According to eMarketer , more than 96% of social media marketers consider Facebook the most effective platform for advertising. And, as reported by TechCrunch, Facebook’s daily active users’ number rose to 1.23 billion people in 2016 (that’s an 18% increase). In addition, social media analysts predicted a 26.3% global increase in spending for social media ads overall for 2017.
Today, more than 65 million businesses are using Facebook as an advertising tool. This number will only continue to expand as new mediums, like Facebook video ads, gain popularity. Here’s a few reasons why you should, too.
Set Target Audience
Facebook allows you to select who see your ads, meaning you can set up an ad campaign that only shows up for people who haven’t visited your site within the last six months. Or, if you want to narrow your audience based on location, work, education, or language, you can do that, too. Facebook’s targeting abilities are a major reason it’s the social media advertising platform of choice.
Engage With Lost Customers
The social media platform allows you to reach customers who either aren’t reading, opening, or receiving your emails. By launching an ad campaign the day after you send out your weekly newsletter, you’ll be able to cover all your bases and optimize conversions.
Track Your Performance
When it comes to analytics, Facebook allows you to track your ad performance (for free). Tracking your ad performance will give you insight as to what appeals to your audience and who your main audience is.
Excite Your Audience
Before you launch a new site or product, you can create pre-launch content to promote on your Facebook page. Building this hype will carry momentum over to the actual launch, and start your business on the right foot.
Facebook Ads Are Relatively Cheap
Facebook ads cost a fraction of what most other online marketing channels cost. For example, for just $5 per day you could potentially reach 200 people.
“It’s not a question of how much Facebook costs, but how far your money will go,” WordStream’s Paid Acquisition Coordinator, Brett McHale said. “If you go into Facebook advertising with a clear focus and follow a simple strategy, the cost-efficiency of the platform will astound you.”
One of the quickest ways to figure out Facebook advertising is to dive right in. Try promoting a blog post to people who aren’t connected to your brand and see where it goes from there. What is clear is that advertising on this social media platform is essential, so it’s time to get accustomed with best practices for advertising on Facebook.
If you have a website that ranks on Google organically, you can test your headline and increase your click through rates without risking your Google standings!
Here’s how:
1. Create ads on Google AdWords for no more than $50.
2. A/B test your headlines.
3. Find the winner.
4. Replace your old headline.
It doesn’t take much to understand how that Subject line could make people click.
Here are the key takeways:
1. Apply “curiosity gap” to your subject line.
Ask yourself, what would generate a “MUST CLICK NOW” feeling if you yourself were to receive this email?
2. Try a VERY SHORT / one word subject line.
We all know about “Hey” during the Obama campaign, which I personally think has run its course because so many “email marketing blogs” have outed it. But there are many others if you get creative.
Great Resources for Landing Page Design
We at Taktical get a lot of requests for landing page samples. Here are some websites that offer a LOT of options:
Many businesses that launch an ad campaign on social media will focus on only one or two outlets. For most, the choice is Facebook, indicated by its close to $9 billion in revenue earnings for Q4 2016. The second outlet for a social media advertising campaign is often the tricky decision, and nowadays comes down to Snapchat marketing vs. Instagram.
Both outlets offer advertisers a unique set of tools for connecting their brand with users. With competition between the two increasing, their features are becoming more similar to each other. Snapchat Stories and Instagram Stories, for example, are quick and engaging ways to reach consumers. Which one is best for your brand, though, comes down to audience: Who is using Snapchat Stories? Who is on Instagram? With a far greater millenial audience that is actively engaged to maximize a social advertising campaign, Snapchat Stories beats Instagram Stories every time.
Who Uses Snapchat vs Instagram?
The users on each social media platform vary, and this affects your ad’s performance. As a result, it’s important to be aware of both the type of person on these apps and the overall population.
48% of users ages 13-24 watch snaps/stories from brands at least once daily
How Snapchat Stories Succeed
Brands that optimize their Snapchat ad to publish in Stories have the benefits of reaching an engaged, target audience. For example, 58% of college students said they would purchase a product if they saw a coupon for it on Snapchat.
