All Entries Tagged With: "online marketing"
Let’s face it – we’re obsessed with consuming video content. We’re all guilty of it – perusing YouTube, watching recommended video after recommended video, or watching one too many Facebook Tasty videos. The number of Snapchat users now exceeds Twitter users. We all love video, so why are so many small business owners still hesitant to invest in video marketing?
As we mentioned in last week’s blog, if content is king, video content is the king’s king! Video marketing is no longer up and coming – it’s a proven successful strategic marketing tactic, and it looks to be here to stay. But don’t just take our word for it. This infographicboasts a lot of impressive statistics about video marketing (who doesn’t love infographics?). For example, YouTube reports video consumption has risen 100% each year. Additionally, after watching a video, 64% of users are more likely to purchase a product online.
Video is human, which is inherently more engaging. Just think about it – video opens up a world of creative opportunities to tell a story, demonstrate your product, or promote your brand. The brain processes visual stimuli 60,000 times faster than words alone, because video appeals to the senses. Video also has the capability to encourage user-generated content and create positive buzz; when a video captivates us, we share it with our network. And we all know what higher engagement means – better ranking in search engine results.
We hear your excuses – “but video content doesn’t belong in my industry.” In the real estate industry? A 2012 National Association of Realtors study found that 85 percent of buyers and sellers “prefer to work with an agent who uses video marketing,” and that was 4 years ago! Since then, consumption of video content has only become more prevalent.Video marketing has a place in every industry –B2B (use video to explain your product or service offerings), education & learning (animation videos are really engaging to explain a topic), healthcare (video can be a great vessel to simply sensitive topics),technology (to show audiences what your technology is capable of), and so on!
A few video marketing best practices:
Seriously, understanding human behavior, or more specifically your audience’s content consumption habits, is key to creating consistent quality content that will keep your current clients, prospects and brand ambassadors engaged. We know you’ve already clearly identified your audience and we know you’re totally committed to producing really great organic content for your social posts, blogs, email campaigns, newsletters, videos, white papers, articles or other information but really identifying how your audience is consuming that information is key to your integrated marketing campaigns and efforts being effective. We don’t want you to just feel like a hamster spinning on a wheel after all! We often refer to ourselves as ‘Professional Spaghetti Throwers’ because we are constantly throwing spaghetti against the wall and quantifying what is sticking, what isn’t, what we should shelf, trash or invest more time, money and energy into. We do this within our own business and for all of our clients every day, every week, every month…it is SO important to really understand which efforts are creating a positive ROI – makes sense, right?
We often get that glazed over eye, deer in the headlights, reaction when first discussing social media campaigns with prospective clients or when giving a presentation or workshop because so many of you feel overwhelmed enough already with the amount of work it takes to run your business and the thought of adding social media with all those different platforms can make your head spin. But, it is often not as complex as most think. No, really. Oftentimes, it’s really a matter of identifying which platforms make the most sense for your business to reach your audience.
As an example…
Let’s say you’re a realtor. You’re going to want to have a professional logo and a solid web presence that clearly represents your differentiator and unique value proposition, a Facebook page, a comprehensive personal LinkedIn profile and a company profile. All of these will of course be streamlined with a clean consistent style and with tons of relevant engaging content. Are you still with us? Once you’ve mastered these basics, which we’ll refer to here as the super important foundation, (which is often the hardest part to build) the rest is fun! …Well, for us it’s fun, let’s just hope it’s not painful for you! Now you’re ready to add some more floors to that solid foundation.
Instagram: What about Instagram? We’re guessing you’ve got some pretty nice listings and/or you’ve sold some pretty nice properties to some happy clients? Take pictures when you’re working and post away! You’ll need to continue to follow a fairly consistent style or theme. Here are some great tips!
Snapchat: Okay, we know your 13 year old uses Snapchat – you must be thinking we’re crazy. Why on earth would we be suggesting you should use it for your business? Here’s an eye-opening article by Gary Vaynerchuk that’ll back up our suggestion and prove that we’re not going cuckoo! It all goes back to understanding your audience, so this platform may or may not be a good idea. If you’re selling some stylish condos in an highly sought after area that is super popular to 20 and 30 somethings, Snapchat is a great idea, but if you’re selling retirement properties…probably not so much!
Pinterest: Women are BIG decision makers and major players in the consumer real estate market so chances are Pinterest is a no brainer for the realtors out there. Here is a great article that talks specifically to that.
We didn’t touch on video in this blog but let’s just say if content is king then video content is the king’s KING! Video is consumed more and more and if done right, you can’t go wrong with video content.
We’ll be following up next week with a very beefy blog all about video content and best practices for using it in your integrated marketing strategy. Until then, happy content creating!
What is your ‘WHY’? What is your reason, goal(s), or impetus that gets you out of bed in the morning? Your ‘WHY’ might be raising a happy healthy family, getting a degree, making a million bucks…
Here at Hub Digital Marketing, our‘WHY’ is all about helping businesses grow through digital marketing and customized growth strategies. Our ‘WHY’ fuels our quest for learning and growing. Can’t stop, won’t stop! We read, watch videos, attend webinars and online classes, and go to presentations and workshops with an almost obsessive dedication. We practice new ideas and platforms out on ourselves, and our own business, ALL the time. We truly enjoy meeting with people and hearing their stories. We are always interested in learning about client’s businesses and we revel in identifying their strengths and weaknesses, their growth stories and pain points then we love working with them to identify, build, and execute growth strategies specific to each and every one of them. We really love what we do and do what we love!
Now you know what our ‘WHY’ is, so what about the HOW and WHAT?
Marketing…what is marketing really? As defined by Miriam Webster:
Full Definition of marketing
Then there’s Digital Marketing, which really is the skeletal structure and/or foundation of everything we do – from the design and development of a website, content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing and all that goes into search engine optimization – that is ‘WHAT’ we do! Digital marketing is an umbrella term for themarketing of products or services using digital technologies, mainly on the Internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium. Wikipedia’s full definition.
Content is king…you’ve heard that, right? Well, it’s true. Content creation is the contribution of information to any media and most especially to digital media for an end-user/audience in specific contexts. But let’s think of content as content marketing…Content marketing is the marketing and business process for creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.
And, of course SEO (search engine optimization) is at the heart of it ALL. Search engine optimization is a methodology of strategies, techniques and tactics used to increase the amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine (SERP) — including Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines.
A list of WHAT we do…
– SEO Strategy and Execution
– Website Design
– Social Media Marketing and Management
– Blogging and Copywriting
– Grassroots Marketing Strategy and Execution
– Email Marketing – List Development and Template Building
– Paid Search
– Display Ad Purchase and Design
– Graphic Design
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.
