Author: Peyton Riddle

Spring Cleaning your Brand in 2021

Posted on | by Peyton Riddle

The early part of a new year is great for more than just cleaning out your house. The spring season is an ideal time to revitalize your brand as well. And in 2021, the need to take a fresh look at your brand image is made more important by the evolving state of the pandemic.

So what are the most important aspects of your brand to reimagine, and how should you go about rebranding?

Logo and Brand Identity  

Your logo is a customer’s first impression of your brand, so it should feel modern. You want your customer to feel like they are interacting with a brand that exists in the current landscape. 

While not everyone is a graphic designer, there are still subconscious impressions that customers have about modern style and design. People know a logo from the 90’s or early 00’s when they see one.

Evaluate your creative assets. A strong logo is the pillar of your marketing efforts and is essential for building brand recognition. 

Companies are constantly evolving, and a refresh keeps your brand from feeling or looking old. On average companies update their identity every 7-10 years. Renew and refresh your company’s vibrancy and set yourself apart from the competition with an updated logo.

Popular website builder tool Wix identified the following styles as top logo design trends in 2021.

  • Hand-drawn imagery
  • Back to basic shapes (with a twist)
  • Overlapping text
  • Bringing classic symbols back to life
  • Optical illusions
  • Analogous color schemes
  • Breaking the rules of composition
  • Incorporating nature imagery
  • Using emojis

Brand Values

The next point should inform every decision you make about your brand when doing a refresh in 2021. Your brand values affect everything from how you should conduct your social media, to your advertising messages, all the way to how you run your business operations.

Your company’s acknowledgement and awareness and adaptability to COVID-19 is the most important “value” to work on. Even though we are nearly a year into the pandemic and vaccines are rolling out to more people every month, customers need to know that you’re still doing what’s best for everyone’s safety. 

Take a look at the first places people see any messages you put out. Think about your instagram bio, your facebook featured image or description, the front page of your website. These are all places that people should see something about your response to COVID. Even something as simple as stating that you’re requiring masks in person, or sanitizing your offices or store. 

If this is something that you haven’t already done over the last year, it’s not too late. Make COVID considerations a part of your entire rebrand as you go about planning it.

Take this time to also consider what social movements might be important to you. Black History Month and Women’s History Month are on people’s minds during this part of the year,  with February and March being dedicated to the movements, respectively. Build out plans to celebrate the messages that are important to you.

Social Media

Evaluate the social media accounts you are currently using and make sure they are updated with current logos, images and links to your website. Review and refresh your social media strategy, set goals, examine analytics and build robust content calendars. 

LinkedIn and Twitter are the fundamental social accounts for financial services, but Instagram can bolster brand awareness and help you engage with clients. Sprout Social reports that Instagram passed the 1 billion user mark in late 2020. So you’ll be missing out on a massive audience by leaving this platform to gather dust. 

Your employees are also key in building your social media presence. Recommend that their profiles are up to date and connected to your business page. Encourage your employees to connect on LinkedIn and share your content. They are valuable to organically expanding your social reach and building brand awareness. 

Finally, don’t forget to clean out your messages and make sure you haven’t missed any questions, comments, concerns, or feedback. Clients expect instant responses, this is a chance to showcase exceptional client service in a public forum.

Tips for getting your social media ads noticed in 2021

Posted on | by Peyton Riddle

Are your ads getting noticed as much as you’d like? Are you looking for ways to grab your audience’s attention? Successful social media ads entice consumers to watch, listen to or click on the message.

So what are the things you should focus on in your social media advertising, in order to get the most out of your investment?

Script It for Broadcast

Podcasting is a great opportunity to reach a new, attentive and engaged audience.

Whether your ad is scripted like a radio spot or read aloud by the podcast host, it will come across as more authentic than any sponsored Facebook post ever could. The audience knows it’s an ad because it sounds like an ad, and that’s okay.

Don’t underestimate the time and resources this kind of advertising requires, though. You’ll need to either have a trusted podcaster do it for you or be extremely creative with how you deliver your messaging.