The instantaneous and raw nature of Snapchat Stories make consumers feel more connected to a brand. For larger companies that value a younger audience, this outlet is especially effective at expanding brand awareness.
Though Instagram has tried to complete by launching a similar set of engagement tools within Stories, Snapchat users are already accustomed to these since they originated in Snapchat. Therefore, they are able to engage and connect more easily than on Instagram with brands that incorporate these features. Essentially, Snapchat Stories are more intuitive for users.
With Snapchat continuing to roll out new features to its advertising platform, Snapchat Stories are becoming even more accessible to smaller businesses. An ad running on this platform has the potential to increase campaign engagement over 200%, reach hundreds of millions of people, and have a high conversion rate at low costs. Geofilters still represent one of the biggest bargains in social media marketing, starting at $5.
Facebook will remain the paid social media outlet priority for advertisers. However, for an additional option that complements the ROI-driven strategy of Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram represent methods focused on brand engagement and awareness. Of these two, Snapchat is the choice, especially for large brands, due to its wide reach with an ideal audience, intuitive interface, and instantaneous appeal.
Google has more than 200 ranking factors, from domain issues to page-level factors to content length and beyond.
This checklist gives a few pointers on SEO best practices for 2018 and how to beat the Google algorithm at its own game.
Domain History
If you’re purchasing a domain, you might want to check the history first.
A site with a less-than-perfect background has the potential to negatively impact your SEO efforts.
Before purchasing a new domain, check out its link profile, previous activity, and previous owners.
What’s a quick way to do this?
Visit Whibse.com to check the current state of the domain in question.
Then, go to HosterStats.com to check the domain’s ownership history, in addition to its hosting history and DNS history.
Majestic, Ahrefs, and SEMrush are additional tools that can help you check the domain’s link profile.
Domain Age
WhileJohn Mueller claims that the age of a domain doesn’t play much of a role in search rankings, Google actually does take age into account.
What’s a Cheap way to check the age of a domain?
If you’re curious as to how old a domain is, just go to godaddy.com/whois, type in the domain, and just like that it will spit out the age.
Exact Match Domain
At one time, having an exact match domain with the precise keyword was imperative for ranking purposes.
But, according to anEMD update having an exact match isn’t all you’ll need.
The update, which launched in 2012, is essentially a filter that prevents low quality sites from ranking just because their keywords matched their domain names.
There’s plenty of EMDs that reign in rankings, though.
Take Cheapflights.com, for example.
How do they do this?
By being a non-spammy, legitimate company.
Mobile Optimization
Making sure your site is optimized for mobile is one of the most important things you can do before unleashing it onto the web.
Google checks for sites that are mobile-friendly, and will penalize those that are not.
What’s a quick-and-easy way to check for mobile optimization?
Visit Google’sMobile Friendly Testing tool to check whether your site is mobile-friendly.
Duplicate Information
According toGoogle’s Matt Cutts, it’s better to have unique meta descriptions, or no meta descriptions at all, than having duplicate meta descriptions across your site pages.
Is there a way to check this?
Screaming Frog, a desktop program that crawls site links, images, and CSS, is a great way to check your site for duplicate meta info and titles.
Though following this list to a T is one preventative measure to avoiding SEO pitfalls, enlisting the help of search-engine specialists is the best way to optimize your efforts.
The world of Google rankings is riddled with nuances that an SEO expert is best equipped can handle.
However, it does help to make even these above minor changes to better your website’s visibility on the web.
Truckers Report was able to increase their signups by putting “drop down” and checkbox form units at the top. By the time people got to the part where they have to give their name and email, they were already too deep to stop!
Why?
People start with easy fields (dropdowns, checkboxes) so that by the time they reach the hard field—email—the user thinks, “oh well I already started” (a known psychological phenomenon called “commitment and consistency” by Cialdini).
Get People to Watch More of Your YouTube Videos:
Here are instructions on how one guy increased his YouTube annotation CTR by 22,400% (from 0.2% to 45%) that resulted in millions of views.
