As 2018 comes to an end, marketers are looking to predict trends in 2019.
The following are promising trends which have begun in 2018 and look promising going forward into the new year.
E-commerce Trends
Many eCommerce marketers use Facebook ad targeting for its easy of use, powerful targeting abilities, and large userbase. Although Facebook is a powerful tool its eCommerce is not as well integrated as other social platforms. The following platforms may be worth a second look as their eCommerce capabilities have improved significantly in 2018.
Pinterest
In 2018, Pinterest increased their eCommerce potential with the addition of shopping tags. This feature allows users to click-through to a ‘Buy Now’ page when they see an item they would consider purchasing. Best of all, this feature is free. Shopping tags is a great way to start promoting products online without spending on ads. Pinterest also sells ad space, however, and the journey from viewing a product to reaching the ‘Buy Now’ page is virtually seamless. With a growing audience of 250 million active users, marketers are considering Pinterest as a viable option for their 2019 advertising campaigns.
Instagram
Instagram also announced shopping tags in mid-2018. Instagram shopping tags can appear on posts and stories and serve as an easy way for a consumer to reach the ‘Buy Now’ page of your website with one click. Instagram’s user base has over 1 billion users with the majority between the age of 18 and 34 – a demographic with a high level of spending power. As Instagram only continues to gain popularity, it is no wonder the social media platform is on the list for 2019.
Video Trends
Video has continued to be a successful part of marketing campaigns throughout 2018 with a focus on live video, and marketers use videos to engage and excite users. According to HubSpot, adding a video to a landing page increases conversion rate by 80% and adding a video to an email boosts click-through rate by up to 300%.
Video advertising is also becoming more common and more options are available. In 2018, YouTube added the ability for advertisers to target users who watch videos on their TV screen after reporting that their watch-time of content from TVs has doubled yearly. Furthermore, this year Twitter announced in-stream video ads on a global level rather than restricting it by region. Advertisers can now reach more users making in-stream Twitter ads a more viable option
Personalization Trends
In 2019, consumers will continue to demand personalized service and marketing. This can be challenging when your business communicates with an abundance of customers. With the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence, marketers will stray away from manual targeting of specific user groups. With the introduction of Facebook Messenger chatbots, such as Chatfuel, marketers can begin to experiment with customer interaction.
Marketing Strategy Trends
By 2019, marketers should know there is no excuse for any guess-work when it comes to marketing strategy. Data is abundant, available, and ready to be analyzed. The only reliable, cost-effective way to market your company successfully in 2019 is through a data-centric campaign, specific to your company’s needs.
A concise, effective model to follow when creating a data-driven marketing campaign is the BEACON strategy. This encompasses Branding, Engagement, Audience, Content, Organization, and Network.
Branding
Brand awareness is important to grow any business. The voice of a brand should be consistent and the persona of the brand should be developed through generating content. Content should be optimized on-site and for search engines to ensure discoverability.
Engagement
Marketers should analyze data and set goals. First, benchmarks must be set to measure the outcome of your efforts. It is important to understand your analytics by looking at engagement ratios, conversion rate, creating a content-engagement correlation analysis, tangible metric analysis, etc.
Audience
Marketers should identify hyper-targeted audiences to zero-in on the unique customer traits that lead to high conversion. High-value audience identification is then important to understand which members of your audience have these traits. Once this has been recognized, marketers can then identify areas for growth and target new audiences that have not been reached. Once new audiences are identified, messages to the audience should be optimized to fit in well with the idiosyncrasies that make each audience subset unique.
Content
Marketers should make sure their message comes across clearly through content message optimization. Messages should have voice consistency and have clear calls-to-action. Content should also be as diverse as possible for discoverability and authenticity and should be optimized for your audience. Content strategies should be analyzed, revised and renewed frequently to maintain effectiveness.
