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ADVERTISING SOCIAL MEDIA

Using Instagram as a Shopping Platform

Using Instagram as a Shopping Platform

If you are in eCommerce, you can’t afford to ignore Instagram marketing. The platform offers a range of engaging options for reaching customers and it can be one of the best options for promoting your products and your online store. Working to up your Instagram game requires working with the best Instagram growth agency, so make sure you pick your collaborators carefully.

Instagram also has a large audience. The ads on this platform have the potential to reach a community of close to 1.4 billion users. Along with that, Instagram ads targeting options make it easy to reach the right audience with the right content.

For eCommerce businesses looking to develop the best Instagram growth strategy, the ability to sell products through the platform has to be one of the most powerful features. With Instagram Shops, business users can add a digital storefront to a business profile. Once you have the shop set up, you can add product collections to the shop, tag items in photos, and allow users to shop for your products without having to leave Instagram.

The Benefits of Instagram Shops

The Instagram Shop feature offers one of the best ways to turn social media followers into customers. A lot of Instagram users go to the platform as a place to discover and learn about new products. With a shop added to your profile, you can do more to promote your products while also offering a more convenient shopping experience.

One benefit is that an Instagram shop can reduce friction during the purchase process. A user might discover your products on Instagram, but they might not want to navigate out of the app to your website to complete the purchase. They might decide to do it later and then forget when the time comes. Since users can purchase directly in the app, you can remove barriers that may have cost you customers in the past. With Instagram ads targeting, you can connect with users who are reminded of your product and decide they finally have to have it.

Another great reason to use the shop feature is that you can get discovered by more users when you have an Instagram Shop. With this feature turned on, users will be able to find your products in the Instagram Shop tab on the app. This can be a way to increase your reach without having to do much more than maintain the shop.

You can also sell directly through your posts on the platform. With this feature, you can tag your products that appear in posts in a way that is similar to tagging a person on Instagram. The tag can list the name and price of the item. Users can also select the item and get directed to the product page in your shop.

Getting Started With Your Instagram Shop

You don’t need to be an expert at Instagram marketing to set up your shop. Even better, starting an Instagram Shop is free. If you don’t feel comfortable setting up the Instagram Shop yourself, work with the best Instagram growth agency to help you boost your Instagram presence and raise conversion rates on the platform.

  1. Make Sure Your Shop is Eligible 

The Instagram Shop feature is not open to all eCommerce businesses. The first thing to consider is whether the feature is available in your country. You also have to own an online store and sell supported products. Beyond that, your business needs to follow the commerce policies and merchant agreement. 

  1. Instagram Business Account

An Instagram business account is another requirement. If you run paid Instagram ads, you already have one. If you do not have one, you will need to convert your personal Instagram profile to a business account. This is a process that can be handled in a matter of a few minutes. 

  1. Connect Your Account to Your Facebook Business Page

You’ll need a Facebook business page to open an Instagram Shop. If you do not have a Facebook business page, you will need to set one up. Once you have a page, you need to go to your Instagram profile and select “Edit Profile”. Select “Page” from under the “Public Business Information” section. Select a Facebook page to connect with your Instagram account.

  1. Product Catalog 

You can start setting up your product catalog at this point. You have two options for moving products into your catalog: you can use the catalog manager to do the work manually or you can import products from your chosen eCommerce platform. The eCommerce integration works with platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce and OpenCart. This is probably the better option if you use one of the supported platforms.

  1. Wait for Review

Once you have products in your catalog, you can submit your account for review. It usually only takes a few days for an account to get verified. Instagram might notify you if they need more information to verify your account. You can also check the status of your request in the shopping settings on your account. After your account is approved, you can turn the shopping features on and start selling through Instagram.

 

An Instagram Shop can be a valuable asset for any eCommerce business. With that said, it will not run itself. You are still going to need to post regularly and follow the best practices for Instagram marketing

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ADVERTISING SOCIAL MEDIA Tips & Tricks

4 Reasons Why Reddit is the Best Place to Advertise

4 Reasons Why Reddit is the Best Place to Advertise

If you’re looking for an alternative to Facebook ads or Google AdWords, then Reddit advertising might be for you. Users can vote for or downvote posts and comments within a subreddit. 

However, Reddit’s digital marketing power truly comes from its advertising options and access to thousands of subreddits to promote your brand. Here are four reasons that you should choose Reddit ads as part of your advertising strategy.

Interactions With Active Communities

Reddit is home to 100,000 interest-based subreddits that are hard to find anywhere else, where people have an insatiable curiosity and constantly seek answers. Questions, comments, and support can come from any user, 24/7. The most popular posts appear on Reddit’s front page, reaching over 48 million monthly users. Reddit ads reach a wide and active audience.