It only took five years for Snapchat to go from social media newcomer to the mobile staple it is today. Now boasting 166 million users, as of May 2017, the platform’s influence extends beyond its population with its incredible engagement rates.
Compared to it’s biggest competitor, Instagram, who’s users share about 95 million posts and videos each day, Snapchat garners 3 billion Snaps daily. Additionally, Snapchat users under 25 years old visited the app on average over 20 times per day and spent a total of over 30 minutes on it. With approximately one-third of total users being within the sought-after millenial demographic, Snapchat should be the platform of choice embraced by digital marketers.
Snapchat’s Unique Marketing Features
Though it’s easy enough to lump it together with the other social media platforms as another expense in a paid social campaign, Snapchat stands out as a way to reach consumers in a completely unique way. It’s also breaking down the barriers when it comes to confusing ad spend: Snapchat advertisers are able to set goals and analyze results with an array of both standard and unique objectives.
Geofilters represent just one of the many original features on Snapchat. It is the perfect tool for any impulse-driven industry, such as food and beverage. Geofilters allow a company to cover the screen with a branded image and text in order to spread brand awareness and encourage immediate conversions. For example, Starbucks launched a Geofilter campaign for their Frappuccino happy hours, which created a layover on screens during the hours the promotion ran. People became alerted to the fact that this deal was going on, and as a result Starbucks experiences a surge in purchases.
The Sponsored Lenses are also an effective engagement tool unique to Snapchat. Taco Bell survey is a good example of this advertising option in action. Their Cinco de Mayo-themed overlay turned user’s heads into one of their iconic tacos, and achieved over 220 million views as a result. Both Geofilters and Lenses require a higher level of creative thinking than traditional ads: How the design appears is only half of the question; the other half is how users interact with it.
Traditional Advertising, Upgraded
Snapchat’s unique marketing and engagement tools have also combine with traditional ad methods for a new and improved experience. For example, the digital coupon is one of the ‘tried-and-true” marketing tactics that is often run as a rote campaign. Snapchat offers advertisers the ability to spice up this strategy by integrating their geo-filters and other unique features. Not only is the coupon more creative in its design and delivery, but the hyper-targeting abilities of Snapchat lend the campaign a greater sense of urgency and increase the chance of conversion.
GrubHub is an excellent example of the traditional coupon method receiving a much-needed boost from Snapchat. In 2014, the meal delivery service ran a campaign that directed follows through a series of daily challenges in order to be entered for the chance to win a $50 coupon.
The results of the campaign indicated the success a coupon strategy could have in terms of engagement on Snapchat: 30% of GrubHub’s current Snap followers participated, and the account saw a 20% increase in followers overall. By leveraging the platform consistently for promotions and coupons in a creative manner, GrubHub has maintained an average 87% view rate on their Snapchat account.
Further Optimization Tactics
There are a few additional features on Snapchat that make it an obvious choice for digital marketers. Of these, the introduction of a new suite of creative tools, like infinite looping (similar to Instagram’s Boomerang) and the Magic Eraser, offering new options for digital marketers. From the various emojis, filters, and stickers to the Snap editing features, implementing these is a more effective means for brands to connect with viewers and enhance brand identity.
The ability to cross-promote Snapchat, even offline, is another benefit advertisers should utilize. Snapchat users are able to follow a brand’s account via a QR code. Printing this code in publications, other social media profiles, and elsewhere helps accrue followers and make the most out of the brand engagement opportunities available through Snapchat.
Every digital marketer should be incorporating Snapchat into their strategy. However, a Snapchat advertising campaign should not be launched without proper research, understanding, and thoughtful design.
This platform, in particular, has a ton of innovative features that can be easily misused or cause confusion if not understood completely. Luckily, there are an increasing number of Snapchat marketing agencies entering the market to help a brand succeed on all fronts. When it comes to advertising on Snapchat, it comes down to having fun, getting creative, and connecting with users in a completely unique way.
The latest and greatest development from Facebook is not so new at all. Instead, it is a desktop version of a pre-existing mobile feature: The watch and scroll. However, what it represents is a developing emphasis on video advertising. This trend is extending beyond traditional digital venues (e.g. television and online streaming services), and is instead becoming increasingly popular on social media.