Organization
Marketers should analyze their current strategies and question if they are both applicable and effective in different real-world settings. Workflow should be optimized in the most time and cost-effective way possible using marketing software. Marketers should also create more cohesiveness between marketing and the operations of the company to ensure the company operates as a unit.
Network
Marketers should conduct reviews and audits of their channels to improve the aesthetic and function of brand pages. Paid and earned media should also be monitored and audited to understand and improve its effect on your brand. Marketing channels and media should be interconnected and smooth to enhance brand experience. A mobile audit should also be performed to understand how mobile integrates into your efforts.
Following these trends can help you make the right decisions for your 2019 marketing budget.
4 Statistics That Show the Potential of Pinterest for Advertising
/by Corey PadveenThere has been a lot of talk about Pinterest since 2017 as it has shown incredible growth year after year. Despite the buzz, marketers often don’t take the time to review the statistics and truly understand how powerful this new platform really is. Here are four statistics showing why you should consider Pinterest for your next marketing campaign.
People who use Pinterest spend 29% percent more on retail than the average person
Pinterest may seem foreign to advertisers on social media given its more recent rise to marketer knowledge. It may however be a hidden gem given the demographic which the platform targets. At a nearly 30% increase in retail spending, Pinterest users may be an easier demographic to market and sell to compared to Facebook advertising.
40% of Pinners Have a Household Income of $100k+
Given Facebook’s recent changes to the targeting capabilities of ads, advertisers are having a harder time targeting higher income users. For there advertisers, Pinterest may be worth taking a closer look. With 40% of users having a household income of 100k+ and 50% making 50k+ there is a unique opportunity with Pinterest to target a high-earning demographic.
Pinterest users plan twice as early as users on other social media platforms
According to Pinterest’s Possibilities Planner, users plan for holidays and events twice as early as other social media users. To potentially increase revenue, advertisers can being their event and holiday advertising a few months earlier on Pinterest before advertising to other social media platforms. This may allow them to capture a greater part of the market and at a reduced cost given the lack of competition for search terms such as “Christmas” in August.
250 Million people use Pinterest every month
Given the advantageous demographics of Pinterest users, it is even more convincing to note the number of monthly users on Pinterest. This number is growing quickly increasing from 200 million to 250 million from 2017 to 2018. If this growth continues, Pinterest will be hard for advertisers to ignore and will continue to become more mainstream in the eye of the public.
Pinterest is worth looking into for your next social media campaign. Despite it still being far behind competitors like Facebook with over 2.2 billion monthly active users, it is growing quickly. Try out Pinterest for as part of your next marketing campaign. You will want to be ready and knowledgeable when it becomes big enough to use regularly as an advertising platform.
The Three Biggest Social Media Changes in 2018
/by Corey PadveenIn 2018, the world of social media changed drastically. Social media companies fought to out-do one another by making relevant updates to generate more traffic and increase ad expenditure on their platform. The following are the top three biggest changes seen throughout the year.
Stories Become Mainstream
In 2018 we saw the launch and the increase of ‘Stories’ usage on platforms other than Instagram and Snapchat. YouTube Launched their stories platform to any creator with over 10,000 followers, which may be driven by the appeal of shorter video contentbased the success seen by other platforms.
Both Facebook Stories and WhatsApp status saw a rise in users with 150 million and 450 million daily active users respectively. According to TechCrunch, stories are growing at 15 times the rate of social media feeds and are projected to surpass them in the foreseeable future. We’re seeing a big change in the way people are viewing content. One conclusion could be that stories are the fastest, easiest way to consume the latest content on a user’s feed and people simply don’t have time to scroll through their feed to consume lengthy content.
New Video Channels Emerged to Compete with YouTube
A big reveal in 2018 came from both Facebook and Instagram with their own long-form video platforms. Throughout the year, YouTube was faced with criticism because they showed ads on videos which companies deemed inappropriate and were also been criticized for their lack of proper compensation to creators. YouTube has also been criticized by their own user-base for being disconnected from why users engage with the platform. In 2018 YouTube launched their annual YouTube Rewind video which was created to showcase the best creators of the year. YouTube rewind 2018 became the most disliked YouTube video of all time with of 15 million dislikes as it did not accurately represent YouTube’s community whatsoever. Both Facebook and Instagram saw an opportunity to find enter a new, lucrative way to sell ad space.
