August 2015

15 Marketing Fun Facts About Instagram

August 31, 2015/by Corey Padveen

Instagram is a network with tremendous marketing potential, as proven by some of these great marketing fun facts!

Long before Instagram opened its API for advertising, it was a valuable asset for any marketer. There is plenty that supports this statement, and the fun facts and figures listed here are just a few of those things.

There are over 300 million active Instagram users, and 70% of those users are outside of the U.S.
There are more than 75 million Instagram users who use the app every single day.
20% of web users are also active Instagram users.
Posts receive an average of 36 engagements (2.5 billion ‘likes’ per day on an average of 70 million photos and videos posted).
Users spend an average of 21 minutes on the app every day.
When Michael Kors tested their first ads on Instagram, posts received an average of four times the amount of engagement.
Nike is the most popular retail brand on Instagram with over 10 million unique followers.
Instagram posts generate an average 3.3% engagement rate, while tweets generate less than 1% engagement (on average).
There is an almost perfectly even distribution of male-female users on Instagram (51% male).
14% of drivers admit to checking Instagram while operating a vehicle. (No one said all of these stats would be good.)
90% of Instagram users are under the age of 35.
85 of the world’s Top 100 brands have an active Instagram account.
50% of retailers are active on Instagram.
The average sales order value from an Instagram-referred conversion is $66.75.
38% more engagement with photos that feature a face.

These are just a few of the amazing statistics that make Instagram a marketers dream when it comes to rich media.

Have you used the network for a particular campaign? Tell us about it!

10 Ways to Improve Your Landing Page Conversions

August 24, 2015/by Corey Padveen

This post originally appeared on CoreyPadveen.com.

There are a lot of reasons why your landing pages might not be converting, so here are ten things that might help.

Your landing pages are designed to drive conversions. But with so much noise, and what can sometimes feel like guesswork (though it doesn’t have to be), our landing page conversions might not be as strong as we had hoped.

These are a few best practices to keep in mind next time you decide to create a landing page in the hopes of driving new conversions from a campaign.

1. Match Your Page Title

If I, a consumer, have clicked on your content from an ad, email, social post or some other source that read one thing, and I arrived at your landing page only to find that the title does not match the original content, I’ll likely a) go back, thinking I arrived at the wrong place or b) exit because I feel duped. Keep a consistent message from content to landing page in order to maintain consistency throughout the consumer’s journey.

2. Clear Call-to-Action

If you have paragraph after paragraph of text and wait until the very end of the page to prompt me to take action, nine times out of ten, I’m going to leave. The average online attention span is eight seconds. If you don’t have a clear call-to-action above the fold prompting visitors to take action immediately, they likely won’t.

3. Direct Users to Your CTA

Using something as simple as an arrow, a photo or even turning your images slightly to face your call-to-action call can all lead to significantly improved conversion rates. Our eyes naturally follow directions that guide them. Do yourself a favor and help your prospects along the way.

4. Single Message

Landing pages have significantly higher conversion rates when there is a single, clear and uninterrupted message without any distractions. As noted above, people have short attention spans. If you push too many messages (i.e. more than one) at the same time, they will likely become overwhelmed and move onto something simpler.

5. Contextualize Your Offer

Showing is better than telling. Think about the classic door-to-door sales person. Your Fuller Brush Man wouldn’t simply tell you how great his products were, he would show you a mess and clean it up! On your landing page, you should try and do the same thing. Showcase an example, or a video that highlights why the product is a must-have and the offer can’t be beat!

6. Conformity

Along the same lines as the single message approach, every bit of content on your landing page should be aligned with the purpose of the page itself. If your goal is to get people to download your eBook, everything on the page should not only push people to download the eBook, but focus on its benefits. At no point should the attention that a consumer is giving you be broken. Don’t share links to other pages, and don’t promote other offers. Your landing pages should be singular in nature.

7. Test Variations

Keep all elements constant, but change the color of your call-to-action from blue to red. Did it make a difference? Now change the phrasing of your page title. Did that help? It is no secret that A/B testing is a valuable practice, yet not all marketers take advantage of it in all aspects of their campaigns. Maybe they’ll run A/B tests on email campaigns, or social ads, but too often landing pages are not tested. Try using a service like Optimizely to make things even easier and to automate some of the process.