Use Video or GIFs

Video has been hot for a few years now, but a lot has changed recently. For example, Facebook has autoplay on video and supports animated GIFs, and Instagram allows all brands to run video ads, where it once did not.

Great content combined with motion is an irresistible combination that gives you the opportunity to engage with consumers on a deeper level. Video marketing can be tricky though, so you need to keep a few things in mind.

First, although many videos on social media feature autoplay, your message shouldn’t rely on audio. Most users of these platforms pop open their app to pass the time in public places. Its highly likely that they won’t have the sound turned on on their phones.

Don’t assume your audience is listening, but do assume they’re watching. Most video ads today incorporate native subtitles, and the best ads use them in creative, visually engaging ways. Utilize this text motion to pull the user in and emphasize words visually, since they cannot hear the emphasis audibly.

Instagram’s latest venture is Reels, a TikTok competitor that is an excellent place for video ads

Second, if you’re thinking about diving into Instagram video ads, know that they’re limited to 60 seconds, with story ads limited to 15 seconds. Familiarize yourself with the recommended video specs for ads on facebook, which apply to Instagram as well. Skip any opening graphics or stills and get right to the story. Also, Instagram was built on an audience that appreciates beautiful and inspiring visuals, so think beyond basic storytelling and consider using a mix of still imagery and video.

Incorporate Humor

Many brands have found success by taking social media advertising and turning it into a parody of itself. Incorporating humor into your ads is an effective way to connect with your audience and entice them to click through to your form or other content. Humor is one of the best emotions to tap into if you want your content to generate engagement, so lighten up and make your audience laugh.

Just know that using humor and sarcasm doesn’t necessarily work for every brand. Your ad content and campaign need to reflect your brand voice and resonate well with your target audience. Done well, it works. If you miss the mark, it can be a social media disaster.

Provide Content Downloads

Instead of simply advertising to consumers, what if you provided useful content? This isn’t a new concept, it’s essential to content marketing, but it’s something you want to embrace.

Develop useful content and promote it with social media ads.
Whether you’re in B2C or B2B, you have something to offer. Content marketers might get thousands of downloads of ebooks on topics ranging from purchasing wholesale hot tub parts to picking the right preschool.

If you need help figuring out where to start, look at your company’s blog and social stats. Which blog posts are the most popular? Which social content gets the most engagement? Build on that. And if you’re still stuck, look at your competitors. What kind of content are they offering? Do that, but do it better.

Once you have your content, consider spending marketing dollars on getting it published on other sites like Reddit, using a traffic tool or promoting it on social media using custom and targeted audiences.

Make yourself worthy of attention

It is becoming harder every year to compete with customers’ attention spans. Apps like Tik Tok and Instagram throw them quick, consumable content that encourages moving on fast. If something doesn’t hook the user in the first 5 seconds, there is an endless trove of content they can turn to instead.

On top of this, people are developing blindness to branded content on social media. It has become so normal to see every 3 posts appear as an ad, that users know when to tune out.

No matter how native your content is, they aren’t likely to want to click on an ad. The trick is to create ads that are valuable enough for consumers to willingly click on them. This means getting out of your comfort zone and seeking new methods.

7 Things Facebook Advertisers Should Know in 2021

Posted on | by Peyton Riddle

2021 is bringing more changes to the social media advertising landscape than we’ve seen in a long time. Between redesigns, new apps, and a major shift around user data privacy, businesses have a lot to pay attention to over the coming year.

Here are some of the most pertinent changes and updates that affect advertisers on the largest social media platform.

User data privacy changes

Facebook has wrapped itself up in an ongoing conflict with Apple. As Apple emphasizes the importance of user’s data privacy, Facebook has growing concerns about how this limits advertisers’ ability to efficiently target people.

