Tag: small business

How To Start A Social Media Strategy For Your Small Business

Barrie 26/09/2021

In this article, we’ll be discussing how to ensure your business starts off on the right foot in terms of social media marketing. In the early days of a startup, it can be tempting to focus almost entirely on product development — and while that is certainly important, running a business also requires some degree of marketing and PR. From building out a content calendar and crafting your first few posts to creating a social media strategy and measuring your results, there’s a lot to consider when getting started.

1. How to start a social media marketing strategy

It’s not enough to just have a social media profile if you want to start a social media marketing strategy. You need to have a plan, you need to have a strategy. What are you trying to achieve? What are the objectives of your social media marketing strategy? What are the goals? What are the tasks?

Take a look at the following three spreadsheets*.
*Sample below: Business development | Business strategy
Business development
Ranking objectives: To rank on Google.com, Yahoo! and MSN in Google (US), Yahoo! and MSN in the US, and Baidu in China.
Target keywords: To link to the business’s online presence.
Ranking position: To rank for keywords in each of the business’s target countries with a probability that they will be linked to based on rankings.
Internal link velocity: To develop links per month and build links on a trial basis.
Direct link velocity: How many web pages use one external link to the business’s website. This will help to build “short-term” links with a higher probability.
Outbound link velocity: How many external web pages use one link with a linking domain to target market. This will help build “long-term” links with a higher probability.
External link acquisition cost: To acquire links.
Link velocity: How often the business acquires links.
Inbound link acquisition cost: To acquire links.
Conversion objectives: To convert prospects into customers within one year.
Target keywords: To convert prospects into cash-buyers within one year.
Ranking position: To rank for all keywords used by prospect specifically to sell online to specific prospect.
Internal link velocity: To influence the top organic links, prioritize niche-relevant, high-authority, authoritative linking domains.
Direct link velocity: How often the high-quality links are acquired.
Outbound link velocity: To influence the top outbound links, prioritize niche-relevant, high-quality, authoritative linking domains.
External link velocity: To influence the top external links, prioritize niche-relevant, high-quality, authoritative linking domains.
Direct link to conversion button: To encourage users to convert directly from web pages with high-rents and high-revenue.

2. Choose the right social networks for your business

There are a lot of social networks out there but not all of them are right for your business. If you’re a small business, you probably don’t need to be on every single network, but you do need to be on at least one. Your choice of social networks depends on your target audience and business.If your niche isn’t huge, don’t worry about having the most popular or the most marketing reach. MORE often than not, users of a given platform will spend more time on a given platform than another. The world is ruled by the Internet duopoly — but there are also lots of great options that cater to other businesses. By the end of this article, you’ll be able to identify which platforms fit your niche best.

Do Something Great

Before jumping into the social media platforms you want to use, it’s good to look at what kinds of businesses are trying to thrive on social media. Social media by nature is inherently niche-specific, so niche businesses are naturally going to have a hard time competing in a market dominated by giants. However, there are other great reasons to consider social media for your business besides followers and engagement — brand building, brand awareness, and engagement are fundamentally aligned with your overall goal of building brand loyalty and trust. When building out your social media strategy, keep this in mind.

Before you choose a social media platform, you should know a bit about your competitor’s offerings. You don’t want to be relying on one social media platform to serve your business — especially a play like Instagram that is dominated by one platform owner. This type of platform has been high-risk financially except for TikTok, and now Instagram is valuing them at $19 billion, way out of proportion to the approx. 800 million active monthly users. Another major risk is giving your customers a bad impression of your brand if you’re missing out on dominating the platform — the platform owner might take all of the praise and glory, leaving you with a large chunk of users but a much smaller brand.

3. Build your content calendar

It’s the most important thing when it comes to building an audience. Why? Because if you can help people know when to expect new content from you, then they’ll start to build it into their routine and expect new content from you on certain days or at certain times.There are a variety of ways you can do this, but the best way to start off your social media efforts is to figure out your “social stage of business”. This is a term I coined back in 2017 from the concept that a great startup is built on the foundation of a great user experience, and while your product is arguably the most important thing to build, your social media marketing is just as important.

Do your researchIf you want to learn the foundations of developing a great social media strategy and measuring its efficacy, I highly recommend reading The Starting Points for Social Media by Adam Audette. This book details five social media stages, and as you read, you’ll come across many real life examples of typical businesses that have started off in one stage before moving to the next. These instances will also showcase how companies have now transitioned to platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram in order to target the “next stage.”

