Social Media

Retargeting – Who Do You Have In Your Sights?

August 24, 2016

I remember the first time I noticed retargeting. I’d been online, checking the park hours before my next trip to Disney World. From that website, I did some work and then went to a CBS sports site to adjust my fantasy football team before the weekend.

As I was trying to decide which running back to play, I noticed a Disney World ad in the side bar. “How weird is that,” I thought, “I was just on the Disney site earlier today. What are the odds?”

Well today – you and I know that the odds are pretty darn high, thanks to retargeting. Only 2% of web visitors convert on their first visit. That means 98% didn’t do what you wanted them to do, be it sign up for a free online class, purchase something or download your free ebook. But thanks to retargeting, you’ll get another shot at them.

Retargeting is a cookie-based technology that uses a simple JavaScript code to anonymously follow your audience all over the Web. You just place an unobtrusive piece of code on your website (this code is sometimes referred to as a pixel). The code is unnoticeable to your site visitors and doesn’t impact your site’s performance.

Each time a new visitor comes to your site, the code drops an anonymous cookie onto their browser. Later, when your cookied visitors browse the Web, the cookie will let your retargeting provider know when to serve ads, ensuring that your ads are only shown to people who have previously visited your site.

Most people know about this kind of retargeting, called site retargeting. But there are other ways to use this technology.

Site retargeting: As I said above, this is when you place a cookie on visitors to your website. But not every visitor is of equal value to you. You can set it so they have to take a certain action or view a certain page before you place the cookie. That way, you know you’re only talking to your best prospects.

Search Retargeting: You are targeting individuals on search engines who have entered a search using key words or phrases that you’ve identified as being relevant to your business. This isn’t as precise as site retargeting so you’ll want to make sure your digital ads don’t assume more interest than there really is.

SEM/SEO retargeting: Think of this as a one-two punch. First, they have to use certain pre-determined search terms and then they have to also visit your site. This gives you a very narrow group of people, so you can be very specific in your creative that is aimed at them.

Email retargeting: This version of retargeting is based on actions that people take after they receive an email from you. Think of all the actions someone could take after they receive your e-newsletter, for example. You could create separate campaigns aimed at people who opened your email, who clicked on a certain link or who forwarded your email along to someone else.

Social retargeting: This type of retargeting gets your prospects earlier in the sales funnel. It is based on interest-based data points that allow you to create audience groups. Think of it as a “birds of a feather flock together” assumptive effort.

I’m hard pressed to think of a business that couldn’t use one or more forms of retargeting as part of their overall marketing strategy. We’re doing some variation of it for almost every one of our clients.

Not only does it allow you to talk to people who are more likely to become first-time buyers, but also it’s very cost effective when managed by professionals who know the ropes. If you haven’t experimented with this, you probably should.

 

 

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Is your Facebook page dead in the water?

June 29, 2016

The organic (natural, without paying any money) reach of your Facebook page has never been something to write home about (you’d be lucky with 13-18%) but now it’s even less.

The simplest explanation is – as more content is created (by both our friends and the brands we’ve liked) there simply isn’t enough real estate. Facebook cannot fit all of the content into our newsfeeds. And it’s estimated that the average Facebook user’s total number of pages liked increases by 50% every year.

So we are adding more friends and more pages and everyone is adding more content. There’s simply no more room.

Add to that the fact that Facebook is trying to give each user the content they care most about, based on a mix of factors like:

• The interest level of each recipient
• The type of post it is (status update, sharing a link, a photo etc.) and the level of interest each recipient has indicated for that type of post
• Who the creator is and how well their past posts have been received
• How popular this specific post is with the people who have already seen it
• How recently the post was published
• A whole host of other factors that Facebook has personalized to every single user

There are a few reasons for this:

• Facebook figures that you’d rather see content in your newsfeed from the people you are closest to, based on your interactions with them
• They also believe that you’re more interested in people than organizations
• They’ve given you the opportunity to both like and follow a page, and if you really want to track their content, you can add it to an interest list
• They want to make more money by selling you ads and boosted posts

So what’s a brand to do? What Facebook is saying to you is – you need to earn your spot. You need to consistently produce content that your audience cares about enough to interact with it.

On your Facebook page:

• Be interesting enough that people not only like your page but also add it to an interest list. In other words – talk about something other than yourself
• Think interactive when you think content. Ask a question, ask for stories or reactions, or say something that will trigger a response
• Don’t play the “like this post for the free XYZ” game. It’s annoying and FB will penalize you for it.
• Buy ads and pay to boost your posts

While many companies are calling foul on this trend, I think that’s a little ridiculous. Facebook is a company built to make money for its stockholders. Since they’ve given us our personal accounts for free – how did we think they were going to generate revenue?

