Posts tagged: Blog

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!

KFC’s UK CMO believes that its response to the ‘chicken crisis’ is a testament to the strength of its relationship with its digital marketing agency and shows a brand that is confident in its identity and place in a modernising fast food market.

In response to the crisis that saw stores across the UK run out of chicken – probably the worst thing that could happen to a fried chicken restaurant – Meghan Farren (CMO of KFC UK) chose wit and humanity instead of the usual apologetic response. In a PR campaign, KFC chose to reverse their logo and rearrange the letters to instead say ‘FCK’.

Farren said “You want me to write FCK on our bucket? You want me to turn our brand into a swear word?!” and was incredulous at the start, but after a humorous response from lawyers and other company managers, she realised the good humour and human error behind the PR stunt.

She also said “We had nothing to hide or spin. We just wanted to get answers to everyone’s questions as fast as possible and match the tone to the tone of public sentiment. That’s one of my biggest lessons; it’s very easy when you are a business that is internally under immense pressure to forget that that context is not the context of the public.” Their marketing company really did wonders here to restore public faith and a public apology from one of the UKs biggest fast food brands.

The response really highlights the importance of employing a marketing agency that really understands their clients. Seeing agencies as ‘real business partners’ has been key to the success of the relationships between businesses and marketing companies. Their agency also brought back The Colonel into their UK advertising for the first time in 40 years.

Agencies are responsible for creative, almost none of which KFC does in-house. “We rely on agencies a lot because we have a super lean team. We own the direction, vision and strategy, with input and challenge from the agencies because it’s collaborative.”

KFC has obviously made a smart decision when it comes to their marketing. If a PR disaster comes about, it is essential to have a marketing team on side to help restore your brand rapport! If you would like to learn more about what PIXAFUSION Digital can do for you, then get in contact today.