Facebook has been capitalizing on video ads since their introduction of autoplay ads in March, 2014. Their entry into this realm reflected a larger trend of video advertising popularization. To attest to this, it is predicted that U.S. digital video ad spend will reach $16.7 billion by the end of 2020, an exponential increase from the 2014 total of $5.2 billion. Year over year, too, it is evident that global video advertising on Facebook has increased as a total percentage of ad spend.
As with any advertising method, there are both design restrictions and best practices for optimizing video ads on Facebook. It is within your best interest to get acquainted with these, as digital advertising on this social media platform is fast becoming a necessity of any effective marketing strategy.
Set Your Goal
Facebook receives over 4 billionvideo views daily. Besides the massive audience at your disposal, video advertisements have also been shown to increase purchase intent 1.8 times. Harnessing the benefits of this medium, and specifically on this platform, starts with the basics: Setting your campaign’s objectives.
Facebook ads fall into categories based on goals: Brand awareness, conversions, engagement, lead generation, reach, store visits, traffic, and video views. Not only must you take into consideration your type of business and industry, but also decide on a target for the video ad to reach your optimal result.
Optimize the Design
Within each advertising objective on Facebook, there are design specifications that apply specifically to video. The Facebook Ads Guide is a helpful resource to turn to for the actual creation of the ads, but there a few general facts about Facebook audiences to keep in mind:
People only needed to spend 10 seconds or less on an ad to acquire up to 74% of the total value of the campaign.
In terms of design, it’s also wise to create a video ad that can complement a traditional visual format. A campaign that incorporated a video ad for the first phase, and a static ad for the second phase experienced a 1.3x greater conversion rate. Having an advertising strategy that uses both forms to encourage engagement and conversions is clearly an effective route to take.
Facebook is also introducing developments within their video advertising to enhance ads within certain industries. For example, ecommerce brands benefitted from the launch of a new format called Collections in March, 2017. With this upgrade, brands can add pictures of products to their newsfeed video ads, thereby enhancing the entire experience and increasing purchase intent.
You should also consider where your ad will appear on the platform, and on what versions: desktop vs. mobile. There are three options for placement within Facebook:
Desktop Newsfeed
Right column
Mobile Newsfeed
If resources permit, running a mix of these simultaneously is the best option; especially combining desktop and mobile newsfeed. Though Facebook stopped reporting on the number of mobile-only users, mobile ad revenue accounted for 85% of total ad revenue in Q1 2017. Utilizing a cross-platform strategy capitalizes on the almost 2 billion users that are on both desktop and mobile.
The Right Way to Have a CTA
Another easy way to make a video ad more effective is direct integration of the CTA into the video. The CTA can first be introduced in the caption of the ad as a description, or within the ad itself as a reminder to people to take action after the end of the video. This is termed a “soft CTA” because there is no specific button for them to press, but instead acts as a value-add with a direction for how to take action.
Another version of an integrated CTA is placement within the video frame at the end and/or within the box the ad appears in on users’ newsfeeds. Be explicit with these, so that users understand where they’re being directed and what they’re being asked to do.
Deciding on Ad Duration
When launching a video ad campaign, you need to also consider how long to make it. As previously mentioned, almost half of Facebook’s video ads that were 30-60 seconds long were viewed to completion. Those under 30 seconds achieved a 26% viewing completion rate, while those at two minutes or longer had a rate of 31%.
With a shorter video snippet, the goal should be to pique viewers’ interest or provide a brief, educational moment. For the somewhat longer, or commercial, style, you’re still looking to capture the attention of visitors, but you have a longer time to spread brand awareness. Finally, the long-form videos are effective for not only entertaining, but also for informing and persuading. These can be the most successful for users that watch the whole video, but do keep in mind that this is referring to only a select few.
There’s not one secret to success when it comes to video advertising for businesses on Facebook. However, as with other Facebook ad campaigns, this medium benefits from targeting, multivariate testing, and high-quality content. Setting clear goals, maximizing its efficacy through design, and selecting the right length for the ad are all factors that enhance these foundations.