Understand that content and social media aren’t just a something for loftier goals. If you want to have a successful social media marketing campaign, your content needs to be more relevant to what your primary audience is looking for. According to a Content Marketing Institute (CMI) 2017 count, the average person checks Twitter and Facebook a few times a day. If you want to compete for that attention, you need to be able to deliver the content your audience is looking for.
Read ahead to ensure you’ve got a detailed understanding of the first four stages of a social media marketing campaign.
National vs. local vs.

4. Craft your first few posts

Once you’ve got your blog up and running, you’ll need to start writing your first few posts. It’s important to get your first few posts right, and to write and edit and re-edit until you’re happy with the result.And “first few posts” can be a huge a la carte bill that includes the following:
Brand “Name” + Keyword + Initial Post Idea
Keyword Research Should Be Decisive (i.e., determine and target your brand goals)
In the early stages of your startup, all of that building your foundation will take place online. As you get into the “main event” — which is really just a few months of blogging and social media efforts aimed at building something really impressive — you’ll want to focus on these items to help you ensure you’re not kicking yourself for not having written a great blog post at the end of the summer.

In this article, I’ll explain six ways you can ensure your blog stays on-topic so that it achieves its maximum potential:. Build a Content Calendar
Be inspired and set up a calendar of upcoming posts from your business. Add dates, deadlines, and mark posts as read or unread. If you know you’re going to be traveling a lot and / or out of town for a particular week, schedule a post on each location/theme you’ll be visiting.
Monthly columns are also a great way to keep readers motivated and focused. A column of recent posts can serve as a reminder of times to be active on your blog and also to see what posts have been most popular so far.
To get started, follow Wistia on social media, which will allow you to see recently shared posts. You’ll also want to check out Memeorandum, which will allow you to see any shared posts within the last 72 hours.
If appropriate, you may also want to create social media bulletins for new posts, providing useful links for those new posts.

5. Create a social media strategy and measurement plan

Create a social media strategy and measurement plan. Social media is a great way to interact with your customers and boost sales, but there are so many social media platforms that it can be hard to know where to start.Here are a few solutions that will get you started.

First, make sure you have a clear idea of the types of social channels you want to invest in at this stage. If you’re launching a new product/service, it may be in your best interest to focus on a few key platforms. For another example, a social media manager at a large company will likely choose to build out their presence on a few different social networks. Different people at different levels and workspaces may wish to have different niches focused on different platforms.

Whatever the strategy, it is important to figure out whether the resources you have available make achieving success with a social media strategy possible or not. If you don’t know, reach out to your team and get to know who will actually be handling Twitter and Facebook, etc., so that you can prospect out resources and schedule them when you need them.

When discussing how to ensure success with social media, keep in mind some people will optimize for conversions, while others may prefer to be engaged with and remember the brand. If you choose a strategy that focuses primarily on conversion optimization, it’s important to consider the long-term consequences of neglecting such efforts, as some of your potential customers may eventually become repeat customers. It is also imperative to consider how passive social media platforms like Facebook Live, Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest may impact your company’s brand perception and ability to build shareholder value.
Create a content calendar.

How To Start A Social Media Strategy For Your Small Business

How A Social Media Expert Can Help Your Business Grow

Barrie 24/09/2021

So How A Social Media Expert Can Help Your Business Grow?

Social media is the new marketing frontier. It’s where people are spending most of their time online, and it’s where you must be if you want to be found by your customers.

But if you’re an entrepreneur starting a business, you don’t have time to learn everything on your own. That’s why you need an expert!

1. Social media is a big commitment

Social media is a big commitment, and you should avoid trying to do it all yourself. It’s hard to keep up with all the platforms, especially if you’re doing it for your job. Instead, delegate the responsibility to a team member or a social media agency.Only hire people with the right experience and skills and who you are ready to manage. You’re going to work with them on a daily basis to maximize your efforts.
So who do you turn to when you want to learn social media tips and tricks that you can apply to your business?

The artists: experiment, fail, refine
Creativity is not a function of knowledge. It is something that you just find and experiment with. Whatever business challenge you’re facing, creativity is going to be the answer. It is not a given that you will find the right solution, but it is nearly impossible to do the wrong one.
The greatest strategist of our time, Napoleon Hill, said it best:
Creativity in business should be confined within the limits of experience, and must not be overstuffed with theories, theories which do no prove themselves, but only confuse the issue… Let experimentation be essential if you want to make progress. — Napoleon Hill
The Siloing of Creativity by Chris Anderson
Chris Anderson is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the history of entrepreneurship. His new book “The Limit” tells an exciting adventure of innovation and entrepreneurship through the works of twentieth-century engineers and inventors. Each one of their ideas was bigger than the previous one, but they adhered to a single principle and an unbreakable commitment. The result? Propelled by a singular vision, Anderson changed the way people live and work.
Strategic flexibility is the name of Chris’s game. It means he can bend the rules as long as the rules are flexible. He finds limitless opportunities for expansion and experimentation when he follows rules that say:
Can’t do it all. Make it one-tenth of the way.