As Apple’s latest privacy-focused iPhone operating system rolls out to phones across the globe, Facebook is implementing changes to ads manager that prepare for limitations and delays on ad analytics and user data. The biggest thing Facebook is recommending advertisers do to prepare is create and prioritize 8 “events” that report how users interact with your website after clicking on your ad.

Read more about the ongoing tech giant battle in another one of our recent blogs.

Facebook’s Redesign

The redesign of Facebook was loved by many, and not-so-loved by many more. Regardless, it’s here to stay. The primary change to note is that the design places more emphasis on Groups and Events – the “two biggest reasons people visit Facebook every day.”

Business manager settings have also shifted around as a part of the redesign. If you find yourself unable to find certain features, there is a way to get back to the old interface for your business page.

Users can no longer opt out of Facebook’s redesigned interface.

To do this, rather than clicking on your page from a shortcut on the main Facebook “feed” page, start in the business manager homepage, business.facebook.com. From here, you can select any of your pages in the center of the screen. Clicking the “Go To Page” button will bring you to the page interface you’re likely much more familiar with.

One thing I’ve found is that it is much easier to search and sort through your page’s posts in this interface. The redesign has removed the “posts” tab entirely from pages.

This frustration with the redesign is alleviated somewhat by the “creator studio” feature, which shows valuable data on your posts and allows you to boost posts through your content library. But for those who are familiar with promoting their page though an older interface, there are still options for you.

More text is allowed on ads

Facebook once penalized ads with higher amounts of image text in auctions and delivery. As of September 7, 2020, this has seemingly been changed. All warnings and labels that previously told advertisers that overusing text would limit their ad’s reach have been removed. It’s hard to say if this means the policy changed, or if Facebook simply no longer warns advertisers about this.

Hashtags on Facebook

While most creators will steer clear from adding hashtags to Facebook posts, the platform is implementing recommended tag listings within the post composer. In September of 2020, the test had only expanded to a specific audience, as not all users see the new listings. It could be a good way to broaden your conversation. Statistically, they do seem to be taking flight, but implementing them may or may not be worth the added effort.

New “Collab” app

Facebook has begun rolling out its latest TikTok competitor. While the Facebook-owned Instagram already has “Reels” to compete with the short-form video content app, Collab will focus on collaborative music making.

Advertisers should be paying attention to Collab, Facebook’s latest answer to TikTok.

The standalone app recently came out of public beta testing and launched on the App store in December 2020. It is not fully clear yet how advertising will play into the service, and if the existing ads manager platform will adopt Collab ads.

With the meteoric success of TikTok, it’s worth paying attention to all competitors in 2021.

Image owner rights

According to the social media behemoth itself, about 3 billion people use Facebook’s platforms, including Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. In other words, where Facebook goes, its other platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp are sure to follow.

Facebook announced in late 2020 that “certain partners” can claim ownership over their images, and then moderate their usage across Facebook’s platforms. As it stands, this implementation could affect re-posted content on Facebook and Instagram in various ways. The current options that an image owner has when it identifies unauthorized usage are:

– Let the image stay up
– Issue a take-down notice
– Or use a territorial block, making it invisible in copywritten countries

Facebook Business Suite

As Facebook continues to roll its main platform and Instagram together, as shown by the merging of messages on both apps, the company has introduced another platform for content creation and scheduling.

Business Suite helps users to:

Save time – Post to Facebook and Instagram at the same time and manage posts in one place to stay connected to both communities.
Stay up to date – Get all your Facebook and Instagram messages, notifications, and alerts in one place so you can stay up to date and respond to all your customers more easily.
View business results – See what is working with Facebook and Instagram insights and learn what your customers are looking for.

While the message management tool is the same as Pages Managers, there is also a user-friendly analytics integration, making it easier to get an in-depth look at post performance.

As this tool is rolled out, keep in mind that Facebook intends to make Business Suite “the main interface for businesses of all sizes who use Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp.”

Breaking down Facebook and Apple’s fight over targeted advertising

Posted on | by Peyton Riddle

There is a war raging between Facebook and Apple, two of the biggest controlling forces in the targeted advertising space. The conflict has been building for months, and it is now in full swing, with both users and businesses caught in the middle. 

