Re-think your Facebook advertising

Facebook took the mighty leap from just connecting people with others to connecting them with businesses - a leap that completely revolutionized what disruptive thinking is all about and gave power to marketing content creators.

Its inspiring to know that you and me can start a business without necessarily thinking of setting-up shop costs. All we have to do is open an online Facebook page at no cost and engage with our potential buyers. If you want to increase traffic to your website and increase conversions while still maintaining a favorable cost per conversion and return on investment, Facebook is your best bet. A no-charge platform that comes along with ready market, is manna from heaven if you ask me.

Using the colloquial scenario of man not really appreciating the garden of Eden until he was thrown out, I feel that we are not tapping into this strong marketing tool well enough. So before its too late, lets re-think things over with this list of 7 deadly sins of Facebook advertising we should avoid.

Sin 1: No purpose or Strategy:


You will be surprised how many times big money is put into Facebook advertising without a solid advertising strategy, which mostly results into what I would like to term as "misplaced" results. For every campaign, objectives must be outlined. Otherwise you will end up getting more page likes with no business at all.

What are your objectives:

• Do you want new registrations and more conversions?
• Do you want to drive your online unique sales?
• Do you wish to have increased site traffic?,
• Is it to grow your brand presence and awareness?

Objectives should help you curve your campaigns-what date you will launch it, what time, to which target audience, with what message and call to action.

Work with that to objectively create a memorable, unique and realistic marketing campaign to fulfill your objective. Strategy will have you capitalizing on critical holiday seasons and tapping into the power of emotional advertising.
Sin 2: No details: Add life


It can be challenging to managing a large number of campaigns and re-market thousands of products. Ensuring consistency and depth in detail in what you are selling, be it a product or a service is the core of face-book or online marketing.

Examples:

• You are selling a pair of shoes. Would it hurt to add the sizes you have the shoes in?
• You are selling an art piece. Canvas size and whether it is framed or not and whether the price is inclusive of this is important information for any buyer
• You provide a service but do not specify the hours you are open, your delivery process and how people can contact you 
• Still on all the above, no contact information!?
• No price details

At the end of the day, your post to your audience should show them what you see, 

Sin 3: No photographs: Good looking content sells


Did you know that articles/posts with photos get 95% more total views than posts with no pictures at all? We are at an age of visual culture where photo sharing apps such as Instagram, Flickr, Pinterest have made buzz-worthy hype and an ad without an image just wont cut it. .

Its in our nature to seek for information with the least of effort, and also to get attracted to dreamy visualized content. With the rise of mobile popularity, people are more inclined to choose content that is easy on the eye. Whatever industry you represent, pictures will always help in sparking conversations and increasing your posts shareability and engagement.

Some things to note when it comes to choosing photos:

• Context is crucial-the simple aim of the photos should be to visually relay information that may not possibly put to words. 
• Quality-put some effort in posting high definition photos, that speak your story well. Make it a rule to put pictures that you could share, if you happened to view them on your timeline
• Variety-never stick to having the same photo or sharing the same style of photography
• Consumer insight- tap into it to know what your audience likes and what will move them, then take them on that visual journey.

Sin 4: No targeting:

Precision targeting and segmentation of your advertising to demographics you think will be in need of your product or service not only helps your business clock in higher conversion rates , but also increases the number of unique purchases. Targeting helps you draw out the noise, so that you communicate with a selected few, people who can buy into your product.


Many marketers, with an attempt to increase brand awareness will fail to segment, rank in numbers of likes and fans, who care less about the product and rarely convert to clients. Its a matter of quality Vs. quantity, your pick.

Sin 5: No testing or analysis:

It is trivial that you constantly monitor your campaign performance so that your future campaigns are fully optimized. Measuring engagement will allow you to see if you are reaching the objectives you set. If the performance is not impressive, get back to the drawing board, dig deeper into your consumer's preferences, create a campaign and test it with a segment of your demographic. Note how they respond to it and polish your campaigns constantly to make them unique, frequent and above all DIFFERENT.

The testing process doesn't have to be so theoretic:

• Test what day of the week and times your users will most likely be on Facebook and capitalize on this. Is it through the lunch break hour? Just after work on their commute home or early in the morning. Figuring this out will help you know the best time to launch your post
• Test your headline and see which has the greatest CTR. 
• Test your content length. The shorter and more precise a post is, the better
• Test your cover photo and profile picture

When you want to take a more serious approach: 

• Determine the metrics you want to analyze, are you measuring engagement, awareness, traffic driven, number of fans, or your brand's share of voice
• Determining the metrics helps you to choose the best tools for analyzing your campaigns
• Do the analysis in real-time so that you can update and make changes on the go

There are many tools to help your testing like Hootsuite, Kissmetrics, Simply measured, Sprout social

Sin 6: No engagement:

Social Media is a tool for educating, engaging and helping influence an organization’s population. Engagement is creating content that sparks conversation between you and your audience, it is dialogue. And for Facebook, it is shown through comments, re-shares, likes, clicks per post and impressions that your post generates.Engagement helps you increase your reach, and allows you to showcase your brand's voice.