Expert

2. Social media can be used effectively to grow your business

Social media is a great way to connect with customers and to build a loyal following. Many people don’t have time to read blogs, so using social media is a great way to reach a large number of people in a short amount of time. Social media allows you to interact with people, answer questions, and build trust.
I started my social media journey when I sold my company to a media company in 2009. At that point, I already knew that social media is important, but I was not sure how to start. I had to hire an employee who could help me build my online presence. Unfortunately, my previous manager was not the most helpful, so I did not hire the best person to start with. Instead, I did what any good entrepreneur does: I researched every possibility!
In my research, I found that there were some basic books that can guide even the beginners about how to use social media. I found them useful, but still required a lot of hard work. Why can’t I just read the book that has a section about SEO? I was searching for one, because I’ve heard that it’s the best book for getting good at SEO! But I come to find that the only section about SEO is in the last chapter of the book. I have finished the last chapter, and I can tell you that I won’t be needing to read the rest of the book to get an answer about SEO. However, I did get to read the different sections that are…
Internal Linking
Rel=Author
Twitter Cards
Internal Linking is the question we all want to know how to answer. The best way involves creating a unique internal link in every page of your website. You do it either by linking to the specific content, or by using rel=“nofollow.” Below is an example of the correct code that Google recommends.
This code sends the visitors to a specific section of your website when they visit your website.

3. Why you need help from an expert if you want to succeed at social media marketing

If you’re going to do social media marketing, make sure you have an expert on your team to help you. Social media has been around for a while now, and there are people who have been able to make a living from social media marketing. Find a social media marketing expert you can trust and ask them to help you with your strategy.

Recently, I experienced the magic of hiring a social media expert. When social media was new, a friend told me they found an unemployed man in the Philippines that could do all the work I was looking for on social media. I was skeptical, but after a few months of working with this guy, I found out he was high on local greek yogurt, and his biggest challenge was a lack of sleep.

The good news is I was able to hire my social media expert through an advertising auction. If you plan on doing this yourself, set a budget for what you’ll need and see if you can find an unemployed local expert on Fiverr or Upwork. Then, interview this person about their social media marketing expertise. Make sure you can trust this person, it’s important when you begin social media marketing to have an unbiased social media expert on your team.

If you’re an entrepreneur, hiring an expert can help you cover more ground. Expertise is a great marketing tool, it’ll make you stand out from the rest of your competition. Remember, your brand and your products or services have to speak for themselves. Your social media expert can help you defend your brand when your competitors are getting creative. They are a marketing resource that can broaden your reach.

Do you know how long it takes to take a photo on your smart phone compared to a camera from 10 years ago? 10 years ago it was 20 seconds, now it can take as long as 30 seconds.

It can be frustrating to get photos and videos on social media after taking so long. But that’s where social media marketing becomes a game-changer.

4. Choosing the right social media expert for your business is key

The right social media expert can help you build your business. Whether you’re starting out or already established, it’s important to get help from the right social media expert to make sure your social media accounts are successful. Check out this blog post for tips on how to choose the right social media expert for your business.
Showcase your community

At the end of the day, people will choose businesses based on how accessible they are. If you can connect your business with others, your business will achieve even greater visibility.
Building your business’s community is the foundation of SEO. By reaching out to others in your community, you can grow your brand. When you start a social media campaign, it’s important to first develop your target audience. After doing research and gathering notes, brainstorm ideas for what you want your followers to achieve.
Your social media expert can help you develop a strategy to reach out to people in your target audience. When reaching out to renowned people, the goal isn’t necessarily for your followers to follow their every wish. Instead, your social media expert can help you establish how your target audience will feel once they’ve accomplished what you want them to achieve.
Start a YouTube channel
When you’re just getting started and no one knows about your business, there’s nothing better than creating a YouTube channel for your business. It’s an easy, free, and effective way to engage your community online.
As your YouTube channel continues to grow, the more videos you create, the more your videos can be shared with others. You can continue to build other important content on your website as well, such as newsletters, case studies, and more.
By creating a YouTube channel for your business and collecting valuable feedback from your audience, you can continue to dig your business even deeper.
Schedule social media status updates
Apart from creating “evergreen content,” social media is a strategy that can benefit your business.