The struggle is over Apple’s fight for user data privacy vs Facebook’s need to gather user data in order to help businesses deliver targeted ads. So let’s first break down the changes Apple has made that started this all.

Apple’s push for privacy

When the iPhone operating system iOS 14 released last fall, Apple doubled down on their continued efforts to ensure users that their personal data is protected on an iPhone. The company detailed an upcoming system that would force every available app to ask the user for permission to save their data. 

Users have always had some level of control over their privacy on iphones, which continued to be the most sold smartphone in 2020, but this update made a large splash. Now, users would be presented with a large notification upon first opening an app that tells them they can deny the app any ability to track them. Surely most users would make the choice to protect their data.

All apps are required to show users this message when first opened

This could have a strong, negative impact on businesses that rely on user data to help their social ads target the right audience. 

There was such a strong initial pushback against the requirement that Apple decided to delay the enforcement of this feature until 2021 after its announcement in September 2020. And now that the feature has arrived on app-makers’ doorsteps, Facebook is scrambling.

Facebook’s campaign against Apple

Facebook’s fight against this change began with a series of announcements to users across its main app and its business manager platform. 

The message read, “Apple has announced product and policy changes that may significantly impact the way you can run ads, measure performance, and engage customers.” It also linked to a blog update that laid out a more detailed response to Apple’s decision.

In a more reactionary section titled “Our Response”, Facebook said that they disagree with Apple’s approach, but they have no choice but to comply, or else Facebook will be blocked from the App Store. They claim that rejecting the policy and being blocked would “only further harm the businesses and users that rely on our services.”

Perhaps the most attention grabbing tactic Facebook has taken was placing multiple full-page ads in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and the Washington Post. The second ad, titled “Apple vs. the free internet,” the tech giant aligned itself with the needs of small businesses and free ad-supported websites in an effort to appeal to readers.

Apple CEO Tim Cook took to Twitter to defend the company’s decision, saying “We believe users should have the choice over the data that is being collected about them and how it’s used. Facebook can continue to track users across apps and websites as before, App Tracking Transparency in iOS 14 will just require that they ask for your permission first.

How this affects your business

It needs to be made clear that both businesses wrapped up in this conflict are invested only for the financial impact these features have. Facebook clearly cares how much money businesses are willing to spend on utilizing Facebook’s swath of user data for targeted ads. And Apple is leaning into privacy features because it has become a major selling point for their products in recent years. It is perhaps their largest marketing push in the last year.

So while Facebook claims this campaign is being done in support of small businesses, this is clearly an appeal to the humanity of users. They want negative word of mouth to start spreading against Apple, in hopes that the feature gets rolled back. 

But at the same time, nothing Facebook is claiming is false. This change does have the potential to decrease the reach and link clicks of businesses advertisements through the platform. 

So in the end, it falls on your business to decide how you want to market yourself while this fight ensues. If the bulk of your marketing is done through facebook ads, it might be worth investing in other ad platforms that aren’t as impacted by Apple’s privacy feature. Some businesses are focusing more on their Android phone applications, as the Google Play Store is not presenting users with the same privacy notifications.

What’s important here is that businesses don’t need to pick a side. These are two major tech companies fighting to keep their marketing effective. Don’t get caught in the middle, just stay informed and find ways to shift your marketing efforts while users make their choice for either privacy or personalization. It truly could go either way.

To read more from us about balancing targeted ads in the age of digital privacy, check out our recent blog.

10 Reasons to Start Planning Your 2021 Event Sponsorship

Posted on | by Peyton Riddle

2021 is on the horizon and there is no better time than now to make sponsorship plans. COVID-19 has affected the event landscape in a major way. Events are changing, and so should the way sponsorships are planned and executed.

Every business in the market wants to create an image of success and authority. But it’s not very easy when you are competing with the large, already established, companies. Through event sponsorship you can leverage the power of credibility.