IGTV launched as a way for Instagram creators to create longer videos for their followers without creating multiple stories. Instagram has yet to release statistics for the new video platform however TechCrunch claims that Instagram’s IGTV launch partner creators are still getting around 6.8 times the amount of video views on their feed than on their IGTV.
Facebook Watch was launched internationally in early August 2018 and now claims to have over 400 million monthly users. Facebook seems to pose the biggest threat to YouTube; they have already begun to attract YouTube creators to their platform and can grow the platform quickly because of their current user-base of 1.6 billion.
Big Changes to eCommerce
This year, eCommerce became a greater focus for social media networks as they looked for new ways to generate income. In late September, Snapchat added Shoppable Snap adds which allowed companies to import product catalogs to create ads. With this addition, companies advertising on Snapchat were reporting up to 17 times more engagement compared to standard Snapchat ads. Snapchat expects the expenditure on their ads to grow to over 767 billion by 2020.
With the launch of shoppable posts in 2018, Instagram also integrated eCommerce into their platform. Users can now see price tags on a post and click through to purchase an item. The shopping feature is a great way for bloggers to sell their merchandise or for a company to sell more of their products. Instagram claims that they want users to have a seamless experience when using shoppable posts to purchase an item.
2018 saw some big changes in the world of social media in terms of advertising, new divisions of social media networks, and the way people consume content. In 2019 we will learn how these changes play out on a longer timeline. Hopefully we will continue to see social media networks making more creative, innovative decisions to stay relevant.
Marketing Trends to Watch for in 2019
/by Corey PadveenAs 2018 comes to an end, marketers are looking to predict trends in 2019.
The following are promising trends which have begun in 2018 and look promising going forward into the new year.
E-commerce Trends
Many eCommerce marketers use Facebook ad targeting for its easy of use, powerful targeting abilities, and large userbase. Although Facebook is a powerful tool its eCommerce is not as well integrated as other social platforms. The following platforms may be worth a second look as their eCommerce capabilities have improved significantly in 2018.
Pinterest
In 2018, Pinterest increased their eCommerce potential with the addition of shopping tags. This feature allows users to click-through to a ‘Buy Now’ page when they see an item they would consider purchasing. Best of all, this feature is free. Shopping tags is a great way to start promoting products online without spending on ads. Pinterest also sells ad space, however, and the journey from viewing a product to reaching the ‘Buy Now’ page is virtually seamless. With a growing audience of 250 million active users, marketers are considering Pinterest as a viable option for their 2019 advertising campaigns.
Instagram
Instagram also announced shopping tags in mid-2018. Instagram shopping tags can appear on posts and stories and serve as an easy way for a consumer to reach the ‘Buy Now’ page of your website with one click. Instagram’s user base has over 1 billion users with the majority between the age of 18 and 34 – a demographic with a high level of spending power. As Instagram only continues to gain popularity, it is no wonder the social media platform is on the list for 2019.
Video Trends
Video has continued to be a successful part of marketing campaigns throughout 2018 with a focus on live video, and marketers use videos to engage and excite users. According to HubSpot, adding a video to a landing page increases conversion rate by 80% and adding a video to an email boosts click-through rate by up to 300%.
Video advertising is also becoming more common and more options are available. In 2018, YouTube added the ability for advertisers to target users who watch videos on their TV screen after reporting that their watch-time of content from TVs has doubled yearly. Furthermore, this year Twitter announced in-stream video ads on a global level rather than restricting it by region. Advertisers can now reach more users making in-stream Twitter ads a more viable option
Personalization Trends
In 2019, consumers will continue to demand personalized service and marketing. This can be challenging when your business communicates with an abundance of customers. With the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence, marketers will stray away from manual targeting of specific user groups. With the introduction of Facebook Messenger chatbots, such as Chatfuel, marketers can begin to experiment with customer interaction.