5. How to find the right social media expert for your business

Many people think social media is just for big businesses, but that’s not true. It’s for everyone, because social media is the best way to communicate with your audience. If you’ve never hired a social media expert before, you might be wondering how to find the right one for your business.Ready to find your social media expert? You can’t… right?
The truth is you can find a great social media expert within minutes of searching online for real estate businesses.
Hiring the right social media expert is not hard once you’ve found them. A quick Google search should help you find exactly who you need. After you hit the search button, you’ll be taken to a page that asks to fill in some crucial information that will be used to find the right person for your business.
On this page, you will find all the details you need like:
Their preferred methods of helping people, their social media handles
Their education level
Their expertise (are they a local expert? an extrovert? etc.)
Their company
Last but not least, you may want to ask the social media expert if they would be willing to develop a social media strategy for your business. This tracks, tests and filters the best online marketing strategies for your business.
After that, an ideal social media expert will quickly develop a relationship with you and your business. You could see strong results within hours!
Here is a list of metrics the best social and online social media experts should have. This list can be used to quickly evaluate their expertise for your business.
Twitter Handle
How often do they tweet? Every minute is important. Don’t assume that experts are tweeting because they have something going on!
Follower Count
Twitter isn’t the only social medium you should use. You must determine how active and influential the experts are on their social media platforms.
Posts
Experts should post new content on a consistent basis.

SEO Tips for Small Businesses

Barrie 26/04/2021

SEO Tips for Small Businesses

Having a website is great but if no one can find it, then it’s useless. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the name of the game and it’s important that you make sure your site is accessible to search engines so that they can find it and include it in search results.

If your website is not SEO friendly then Google will not rank your content for queries or even show it in search results. Frankly there are hundreds of SEO best practices that you should do to ensure your website is user-friendly so that search engines love using it.

Here are the five most important ones. A perfect web design does wonders for SEO, making your webpage SEO ready means adding tags and implementing the right colours. Check out this quick guide to SEO-friendly web design.

All text on a webpage should be in the English language unless this doesn’t make sense for search engines and you’re specifically targeting non-English speaking audiences. Using keywords within your text will help search engines to understand the purpose of your page and content so that they can rank it easier for particular keywords. To optimize your text SEO, you can use the following special characters for SEO purposes.

Students will know all about the importance of using keywords when writing academic research but there are many other reasons to optimise your text SEO including improving your SEO visibility. This means making it easy for search engines to crawl your website and index it.

Good writing is punctuated correctly and there’s no excuse for using any kind of exclamation mark.

Having a long punctuation such as these in your text will make search engines interpret it as a question mark or something that isn’t the main point of your sentence. Text is what Google is looking for Google — this is especially important as search engines can’t see keywords. For this, make sure your title, subtitle, and section titles are as clear as possible.

 

Local SEO

Local SEO is very different from organic SEO. It’s all about getting your business listed correctly on Google Maps and Google Local. If you have a physical store, then you want to get your address listed correctly.

If you have a website, then you want to get your address, phone number, and hours of operation listed on Google Maps and Google Local.

 

One of the first things you need to know about local SEO is that it is very competitive and you need to treat it that way. There are many variables to consider and it can take time to figure out your niche. To help you out, here is a list of dimensions to focus your SEO efforts on: Google is constantly changing their algorithm to make local search better.

As a result, sites under constant review will have a worse rank. To maintain your current top ranking, you need to remove your site from Google’s index. This is why it’s important to read our article on the basics of webmaster tools.

To do this, head over to your website’s Properties page. From here, you’ll see the Remove from SERPs box and scroll to the bottom. Once there, select Delete and you will be able to start getting back to normal.

Having a good Google Map location is essential to your listings’ ranking on Google Maps. However, these listings don’t lead to search results.

To improve your Google Maps listing, you need to optimize your page to move the traffic to your physical store. Keep in mind that one of the most powerful tools at your disposal is the content marketing, so try implementing various contests.

Keep the context of your competition in mind when you go about your giveaways, but don’t forget to add links back to your social media profiles.

Adding locations to your Google Places accounts is a helpful way to make yourself visible in new areas and also improve your organic search engines. To do this, head over to your Google Places pages. Enable the geo-location tag and add the address of your business.