Whenever you’re creating web content, it’s easy to make assumptions about what your audience will respond to. Unfortunately, this way of thinking doesn’t always yield optimal results.
A/B testing is a common (and easy) way to test your site’s CRO, if done correctly. If done incorrectly, however, this method can leave you frustrated and broke. So, to save you time and money, here’s what you should avoid when A/B testing your content.
Testing One Element At A Time
While it’s fine to change just one element of your media per test, this approach usually ends up being problematic. For starters, it’s time consuming.
According to Peep Laja, sites that already have a steady stream of traffic take two to four weeks to test. For other websites, it takes even longer. If you lack the resources, testing just one element per month is an unreasonable way to find the trick to a high-converting page.
Small Changes Rarely Bring Big Returns
In general, subtle changes to your page are less likely to yield a big payout. If your business is small (read: does not generate billions of dollars a year) then a 4-5% increase in conversion rate will not make a difference in your return.
It’s All About The Viewers
Your CTA button, copy, and hero might all be in the wrong place, but are you going to test each item individually to see where the problem lies? Hopefully not.
Adjusting a headline or button color is a quick and easy fix, but let’s face it: If your content doesn’t resonate with your audience, then your site will never optimize conversions.
You’re Testing Too Much
While the goal is to optimize your site, it is possible to test too much. If you test two completely different formats with different colors, form fields, headlines, etc., you may find that one clearly works over the other. However, with so many elements changed, you’re likely to not know which was the deciding factor. This is how you realize you’re testing too much.
The solution? Keep the testing variations at a minimum, and maintain a strict record of what’s being altered within each test. At any point, you want to be able to refer to a version and know what made it succeed or fail.
While A/B testing is time consuming, performance marketers all agree it’s worth the effort. Just remember, luck isn’t something that comes along often. If you want to see results, you’ll need to take a methodical, scientific approach that works for your individual business.
Prevent the Loss of Sales by Using This Simple Price Match Popup When People Try to “Copy Paste” Your Items
You can’t avoid your customers checking if the same product you are selling is cheaper somewhere else; that’s a fact. But if you know they are doing it, at least you can do something about it and maybe counteroffer.
Basically they noticed that you are copying that product name and likely you would search for that same product either through Google or Amazon to find a better deal.
Here’s a link on how to implement a trigger to let you know when a product name is highlighted:
Graziashop mixed content marketing (Fashion Stories) and e-commerce, and started a storytelling-based online shop.
The main idea was to make it look and feel like an already familiar print editorial (an education + entertainment: expert tips, explore a current trend, the history behind a certain fashion piece), which would provide readers with an instant shopping opportunity.
Then they started to create Facebook posts that draw attention away from sales to this engaging content.
As a result, their traffic from Facebook increased by over 100 times.
The Magic Rule of 7
A well known rule of marketing: It can take up to 7 “touches” or more before people will consider buying your stuff — almost no one buys on the first go.
How do you do this efficiently:
– Content marketing and ads
– Do Website Retargeting
– Grab Emails
– SELL ON THE BACKEND through your email drip campaigns.
Every advertiser knows the names Google and Facebook as major platforms for launching an ad campaign. Google alone claims 40.7% of the total revenue of U.S. digital ad spend, and owns 78% of the total U.S. search ad market. Lesser known, however, is the increasing role Snapchat is playing in the marketing game.
Not only does Snapchat have an audience of over 150 million daily active users, but they have been proven to be one of the most engaged group on a social media platform today. Consider this: Hootsuite data shows that Snapchat users watch over 10 billion videos per day, and 400 million snaps are sent daily.
Additional Snapchat stats to keep in mind about this influential platform:
With such a massive, motivated audience at their disposal, it’s no wonder advertisers are increasingly looking to Snapchat as a platform to integrate into their branded campaigns. However, just like with any kind of marketing, how the message is delivered is crucial.
There are a few companies who exemplify the best practices for Snapchat ad campaigns. Whether it’s their direct user engagement tactics or creative implementation of a Geofilter, they offer insight into how best to maximize the potential of advertising on this unique platform.