Marketing Strategy Trends
By 2019, marketers should know there is no excuse for any guess-work when it comes to marketing strategy. Data is abundant, available, and ready to be analyzed. The only reliable, cost-effective way to market your company successfully in 2019 is through a data-centric campaign, specific to your company’s needs.
A concise, effective model to follow when creating a data-driven marketing campaign is the BEACON strategy. This encompasses Branding, Engagement, Audience, Content, Organization, and Network.
Branding
Brand awareness is important to grow any business. The voice of a brand should be consistent and the persona of the brand should be developed through generating content. Content should be optimized on-site and for search engines to ensure discoverability.
Engagement
Marketers should analyze data and set goals. First, benchmarks must be set to measure the outcome of your efforts. It is important to understand your analytics by looking at engagement ratios, conversion rate, creating a content-engagement correlation analysis, tangible metric analysis, etc.
Audience
Marketers should identify hyper-targeted audiences to zero-in on the unique customer traits that lead to high conversion. High-value audience identification is then important to understand which members of your audience have these traits. Once this has been recognized, marketers can then identify areas for growth and target new audiences that have not been reached. Once new audiences are identified, messages to the audience should be optimized to fit in well with the idiosyncrasies that make each audience subset unique.
Content
Marketers should make sure their message comes across clearly through content message optimization. Messages should have voice consistency and have clear calls-to-action. Content should also be as diverse as possible for discoverability and authenticity and should be optimized for your audience. Content strategies should be analyzed, revised and renewed frequently to maintain effectiveness.
Organization
Marketers should analyze their current strategies and question if they are both applicable and effective in different real-world settings. Workflow should be optimized in the most time and cost-effective way possible using marketing software. Marketers should also create more cohesiveness between marketing and the operations of the company to ensure the company operates as a unit.
Network
Marketers should conduct reviews and audits of their channels to improve the aesthetic and function of brand pages. Paid and earned media should also be monitored and audited to understand and improve its effect on your brand. Marketing channels and media should be interconnected and smooth to enhance brand experience. A mobile audit should also be performed to understand how mobile integrates into your efforts.
Following these trends can help you make the right decisions for your 2019 marketing budget.
Facebook’s New ‘Business Recommendations’
/by Corey PadveenFacebook reviews have become increasingly important for both small and large businesses.
In 2017, 90% of consumers read online reviews before visiting a business. Meanwhile, 88% of consumers said that they trust online reviews as much as they would trust a personal recommendation. With the decline of Yelp due to their inaccurate review filtering system, more and more people are turning to Facebook for reviews. In a survey of over 2000 internet users, 49% said they had visited Facebook to check online reviews for a local business.
Recently, Facebook has been testing Recommendations: a new feature which may be replacing reviews on Facebook Business Pages. These changes come after many Facebook review issues saw business owners write false negative reviews on a competitors Facebook business page or the opposite where owners will write false positive reviews on their own page. With Recommendations comes a few important changes which may change the rating score of many businesses.
Facebook will now be tracking recommendations and opinions about a business even if they are not posted directly to the business’s Facebook page. When users write their opinion about the business, they will have the option to either recommend or not recommend the business. If the post is public, Facebook will consider it as a feedback about that business and will gauge the sentiment of the post to determine the rating which the business will receive. The rating, previously between 1-5, has increased to rank businesses between 1 and 10.
Facebook has also added the ability for users to post photos or gifs alongside their review. These will be displayed in the recommendations section of a business’s Facebook page. This may add to the overall experience and the quality of Facebook reviews by helping to get a user’s message across.
The final change made to Facebook business pages is the introduction of tags. Using recurring words from past reviews, Facebook will recommend tags (similar to hashtags) which will be suggested to users who are writing a review directly on a business page. This will make it quicker and easier for users to leave reviews and may bring more consistency to the wording of reviews.