 

How to Avoid Mistakes with SEO

If you make mistakes with SEO, then it’s going to affect the way you market yourself and your business. SEO is the first thing that people will see when looking for your business. It’s the first impression that you give, so it’s important that it’s good.

The goal is to improve your SEO skills no matter what industry you work in. Improve search engine rankings is a long-term game.

During this time, you will need to employ a few strategies. These can’t be looked at in a piecemeal manner. If you only employ a few strategy strategies, then you’ll risk being short-changed on the advantage you have.

Imagine if you brush your teeth in the morning and never brush your teeth again after that. That would be terrible. Why would you want to do that?

It’s in the same danger zone as pursuing too much on your SEO journey.

Make sure that you only employ a few SEO strategies. Doing so will allow you to discover which strategies work and which you may want to abandon, resulting in making tweaks and optimization.

Improving your SEO will only succeed if it’s planned. The best way to do this is by scheduling time to execute your strategies.

Developing your strategy plan should only take a few hours.

Marketing is an iterative process. The goal is to find new places to improve.

Many marketers get caught up in the next thing instead of focusing on the things that would help them improve.

It’s important to understand where you got SEO but also how to improve it.

Exploding traffic and search engine optimization are nice-to-haves. This means a certain amount of SEO victory. More commonly, though, seeing more people interested in your product or service.

Marketing that is aligned to your values will come naturally.

When it comes to SEO, it’s important to develop a sense of urgency. It’s important to start implementing tactics that will make a noticeable difference.

 

Content Marketing

Content marketing is an incredible way to reach a wider audience. It’s also a great way to build credibility and authority in your niche. If you’re a blogger, you can use content marketing to write blog posts that offer value to your audience and help build your brand.You can even use it to build links to your website.” Content marketing is about earning links.

Anchoring content to a blog is helpful, but often superficial. Content that relies on strong anchor text and is more editorial is more likely to attract links from that blog’s readers. If the audience at the blog has a high search potential or share-ability factor compared to your target prospects, you may be able to get them to link to you.

Why do you want a link from their blog?

What you want a link for is a mix of their readers, their pages or other content, and the value that your post brings to their visitor. These are a few reasons these content marketers have written and been successful at getting links.

Financial transaction

Robert Kiyosaki:

A friend once asked me, “What’s the number one reason other people buy your books?” (I’ll paraphrase), Then he said, “Other people buy them to show off to their friends.”

Wow.

In other words, someone is buying your book so that they can use it as a VR prop. (Did you see the movie, 47 Ronin? Well, they do this with the 47 Ronin books. They don’t show Ren O’ Meyer nearly enough.)

That’s why people buy your books. They’re using them to show-off their status. As a (slightly embarrassed) content marketing nerd, I can kinds of posts that do this. They focus on transactions–communicating value in the form of a story.

But, it’s almost useless without a good navigation system and keyword research map to keep tabs on the flow of traffic. Getting traffic leads to making a sale–which then leads to a second visit to your site or newsletter signup. This is exponential.

 

Conclusion: For a quick resource on SEO, start with this article!

If you want to learn more about SEO, you’ll find a great list of resources here. It’s always a good idea to read some of the most recent content on a topic you’re interested in, so that you can stay up-to-date with the latest trends and developments.

Content is King. Before we get into the actual content-building process, there are a few things you should keep in mind before you start. Since there is such a strong emphasis placed on SEO in order to get high rankings and attract more readers to your content, it’s always recommended that you utilize keywords carefully in your titles and body copy.

There are a number of things you can do with keywords, but let’s go over some of the most common ones and their usage in SEO headlines and body copy.

Search results typically rank as one of three things — user, authority, and site. This means that SEO headlines and body copy should focus on each of these three factors:

1. User (What type of user are they?) — The keywords you choose will affect how users rank for your keyword (Could be a search term for your product or service, for instance.)

2. Authority (How well-known is the brand in that niche?) — One of the most popular keywords in SEO research is known as the “boundary-pushing keyword” — as you place a keyword in front of a keyword that’s potentially competing with other keywords, it forces all higher-ranked keyword phrases into a ranked position.

This means that your overall ranking can be improved since users are forced to consider what other keywords are available to them! This is also known as a preemptive keyword addition! If you want to run a keyword through a list, make sure that it’s a preemptive keyword!

3. Site (What is the authority of this site allowing the keyword to rank?) — Having the anchor text of a site keyword within a keyword helps users guess what the primary keyword source is for a particular search.

