What does Online Marketing really mean? Watch this short video which provides an easy to understand overview.
Simply put, online marketing refers to using internet promotion to generate a response from your clients. It is a combination of activities used to increase website traffic and search engine rankings. Online marketing encompasses Search Engine Optimisation, Search Engine Marketing, Internet Marketing, Social Media, Inbound & Content Marketing and Remarketing. Given the prevalence of online searches, all businesses should include some online marketing in their marketing mix.
We understand the challenges involved for Business Owners and Managers to judge which digital tools will yield the best results to market your business and drive sales. Cre8ive is a digital media specialist where we advise clients on the most effective way to spend their marketing budgets. Give us a call 03 474 1075 or email if you would like to know more.
From email marketing, trade shows, PR to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), marketers invest in numerous channels to find and engage with prospective customers.
The 2015 survey conducted by Pipeline Marketing includes responses from 370 marketers, the majority of whom come from the B2B marketing space. They come from large and small companies in a wide variety of industries. Respondents were asked to select their top marketing channels and then asked to identify the channel that had the greatest revenue impact. We can see from the graphs below that the top three channels employed are email (nearly 83%), followed closely by content marketing and SEO.
As the countdown to Christmas is on, now is the perfect time to really ramp up your social media marketing efforts with the goal to see a spike in revenue with our 12 social media tips for Christmas promotion.
Establish your Goals
How can you measure your success if you don't know what you want to achieve? Examples of goals might be to increase sales, increase volume of website traffic or have more newsletter sign ups. Use website statistics such as Google Analytics and Facebook Insights to measure the effectiveness of your campaign.
Create a Content Calendar
Reduce stress and errors by preparing in advance your content and when it will go live.
Begin with key dates, special offers and events you may have planned etc. There is no right or wrong answer as to when to post or how much to post but establishing a regular cadence that your audience can come to rely on is a great start. However in saying that, an indication for Students is not to post on Friday/Saturday as they don't tend to be on Facebook as much then.
Try Facebook advertising
Did you know that only 2% of your fans will see your posts on Facebook? As a low cost way to increase your audience reach you should experiment with Facebook ads.
This highly targeted form of advertising is an ideal way to ensure important posts are seen by your fans or others in your target market.
Each ad you create, you can choose how much you want to bid to have your ad shown to your target audience as well as the option between cost per click (CPC) or cost per 1000 impressions (CPM). Budget control is completely at your discretion.
To give you an idea of what you might pay, Statista reports that in Q3 of 2014, ecommerce businesses saw an average cost per click of $US 0.49 on Facebook.
Don't forget Twitter
If your target market uses Twitter, then it will be just as important as Facebook for building an engaged audience.Zaggora, a fitness wear brand, held a contest on Twitter for Christmas. They asked followers to post a hilarious photo showing off their Christmas gifts.
Entry criteria was simple: use the #zaggora hashtag to enter. The winner received a selection of Zaggora fitness clothes. It was a very simple yet successful campaign for them, increasing their brand and product visibility.
Last year there were over 282 million Tweets from around the world about holiday shopping. The Twitter Business Blog contains some interesting stats for the upcoming holiday season:
of Twitter users are likely to purchase something from a small business they follow on Twitter
of Twitter users are likely to Tweet about their holiday purchases
of Twitter users are planning to use Twitter for holiday shopping
Follow the 80/20 Rule of social media posting
Ensure that 80% of your tweets/posts drive interaction and offer value to your followers. The other 20% use for direct offers or ‘selling’ type messages. Facebook is cracking down on 'overly promotional' organic posts so if you post too often "Buy now", "Join now", "Sale on now" and so on, less and less of your fans will see these messages. Read our article about overly promotional posts.
Get Creative with your Imagery
Attract interest by creating customised Christmas cover images/backgrounds/post images for each social media platform.
Give Tips for Christmas that are tailored to your audience
Try to focus on providing some genuinely helpful information such as weather forecasts, gift ideas, travel tips and Christmas recipes. Find a way to tie these themes into your business and promoting your product and how it can be used during the festive season.See this example from Thermomix, which produces a multi-function kitchen aid, where they created a festive drink to promote their product without actually mentioning it or any reference to purchasing.
Respond Rapidly
Gone are the days of getting back to your clients in 24 hours. Today you’ve got to make every effort to get back to them within 1-2 hours - this applies not just to email but to social media messages as well.