If you are thinking of stretching your marketing budget, here are 10 reasons why you should sponsor an event.

Brand Visibility

Sponsoring an event brings your business in the limelight. The event you sponsor puts your business in front of a global audience and gets you a lot of mention in the social media and press. The bigger the event, the bigger the reach.

And in an era of virtual and online-hosted events, reach is actually increasing. More people are open to the idea of attending an event from the comfort of their couch. You don’t have to rely on only reaching the people who enjoy public outings. Under COVID lockdown measures, both audiences are engaging in virtual events.

Lead Generation

With event sponsorship you reach a huge population at one place. You get to meet your target audience and approach them all under one roof. The event organizers also provide a list of attendees which you can use for email marketing.

Business Relationships

Event sponsorship is an opportunity to meet non-competitive companies from your industry and in your area. Sponsorship is a way to collaborate, rather than compete. You can learn more about other businesses that share your target audience and likely hold the same values, which could help plan future partnerships.

Increase Sales of Products

With event sponsorship you get to increase your sales. You can put your products in the hands of your target audience and let them experience it. You can also pass on some free samples which will lead to increase in sales. In the virtual space, you can give product or service demonstrations. You can even have an easy way for the viewers to click through and sign up to learn more, opt in to email messaging or just make a purchase!

Show Social Responsibility

Event sponsorship is a way to show that your business supports a cause or mission about which your customers are passionate about. It helps you to build an image in the society and connect with customers on an emotional front.

Enhance Content & Social Media Marketing

Sponsoring an event gives you a lot of content for ramping up your strategies. Events can put your brand name in every possible social media platform including the event’s official website boosting your reach on social media.

Improve Your Company’s Image

When your business sponsors a big event with a wide enough base, the public perception of your business is as big as the host of the event. People see you as big professional and reputable business.

Learn More About Your Target Audience

Event sponsorships are an opportunity to meet your target audience, though not always in person. Virtual events will continue to be popular even after we start returning to in-person gatherings. But both types of events allow you to interact with your audience.

As a sponsor, you can work with the event host to hold an interactive Q&A segment as a part of a virtual event. Get the audience engaged and learn what they’re interested in, and ideally tie it back to what your business does.

Sponsorships are Affordable

Radio, television and print ads continue to work well and even work together. However, these take a great deal of your time and could potentially be out of your budget. Event sponsorships save you the time and money of having to target an audience. Let the audience choose to come to you through the event.

Get a Strong ROI

All in all, event sponsorships get you a solid return on investment. You get to approach your target audience, increase your sales and you get a list of leads to follow up with afterwards.

Event sponsorship is a deal with a lot of benefits. So start planning how this could fit into your 2021 budget now, before sponsorship slots fill up. Events often live or die based on sponsors, so showing that you have interest and can help support live and local events can help everyone involved.

The Value of Repurposing Content

Posted on | by Peyton Riddle

Reusing old content has become more valuable than ever in 2020. On top of that, there’s no better time to revitalize old posts than during the holidays. Between the stresses of dealing with COVID-19 as a business and planning time away from work, pulling content out of the vault can lift many burdens.

Depending on what your business produces to market itself, there will be different ways to repurpose it. But the core idea remains the same; take valuable content that has been buried under newer things, add a new spin on it, and push it back to the top of your feed.

Why reuse old content?

Before diving into your past catalog and simply re-posting everything you have, let’s dissect why this is important to do. Understanding the value of repurposed content will help you to decide which pieces to revitalize and how to do it.

Save time/money

The most obvious reason to go about this, is that you’ll save time and possibly money. Repurposing old content can often take a fraction of the time and effort it would take to create something new.

If you’re working with a third party such as an agency, you probably are conscious of both time and money. Your agency can help identify good content to reuse, based on how well it performed. The agency can then transform that at a faster pace and a cheaper cost than producing something original.