Picking the right marketing expert for your small business

Barrie 25/03/2021

Picking the right marketing expert for your small business

Google analytics, SEO, hashtags… the list of technical words goes on – digital marketing can be a mind field for most small businesses (social media start-ups aside, of course). But, in 2019, your social media presence and online advertising tactics can also be vital to your company’s success.

Luckily, there are lots of marketing agencies and social media managers around eager to take care of that side of things for you, leaving you free to concentrate your precious time on what you’re good at: growing that start-up of yours.

The digital marketing industry is a big one, which means you can afford to be picky about who you hire to help put your company on the map. Marketing is a massive part of future company growth, so do your research and ask the right questions when selecting an agency or individual to work for you.

Here’s a few key points to consider…

What’s your niche?

If you’re running an innovative engineering start-up specialising in some ground-breaking automotive technology, you probably don’t want to hire a marketing consultant with a portfolio of fashion campaigns – regardless of how successful they are. They’re unlikely to be able to represent you as well as a smaller, perhaps lesser known agency, which has a host of engineering-related campaigns already under their belt.

Similarly, if you’re a budding plant-based chef of some sort selling the “best” vegan cheese, it could be worth checking that none of the marketing agency’s previous or current campaigns clash with your company’s ethics.

For example, if they do the social media for a big name dairy ice cream brand or similar they should be avoided, as using them – no matter how good they are at marketing – would be counterintuitive, as knowledge of their other work would likely upset your customers and could therefore be damaging for your business.

If it’s not clear who the company’s previous or current clients are and this is something that interests you, then ask them.

And, while you’ve got them on the phone, ask them if they know many experts and influencers in your industry. If so, who? If they can’t name anyone on the spot, forget them.

Can they do it all?

Chances are you’re busy enough without having to run around chasing several different people to ensure your marketing is on track. So, keep things simple by hiring one person or an agency who can do it all – that’s the SEO for your website, your social media posts, your online adverts etc.

You’ll also want to ensure that they are proficient in all of the social media platforms that are important to your business.

Most digital marketing pros will be Instagram and Twitter whizzes, but if your company is interiors focused, you will need to check that they have Pinterest nailed, too. Likewise, if you’re an innovation-based start-up, ensure that they understand the ins and outs of LinkedIn, as well.

Do you like their campaigns?

It may sound silly and rather obvious, but if you don’t like the work they’ve done for other companies, chances are you won’t like what they would do for you either.

Poor design work or bad grammar? Look elsewhere. Have a browse of their work on their website and make this call before you bother approaching them for more information – it will save both yours and their time.

What do previous clients have to say about them?

Once you’ve found a marketing expert that you think could be right for you and your small business, get some references. Most companies will have a few carefully chosen testimonials displayed somewhere on their website, but they’re not what we’re after here.

Ask to speak to a couple of clients yourself, either on the phone or via email. Or, even better, be sneaky and approach previous clients yourself (rather than being put in touch through the marketing consultant) so you’re not palmed off with clients that they already know love their work and will only say great things about them. Ask them any of your niggling questions – not just if they are happy with the results of the campaign(s), but also how so-and-so is to work with, whether they consider it value for money, if they would use them again, if they delivered the required results, if delivery was punctual, and so on.

Also, ask the marketing agency to direct you to online examples and/or portfolios of their work to further your understanding of both how they work and the sort of campaigns they would potentially be able to create for you.

Define your budget

Work out what you can afford to spend on marketing from the get go. Don’t be deterred if your budget is pretty small right now, you can always find an agency that will tailor a package specifically to you, cutting out any of the bits that aren’t a priority to you right now, and you can then expand your package as your budget increases and your company advances over time.

For example, if your company is striving to sell a new air conditioning system but it’s not yet in production, don’t waste money paying for Instagram ads, instead put your cash into getting the SEO on your website as strong as it can be to drive potential investors and retailers to your site to discover your product. Similarly, if you do have air conditioners ready to sell but your market research shows that your target customers tend to use Facebook over Instagram, tell the agency that you wish to concentrate your advertising on the former platform for now, until you have more cash to spare, and then you will consider advertising on Instagram, too.

It’s also important to ask the marketing agency or consultant if they have a minimum contract period. This is great for any business to know, but it is especially significant for a young company who doesn’t yet have the security of knowing how successful their venture will be.

Finally, find out how they charge – is it by the hour, by the campaign etc – and how often they invoice (weekly, monthly, by project etc), so you can work all of the costs into your financial planning.

