All Entries Tagged With: "digital marketing"

How To Optimize Your Facebook Ads

Ok, so if you’ve had anything to do with Facebook in the past decade (that’s right, Facebook has been around now for over 10 years!), you’ve noticed that it’s gone through some major changes. What once was a mecca for small business owners who were looking for organic reach and inexpensive advertising, has now become a frustrating place of lost content just floating around with no one paying attention to it.

Algorithm changes over the past few years has significantly decreased the organic reach of business pages. It’s gotten to the point now, where on average a business owner can expect that only 2% of the people who like their page will organically see what they’ve posted. As someone who spends a significant amount of time researching, creating and editing content to send out to the masses, that is a bummer. There’s nothing worse than knowing you have something really important to say, without an audience to say it to.

Well, once you’ve mourned the loss of your organic reach (because trust us, it’s not coming back), it’s time to buck up and make the best of it. Despite some challenges, there ARE ways you can get great reach on the social media platform at a lower cost than other outlets, and those are Facebook ads. Trying them out? Below we’re breaking down just a few tips to help you optimize your ads to ensure they’re working the best for you.

1. Spend some time researching your audience and target them. When you’re looking to target your ad don’t just go by geographic area. Take some time to do some research on some of your existing audience’s interests and likes. On Facebook you can target by general interests, things they’ve looked at on the web, and even other complimentary Facebook pages they’ve liked. Spending some time playing with the interest categories available for targeting can make a HUGE difference in your ad performance.

2. Pick the ultimate pic.  Ahh the ad image. This is always the most difficult (for many people) when designing an ad. The image is the first thing people will see when scrolling through their newsfeed so you want to make sure it not only makes sense with your content, but that it’s attention grabbing as well. Find something with bright colors, interesting designs or a little bit of humor to ensure maximum results. And be sure to keep text to a minimum! While Facebook has loosened up a little on their restrictions, it will cost you more to run an ad with text in the image than one that doesn’t have any. And be sure to keep it in the 1200 x 628 wide format so it fits the space nicely.

3. Start small with the budget. A lot of times people think the more money you throw behind an ad the better. However, recent studies have shown that dramatically increasing your budget will actually cause your Cost Per Click (CPC) to go up dramatically as well! Start your budget smaller (about $5 per day) and test it out over the course of a few days to see how it’s working for you. Don’t like what’s happening? Go back and edit the image, text or both until you find the right mix. Happy with the results? Slowly increase your budget (No more that $5 per day) over time to increase the reach without increasing the CPC.

Continuing Education for the Business Owner

Time tends to go by very quickly when you’re in the trenches of running your own business! The day-to-day tasks of a small business can be overwhelming and take up most of your day. By the time you have a minute to reflect, a month has gone by and you’ve done nothing but tread water. The world is changing, marketing is changing, and best practices are changing, and you’re left wondering how you can possibly fit more into your day? There’s no way you can add anything else, like learning and implementing the newest trends in business while managing your daily to-do list.

This is where the newest trend in continuing education can come to the rescue – online classes. Created by both real world professionals and educators, these classes are created for the busy small business owner. They are often presented in smaller modules that are easy to sneak in during the day and can range in topics from current marketing trends, time management and how to drive sales.

college student study in the library

The online class is one our favorite new things. It’s an amazing way to pick the brains of those that are rocking it in the business world. However, there are a lot of classes out there, and it can be difficult to know which ones are worth investing in. We have a few tips on what to look for to ensure the class is top quality and will work for your needs:

• Make sure they’ve implemented their techniques on their own business. The best way to tell if someone is the real deal is if they don’t just teach, but actually do. Make sure they mention using their strategies on themselves, and if they give real world examples of how it was successful.
• Get an outline of the class before purchasing. Real classes will give you a full, in-depth look of the class BEFORE making you buy it. They should walk you through the modules, clearly explain what you’ll learn, and what you’ll get which should give you a good idea if it’s what you’re looking for.
• Make sure your personalities jive. Not only does the information need to be legit but you need to actually like the person to retain any of it. Check out some of their videos and articles to see if you like how they speak, phrases they use and if you can easily understand the way they present the content.
• Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Those disseminating and selling the information shouldn’t be afraid to answer questions you have about their product. Ask them to give you more in-depth information on what’s covered in the class, if it’s updated as things change and how long it will take to finish the class.

If you take a couple minutes to Google different topics you’re interested in learning more about, you’re bound to find a variety of classes that will fit your needs. To give you a little bit of a head start we’re breaking down our personal favorites that we can guarantee are well worth the investment.

Jump Start Your FB Marketing – Amy Porterfield – $197. Amy Porterfield is one of our favorite online educators and learning about FB marketing is one of the things almost all business owners need help with. This class breaks down how to optimize your FB presence as well as drive more sales and traffic through your page.