GrubHub
More of a crowdsourced campaign than a true Snapchat Ad, GrubHub still demonstrates how to incorporate all aspects of Snapchat into a branded message. By enlisting direct user responses, they ensured ultimate consumer engagement, all with concise language and clear instruction. The integration of a contest, too, is an added incentive and strategy proven to work well on Snapchat. Business Insider even revealed that 58% of college students would purchase a product if they were sent a coupon from a company in Snapchat.
Mondelez
Candy company Mondelez launched a Snapchat ad campaign that centered around a contest to send snaps of their product to their account. Again, direct user engagement is the key to success here, as well as an incentivized promotion. While rewarding customers, they also featured a few on their site, which encouraged customer loyalty and furthered brand awareness.
Jonathan Laberge, Director of Business Development at Reptile and Forbes contributor, sums up the appeal of Snapchat as an advertising platform: “Snapchat will help with your brand awareness and make sure you are ‘top of mind’ for users in their journey to purchase.”
Gatorade
By taking advantage of the Snapchat Web View ad platform Gatorade created an entertaining campaign that allowed users to play through Serena Williams’ Grand Slam victory. The ad reached over 28 million people and users spent an average of over 3 minutes on the game screen, proving that a little extra effort in creating something unique and interactive pays off. Snapchat is a platform that encourages new mediums for ad campaigns, with options like the Web View above, and Geofilters and Sponsored Lenses.
Taco Bell
Frightening, maybe; but Taco Bell’s Cinco de Mayo Snapchat Lens campaign was a huge success. On average, these filters reach 16 million users daily, which makes them an effective choice for a one-off ad run. In this instance, the lens garnered 224 million views in the course of 24 hours. The radical and humorous transformation the filter gave to Snapchatters incentivized them to share with friends and promote Taco Bell’s brand awareness.
Secret Life of Pets
Universal Studios partnered with Snapchat to launch a highly interactive ad campaign that allowed viewers to swipe up after a movie trailer and create a Petmoji directly in-app. This marketing strategy emphasized providing a unique outlet for users to engage with the brand, with the ability to create their very own pet. The ability to share with friends and interact directly with characters from the movie is an example of best practices for spreading brand awareness.
Since the announcement earlier this year that Snapchat launched a self-serve ad platform that will compete directly with the advertising hegemons, Google and Facebook, more and more ad campaigns like these have emerged. By making Snapchat advertising attainable for small businesses, the platform has opened up the door of opportunity in maximizing ad revenue. For the advertisers themselves, this means more competition, which involves understanding what ads resonate with their viewers and how best to optimize Snapchat’s tools.
Starbucks
Starbucks marketed their Frappuccino Happy Hour more effectively by utilizing the Geofilter option on Snapchat ads. Geofilters generally deliver a 3.5 times greater lift in purchase intent and brand awareness than a traditional mobile ad. Simple but effective, this ad from Starbucks reminded people of the promotion while leaving space for users to capture their own image. Without weighing down the ad with too much text or design, it still managed to incorporate the brand’s logo, description of the promotion, and a fun design element.
Thrive Market
Snapchat Ads also take the form of app installs, which allows users to go directly to the App Store and download the application shown in the Snap Story. Thrive Market took full advantage of this with a short but catchy video ad that included energetic animations and clear, on-brand copy. Additionally, they incorporated images of someone actually using the app from their phone, emphasizing the product’s ease of use and convenience.
AT&T
For Father’s Day, AT&T launched a campaign through Snapchat Ads that let users click on the objects they saw to learn more about it. Modeling itself as a gift inspiration ad, AT&T succeeds in positioning itself as a helpful company and providing a means for users to directly engage with their products. The ad achieved over 4 million impressions, and 14% unique engagement, indicating that making an advertisement a hands-on experience is the right way to go.
When it comes to accessing an engaged mobile audience, Snapchat appears to hold the keys to success. Whether it’s through a traditional Snapchat Ad campaign, Geofilters, or Sponsored Lenses, this advertising platform cannot be ignored as an effective means of reaching millions of interested, relevant consumers.