Get to the nitty-gritty: ask them to prove their success

It’s all very well a marketing expert qualifying their success by showing you that one of their clients who came to them with 1.4million Instagram followers now has 3.6million. Sure, that person’s account has grown, but how can you be sure that the marketing person had anything to do with that?

The account already had high traffic, it could have grown regardless of the marketing campaigns. This is where analytics come in.

The marketing agency will use some sort of analytical software to track their progress, so they will be able to tell you their lead conversion rates – that is, how many of those followers came as a result of their work. Don’t be afraid to ask them to share this information with you. If they’re good at their jobs, they will happily talk data and graphs with you. If they’re cagey about it, take it as a bad sign. You can similarly ask for evidence of how successful their advertising campaigns are. If people click through their ads to buy a product rather than stumble across it by any other means, they will know about it.

How good is their pitch?

Just because you are a small company, it doesn’t mean that marketing consultants don’t want your business – they very much do, especially if there’s a chance of you growing into a big business one day. So don’t feel like they’re doing you a favour, you’re hiring them – if anyone’s doing anyone a favour, it’s you doing them one. Be sure to ask them what initial ideas they have for marketing campaigns for you. In a similar way to how a newspaper would never hire a journalist without first checking that they can string a sentence together, you should never hire a marketing manager who can’t fire off a few digital marketing ideas on the spot.

However, an even better idea is to email ahead of your meeting with a new agency to let them know you would be interested in hearing their initial ideas for social media campaigns, for example, just to check whether you’re on the same wavelength. Don’t expect them to have drawn up a whole proposal ahead of your meeting (before they have been hired), but a good candidate will have dedicated a little time to drafting some ideas to show their abilities and interest in your business.

Still unsure whether a particular marketing expert is the right fit for your business? Then simply ask them: “Why should I choose you?” If this person is going to be successful at getting hundreds/thousands/millions of people to buy into your business across multiple digital platforms, then they shouldn’t have any problem in getting you to buy into them.

Facebook Advertising for Startups

Barrie 09/03/2021

Facebook Advertising for Startups

So what exactly do you need to know about Facebook Advertising for Start-Ups?
placeholder 2

By BARRIE LE GALL

Table of Contents

Did you know that Facebook is the preferred method of advertising for around 97% of businesses? If you are looking to advertise your startup on Facebook, there are a few rules you need to be aware to make sure your ad is the one that is seen over everyone else’s. 

After all, 97% of the global market means a huge amount of advertising and if you are getting it wrong, you can guarantee your competitor is getting it right.

So what exactly do you need to know about Facebook Advertising for Start-Ups?

Facebook and indeed, the world of social media offers entrepreneurs an unparalleled ability to reach new and prospective clients in an easy and immediate manner. Utilising reach and Brand Awareness campaigns, the power is in the hand of the marketers to create an ad that will drive Facebook users to act upon what they are seeing in a targeted setting.

Using the information handed to you by Facebook’s algorithms, you can decide exactly what you want to do with the information you have. The process is quite simple once you have determined your call to action for the specified Facebook ad for your startup.

Your CTA (call to action) can be one of the following – likes and engagement on your ad, increase in brand visibility, click-throughs to a website, or generating sales.

Once you have this you need to be confident you are targeting the correct people with your ad. Ask yourself the following question;

  • Where is your audience based? 
  • What are you offering?
  • Is your product or service aimed at a particular demographic eg parents or Gen Z?
  • What are you hoping your ad will do?
  • How will you follow up potential leads and sales funnels?

But how exactly should you create your targeted ad campaign?

Simply throwing up a caption with or without an image, is simply like throwing away your marketing budget because you can. Depending on your desired result from the ad itself, you need to make sure you generate the correct type of content for the results you desire. Don’t forget, creating ads that fail to perform could be sending your clients to your competitors so you need to get it right.

In social media, everything is instant, so getting it right before you place the ad is vital. A successful Facebook ad campaign for your startup and start generating results almost instantly. But wait, before you send your ad out to the millions of Facebook users, have you determined exactly who needs to see it? 

This is where the algorithms come into play. In the steps to create your perfect Facebook ad, you can decide who you target based on all the aforementioned collected data Facebook holds. Tailor this demographic to whittle down the results to make sure your ad spend is working for you from the get-go.

Pair this with information you hold and the results you are looking to achieve and suddenly you are one step closer to placing an effective Facebook ad for your startup. Alongside this information, you can look back on any previous engagement from past ads if you have and your engagement rate from previous social media posts. All of this will help you determine the category you select when it comes to selecting who should see your post. The best part is, you have the information you need to tailor your ad’s potential audience already for you within Facebook.