How do you react to negative feedback for instance. Are you quick to find an excuse or you blatantly show no disregard? Do you answer to queries made by your audience immediately or do not answer at all? Creating an engagement strategy revolved around fun, immediacy and memorable customer experience will go a long way in creating a strong and trust worthy brand presence.

But in all these, remember that engagement is important, as a means to an end, a precursor to action and that it is not the final goal.

Sin 7: No manners:

How do you engage with your audience? How is their experience with you? Would they be a repeat customer? Would they recommend you to a friend? Your tone on Social media matters a lot when talking to your clients especially since you are not speaking to them face to face, Being kind, offering solutions and always keeping your cool even when a client is breathing fire under your neck will help.


You will spot a big difference when you talk to an employer vs when you talk to an employee, it is said. How true is that? Business owners know the value of clients and are always quick to create solutions around their needs. This is what the overall tone of your business should be built on: It will help salvage a bad client experience and will score you a great opportunity.Be a honey and don't be that boyfriend who does not buy his girlfriend flowers, okay?

Chronicles of an Aspiring Digital Marketing Strategist: Part 2

 

"To app or not to app- that is the question"

With the growing number of mobile phone users, digital marketing is taking a massive turnaround from web applications and sites to mobile phones. Anyone seeking to make significant impact on their consumers should not only target the individual surfing on their laptop, or desktop but to the more mobile, not so patient consumer who has a smart or feature mobile phone. A mobile strategy is inevitable. 

A company's site should work across different platforms with the same clarity, information density and offer the same level of user satisfaction across all platforms. If you are a business owner with a website, you should make it your duty to know how your site looks like on all kinds of devices and operating systems. Am sure am speaking for many when I say some mobile sites are way too crappy and less impressive than their desktop versions. They are either too big, not scalable, have a lot of unnecessary content or the usual nightmare of unnecessary ads. 

It should be common sense for an organisation to design their sites with the progressive enhancement approach of 'Mobile-first development'; meaning development starts with mobile functionalities as it gradually builds up additional functionalities to the desktop versions. There are several reasons to back this up: for instance, the number of emerging opportunities courtesy of mobile devices are immense. Mobile allows for explosive growth- in areas such as location based services through inbuilt location detector technologies like Wifi, GPS and cell hour triangulation, that help a user get relevant information about what is close to their current location. Other emerging opportunities that can be supported by smart phones include inbuilt device orientation and acceloremeters that detect change in movement. 

The Mobile first approach will force the designer to embrace constraints inherent in mobile design. Some of the major constraints include having to design for small screens and having to deal with below average performance. Unlike desktops, a small screen on either a feature or smart mobile phone will not give the designer an option to beat around the bush with ad banners or irrelevant information but will literally force them to go straight to the point and include only the core functionalities necessary. By knowing your customer needs and requirements, why exactly they would be in need of your mobile app and what they mostly use it for will allow you to make the design and content as simple and straightforward as possible. 

Performance is another constraint that will force a mobile app developer to pay key interest to key performance aspects such as limiting the use of CSS grids, minifying JavaScript and CSS files, using lightweight technology as well as ensuring appropriately cached HTTP headers are used in the  browser's memory. Ignoring the little hogwash I just did there, I simply mean that you ensure the designed site will deal with the slower connections and longer waits that are associated with mobile phones. Designing for mobile first will therefore ensure that web applications have an even higher performance. 

Is there much need to have an application? This debate has been there for the longest time. Some people may not find it an argument anymore because having responsive websites should be s design default in this day and age. Plus with the new HTML5 capabilities, users can easily incorporate and get access to features of a device such as the camera and GPS, no need to develop a whole native app for that. Responsive websites also allow you to develop in short periods and work with a lower, more manageable budget. They also do well when it comes to SEO optimization which will work well for a company seeking to develop a web 'fan base'.

    

Developing an application is much more expensive than building a responsive or mobile site, and it often will take more time. It is also important that you develop for all the Operating Systems so as to make sure that none of the users are alienated. Applications are however known to provide the best user experience by providing a mobile centric experience that users grow to appreciate. They have a unique functionality and speed but unfortunately cannot be indexed on Search engines. 

Companies may choose to go with applications because they allow for personalization through data by supporting push notifications sent by the app. Native applications will work well with providing product recommendations and suggesting content to the users. They also provide a better platform to gather user information and patterns when users are prompted to sign up and make profiles of themselves. 

On whether to app or not, I think it all boils down to the business objectives of the organisation. In summary, I think that some of the major things that should be considered include: 

1. Your Budget

If money is not an issue, then a native application doesn't sound like a bad idea. It is important to ensure that it can be downloaded on all the different online stores though. However, if you are cutting down on costs, it would be best to invest in a responsive website which will be the cheapest design option. Second on the list is choosing to develop a mobile site that is different from its website version. 

2. Business Goals. 

Who are you targeting? Would you want to have a stronger fan base on the net? Is the site content centric? Do you want to incorporate SEO and marketing tools? In this case, a responsive website will suit you best. It can easily be indexed in Search engines and will provide you with one URL that users can easily access and memorize. The issue with mobile sites is that they will have different URLs from the desktop version and this may not run well with the fast paced, rather impatient user. 

