Monthly Archives: June 2020

Retargeting in today’s social climate is absolutely critical. If you’re already doing it, you’ll know so. If you’re not, this is something quick and easy to implement, that can have a colossal impact on your business. Generally, retargeting can increase your inflow by 15%+.

Retargeting is a separate form of marketing that’s exclusive to people that have already seen an offer of yours, been to your website, subscribed to a list, engaged with your page, anyone that’s taken any form of action whatsoever. Retargeting can be used across the internet but for now, we’re going to stick with an example for Facebook retargeting.

Let’s say you’re selling an amazing new shampoo. You have 1,000 website visits last month. Putting sales aside, let’s say 250 out of those 1,000-people added your shampoo to their cart, but they didn’t complete their purchase. With retargeting, you could then show ads specifically to those people on Facebook, reminding them about their cart, and even offering them a discount code AND/OR with the people that visited but didn’t add to cart, you can have a separate campaign “hey thanks for visiting our site! We’d love to have you back, use code OFFER20 at checkout for a 20% discount on your order, shipping is free too! Look forward to the best smelling hair in town”.

You can do this with people on your email list, people that liked a particular post on your page, watched a particular video on your website, it’s the most accurate form of marketing around, and because you’re targeting such a small set of people, it’s cheap too!

When you have your FB pixel installed, it tracks all your website visitors, meaning you can set up specific campaigns targeting certain people. FB Pixel Aside from the data gathering is the super intelligent beast behind Facebook ads. The pixel is both tracking code you install on your website/sales funnels/pages, and it is also the hub where Facebook stores your advertising data.

Your pixel is unique to your ad account, and it has a number of different triggers that can be fired, like “visit” “purchase” or “sign up”. When someone visits a website with a pixel installed, it will fire as a “visit” from that person, and a “purchase” should they buy anything.

Facebook ads (or Instagram/LinkedIn/Youtube), is interruption marketing. You’re appearing in a news feed, in between video content, or wherever else, and trying to grab their attention, build their interest, and encourage them to take an action. It’s more common for impulse purchases, viral content, or broader offerings. Google Adwords is very different, it’s search traffic, so people are specifically looking for what you’re offering. Although you can also appear in other places if you’re smart.

With certain products/services, you’ll find you can have a higher ROI with Adwords. It’s typically the case with higher-ticket products/services, niche offerings, or anything B2B. For example, let’s say you’re a company that builds exhibition stands for businesses. In this instance, Adwords will be more effective because you’re going to be appearing when people search for terms like “exhibition stand builders or “bespoke exhibitions stands”. Whereas on Facebook, it would be difficult to narrow down your audience.

A combination of Adwords and Facebook retargeting is often a highly effective approach for B2B and higher ticket products/services. The skill in Adwords is knowing what terms to bid for, whether to be broad or exact and optimising the campaign with the data you get, ensuring your ROI is as strong as possible.

Youtube ads run from within the Google Adwords platform and is arguably the hottest platform right now. With Youtube ads a) most of the time watchers will have the volume switched on, and b) it’s compulsory to watch the initial part of the ad before they can skip it. So, you have a pretty sizeable window to get their attention and capture their interest. Youtube is also highly targeted, not only can you show up on specific videos and channels, but you can target people based on the specific websites they have visited…

Finally, LinkedIn functions VERY similar to Facebook ads, but it’s more suited to professionals and the B2B market. Another aspect of LinkedIn that isn’t available on FB is “Inmail” marketing. This is guaranteed delivered and read emails, so it can be really effective when used well.

We’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve seen certain products or services smashing it on Facebook, whilst we’ve been watching thinking “I can’t believe anyone is buying this, let alone from seeing a Facebook ad!”. You can test any idea on Facebook, and can usually tell within the first spend whether the campaign will be successful of not.

Speaking broadly, B2C generally does far better on Facebook than B2B. That doesn’t mean to say B2B isn’t effective; you can target pretty much anyone on Facebook.