8. Give a Guarantee

The majority of consumers are naturally risk-averse. Therefore, when they see that something is guaranteed – satisfaction, as a soft guarantee, or, as Kaplan does, improved test scores, for a hard guarantee – they will be more comfortable making a purchase or subscribing to a service. There is simply something comforting about seeing that a brand is confident in its product.

9. Segment by Source

If you are running search ads, social ads and email campaigns, they should have their own landing pages. Each of these variations should have its own set of A/B tests as these audiences will not be made up of the same people, and neither one of these audiences are likely to have the same tastes.

10. Show Accessibility

People are naturally skeptical when it comes to web offers. Showing that you have a real email address, an actual phone number and can be found in an office somewhere in the world will boost the confidence of your visitors. Again, people like to know that there is an actual human being on the other end of the computer that will be there for them if needed.

Try some of these tactics and see if you can’t boost your landing page conversions next time you run a campaign!

Social Media Update: What’s New?

August 17, 2015/by Corey Padveen

Every so often, there are so many major announcements and changes in the world of social media, that a simple industry-wide update is needed.

With everything from Instagram to Google+ changes being announced lately, it seems harder than ever to keep up with what’s happening in the social media marketing world. This list breaks down what marketers need to know in order to stay on top of the social media game.

Instagram Ads Open to the Public

We recently discussed Instagram ads and how this announcement is going to open a whole new world for marketers. It is no secret that Instagram is a powerful tool, and that power has now increased exponentially with this announcement from the company.

Google+ is Disappearing

Though it is not completely dead, Google+ is slowly (but very surely) pulling out of the spotlight. This has been made apparent by the fact that other Google products no longer require the Google+ profile sign in. It is safe to say that it won’t be long before Google+ is broken down even further (Photos, Streams, etc.) and all we are left with is some version of the +1. While there is still some value to sharing content (from an SEO standpoint) paying close attention to the network won’t seem to yield great results moving forward.

LinkedIn Creates a Messenger

It is no secret that LinkedIn has long had one of the worst messaging platforms of any social network. While the intention (as a business-oriented social network) was to make it seem like an email dashboard, it wound up feeling clunky and outdated. Finally, LinkedIn has updated their messaging system so it feels more like a live chat than a series of disjointed and unnecessarily professional messages.

Improved Facebook Ad Dashboard

As the first social network with an ad dashboard it should come as no surprise that Facebook’s latest update to its ad management system makes it the most powerful of any social advertising dashboard on the market. The simplicity and user-friendliness make it a marketers dream, and on the agency side, it has quickly become the best to work with (with regards to segmenting campaigns and producing reports).

Facebook Messenger for Businesses

Slowly but surely, Facebook is making use of its assets. Another new feature on the network is the ability for businesses and customers to interact privately in Facebook Messenger. For a long time, detailed customer service issues have been a problem since interaction between consumers and brands have been done publicly on an open message board. Now, Facebook is providing a space where customer service can be taken to new heights.

Twitter Makes Ads Easier

Another major move forward for marketers (particularly on the agency side) is the new ability for marketers to edit Twitter ads in bulk with their new ad manager system. Twitter ads offer great value when it comes to interest and behavioral targeting, and the TV targeting is second to none. Now, with this update, marketers can rejoice at the amount of time it will save managing campaigns.

While plenty has taken place (much more than what is listed here) these are a few of the updates that marketers need to be aware of and should be most excited about. What other changes are you looking forward to?

4 Ways Instagram Ads Will Benefit Marketers

August 10, 2015/by Corey Padveen

Instagram recently opened its ad API, and readily available Instagram ads can mean great things for marketers.

For quite a while now, Instagram ads have been something reserved for the most elite brands, those willing to spend the high costs and take the time needed to execute the programs. Now, as Instagram opens its API to the public, virtually any marketer will be able to reap the benefits of the Instagram ad platform.

These are a few of the benefits that marketers can begin enjoying thanks to this move.

Instagram Advertising (Obviously)

The first one almost goes without saying, but it is (quite obviously) the greatest benefit of all.

Now that the API is open to the public, marketers will finally have access to the hundreds or millions of Instagram users worldwide (in a very targeted way). Of course, it might take a little trial and error before finding an advertising sweet spot (as with most ad capability introductions, there is bound to be some resistance) but reaching specific users with a hypertargeted message is a major win for marketers.