Creating and Delivering 5 Figure Webinars – Amy Porterfield – $1000+. Another Amy Porterfield course, this one is a significant investment. We have taken this class ourselves and find the information completely worth the 4-figure price tag. It breaks down everything from how to use webinars to promote your business, to how to build one from scratch, to how to market it effectively. It’s been a tactic that we’ve found has been an integral tool in promoting our business. Check out the free webinar in the link to learn more about the class before committing to see if it makes sense for your business.

Power of Pinning – Melanie Duncan – $297. A great option for those looking to explore Pinterest and learn how this platform can be used to help drive traffic to websites and sell products directly through the platform. It also dives into Pinterest SEO and how you can optimize your pins not just for Pinterest but Google as well.

Instagram With Intention – Hilary Rushford – $97. An awesome class that breaks down Instagram and how to create share worthy photos for it. It also talks about how to properly use hashtags as well as get more followers. The only downside is it doesn’t run continuously all year long but you can sign up for her emails and you’ll get notice as soon as it opens up again.

Big SEO For Small Businesses – Amy Fields – $179. We couldn’t write an article about online classes without adding a shameless plug for our own! Big SEO utilizes a series of techniques that we’ve implemented on our own website, as well as countless client websites. If you want to help drive your website up in search to then drive more traffic and sales without spending money on ads this is for you! We, and many other people, think it’s pretty great (if we do say so ourselves) so click on the link above to watch a video and learn more!

CRAFTING THE PERFECT PIN

If you have a brand that targets women (and in many cases, even men) you’ve probably heard of Pinterest. The bookmark-style brand has skyrocketed to over 100 million users who log on daily to save some of their favorite products, wedding DIY, dream home decor and fashion styles. Touting a nearly 75% purchase rate (that’s right, 75% of Pinterest users have purchased something they found on the site) it’s a digital platform that can’t be ignored.

Thinking about getting into Pinterest or have tried in the past and haven’t seen success? Well, like anything, there’s an art to pinning that can make or break your Pinterest page. Below we’re breaking down some of our favorite tips to help ensure that your pins will get seen, clicked on, and converted to sales.

1. Create a “Buyable Pin” if you can. “Buyable Pins” are something that are still growing in popularity and are still very limited to only certain commerce platforms. However, if you are one of those lucky ducks who hosts their online store on a compatible one, you can easily activate “Buyable Pins”. These allow the end user to purchase your product DIRECTLY from Pinterest, making it even easier to get that sale. Plus, word around town is Pinterest is promoting buyable pins more in users feeds than a normal pin. If you have an Etsy store, it’s not compatible with Buyable Pins yet, but you can create a “Rich Pin”. Pin directly from your store listing to feature the product price and description more prominently than a regular pin.

2. Create an eye catching image. This one may seem obvious but you’ll be shocked by how many people pin cut off or poor looking images on the site. A great idea is to create almost a cover photo by combining a great picture with some brief text of what you pin is about or where it links to. Now, you can’t add call to action text like “click here” to your pin, but a general title helps give pinners and idea of what they can expect for your pin without having to read it so the chances of them pinning to read later go up dramatically.  Research has shown that vertical images with a 2:3 ratio (the recommended Pinterest size is 735 x 1102 pixels) tend to be the most eye catching and get repinned the most. Need help crafting the perfect pin image? Check out Canva where you can utilize pre-sized templates and get some ideas.

3. Keywords, keywords, keywords. You knew it was coming…  You HAVE to add keywords to the description of your pins if you want to see any traction. People are not only searching for pins within the actual site, but they show up on Google as well. Take a few minutes to ensure your pin descriptions include not only keywords about what your specific pin, but about your business as well.

4. Timing is everything. This one is the big one. Research has shown that pins are the most effective about 20-40 minutes after they are pinned. Because they are shown in users’ feeds based on the time they are pinned, they have an EXTREMELY short shelf life. When you sign up for a business account, you’ll get access to your analytics. This will help you see when people are responding to your pins the most and what is getting repinned. Take some time to research and test when your users will be online and save your most important pins to go live during that time (although a good rule of thumb is about 2-4pm or 8pm-1am as popular times). However, be careful because….

5. There’s nothing worse than going overboard. It may be tempting to pin all your products to your page over the span of a few hours. We get it – You’re on a roll, you have a plan and you just want to knock it out. However, because the shelf life of pins is short, it’s recommended to spread out your pinning over days, weeks and months, to ensure there’s always something fresh in your viewer’s feeds. Also, bombarding your followers with 60-70 pins at a time is super overwhelming and may turn them off from your feed. The best rule of thumb is to plan on about 15-30 pins per day, spread out over the course of 24 hours (with your most important ones going live during your optimum engagement time). Now, it’s not always ideal to check in to Pinterest at 1am, so check out some scheduling options like Buffer to help make it easier on you.

Tags pinterest, creating pins, social media, social media marketing,digital marketing, online marketing, rhode island, online consultant, digital consultant, digital marketing expert

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