Probably the most important adjustment you can make is to level set your expectations. Facebook pages have never been and will never be the end all and be all of free advertising and marketing. I worry about the small businesses out there who have been sold a bill of goods and believe that a few posts a week (where all they do is talk about themselves) is the golden ticket to success.

There is no magic bullet and marketing is neither free nor easy. Your Facebook page probably still has a place in your marketing mix. But how large a role or how much business you can drive from it is really dependent on whether or not your audience values what you share.

Hmm, are you sensing a theme?

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No one likes you

June 9, 2015

Like millions of businesses around the world, at some point in time, you decided to hop on the Facebook train.  You created a presence with either enthusiasm or distain (seems everyone starts at one end of the spectrum or the other) and posted your first update.

Since then, things have been a little stagnant.  The fans didn’t come pouring in the way you hoped (or expected) and as a result, your enthusiasm and activity level have waned.

Ready to fire back up?  First, let’s diagnose why your Facebook fans have been a bit lackadaisical.  Or worse.

You set up the wrong kind of presence:  Many businesses mistakenly create an account rather than a page.  An account is owned by an individual and has friends.  A page is created by an account holder and has likes.

No only is it the wrong kind of presence but if Facebook realizes you’ve given a business entity a personal account, they can force you to shut it down.  Which means you’d lose all your friends/fans and have to start over.  Be sure you have the right set up.

You infrequently and inconsistently post:  It’s a little like knowing someone who rarely speaks to you.  Or speaks to you a ton for one hour and then ignores you for the next five days.  Pretty soon, you find someone else to talk to.

You can’t expect people to pay attention if they can’t count on you.  Hopefully your plan is to use your Facebook presence to create a relationship with people who either are already fans of your work or could be. Silence is not a great relationship enhancer.

You’re all about you:  This is one of the biggest marketing mistakes that most organizations consistently make.  All they do is talk about themselves.  This usually comes from one of two places.  First, you don’t have a good idea of who you are talking to, so you aren’t sure how to talk about what they’d care about.   So you default to talking about yourself.

Or, you aren’t thinking about your Facebook presence as a relationship conduit in the same way you’d think about a face-to-face conversation.   If you were sitting across from someone, you wouldn’t be rude enough to blather on about yourself non-stop.  Don’t do it on Facebook either.

You use Facebook as a sales tool:  It’s okay to share a great deal or special pricing now and then on your Facebook page.  But, it’s not a sales flier – it’s a place to connect.  The Facebook pages that I spend time on are the ones that make me smarter, make my life easier/better, make me laugh, connect me to a memory or to a community of people with whom I share a common interest.

I never mind when they occasionally pitch me, because the rest of the time they give me so much value, I’m grateful.  Would your Facebook fans say the same thing?

You never use Facebook as a sales tool:  I know, people are fickle.  Especially if you are a retail location or sell a product, one of the reasons people are willing to like your page is because they think it will get them something special or at a discount.  Don’t disappoint them.  Just do it sparingly.

You tell and sell: One of the best and easiest ways to generate activity on your Facebook page (which will generate new likes) is to ask questions.   By getting your fans involved, you can actually have a conversation and even better, their friends will see the interaction and hopefully decide to join in as well.

Remember that like all social media, Facebook is permission based.  Your audience can disconnect from you any time they want.  So provide value every day and watch your likes spike.

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Are you social sharing to your best advantage?

October 20, 2014

If your company is involved in social media, one of the elements you worry about is if you’re sharing in the best way. You want to maximize your company’s exposure but choosing the best social networks, the best way to communicate and even the best time of day.

Your blog content:

If you aren’t using your corporate blog to fuel your social media strategy, you are almost certainly not as effective and efficient as you could be.

If you are sharing great content on social networks that doesn’t exist on your blog or content hub, you are missing out on a huge SEO opportunity. If your content is on your blog, it will generate links and social indicators (likes, shares, +1s, etc.) that will benefit your website’s domain.

Blog content is permanent – social content is not. Let’s say that you posted a great tax tip on Facebook that received hundreds of Likes. When tax time comes around next year, that post will be long gone. However, if you post the tax tip on your blog, you can re-share it year after year. In addition, the tip will be indexed by the search engines and will likely drive search traffic as well.

Social sharing:

How you share content influences the your audience’s reactions. Here are some suggested copy do’s and don’ts as you compose your next update.

• 11-15 words is the sweet spot for Twitter (about 100 characters), and you’re safe to use up to 25. Go any shorter, and your message will likely lack enough information to draw people in.  But you want to leave enough “open real estate” so you your audience can re-tweet or comment.
• LinkedIn postings should aim for 16-25 words, but you are safe to go shorter if necessary.
• Messages on Twitter and LinkedIn receive significantly more clicks if they use a hash tag.
• Using a number (i.e. 4 smart ways to work with your attorney) generate  more clicks on Twitter.