3. Industry features. 

What exactly will the app be used for? If all it will have is static information that will rarely be updated, it would beat the sense to develop a whole application for that. A standard mobile site would do, or rather a responsive site. However, in cases where you will need to have unique users sign in and take part in transactions, an application would be the best option. It would allow you to take advantage of native features of the device for functionality and performance improvement. They provide excellent performance therefore fusing these features with a cross platform operation that has a flawless UX will be the best option for your esteemed user.  

For a successful app, it is important to capitalize on value engagement, ensure that the app is thoroughly tested on the different platforms, that the interface is self explanatory with the call to action buttons loud and clear in a "on-your-face-kind-of-manner", minimalist with a logical user flow and has an easy navigation.

If all this is not achievable, you can stick to Responsive designs, there is no pressure really. Remember, a negative app experience will equate to a negative shadow on the brand.

I am still on the run to be a kick ass Digital Marketing Strategist. How am I doing so far?

Chronicles of an Aspiring Digital Marketing Strategist: Part 1

In a year or so I believe that I will be your Digital Marketing Strategist, if you are planning to have a company or if you have one already. So get acquainted with me already J

Digital marketing involves employing use of electronic devices such as PCs, Tablets, mobile phones and game consoles for marketing while applying technologies such as websites, apps, social networks, text messages and e-mail.I will help you to come up with online marketing campaigns and strategies that will blow you away, get more market share than what you may have settled for, ensure that your company is catching up with the latest web analytic trends and optimizing the powerful web to your business advantage.

That is why I have started a series of posts talking about my ideas in regards to how digital marketing should be strategized and implemented. I welcome any form of constructive critique. 

MOBILE MARKETING

Companies are able to fully maximize mobile in the exact way they optimized the web to radically improve their businesses, know their customers more and make more lasting relationships with them in the process of earning more revenue. Companies like Coca Cola have incorporated mobile marketing strategies to their overall advertisement strategies and it is working miracles for them. It’s all about doing it right, as always. 

For any company, I think it shouldn't be a matter of investing in mobile advertisement, rather how much and how to go about it. Incorporating mobile does not only include awareness, brand promise and engaging customer loyalty, but also having two way communication with your consumers. Unlike bill boards and advertisements running on the radio and on T.V, mobile advertising allows you to have conversation and feedback with your customers. This is extremely important since it forms the major building blocks for longer lasting relationships with consumers. The two way communication allows you to hush, and listen to them talk too.  

With any kind of advertising, company executives will not buy into using mobile to get more fans and capturing as many phone numbers as possible, they want something more solid, for instance, what is their Return on Investment from this kind of market investment, is it measurable and is it of high value?
So why invest in Mobile Advertising? Mobile growth has been tremendous in the past 5 years.  Everyone I know has a mobile phone, it may not be a smart phone but it’s mobile all the same. Consumers are busier than ever, but despite all this, they get time to always engage with their phones or gadgets. The manner in which they always search for goods and services shows the urgency of their need to make purchases or at least get content on various subjects. Through the devices, consumers easily access information that allows them to make decisions on whether to make purchases or not. 

For a company, providing the right mobile experience at the right time, all in the context of a broadly well thought out and integrated mobile campaign equals a win. Being consumer focused for any company, their goal should involve crafting a seamless start to finish experience. With the finish being making sales, of course. 

Basic Principles of Mobile Marketing

 1. Identify the main objective of the business and try to realize how mobile marketing can come in to help with that. Is it to create more sales, create a huger fan base, attract new customers, and strengthen the company brand..?

2. Curve out the niche you specifically want to target. How do they interact with their devices? What kind of phones and gadgets are they most likely to have? In essence, understanding the customer is the most important aspect that will determine whether you make a financial breakthrough with them in the end or not. 

3. How do you plan to reach your targeted audience? What will be their first point of interaction? The thought of first impressions can only be made once are entirely true. Do you plan to do so using a QR Code on a billboard, through banners, mobile websites or through SMS?

4. After they have heeded to your call and are willing to know more about you, the best thing is to engage them. Through engagement, you can be able to create a relationship with your consumer. There are various ways to engage. Examples include 

• posting relevant content on the sight that is useful to the user e.g regular health tips, fashion tips… anything related to what you offer
• Shop alerts for instance, messages, offers, rewards and coupons will always go well with the smart shopper
• Asking for opinions regarding your service once in a while will help you to better your services as well as cater to the ever growing needs of the consumer. 
• Asking people to share their experience with your Company’s goods or services with you or on other social media sites would help boost the image of the brand. 


5. At the end of it all you have to analyze what you are doing and if it’s effective or not. The advantage of working with mobile is that it makes it easy to analyze and measure all your efforts. For instance, it is very easy to know the number of consumers you attract and what percentage of those are actually realized to actual sales. Analyzing helps in making decisions later on in regards to future marketing strategies and will help you know what you should work on to realize more profits.