in the locality so that the global and local are not always distinct. The team wanted to understand the different segments of businesses and the landscape in which they were working in.

“The complexities of Asia, the complexities of the segment, the types of digital, could become such a beast,” says Kerner. “My instinct is to start with the data. Starting a business now, no matter what your age is a challenge and a lot of small businesses are obviously struggling to survive. We’ve got a lot of things to think about. What aspect of this do we want to try to unbuckle?” asked Kerner. “In Singapore we are losing a lot of that Hawker culture and if we can find a way to re energise it, and bring more people back into it, it’s good for all of Singapore culture.”

The next steps

Over the upcoming weeks, the teams will continue to work on their campaign and then subsequently present the big idea for solving that problem.

The final ideas will be entered in The Drum Social Purpose Awards.

The Drum consulting editor, Sonoo Singh, said: I’m inspired to see the true power of marketing when used to promote issues that are critical to our societies, persuade a change in behaviours, and influence a positive shift in behavior that would benefit our environment. Having been involved with all the teams, I cannot wait to see the final outcome of this very challenging brief.”

By Jenni Baker

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To Pay for Social Media Advertising Or Not When, Why, Why Not, How!

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Sourced from B&T Magazine.

Nicola Moras (main photo) is an online visibility expert and author of Into The Spotlight, a guide to help you step up your online visibility, become a rock star in your industry and make your business thrive. In this guest post, Moras takes a look at the pros and cons of paid social media advertising…

To the uninitiated social media advertising can have the allure like that of the holy grail to Indiana Jones. Whilst the adventure may not be quite the same, put a foot wrong and BOOM! You end up falling into the abyss of closed ad accounts, pages shut down and worse – you could lose all the equity you’ve spent time building up on your pages.

I’ve heard the cries time and time again: “Social media advertising doesn’t work” and “We did an ads campaign and we got nothing from it”. The fact of the matter is this: most people who try to advertise on social media fail dismally – not because the advertising doesn’t work, but because the strategy they’re using quite frankly, sucks.

It’s tough to know what to do. We’ve all heard the success stories from using social media advertising, so why does success seem so elusive? We’re badgered by the platforms to ‘Boost to reach more people’ and to ‘advertise to reach more people’. There’s the prompts that tell you that ‘this post is getting more engagement than usual. Boost to reach even more’. Phew. No wonder everyone’s confused. Throw into the mix the adverts managers, the placements, the targeting, the creative options and what platform to choose.

Overwhelmed yet? You’re in good company. The good news is that there is a simple way to navigate it to ensure that should you choose to spend your hard earned dollars on advertising on social media, you’re going to get a return. (Otherwise don’t do it!)

1. When should you pay to advertise?

There is a golden rule to advertising on social media and that is this: Only advertise when you are generating leads and or sales. Generating a lead means obtaining a name and email address from someone. You can then stay in contact with them through your email marketing. A lead is not a ‘like’ or a ‘follow’.

The only other instance that you should pay to advertise on social media is if you are wanting to actively promote something that you are selling. For instance your event, product, program or a service.

If you are not wanting to do either of the above, then you should not be paying for advertising!

2. Why would you?

Facebook is the best social media advertising platform available to us right now. The platform has the biggest volume of users sitting at 2.45Billion monthly active users. Half of those are active daily and on mobile devices. You have the most targetable audience online sitting there in Facebook daily. Your people are on Facebook. It doesn’t matter what you’re offering, what you’re selling, what business you’re in. Your people ARE on Facebook. They may well not be on there using it the way you are. They may be using it to stay in touch with

their families, check up on what their children are doing. They may even be using it for work.

When people are on social media, their guards are down and they are more likely to be inspired by your content, your marketing and your advertising than on any other medium available to us right now.

3. But how do you do it?

Firstly, you have to know who your audience is and you need to identify a problem of theirs that you can solve. You will create something of value that you can give to them for free in exchange for their name and email address. You’ll then email it to them! (All of this should be automated, by the way!).

When you know who they are and the free item (digital ideally) you’re going to give to them, it’s time to head into the Ads Manager. Do not ‘boost’ a post from your page. You always want to use the Ads Manager facility within the platform. You can test, measure and fine tune within the ads manager. It’s very difficult to do it should you choose to create an ads campaign any other way.

From there, you’ll choose your audience targeting (you can be very specific), your creative and hit SUBMIT! Test and measure for a short period of time. A couple of days should be enough to see the leads starting to flow.

Social media advertising is the best it’s ever been…when you have the right strategy behind you.

Sourced from B&T Magazine

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What Brands Need to Know About Marketing on Social Media, Amazon and Google Shopping

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By Madeleine Streets

For most of 2020, brand marketing has been a critical way for companies to connect with their consumer and try to preserve their loyalty. But these direct communications mostly focus on existing customers or those familiar with the brand; shoppers must have already opted into email or SMS updates, or visited the brand’s site. In order to reach new customers, brands must explore shared locations like marketplaces or social media.