Social timing:

It’s not just what you say, but when you say it.  Timing your social sharing matters.

• Want to get some social love on LinkedIn? Be sure to share your content on Sundays, which delivers more clicks that any other day of the week.
• Fridays yield more clicks on Twitter than any other day of the week.
• Facebook content does well around lunchtime and later in the afternoon. This is because many people get on Facebook during lunch and towards the end of the workday.
• Schedule tweets between 10am and 2pm. Many people check their Twitter stream after they settle into the office, but they are less likely to check it once they start wrapping up for the day.  There’s another spike of activity in the evening, when everyone checks back into their social networks.
• Twitter and LinkedIn content are both more likely to be consumed during the top and middle of the hour. This is likely due to the reader’s need to check their feeds in between meetings.
• Again – keep in mind that these are good rules of thumb, but your industry, audience and experiences may vary. The key is to actually look at your analytics and identify the patterns so you can be as effective as possible in your own social sharing strategy.

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Use social media to drive traffic to your business’ website

September 14, 2013

Social media is an ever-increasing facet of everyday business. Companies large (Starbucks) and small (your local car shop) are using social media to expand their exposure and reach a broad base of prospective consumers.

B2B marketers are now spending 30% of their budgets on social media programs, trying to reach, among others, the 21 million+ Twitter users  (per eMarketer). There are big audiences on social media for your company, and using some strategies are more effective than others.

Here are five strategies you can employ to promote your business website through social media.

Engage Directly with Consumers

To generate online conversations, businesses can engage customers and fans with photos, links and more from their blog or website. That conversation can lead to new product insights and customer service issues.

Maintain and Develop Visibility Among Your Consumer Base

Be visible with social media. Post links, pictures and video clips on social networks for your current and prospective customers. Your steady use of social media can help keep your business relevant and known, while gradually expanding exposure.

Target specialty audiences online with a microsite, which refers traffic to your main website. Create SEO marketing materials for direct sales through your primary domain via a website like MyHosting VPS hosting.

Generate Sales Referrals Through Social Media Platforms

Provide links to products or other pages that are likely to prompt consumers to make a purchase. The links you use, and the way you present them through your social media profiles, will have an impact on your business’ performance. Helpful tip: send tweets on your company’s various white papers, articles and case studies to encourage consumer interest in your company.

Data Collection and Analysis to Improve Operations Efficiency

When it comes to data, social media is a gold mine. Data analysis informs you of the size of your social media following, its growth rate and levels of engagement. You can also track total referrals to determine which social networks are most effective in generating new business. Look at these numbers for the percentage of referrals that lead to sales.

Use Feedback to Guide Future Efforts

As you gain insights from comments and data analysis, your internal teams should start to identify areas for improvement. Then you can implement solutions in your day-to-day operations.

By establishing a basic social media marketing approach, you can set yourself on the course to increased revenue and a much greater return on the investment into your website.

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We have to earn our audience’s attention

August 9, 2013

We have to earn our audience’s attention.  Let’s see how you’re doing at that.

If you own or run a business, I’d like to you take this little quiz.

1. Would you ignore your business phone 30% of the time it rings?
2. If a customer was standing in a crowd of your best customers and complaining loudly, would you ignore them?
3. If you had the chance to have the attention of your best customers and your best prospects for about 3 minutes uninterrupted, would you talk incessantly about yourself?

I have to believe that all of you passed this quiz by answered “good golly no!” to all three questions. After all you hustle like crazy to capture the attention of your customers and potential customers, right? Only a fool would squander the opportunity once they earned it.

And yet…that is exactly what’s happening online every day.

• 30% of customer questions and comments on Facebook, Twitter and company blogs go unanswered.
• 71% of complaints on Twitter are ignored.
• 89% of corporate blogs only talk about themselves, their products, promotions and awards.

No wonder so many business people say that they can’t measure any ROI on their social media efforts. If anything, their ROI should come up as a negative number!

Too many businesses believe that social media networks are simply places they need to put a placeholder in. Like a flag that says, “Look, we exist here too” and then go to some autopilot shout into the abyss mentality. The core idea behind Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ or any of the other networks out there is connection.

Real, human connection.

It’s why people share photos, stories of their day and get fired up about politics, religion and what their kid’s school is up to. And into that very personal and very meaningful conversation – most brands just blunder in and shout that they are having a sale.

Ugh.

Businesses spend thousands (and some millions) of dollars putting on elaborate dog and pony shows, with the hopes of capturing someone’s attention for a millisecond. So the assumption would be that they would actually value the attention, once they’d earned it.

But the truth is, most businesses think of social media as the newest necessary evil. They can’t get out of their own way enough to see the potential in it or that they need to approach it with humanity for it to work.

So what would that humanity look like?