These small changes may make a large impact on small and large businesses who can only hope that Facebook will properly implement their new Recommendations section. These changes will also hopefully show a more honest overall sentiment of a business while improving the quality and the number of reviews on Facebook. To continue to compete with Google, Facebook must continue to innovate on the business side of their platform.
The Implications of Facebook’s New ‘Reputation Score’
/by Corey PadveenAs of this week, Facebook has started to rate users based on a reputation score from zero to 1 based on their trustworthiness when reporting disallowed posts.
Posts can be reported for fake news, or for inappropriate content. According to Facebook, they have taken this measure because some users will intentionally flag stories when they don’t agree with the views of the story, even if the contents of an article are valid and appropriate for public viewing. This poses a problem to Facebook which relies on its users to help distinguish acceptable articles from non-acceptable ones.
The reasoning for a trustworthiness rating seems logical for a corporation that wants to maintain a good image. However, being that Facebook has become a global news source, they should still at least consider the concerns of Facebook users. In doing so, they can shape their policies around the overall public opinion of what is acceptable. Of course, this must be done while still maintaining a set of core values such as free speech, and the refusal of hate speech. By simply dismissing what does not fit Facebook’s views of appropriate vs not appropriate, users are at the mercy of Facebook’s policies and views.
The latest example of Facebook imposing its view of appropriateness happened early this month when the company permanently banned conspiracy theorist Alex Jones from using their social media platform. Considering Alex Jones’ sizeable following, the decision came as a shock to many users. Despite his often-absurd claims and views of the world, his silencing leads Facebook users to question the level to which free speech is permitted on the social platform.
Facebook should be treated as an open ground for all. Even if Facebook tries to commit to free speech, dismissing a user’s opinion about the validity and appropriateness of a post can have extremely negative repercussions. A study by Pew Research Center in 2017 states that “two-thirds (67%) of Americans report that they get at least some of their news on social media – with two-in-ten doing so often.” By implementing an algorithm which indicates whether or not a users’ opinion about a post is different than what Facebook deems acceptable, they are essentially ignoring the opinions of all users who don’t agree with their policies and views.
Despite this being a more extreme view of Facebook’s new ‘reputation score’, it is important to stay critical of powerful corporations such as Facebook, especially given their privacy issues within the past year. Only time will tell whether or not this new addition will do more good than harm. However, with Facebook improving its transparency and working on trust, one can only hope that the new reputation score is simply a tool to help Facebook help its community.
HTTP vs HTTPS and why it matters
/by Corey PadveenWhen browsing any site on the internet, the term HTTP or HTTPS will appear before the site address in your search bar.
HTTP means HyperText Transfer Protocol. It is what defines the message structure between the web browser and the web server. It is the basis of all communication on the world wide web and comes in two forms: HTTP and HTTPS.
Both HTTP and HTTPS serve the same main function, however, HTTPS encrypts your connection and prevents several potential problems when browsing the web. When websites are not secured with HTTPS, hackers can send users to fake websites, steal passwords, run third-party ads and use the browsers of unaware web users for cryptocurrency mining.
HTTP is becoming increasingly less common with over 90% of web traffic in the US using HTTPS secured connections. Despite its decline, HTTP is still found among the largest sites on the internet. As shown on the website whynohttps, many of the worlds most visited websites including bbc.com and espn.com still use HTTP versions of their website.
Last month, Google made a push in favor of HTTPS on their internet browser, Chrome. The company began to show warnings on non-HTTPS websites where users could share personal data such as their credit card information or their password. This change comes from Google’s effort to improve web security and data safety.