Different demographic groups use different social media platforms
Adjust your posts/tweets and imagery for each individual platform and target market. What works in Facebook may not work in Twitter.
Run a contest
Creating a contest is a great way to engage your audience and generate content on your social media site; incentivise your target market to sign up to your database by offering a prize or deal.
Create a Facebook App
To make your e-mail audience bigger, create a Facebook App and encourage your visitors to sign up there. You can also promote special deals and offers through this tool.
Drive Traffic
Most important of all, use Social Media to drive traffic to your website. When posting or tweeting include a link back to your website, when relevant.
If you need assistance with your social media marketing whether it be planning content ideas or Christmas imagery, please call 03 474 1075 or email Philippa.
Goal: increase market share by targeting teens and young adults
Wendy Clark, President of Strategic Marketing at Coca-Cola, says that this most of this target market is self-obsessed and that if they like their image, they like their name second most which became the foundation of their "Share a Coke" campaign, which ran last year and is now repeating in 2015 due to its success.
This popular advertising promotion involves printing first names (1,000) on 20-ounce bottles of Coke, Diet Coke and Coke Zero. For people with less common names, Coke is offering the chance to order a custom bottle online with a name or personal message.
The goal is to encourage Coke drinkers to share pictures of themselves and their "Share a Coke" bottles on social media. "We can't wait to see how fans share their amazing stories again this year - in real life and through social media," said Jennifer Healan, a marketing director at Coke. And the sharing was viral!
The success of Coca-Cola's "Share a Coke" campaign inspired brand fans across the world to re-engage with the most popular soft drink of all time. Wendy Clark said this of Coca-Cola's dedication to mobile:
"Mobile is at the core of everything we're doing. If we can't make a story work on a 4-inch-by-2-inch screen, then it doesn't work and it doesn't go further."
Coca-Cola recognised that people would turn to mobile to find their own customised Coke. Wendy Clark reveals in this video how "Share a Coke" inspired consumers to take action and how Coca-Cola was there for them on mobile.
Google recommends the following to get better rankings in their search engine:
Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.
Don’t deceive your users.
Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.
Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
Make sure that your <title> elements and ALT attributes are descriptive and accurate. Eg when uploading an image of a skirt include words to describe it such as “a knee-length, navy skirt made from velvet”
Digital marketing is critical to business these days. When customers are looking to purchase their initial search will be an online one. Search engine optimisation is essential for customers to find your organisation, which is the art and science of getting your website ranking high in web searches. An SEO strategy is critical for websites. This is the process of improving the quality and volume of online traffic driven to a website by search engines. Basically, the earlier and more frequently a site appears in search results, the more visitors it will receive.
Watch our short video that covers understanding the SEO basics.
With Facebook organic reach on the decline businesses must seriously consider paying for their posts to appear in the news feeds of their fans. Don’t pay for every post however, choose the best ones. What are the options?
Boosting a post is the most straightforward option.
When you’re publishing your post you can simply choose to boost by clicking the ‘Boost Post’ button in the lower right corner of your post. Boosting posts is the quickest and easiest way to increase the reach of posts that need to be seen soon, for example latest news and links with rich media like photos or videos.
After you click ‘boost’ you then have the option of “People who like your page and their friends” or “People you choose through targeting.”
One problem with choosing the first option is that your fans’ friends may not be interested in your business and may not be located in the area you want to target. Which means you may be wasting your budget by paying for your post to appear in their news feed.
If your goal is to engage your current fans, don’t choose the first option. You’re better off using a promoted post and choosing that the ad only go to your community. However, if you’ve already boosted a post to fans and their friends, you can still change your audience. Just go to your Ads Manager and turn off the segment of the ad that goes out to friends of fans.
If your goal is to drive some targeted traffic to your website, or reach a new audience, then choose the second audience option ‘People you choose through targeting’.
When you boost a post, the ad results show up in your Facebook Ads Manager where you can access the results and run more detailed reports.
Tips for Which Content to Boost
Make sure you only promote your own content and direct traffic back to your website, not someone else’s.
Select content that’s helpful for your audience. Highlighting sales messages from time to time is acceptable but primarily choose content that will be of value for your audience.
Content that should definitely be promoted is where you harvest email addresses. If you’re offering something for free with an opt-in, definitely promote that content so you can transfer as many fans to your email list as possible.