Real interactions: When someone talks to you, it’s polite to reply in a reasonable amount of time. If you can’t monitor and react to a social media stream – don’t be there. Every social media tool out there has a way for you to be notified if you’ve actually started or were mentioned in a conversation.

Conversation, not monologue: No one enjoys being talked at. Your goal should be to spark conversation, not spit out rhetoric. Conversations are started when we care about the other person and ask questions, offer helpful information and listen to what they need from us.

Consistency: Just like all of our other relationships – we grow connections partially because of frequent exposures. You can’t get to know someone very well if you only communicate once or twice a year. It’s better to be fewer places but be in the places you’ve chosen more often. Don’t spread yourself too thin.

Having a heart: If you don’t actually care – then don’t be there. If you genuinely care about your customers and what’s going on with them, then show that by asking questions, reaching out and being very human.

You can create an amazing referral source and client base with your online presence or you can alienate those who already have you on their radar screen. All it takes is a little humanity to make it work.

 

 

 

 

 

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Social Sharing – what and when works

October 28, 2012

Figuring out what is best for your company’s social sharing accounts can be tough. Not only do you have to figure out what to share, but you also need to know how and when to say it. The folks at Compendium crunched the data of over 300 companies’ social sharing statistics, to identify some social sharing best practices.

One additional thing they did was break this data down as a B2B vs. B2C comparison, as they learned while going through the data that there were some significant differences between what works for B2B companies and B2C companies.

Check out this info graphic that outlines some of the findings. If you’d like to review their social sharing guides that looks at some of these results, click here.

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Search versus Social – which one wins?

September 29, 2012

If you’re wondering which is more potent — search or social media — as is often my answer — it depends.

The truth of the matter is that every organization should be thinking about BOTH because they are the yin and yang for each other.  Each feeds the other side of the equation.  When you write quality content about topics that your audience cares about (social) you attract readers, shares and you earn social proof of your expertise.

That content then begins to influence search for those key words and phrases that exist within your subject area and content (Search) and before you know it, you’re impacting Google and the other search engines — becoming more findable and attracting exactly the right people to your content.

Yin. Yang. The perfect combo. This infographic, developed by MDG Advertising really makes the point.  And should be hanging in your office to remind you to go for the one two punch of social AND search.

 

(Click here to download the full-sized version)

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They’ll buy when they trust

September 27, 2012

Here’s an equation that every business owner needs to understand.

Know + Like + Trust = Buy.

Whether you sell toothbrushes or multi-million dollar medical equipment and everything in between — until a customer:

• Knows who you are
• Likes who you are
• Trusts you

there is no purchase.  The depth of the trust required varies but there must be at least a base level of trust in place before anyone will spend a dime.

One of the things I love about social media/content marketing is that it is hard-wired to help savvy business people maximize this equation.

Know = search.  If I can’t find you, then I can’t know you exist.  Understanding how potential customers are using search when they want what you sell is vital to your business success today. Do you know what key words and phrases you should be mindful of? Are you creating content that will leverage that?

Like = social networks/blogs. When I hang out with you, in person or online, I get a sense of who you are and whether or not I like who you are.  When I read your blog, I begin to learn who you are and what you believe.  Are you out there, creating conversations and relationships?  If not — when are you going to start?

Trust = consistency online and off.  It’s easy to fake being nice, smart or helpful once or twice. But that’s tough to pull off on a consistent basis. We know that when it comes to our offline world.  And we’re learning it’s just as true online as well.  One of the greatest elements of having a digital presence is that it can quickly provide someone with a long term view of who/how you are.  That builds trust.

That equation lines up perfectly with how content marketing/social media is supposed to work.  When you create great, helpful content that aligns with how people search — you create that long tail effect that drives people to you. When you share it through your social networks and it’s done without being pushy or sleazy, people will come to like and respect you. Like and respect evolves into trust when you behave consistently in the same way.

Whether you actually sell online or you have a brick and mortar presence – using content marketing and your social media presence to move prospects along the spectrum of know, like, trust is just good business.

I’m curious — how are you building trust with what you do online?

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Social Media Primer – yours for the asking

September 13, 2012

There’s so much going on in the social media world — it’s hard to keep up.  But don’t worry — we’ve got the answer for you.

We’ve created a new educational series called 60 Ticks to Social. (Drew’s Marketing Minute…get it) When you sign up, we’ll send you one email a week for about 18-20 weeks.  Each email will give you a quick overview of some aspect of social media and sometimes it will also include a link where you can download even more info, if that would be helpful!

It’s 100% free — free of hype, free of jargon and free of any strings.  We hope you’ll sign up, tell your friends to sign up and that, most of all, it will be helpful to you.

I promise — it will be worth the minute it takes to read it. If you’d like to sign up, all you need to do it click right here.

 

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