Further changes coming to the Google Chrome browser in upcoming months will push more site owners to switch their website over to HTTPS. In September, Chrome will begin to change the green ‘secure’ label next to HTTPS websites into a less noticeable black label. In the following month, HTTP sites will show a noticeable red ‘not secure’ label on the left of the website URL. And finally, the ‘secure’ label will be removed completely in a later month. This will presumably be when most of the commonly used sites on Chrome have switched over to HTTPS. To facilitate the process, an initiative sponsored by Google, Facebook, and Mozilla called Let’s Encrypt has been created to help website owners secure their HTTP websites free of charge.
Aside from the addition of warning labels as a push to change HTTP sites to HTTPS, Google has also introduced HTTPS as a ranking signal for SEO. Stating that security is a priority, Google uses HTTPS as a lightweight SEO signal for page ranking. Despite carrying significantly less weight than other SEO factors right now, Google plans on strengthening the importance of HTTPS for SEO in the future. For any marketing professional wishing to improve or maintain their Google webpage ranking, switching over to HTTPS before Google increases its importance is an important move.
Google’s push towards a safer world wide web with the help of HTTPS is a step in the right direction for the history of the internet. With HTTP being outdated and unsafe, it is wise to avoid entering personal data in HTTP sites and switching your personal website over to HTTPS as soon as possible.
Facebook’s Recent Platform Changes Explained
/by Corey PadveenThis week, Facebook decided to relax its cryptocurrency ad ban. In doing so, they added new regulations to assure that any cryptocurrency company who advertises on the platform is legitimate.
Facebook will now be performing background checks and reviewing licenses before allowing cryptocurrency companies to advertise. This is one of many changes Facebook has made to their platform over the past few months. Since the Cambridge Analytica scandal in March of 2018, Mark Zuckerberg vowed to improve the safety of Facebook user information. In doing so, many changes were made to the social media and ad platform. The following changes show Facebook’s attempt to regain the trust of their online community and improve the transparency of their platform.
Ad targeting
As of September 30th, advertisers will no longer be able to target Facebook users by a number of currently available targeting metrics. Facebook will be removing all targeting data from third-party databases such as Oracle. In doing so, Facebook ads will lose many powerful targeting options. These options include targeting by net worth, income, and various purchase behaviors. This may turn out to be a big loss for Facebook in the long run as advertisers will have a more difficult time reaching their audience. It may cause them to consider switching to Google Ads or Amazon Ads.
Simplified Privacy
Facebook has simplified the option to customize profile privacy settings. Users can now access a privacy shortcut menu where they and choose who can see their profile information, and which information can be used for Facebook ads. The new option to turn on two-factor authentication can also help further secure your account. On top of this, Facebook will be updating its service and data policy to ensure a better understanding between Facebook and its community. The company plans on continuing to show users how and why their data is being used and what they can do if they aren’t comfortable with certain data being shared.
Ad Transparency
Ad transparency is another important feature added by Facebook in recent months. Users can now view any active ads running from a Facebook page, they can filter ads based on country, and can report an ad if they deem it inappropriate or offensive. This doesn’t only add a level of transparency for users. It can also help businesses keep track of their competitors marketing initiative, and may help small business find inspiration for their marketing campaigns. On top of ad transparency, users will now be able to view the info of any Facebook page to see the creation date as well as any name changes the page has made.
Facebook has been making impressive changes to their platform to improve the safety of user information as well as the transparency of their ads. These changes are reassuring after a breach of trust between Facebook and its community but may come at a cost to the social media giant (Facebook stock dropped 19% after announcing their Q2 results and projections) and may significantly lower the quality of Facebook as an ad platform. Hopefully, Facebook can find a way to stay transparent and honest while continuing to grow their amazing community.
Why Facebook Missed Their Q2 Estimates
/by Corey PadveenOn Thursday, July 26th, Facebook’s market cap lost over $120 billion after announcing slowed user growth and missed revenue expectations.
Despite FB stock dropping 19%, the reasoning behind Facebook’s decreasing revenue and slowed growth may have simple explanations which don’t imply the company’s decline.