As an active Reddit user for your brand, respond to posts with valuable comments to other Reddit users. Don’t be afraid to use humor in your comments and posts to engage your audience when appropriate. 

Spotify is an example of a brand that used Reddit to engage consumers creatively by asking questions about music and the emotions songs evoke from listeners. Reddit digital marketing can be creative and engaging on the platform.

You can use AMA (Ask Me Anything) posts to answer questions and show that your brand is approachable and open to feedback from customers. The CEO of Nissan started a subreddit thread called “IAmA,” where he got his target market to ask questions and actively engage with the brand. 

Easily Reach the Right Target Audience

With Reddit’s focus on community, it’s no surprise Reddit ads focus on popular topics discussed within subreddits. Since users are subscribed to certain subreddits, they can see Reddit ads as they scroll through posts and comments. 

Thanks to Reddit’s niche-related subreddits, you can locate your niche and talk about your product or solution. If you advertise to gardeners, rely on garden-related and plant-related subreddits like r/gardening, r/plants, and r/houseplants for placing your ads. This strategy helps ensure your advertising budget is well spent because your ads are reaching their target audience. 

Offers a Variety of Advertising Options

There are various ways to present Reddit ads, including image and video ads with call-to-action buttons. Reddit allows for promoted carousel ads that let you publish multiple photos or videos in one ad. 

You can also choose to have your Reddit ads and posts promoted as sponsored posts within a subreddit. Lemonade Inc., an insurance app, used Reddit digital marketing via promoted posts. The company had a promoted post on a fast food subreddit to show how insurance payments cost as much as fast food – cheaper than what the audience might imagine. The ad was relatable enough to gain people’s attention. 

Other ways to advertise on Reddit are through takeover ads in which your brand can take over the category, front page, and trending pages for 24 hours. First View allows users to see your brand first on prime Reddit real estate such as Home, the hub of all the subreddits a user has joined. 

Your Reddit ads can also show up on the Popular Feed-First View, which is the feed of the most popular posts. Reddit Pixel lets you track the performance of your ads and customer conversions, helping you better understand your target audience. 

Reddit Ads Can Fit Any Budget

Reddit ads will only cost you what you can afford for your advertising budget. Since Reddit is an auction-based marketplace, targeting, bids, and Reddit traffic affect the number of views for your ads. Some successfully promoted ads like Duracell’s ad gained 250 million views on Reddit and increased brand awareness by 16.3%. 

The top bid will be based on the second-highest bid plus $0.01. When placing a bid, make sure you are prepared to pay the highest amount of money possible. A small bid for a Reddit ad may be appropriate for a specific audience. However, if you’re targeting a broader audience, skew your Reddit digital marketing budget higher. 

Start Your Digital Marketing Campaign With Reddit Ads

Online advertising on Reddit has many benefits, including the ability to reach your target audience and create a campaign that fits any budget. This ever-growing platform is a great place to reach new customers. Whether you are interested in reaching a large or a small audience, you can make the most of it with the right targeting and Reddit ads.

 

 

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ADVERTISING SOCIAL MEDIA Tips & Tricks

LinkedIn Ads Best Practices

LinkedIn Ads Best Practices 

We all know social media can do a lot to help you achieve your marketing goals. Social media platforms offer access to large audiences and they provide marketers with a range of useful advertising tools. Along with that, it is a cost-effective way to raise awareness and acquire new customers. 

What many marketers are missing is the benefits of a platform like LinkedIn. Do LinkedIn ads work when compared to larger platforms like Google or Facebook? Sure, the advantages of Google and Facebook ads can’t be denied, but LinkedIn is a platform that could be uniquely powerful depending on the audience you are trying to reach. Most notably, it is one of the best options if you are trying to sell to businesses or reach professional audiences. 

While many of the features and options you will find with LinkedIn ads are similar to what you may expect from other social media platforms, there are important differences. Trying to just take your strategy from another platform and apply it to LinkedIn will not lead to the best results.

In this post, we are going to look at the LinkedIn best practices that can help any marketer reach their goals on the platform. 

Get to Know Your Audience

You can do more to reach your goals when you define your target audience. One of the LinkedIn best practices involves targeting on the platform. A great thing about targeting on LinkedIn is that it goes beyond the standard targeting categories like age, gender, and location to offer options like industry, job title, seniority, and company name. When you are selling B2B or targeting professionals, these options can have real power. Once you have your ideal audience, you can then craft marketing content that will appeal directly to those people.