“Reaching shoppers on external platforms is critical because it’s your way to introduce them to your brand on their turf, rather than your turf,” said Kevin Dugan, VP of agency services at performance marketing agency DMi Partners. “As someone is browsing Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, they are actively engaged with the content and if you meet them with the correct messaging and tone, it’s a powerful way to bring your products into their world.”

Unlike other segments, retail has been given designated advertising spaces within these platforms – think the Instagram “shop now” function or Google Shopping – and this ensures fertile ground for marketing initiatives. But while these platforms aren’t new or unknown to brands, effective strategies for social media, Google and e-commerce marketplaces each require tailored approaches.

For one, competition on these platforms is tough and can come at a high price; smaller businesses that need the exposure may be the same ones that are unable to afford to market their product extensively. Moreover, the saturated space means that effective advertisements need to stand out and resonate with the right audience, in order to generate real benefit for the brand.

“The way that these platforms have evolved over the last couple of years, there’s a lot more levers to pull around targeting that didn’t exist before,” said Mike Farrell, senior director of integrated digital strategy at marketing platform Sidecar. “A thoughtful targeting strategy would allow retailers to take that limited budget that they might have and really focus it in on the highest value customers that they’re going after.”

Platforms like Sidecar are specifically focused on creating marketing for these external platforms due to their specific requirements and data-rich nature. These function as a double-edged sword: With the right support, a company can tailor its marketing to each audience and reap rewards; without the ability to leverage data and optimize strategy accordingly, brands are likely to find their messages lost amongst the competition.

Then there’s the diversity of campaigns needed within each platform. DMi Partners’ Dugan warns against brands just setting a few generic social ads live and expecting traffic to roll in. Instead, he argued the importance of identifying different consumer groups based on their experience-level with the brand.

“We are always advocating for subtle differences in messaging depending on the audience we’re reaching on these channels,” said Dugan. “We suggest at least having top of funnel social ads, for your behavioural and interest targeting; bottom of funnel ads, for your retargeting audiences; and winback ads, for your custom audience of past customers.”

From a content perspective, marketing should consider the platform it’s on. Social media sites are well-suited to discovery and brand storytelling, although Dugan highlights the opportunity of Facebook Shops for a more direct-conversion experience. Google Shopping and Amazon are the most purchase-driven; clear product imagery and information performs well for shoppers who are ready to buy.

Farrell recommends that brands use their marketing to spotlight their best performing styles but in colourways that perhaps aren’t as popular; this evokes familiarity and novelty simultaneously. As a result, brands might be able to reduce the common diminishing of sales that occurs once the preferred shades sell out and also optimize inventory, which is a challenging area for many companies right now.

Feature Image Credit: URUPONG – ADOBE STOCK

By Madeleine Streets

Sourced from FN

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Two-thirds of consumers will continue using social media to the same extent post-lockdown

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Sourced from The Drum

A report published by Influencer and GlobalWebIndex has found that two thirds of consumers think they will use social media to the same extent once restrictions are lifted. This comes as the report also finds that 72% of consumers who follow influencers in the U.S. and the UK say they’re spending more time on social media per day since the outbreak of coronavirus.

The news proves that the coronavirus outbreak has shifted the social media landscape in a potentially permanent way. The trends that the marketing industry has seen in recent months are set to have long lasting impacts, with consumers suggesting that their interaction with influencers is here to stay.

The report from Influencer offers custom research on influencer marketing alongside existing research on the coronavirus to dig into the impact the outbreak has had on consumers’ behaviors. The survey taken in May 2020, defined their audience as internet users who say they follow content creators/influencers on social media. This definition rendered a sample of 1,056 (UK) and 1,038 (U.S.) internet users aged 16-64.

The goal of the report was to unearth the effect that coronavirus has had on influencer marketing and consumer behaviours, as well as consumer relationships to content creators. This report is being used as a guide post for brands concerned with how to successfully work with creators moving forward.

Influencer’s findings proved that consumer media use has increased over the coronavirus period, largely because people have been restricted from doing their normal day-to-day activities. The report confirmed that content consumption has risen, showing that 72% of consumers who follow influencers in the U.S. and the UK say they’re spending more time on social media per day since the outbreak of coronavirus.

Gen Z already use social media at high levels, however, the research by Influencer has shown that this has increased to 84%. It was found to be only a little lower for baby boomers at 68%, showing that time spent on social media has increased across all age groups. People are using social media at higher levels across the board, and crucially, they see this as something that they will continue to do.

One of the key findings of the report was that two-thirds of consumers who follow influencers say they’re likely to continue using social media to the same extent once restrictions are lifted. The report showed that baby boomers are more inclined to say they’re likely to continue using social media to the same extent than Gen Z; 69% of boomers say this compared to 57% of Gen Z.

The findings have proven that social media use is at an all time high, and this high is set to continue into 2020 and beyond. Consumer perceptions of social media are shifting, as more people become comfortable with consuming content on social platforms.

Read the full report here: The Age of Influence: How COVID-19 has propelled brands into the era of influencer marketing

Sourced from The Drum

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