Is your target audience active on Facebook? Chances are, the answer is yes, as most of the population is active on Facebook. It all comes down to your approach and how you speak to them. Physical items do extremely well on Facebook, as do events, and anything else people can share and tag friends/family in. Some things are harder to market than others on FB, and some things are more suitable for Google Adwords, rather than Facebook marketing. Generating leads on Facebook is something we swear blind by, as well as retargeting.

Facebook gathers a lot of data on its users, from location and gender to more specific things like interests and certain behaviours E.G. Interested in horses or buys luxury brands.

This information can be used to your advantage when running a marketing campaign from the Facebook ads manager, which you can find on your Facebook business account. You create this by going to business.facebook.com. Free, quick and easy to set up.

When you’re running you can choose who exactly it goes in front of, and you can optimise your campaign for the result you want. Once you know who you want your ad to go in front of (we’ll get into the when and where later), you then need to determine what you want them to do. You can optimise your Facebook campaign for a variety of different objectives:

• Website visits
• Purchases
• Messages to your Facebook page
• Video views
• Downloads
• Opt-ins
• Appointments
• Phone Calls

Facebook will then show your ad to the people in the audience you’ve specified. It will spend your money wisely when doing this and will aim to complete your objective for as little cash as possible. The more pixel data you have, the more accurate your ads will be (more on that later too).

So where do your ads show up?

• In the news feed on mobile and/or desktop (you’ve likely seen these before, they look like any other post but have “sponsored” in little grey text in the top left corner)
• In the sidebar (those little-classified ads style ones you see)
• Between video content (a bit like a TV advert)
• Instagram, in the form of posts in the feed, or between Instagram stories.
• Facebook audience network (a variety of banners and other things across the web, most people switch this one off, always)

So there you have it, the main components of how a Facebook ad works. There are tonnes of other things we could mention but we hope this simple explanation will suffice for now! Furthermore, the Instagram platform is synonymous with Facebook, so you can run ads on Instagram as well as Facebook.

Myths are common surrounding marketing and SMEs so this blog is going to be all about getting facts straight and improving your marketing strategy! When you are running small to medium-sized businesses, you’ll often feel like you are juggling countless concerns and responsibilities. As a result, it can be easy to let tasks slide down your list of priorities and usually the buck stops at marketing. There are a few common misconceptions that are leading business owners to think that marketing isn’t as vital as it really is.

1- Social media is easy to attract customers…

Social media has been hailed as a great leveller for SMEs as it offers a very affordable way forthem to boost their brand visibility and compete with competitors. But having simple pagesonline isn’t really enough. As with any other marketing platform you have to have a clear andeffective way of utilising them. Be selective with your posts, don’t just post for the sake of it or‘spam’ post which will irritate your followers and potentially even lead to unfollowing. Makesure you analyse the metrics and establish which posts are getting the most likes and views.Reply to people’s comments, this boosts your online visibility and allows you to learn first-handmore about your client base!

2- Marketing is working… I don’t need to change it!

Marketing is forever adapting and changing to fit modern technologies and trends. You can’t afford to stand still and stay the same when your competitors will be changing. You may haveprocesses in place that have worked very well, but will they always continue to pay off? Probablynot. Customer tastes and preferences are changing all the time and you need to be open-mindedwhen it comes to learning what is on trend in your industry otherwise you may risk becomingirrelevant or outdated.

3- The larger audience reached the better.

If you focus on reaching a large audience rather than specialising toward a specific target market you could really miss out on making a real impression on certain customers. A mass marketing campaign will not reach the specific kind of person you are looking for and is therefore a waste of time and money. Brands should understand what makes the customers tick and engage with them in a more personal way for the most effective results!

Make sure you are not swayed by misconceptions when it comes to marketing because it could lead to a detrimental effect on your success. If you have any questions about your own marketing strategy, please get in touch today!