Slowed Growth
This quarter, Facebook’s daily active users grew by only 1.54% while monthly active users grew by only 1.73%, a huge decrease since Q1’s DAU growth of 3.42% and MAU growth of 3.15%. Q2 of 2018 marks Facebook’s slowest quarter ever. One conclusion is that Facebook may be reaching a plateau of users. With 2.234 billion total monthly active users (almost 30% of the global population), Facebook may have simply hit its peak.
There may be other reasons for Facebook’s decline in growth. Following the Cambridge Analytica data scandal where the personal information of 87 million Facebook users was sold in an attempt to influence voter opinion, the hashtag #DeleteFacebook was trending on Twitter. According to research firm Tech.pinions, 11% of American Facebook users deleted the app from their phones while 9% deleted their Facebook account during the trending period. Facebook may have continued to gain new users around the world while also losing a large proportion of their current user base.
To regain the trust of the Facebook community, Facebook spent much of Q2 focusing on transparency and ethics which may have taken the company’s focus away from growth. Furthermore, their willingness to act more ethically may come with negative financial consequences. Recent transparency and ethics changes to Facebook include the ‘Info and Ads’ section where users can see which pages are running ads, the labeling of political ads along with registration to run them, and the removal of targeting options.
Decreasing Revenue
At first, these three changes seem like a step in the right direction however they may come at a cost. With the ‘Info and Ads’ section and political ads changes, advertisers may be less inclined to buy Facebook ads now that the advertiser will be openly exposed. As for the removal of targeting options, advertisers will no longer be able to segment users by income, net worth, shopping habits, and any other data found by third-party sources. This change can render Facebook ads less effective and cause advertisers to take their campaigns to other social platforms and advertising platforms.
Despite Facebook’s changing ad platform which may decrease revenues, their team is constantly innovating to bring the best user experience. Investors can only hope that their innovations will pay off in Q3. As with their latest addition: Facebook story ads, Facebook is adding features or generating reports almost daily and is striving to consistently dominate the social media industry. With over 2 billion monthly active Facebook users and 1 billion monthly active Instagram users (and growing quickly), Facebook’s Q2 numbers are not representative of their direction as a company. Facebook will bounce back stronger than ever as long as their team continues to innovate and regain the trust of the online community.
A Breakdown of Facebook Ad Targeting
/by Corey PadveenFacebook Business Manager has helped lead the online advertising revolution in the past 10 years. With Facebook’s ad targeting becoming increasingly complex and accurate, now is a great time to take advantage of Facebook advertising for your small business.
The following is a breakdown of the different ad targeting demographics provided by Facebook along with some examples.
By Financial Situation
With the ability to pinpoint Facebook users based on Income and net worth, advertisers can now target anyone from the lowest income Americans to the wealthiest 1%. This can be advantageous if you know your product/business. For example, if you own a fast food restaurant, it may be worth targeting a lower income demographic. Meanwhile, if you’re advertising for an expensive, five-star restaurant, targeting a higher income demographic makes more sense. With this ability, it may even be worth increasing your product prices while targeting a more wealthy demographic to give the impression of higher quality and value.
It’s worth noting, however, that Facebook is in the process of revamping some of their targeting options, and this kind of detailed financial targeting looks to be disappearing in the near future. We’ll be covering that in an upcoming article.
By Purchase Behavior
In the purchase behavior section, users can choose the category in which their product belongs, and target users who are “known or likely buyers” of that product. This is one of the most obvious and effective ways of selling your product for a conversion campaign. How does Facebook acquire this information? They say it’s ‘based on information provided by Oracle Data Cloud. Loyalty card and transaction-level household purchase data with multi-channel coverage across all product categories’. While the data may not always be 100% accurate, however, it is constantly being improved with up to 15% of your ad spend going towards data costs.
By Gender
These demographic options aren’t always obvious. Of course, if you’re selling men’s care products, you should probably be targeting men. However, even targeting only men for a men’s care product has its flaws. Certain items are often purchased as gifts. By excluding either men or women you may be missing out on conversions. The best solution is to do your research before creating your ad to make sure you fully understand your target audience.