Should You Use an Existing Post or Create a Specific Ad?

Again, one you have figured out what you hope the ad will achieve, then you will be better placed to decide the actual content of the app. An existing post which you can ‘boost’ to reach more followers can be efficient if all you want is engagement on the post. However, to entice new clients and get them to click through to see what you offer, you may need to generate a specific ad for this purpose.

This is where we at Found UB4 come in. We are experts in placing successful Facebook ads for startups and we can work with you to create an advertising campaign that hits the right spots from the beginning. Cut out all the guesswork and choose to invest in experience to help your startup reach the people it needs to in real-time via a proven marketing method on social media. Get in touch with us to see how we can help you with Facebook advertising for your startup today.

 

Email
Share on facebook
Facebook
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on linkedin
LinkedIn
Facebook-f Instagram Linkedin-in

Instagram for Small Businesses

Barrie 09/03/2021

Instagram for Small Businesses

Do you want to advertise your small business on Instagram?

By BARRIE LE GALL

Table of Contents

Do you want to advertise your small business on Instagram? Maybe you have seen ads popping up in your personal feed and wish to get a piece of the action for your business too? Creating an effective Instagram ad campaign needn’t be complicated. Getting your business in front of people via social media is a useful marketing tool used by many small businesses and larger companies alike.

The universal attraction for advertising on Instagram is the ability to create a stunning visual that will catch consumers’ eyes and lead them to your site. But how do you go about creating the perfect Instagram ad for small businesses?

Understanding Instagram

Instagram is the world’s leading image social media site. Users post snapshots on the site for their followers to like and comment on much as they would on Facebook. Unlike it’s older social media counterpart, the onus on Instagram is the picture. You can post a picture with no caption but not a caption with no image.

Over the years, Instagram has proven to be a viable income generator for businesses and content creators.

Creating effective Instagram ads

It is thought the Instagram platform sees around 200 million users worldwide log in each day. With over 70% of these users by something via their feed, how does your small company get a piece of the action and generate business sales? It is initially about creating a striking and engaging ad, but that ad is virtually useless without being targeted at your ideal customer.

Instagram ad campaign objective

Do you know precisely what you ant your advert to do? If you are unclear, then no doubt your audience will be too. Identify what response you want the ad to elicit and then make sure the people who see act upon this. If you want the engagement to boost your brand’s visibility, then your ad needs to reflect this, the same if you want to click to a website or specific articles or even generate a sale.

7 types of Instagram ads for small businesses

When creating your perfect small business ad for Instagram, you can choose from the following layouts:

  • Image
  • Video
  • Carousel
  • Slideshow
  • Collection
  • Instagram Stories ad
  • Instant experience

Each of these different ways to advertise can help you get the desired result from your ad. Knowing what that response is is something you need to create an effective ad campaign on Instagram for your small business.

Possible outcomes you can get from an effective Instagram ad campaign:

  • Views
  • Engagement
  • Traffic
  • Visibility
  • Lead Generation
  • Conversions
  • Brand Awareness
  • App Installs

Targeting your audience 

This is possibly one of the most effective ways to really push your Instagram ad. When creating your ad, you have the ability to specify who you target based on a variety of factors.

Using collected data on each and every user, you can narrow down that massive 200 million user count to identify the exact people you need to target. So who exactly is your ideal customer?

This depends on the person who needs to know about your brand and what you offer. Using algorithm insights, Instagram can use your requests when choosing who to target with your ad and find the people most likely to do what you want them to.

Location, shopping habits, activity within the app, browsing history in connected accounts, and user profiles are all ways Instagram identifies who exactly to show your small business ad to within the app. without this insight, your ad will be lost amongst a sea of similar ads and your customers to your competitors who are using the Instagram advertising feature to their advantage.

Once your ad is complete, it is instantly in the feed of users and can be an immediate way to boost your profile and sales.

How we can help create your ideal Instagram ad

With a market full of noise and a sea of targeted ads, we know exactly how difficult it can be to be seen on Instagram as a small business. At Found UB4, we use our expertise to help create a visually striking image that will capture the attention of Instagram users and help you get your desired result from each and every Instagram ad you place.

Use our knowledge to help your marketing budget work harder for you without you having to. Hit the ground running and see exactly how impactful your campaign can be by adding Instagram ads to your marketing campaign.


Facebook-f

Instagram


Linkedin-in