It’s important to note that Facebook has guidelines about images only having ‘20% text on photos’. If your post has a link in it and the link pulls in a photo that has too much text, you won’t be able to boost or promote it.
Promoting a Facebook Post
This is achieved via the Facebook Ads Manager and gives you more options when it comes to targeting, budget and bidding options. For example, this method allows more options regarding the audience you want to reach, and allows you to pay per click or set a daily limit. The results are also shown in Ads Manager. On the downside, setting up a promoted post takes more time and requires some forward planning.
To promote a post, go to https://www.facebook.com/ads/create/ and select Page Post Engagement. Use the drop-down menus to choose the page and the exact post you want to promote.
You will see the ‘Offer Claims’ use this option if you want to promote some kind of deal. With one of our clients, Back in Motion, we offered 50% off massage for new clients and this method worked well – over 75 people ‘claimed the offer’ where they received an email. (Facebook generated an automatic email with information we provided).
So it is better to boost or promote?
It really depends on the type of post and timing. Many marketers use the boost post option because it’s easy and accessible. This doesn’t necessarily make it the best option to reach the perfect audience however. If you have the time and you have a really great piece of content you want to push, promoted posts should be employed first as it allows more control over who sees your ad and how you pay for it.
If you would like help setting up an advert or campaign, call 03 474 1075 or email cre8ive@cre8ive.co.nz
In this fast-paced world, you have to make your message count. Don’t get caught up in trying to say everything in one post or tweet. Aim to make your content as long as it takes to convey the message, and no longer.
Twitter Tweets shorter than 100 characters have a 17% higher engagement role.
Facebook Posts with 40 characters receive 86% more engagement than posts with a higher character count.
Google Plus If your Google+ headline can’t be contained in one line, your first sentence must be gripping teaser to get people to read more.
Paragraphs Opening paragraphs with larger fonts and fewer characters per line make it easier for the reader to focus and jump quickly from one line to the next.
Email Subject Lines Subject lines containing 28-39 characters get an open rate of 12.2% and click rate of 4% on average.
Blog Headlines Only the first 3 words and the last 3 words of a headline tend to be read. Rather than worrying about length, you should focus on making every word count.
Blog Posts Overall, 74% of posts that are read are under 3 minutes long and 94% are under 6 minutes long.
YouTube The most popular videos are pretty short. After analysing the length of the top 50 YouTube videos, the average length was 2 minutes 54 seconds.
Podcast The average Podcast listener stays connected for 22 minutes on average. Studies show students zone out after 15-20 minutes of lecture time. After 20 minutes, attention and retention rates crash.
Few tactics are as effective at conveying a brand personality and encouraging engagement on social media as a carefully selected image. In this fast-paced-scroll world of social media, the visual images are the first thing your audience sees and it might be the one thing they remember.
In the two Facebook cover images shown below, which cafe would you frequent? I imagine within less than a second you will have made your mind up about which you prefer based on the image the cafes have chosen to represent themselves.
This example below shows how the owners have so much to say they have simply put EVERYTHING onto their cover image which has effectively made it impossible to take anything in. Keep your message simple and use the description tool to add extra copy in.
To optimise your social presence, you must ensure that the images you’re using to represent your brand are high quality and the best fit for the various networks. To help, we’ve outlined the best image sizes for Facebook (desktop and mobile) and image type.
Your Facebook Page’s profile picture:
Displays at 160 x 160 pixels on computers, 140 x 140 pixels on smartphones and 50 x 50 pixels on most feature phones.
However, the image must be at least 180 x 180 pixels. Your image will be cropped to fit a square.
Ideally we recommend using your logo here or part of your logo that is easily identifiable. Businesses often make the mistake of inserting an image that works on a desktop on the actual Facebook page but in the fan’s newsfeed it becomes unidentifiable.
Your Facebook Page’s cover photo:
– Displays at 851 pixels wide by 315 pixels high on computers
– 640 pixels wide by 360 pixels high on smartphones.
– Doesn’t display on feature phones.
Ideally you want to achieve a fast load so supply the file as an sRGB JPG file that’s 851 pixels wide, 315 pixels tall and less than 100 kilobytes.
For profile pictures and cover photos that display your logo or text, you may get a better result by using a PNG file.
See our handy reference visual below which indicates the areas that aren’t visible in mobile views. Remember to keep all critical information out of these areas.