Speaking of which…

Hypertargeting

The ability to pinpoint an audience by tastes, preferences and behaviors, and then craft messaging geared towards those criteria is an under-utilized benefit when it comes to social media and, more specifically, social advertising.

Now, on Instagram, marketers will have the ability to create messaging geared towards a specific group of followers of general users. No longer will there need to be sponsored content worked into a news feed in a clunky way (for example, comedy accounts sharing posts promoting iPhone covers) and marketers can focus messaging efforts on the users that actually want to hear them.

Detailed Analytics

Instagram analytics have been made available in some capacity before (with tools like Simply Measured, for example) but with a native analytics dashboard now available, marketers will be able to see exactly how their content is performing with their desired audience.

As any marketer knows, detailed analytics is something that any client, brand, or boss needs in order to justify a program’s expenses and progress. Now (presumably) there will be far more insights made available with Instagram that marketers are going to love.

Monetization

While the age of Instagram advertising is still quite young (nascent, really) it is fairly safe to assume that there will be aspects worked in that are designed to monetize the ad.

As with Facebook (e.g. register for an event, download an app, click to a website, sign up, etc.) there would really only be value to the investment in advertising (for some marketers) if there were some sort of mechanism built in that allows for a direct return on investment. While there are many ways of measuring ROI, capabilities like those outlined above surely aren’t too long for this new space.

Conclusion

There will certainly be a lot of excitement over the new ad platform (and capabilities) and a lot of these features and benefits will be rolled out over time. But the one thing that can be said for certain is that there is sure to be a great deal of benefits reaped for this new launch. It’s exciting to watch.

Do you plan on using Instagram ads? Tell us in the comments below!

New Facebook Ad Manager Features Marketers Will Love

August 3, 2015/by Corey Padveen

Facebook recently rolled out their new ad manager, and marketers should be excited about the changes.

It seems like eons since major changes were made to the Facebook ad manager. For the longest time, it has been clunky, unfriendly and difficult to navigate. That is especially true for marketers with multiple accounts to manage. Of course, small additions were made in order to mimic Google: the separation of ads, ad sets and campaign, and the ability to edit on different levels. But these new changes to the Facebook ad manager mean a simpler process, a sleek new look and a much easier life for Facebook advertisers.

Here are some of the more important changes to the ad dashboard that marketers are going to love.

Filters

Yes, there were options to filter results with the old ad platform, but now that has become much simpler.

As shown above, perhaps the most exciting new filter is the ‘Campaign Name’ filter. Searching in the standard ad manager used to be a fairly unpleasant task. Now, simply choosing the campaign name and selecting the ‘contains’ option (shown below) makes searching by name a much more accurate breeze.

Timeline

Again, this is a feature that was available in the old ad manager, but any marketer that had used the feature in the past knew that it presented less than accurate results.

Now, when a date range is selected, the data shown is much more well organized and, to any marketers relief, perfectly accurate. The data breakdown for selected timelines is also much neater.

Everything from results, reach, cost per action, amount spent is well detailed for the selected period, which removes the need to conduct the occasional (educated) guesswork when data was not breaking down properly.

Layers

In keeping with their attempt to emulate (and eventually surpass) Google, Facebook has made considerable improvements when it comes to the campaign layers – from the campaign level right down to the ads.

Now the user friendliness is significantly greater. It is made clear where you are in the process (shown below) and the editing can be done within one cohesive space as opposed to several disjointed steps (which was becoming tiresome for avid Facebook advertisers).

As the arrow indicates above, breadcrumbs are easier to follow here. What’s more, all of the editing can be done within the same page, without the need to open individual ads in new, separate spaces and work on them individually.

Mass Editing

For anyone familiar with the old ad manager, the ability to edit ads on a mass scale with the new manager is a true gift. Marketers can now choose to either edit individual ads (which was always an option) or the ad set as a whole, modifying every one of the ads evenly.

There was always the option of changing targeting and budgets for a campaign or an ad set, but the major focus for Facebook with this new change has been, seemingly, on creative. Of course, the user interface has become much easier to navigate, but the creative has undergone dramatic changes.

It will be interesting to see what comes of the Facebook Ad Manager app, but for the time being, these changes are particularly exciting and will certainly attract a new wave of advertisers due to its simplicity.