By Age
This is another demographic where research and real thought must be put into place. During the summer of 2017, when I started my first ecommerce store, I ran Facebook ads to sell fidget spinners. Of course, the minimum age for advertising was 18 years old, so I needed a way to target an audience that would purchase my goods. My first thought was the end user: children between the ages of 6-10. They couldn’t purchase fidget spinners because they couldn’t be targeted with ads. Their parents, however, could be advertised to, so I decided to choose a demographic of women between the ages of 30-38 for my first ad. My reasoning was that they were the perfect age demographic to have kids between the ages of 6-10. After running my campaign for a few days, my CPA (cost per acquisition) was around $1.50 – a fairly low cost for the markup on my items. This helped drive sales on my Shopify website, and showed me the power of Facebook ads. Looking back, I would have created multiple ads within my Facebook ad sets to lower my CPA and drive more sales with the same budget.
Facebook ads have amazing potential to help grow your business with the ability to accurately target your audience. They often need to be thought out and analyzed using third-party data but you can see amazing results if ads are created properly. Consider Facebook Ads for your next marketing campaign, but act fast – again, Facebook is removing some of their most detailed targeting options.
3 Tips to Boost Your Social Media Presence using Video
/by Corey PadveenThe average American checks their phone 46 times per day. Whether your audience is using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or another social media platform, video stands out on their feed.
Using video to increase visibility and engagement, however, is often overlooked by account managers as part of their social media marketing plan despite being an effective strategy. The following suggestions will help you create videos that make an impact on your audience and establish your social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Add Subtitles
Adding subtitles to your videos can effectively increase the view-through rate (VTR) of your videos. It defeats the potentially disruptive aspect of audio and allows viewers to enjoy videos throughout their day in public or in private. In addition to increasing the ability to view videos in places where they may normally be disruptive, subtitles can help grasp the attention of your audience. All three mentioned social media channels have auto-play video features. However, the volume of videos remains muted until a viewer decides to activate sound. Adding subtitles can help your audience quickly understand what your video is about, and whether or not they want to watch it.
Grasp Attention Quickly
With an endless amount of content being delivered to social media users, your video has to stand out from the crowd of posts if you want it to be noticed. As users are scrolling through their feed, they don’t stop to look at everything. The first 3 seconds of your video must be able to grasp the attention of your audience. Use high-quality visuals, humor, shock, interesting subtitles, a gripping story, etc. to capture a viewer’s attention. Tip: Try to keep your video less than 60 seconds long. With the average human attention span lasting only 8 seconds, keeping your audience focused for longer than a minute may prove more difficult than you’d think. Hubspot recommends a maximum of 30 seconds for an Instagram video, 45 seconds for Twitter, and 60 for Facebook.
Tell a Story
If you own or work for a small business, your brand story is what sets you apart from the big brands which often don’t have genuine, relatable, human qualities. Big corporations are veering towards high-quality production. However, it comes with a loss of authenticity and charm. Use video to tell the captivating story of your company with your audience. An effective medium for telling your brand’s story is the use of Instagram and Facebook Stories. Instagram Stories see over 400 million daily users while Facebook stories have grown to over 150 million daily users. Effective storytelling can portray authenticity and establish trust with your audience. As a small business owner or account manager, you are most likely surrounded by the day to day activities of your company. Take advantage of the situation and film different aspects of your company, or have employees record their daily highlights. Ex: If you own a hot sauce company: film yourself making hot sauce, going to visit suppliers, engaging with the community, making sales, designing packaging, etc. Remember, anything can be interesting if you frame it the right way. The camera quality doesn’t have to be professional grade – many of today’s smartphone cameras are able to achieve amazing video results. Post your stories consistently to achieve optimal audience growth.
These guidelines for creating captivating videos can easily increase and boost your social media presence and keep your audience interested. As they become increasingly popular in 2018, now is the time to take action and dive head first into the world of social media videos.