Watch the Forecasted Results

An important thing to consider when you’re wondering, “do LinkedIn ads work?” is to make sure you’re paying attention to the projected audience results in LinkedIn. You will see the forecasted results on the right panel when you are building the audience for a campaign. This can indicate the projected size of the audience, and you also have a section for segmented breakdown. This can tell you the breakdown of your audience by factors like years of experience, company size, job function, and more. Keep an eye on how the makeup of your audience changes as you make different selections. You might need to make adjustments if your audience gets too small or if a critical segment looks to be under-represented.

Use the Right Ad Placement

Just like other social media platforms, LinkedIn offers different options for ad placement. The three basic options include sponsored ads, InMail ads and text ads. Sponsored ads show up in the user’s feed; InMail ads go directly to their inbox, and text ads show up on the sidebar. You need to consider your audience and you might even need to do a little experimentation to find the right ad placement for different campaigns. You can also work with a LinkedIn ads agency to help you figure out the best placement for your ads.

Target by Lists 

LinkedIn offers the option of matched audiences to allow for precision targeting. With this option, you can upload different types of lists to target users in different ways. As an example, you can upload lists of email addresses. You can also upload lists of company names to target people at those companies. Beyond that, you can also use those lists to create lookalike audiences to target users who may be similar to the people on those lists. One important note is that the LinkedIn ads policy for these lists is that they will expire if they are not used for ninety days. 

Add the Insight Tag to Your Website

The LinkedIn Insight Tag is a feature that allows you to install a tracking pixel on your website. If you are serious about making the most of LinkedIn ads, you should install the Insight Tag as soon as possible. The Insight Tag offers reporting features and conversion tracking. Along with that, it can provide valuable insights concerning the visitors to your website. You can also use it to create matched lists based on website activity.

Use Text in Images

An attractive image can be one of the best ways to capture the attention of users on LinkedIn. Another great tip is to add text to the images. It might not be appropriate for every campaign, but it can be an effective way to make sure the main message of the ad stands out. One way to make sure this works is to use letters with bold colors that offer a strong contrast with the rest of the image.

Create Lead Magnets

Lead generation ads from LinkedIn offer a simple ad format for collecting leads on the platform. When it is done right, you can make a lot of connections. If you want to enhance these campaigns, you should create a lead magnet to encourage more users to give you their details. LinkedIn allows advertisers to integrate lead magnets with campaigns, so it can be a simple way to make sure you get the most from your lead generation efforts.

As a final tip for LinkedIn ads best practices, test everything. Try different ad formats, placements and make adjustments to your audience. With a little testing, you will be able to find the options that work best for the campaigns you run. As an alternative, you could hire a LinkedIn ads agency to run your campaigns for you. With experienced professionals running your campaigns, you should see better results in less time.

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Guest Posts SOCIAL MEDIA

The 10 Best Apps for Marketers

Small and large businesses alike have embraced digital marketing as one of their most important aspects. 

In addition to maintaining social media profiles to provide information to customers, smaller businesses tend to have streamlined campaigns linking all social media forms to television and magazine ads.

The fact that most people browse for shops, restaurants, and reviews on Facebook and Twitter and see advertisements for businesses while using these platforms makes it an area to not ignore for businesses.

It’s important to keep up with constant updates to meet ever-changing requirements if you want to run a relevant and competitive digital campaign.

Managing digital marketing efforts is an arduous task, however, some tools can assist you to ensure maximum results are reached and that your message reaches the right audience.

Keep up to date with your campaign using the following tools:

1.  Idio

Communication directly with individual consumers is one of the main advantages of digital marketing, and this app makes it possible for users to have a truly personalized experience.

As digital marketing grows and expands, the rules are changing regularly, making it more difficult for even skilled marketers to adjust. 

Despite this, however, you can use these tools to differentiate yourself from your competitors.

2. OxEssays

The content wasn’t an important part of digital marketing when it first emerged. 

The search engines are getting smarter, so only posting original and high-quality content is now essential. 

Through this website, marketing professionals who are knowledgeable about the requirements for marketing content can be assigned writing and editing projects.

3. Offerpop

If you’re having trouble keeping your users engaged, Offer Pop is an excellent tool. 

Even when it’s challenging, all companies should strive to improve engagement, since social media marketing gives them the ability to talk with their audience. 

You can use this tool to reach out to your audience through a variety of methods and formats.

4. Socioboard

Managing multiple profiles simultaneously can be overwhelming, and keeping track of multiple profiles and their updates can be challenging. 

Staying up to date makes managing multiple social media profiles much simpler, as many sites allow this.

5. Sprout Social

This social media management software helps brands engage their customers more effectively by enabling them to capture and share posts on social media. 

In addition to maintaining detailed statistics on all social media networks-LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Zendesk, this platform integrates with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Zendesk.

