Perception sometimes equals reality when it comes to marketing. Businesses that win and are successful often create a public persona and brand that enables them to remain at the top of the food chain through emotional and clever marketing. It is not about the facts but how they touch the hearts and emotions of their customers and fans. Prestige brands sell products for premium prices that don’t reflect the real cost of production but how their products make their clients feel. They tap into the limbic and emotional part of the brain and bypass the thinking cerebal cortex. How else can you justify the purchase of a coat, dress or shoes that sell for $2,000 when the cost of making it is $30? Does the price for an Apple iPhone or a Loius Vuitton bag reflect real or emotional value? The booming sales for premium brands reveals that “Human beings…
3 Great Ways To Reward Your Social Followers
Social media marketing is a game of give and take. As a marketer, it might feel like you’re constantly giving – great blog content, witty tweets, alerts to breaking news, special offers, promotions. Indeed, you may even think from time to time that you are giving your very soul to your keen and hungry followers on social media. But, those followers do give back, of course. They give back every time they click on one of your links, read your blog, like your Facebook post, or retweet one of your articles. And this is where the rewarding part of your job comes in – especially when some of those followers actually go one step further and leave a comment or even a question after a piece of content that you have lovingly provided for them. Yes, when you start to garner some real, meaningful engagement with your following, then that’s…
6 things you absolutely shouldn’t do when marketing your services via social media
Promoting your services on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook can be tricky. People don’t like the hard sell so if you push too hard you could lose followers quicker than you can gain them. To make best use of social media and to stop people unfollowing you take a look at this infographic from Salesforce which gives you 6 things to avoid and 5 things to do instead.
How to Design An Irresistible Facebook Page
11 million people use Facebook every 18 minutes… 7,246 new users are added to the social media mammoth every 15 minutes and 936 million active userslogin into the site on a daily basis. Do these Facebook facts make you wonder? “Am I missing out?” Even large businesses are gradually distancing themselves from traditional forms of advertising and are battling for new customers on social media sites.1 According to a recent study conducted by KA Social, 75% of the world’s population is on social media, and the other 25% of the population is both curious and excited to be on it. It’s easier, quicker and cheaper to put up a Facebook page with dynamic content compared to traditional and more expensive ways of promoting your brand. Your Facebook page is an extension or your primary website. It showcases your business philosophy. A well-designed page isn’t just about how it looks –…
Comparing the ROI of Content Marketing and Native Advertising
by Kelsey Libert Many companies today rely on content marketing and native advertising to gain visibility for their brand — after all, 70% of people say they’d rather learn about products through content rather than through traditional advertising. But is either content marketing or native advertising a surefire way to boost brand awareness? And which one offers more bang for the buck? To answer this question, we at Fractl, a content marketing firm, collaborated with Moz to survey over 30 agencies specializing in content marketing about content formats and the metrics they use to track ROI. And I’ll get to what we found, below. But first, let’s remind ourselves how each approach is different, and what each approach aims to do. Content marketing agencies produce campaigns for brands (this is an example) and then pitch these to multiple top-tier publishers for coverage. Each time a publisher writes about a campaign,…
15 Social Media & Search Engine Marketing Trends in 2016
2015 was an exciting year in the world of search engine optimization and social media marketing. The two fields of social media and search are constantly evolving, with plenty of changes that prompt shifts in consumer and marketer behavior. In order to succeed, you should adapt to these changes and employ the latest and most effective strategies. The following are 15 social media and search engine marketing trends in 2016 and what you should do to stay ahead of the curve: 1. Mobile optimization is a must. Last year, mobile generated more traffic than desktop and laptop search. With virtually everyone using their smartphone or tablet to find information online, it goes without saying that business owners must cater to the needs of their mobile audience to generate leads and increase conversions. If your website still isn’t optimized for mobile, then you risk losing out to your competitors. This is…
How to Use Twitter’s Advanced Search Parameters to Uncover Relevant Mentions
This week, via Twitter’s Small Business Blog, a new post was released which provided an overview on how to use Twitter’s advanced search parameters to maxi Which is great – Twitters never all that good at communicating the inner workings of their system and how to use their tools effectively, so any information on this front is helpful. But the detail provided was a little too basic and didn’t go into the full depth of what’s possible through the platform’s advanced search features. So we decided to put together our own – a listing of how you can utilize Twitter’s search functions and qualifiers to make the most of the network’s stream of real-time conversation. And what’s more, we’ll also go over how to use those search parameters to set up constant monitoring to keep your brand on top of the latest news as it happens, via tweet. Twitter search basics By now, everyone pretty…
Retargeting Best Practices
The general consensus among marketers is that the average conversion rate for an ecommerce site is around 2-3%, meaning that most website visitors don’t become customers immediately. According to Digital Information World, 72% of online shoppers abandon their shopping carts before making a purchase, and only 8% of them return to complete their transactions. The best way to increase the number of purchases is through retargeting (also known as remarketing)—a form of online advertising that helps businesses recapture lost customers. Digital Information World has discovered that website visitors who are retargeted with display ads are 70% more likely to convert. If you don’t know how to drive conversions with retargeting, take a look at some of our best practices: 1. Refine your audience segments Start by segmenting your visitors based on the way they interact with your website. For instance, people who visit your shopping page are more ready…
How to Choose the Right Content Format for Your Audience
Captivating audiences with the right content is one of the biggest challenges in marketing. In fact, according toLinkedIn Technology Marketing Community, successful content leans heavily on audience relevance (58%), followed by engaging and compelling storytelling (57%) that triggers a response (54%). To make sure your content drives results, its format needs to be just as well-researched as the information contained in it. For instance, if you’re trying to explain a complex mechanical process to an engineer, then a comprehensive white paper would work better than a short blog post or an infographic. If you’re not sure which content formats will resonate with your audience, then use the following tips to identify them: 1. Pinpoint your audience You can’t captivate an audience without understanding it first. Start by identifying your key customer groups. For instance, if you sell complex machinery for automotive plants, then you may already know that your…
YouTube Releases New ‘YouTube Director’ App to Help Businesses Create Better Video Content
In case you don’t know, video content is huge right now. How huge? Check out these two graphs from the recent Mary Meeker Internet Trends report which show the rise in video consumption on Facebook and Snapchat, respectively. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said he expects most of Facebook to be video by 2019. Video is the fastest growing online advertising category. Videos generate the best reach and response levels on social media platforms. Given advances in technology, particularly in regards to network capacity, enabling us to consume video whenever and wherever we like, video has become the medium of choice for a great many people, and will likely remain in that position till we advance to the next level (in virtual reality). But while there are now a heap of video creation options available, actually creating compelling video content isn’t easy. YouTube knows this, and today, the Google-owned video platform has released a new…