6. Australian Help

Any communication you publish in response to your business, including emails, blogs, and social media posts, represents you and your business.  

Because of this, you should ensure that all your work is accurate and grammatically flawless; otherwise, your company will appear inadequate and sloppy. 

Due to this, companies often hire writers or editors through this website to write or edit their online content.

7. Hootsuite

With one simple dashboard, Hootsuite is the ultimate app for bloggers.

In addition to scheduling posts, tracking ROI, collecting analytics, and keeping tabs on social mentions, you can manage your social media like a pro with Hootsuite.

As well as integrating your existing apps with 250 others, the app also helps you organize your social life.

8. Perka 

Local businesses often use loyalty programs as a marketing tactic. Business card-sized punch cards are usually used to fulfill these needs. 

Your card is punched every time you enter a sandwich shop, a nail salon, or a coffee shop. 

With all four punched cards, you are entitled to a free lunch, coffee, manicure, or pedicure. It’s the incentive of that free reward that can keep users and customers returning over and over again. 

This old-fashioned model is made digital by Perka. The app is still working on some quirks, but if your business uses punch cards, then this is something you should try.

9. Mention

What does the web have to say about you? Your back is covered by Mention. 

This app will give you regular updates on who and what has been said online about you, your brand, and everything else you care about online. 

It monitors social media, blogs, and news sites, and offers an easy way for you to find out what has been said about you. 

It’s possible to create customized statistics that are relevant to your business and connect them with your social media accounts. 

There are free and paid plans available for small businesses, but large corporations must pay up to $600 per month.

10. Plai

It takes a long time to track data for each website login. PLAI helps you quickly analyze your YouTube ads, Google Analytics, and Google Ads all from one platform.

Keeping track of your marketing results is seamless and easy with a visual experience.

In addition, Plai provides trending content and keyword research in your niche. 

Before creating a marketing campaign or a social post, keywords are discovered and marketing strategies are learned.

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ADVERTISING SOCIAL MEDIA Tips & Tricks

Why Advertising on Snapchat is a Good Idea

Why Advertising on Snapchat is a Good Idea

When you think about which social media apps to advertise your products and services on, it’s likely you focus more on the big dogs like Facebook, Instagram, or (yawn) LinkedIn. Advertising on Snapchat, an app largely known for digitally superimposing cat whiskers on people’s faces, might not be front of mind when you’re trying to develop your brand’s reputation. You may even wonder “does Snapchat even have ads?” Short answer, yes.

Are Snapchat Ads Worth It?

So you’re wondering if Snapchat ads are worth it. We get it. You want your company to seem solid, dependable, and legit. Short little videos that disappear into the ether right after they’re viewed may not inspire confidence if your intended audience is the typical C-suite crowd. But you have to know your market and how to cater to it, and people who use Snapchat may not be your corporate enterprising types. That’s not a bad thing. Most Snapchat ad viewers are under 30 and so well-versed in social media that they probably think Facebook is exclusively for boomers. They’re looking for something fresh, something irreverent, something that tells them you don’t take yourself or your company so seriously that you can’t have a bit of fun. 

There are currently 306 million daily Snapchat users across the globe, so you’d be wise to think twice before leaving them out of your advertising strategy. These Snapchat ad viewers are, after all, the corporate execs of tomorrow, and they already wield a great deal of influence across a wide variety of industries today, both as consumers, mid-level employees who have the ear of the decision-makers, and startup founders. With the shakeup happening in terms of how and where we work, due to the COVID pandemic, marketing strategies have had to adjust to a new normal where work life is increasingly entangled with, well, everything else. Our online lives are playing a bigger part than ever in our decision-making and interests.

Do Snapchat Ads Work?

Ok, so the Snapchat platform is popular. But your products and services are meant for specific demographics, so how can you make sure your ads are not just seen by a lot of people, but also foster the kind of engagement you want with the right people? Snapchat’s goal-based bidding feature enables you to implement specific kinds of customer engagement that are desirable for your bottom line. In other words, you can find out in real-time what kinds of ads and actions taken on those ads are working. In addition, Snapchat’s Discover ads, which are essentially bite-sized TV commercials, have been shown to have “increased efficiency in ad awareness by 65%.” 

So the question is not whether Snapchat ads can work or whether an investment in Snapchat advertising is worth it, but how you can tailor your advertising and marketing content to your intended users and spur the type of engagement that drives success for your business. Snapchat already offers the tools to implement targeted campaigns and to measure their success, and the versatility of its advertising formats has the ability to increase brand awareness in ways that some of the bigger social media companies don’t. Once you’ve got a solid team in place to help you hone your message and what form that message should take, maybe the next step is just figuring out how to record a good video.