The process can even be automated. If you have timeless content, meaning it wouldn’t need any rewriting or additions, you can set up a system to automatically republish content. This is great for the holiday season once you start to take time off. This can be done through something as simple as using social media to post links to your content. Or on a deeper level, set up your website to push old, but relevant blogs to the top of the page.

Boost SEO

Your content can only truly boost the overall SEO of your website if people are visiting and spending time viewing your content. So don’t let your old content go to waste by hiding it in the past.

Giving people a fresh reason to visit your page will add to the existing SEO power that it built up originally. Whether you decide to update your existing content’s page, or copy the contents to create a new, fresh page, the SEO benefits will be great. You can attribute your new content back to the old post. More pages on your site means stronger search engine value. 

Reach new audiences

This boost in SEO is also one way that your repurposed content will attract new audiences. Perhaps your content didn’t’ achieve its full potential the first time. Giving it a second chance will do nothing but positive things for your brand’s reach. 

Times have changed dramatically in 2020. People are living their lives in ways we never saw coming, due to quarantines and social distancing. Chances are high that your business can play on these life changes in some way. Take a look back at your history of content marketing. You might just find something that is now relevant to a wider audience.

Just be sure not to overdo it by rehashing the same topics week after week. You don’t want people to see you as a brand with nothing new to say.

How should you reuse content?

Content marketing comes in many forms, and they cannot all be treated equally when it comes to repurposing. Once you’ve identified what’s worth reusing, you have to find the right approach to doing so.

Blogs

Blogs often rely on data to back up points, which builds up your brand’s expertise on a subject. One straight-forward approach to reusing old blogs is to update them with newer data. Add new links to externals sources, or even new backlinks to pages on your site that didn’t exist before. This all adds to SEO and brand image.

You don’t even have to keep the blog in written form to reuse it. Consider ways to turn your writing into podcasts or videos. Come up with new ways for audiences to digest your content. Not everyone engages with content in the same way.

Once you have a solid backlog of blog content, you can compile related blogs into a single collection. This can even take the form of a physically published book. 

The purpose of blogs in content marketing is mainly to build up the brand image by showing your expertise. Reminding people that they can engage with your content in different ways gives them more chances to see that you’re an expert.

Videos

Video content does not need to be reshot in order to be repurposed. Graphics, text, and animations can be added to transform your video.

Are you proud of a recent award or achievement your business achieved? Commercials or other video marketing pieces are a great place to insert graphics announcing your success.

If you have the time, recording new voice-over narration and adding new music is a great way to reuse videos. You won’t have to bother reshooting footage, and the content will still feel fresh. This is a great way to make new announcements for your business or share anything that has changed since the original video.

This is an important thing to remember even when shooting footage for entirely new videos. Always incorporate some level of timelessness. You can always cut things out, but try to get enough evergreen footage in your content that it can be trimmed and reused. 

Social Media

Social media is made for throwbacks. We’ve even dedicated a whole day of each week to it. Engage in the Throwback Thursday trend to reshare old posts with your followers. 

Hopefully, your follower count is always growing, so there should always be new eyes to share your content with. This can be done through stories, so you don’t have to clutter up your feed with duplicate content.

The cycle of reusing content can involve every channel. So if you’re refreshed an old blog for 2021, share that out on social media. You can do something as easy as taking the original image you used to post about the blog the first time, and add an “updated for 2021” text stamp on it. 

One important thing to remember when updating content that has been shared on social, is to make sure links still work. If you’ve gone back to edit an old blog, or have published a new version of a blog, make sure your posts link out to the new content. And always make sure no posts are linking to a page that no longer exists. Set up redirects to solve this issue.

Dealing with Pandemic Black Friday Sales as a Local Business

Posted on | by Peyton Riddle

COVID-19 has caused retailers across the globe to shift to a heavier focus on digital sales. Lockdown restrictions may have eased, but the country is starting to see a resurgence of COVID cases. Small and local businesses have found ways to balance in-person sales with online throughout this year. But what happens when the busiest shopping day of the year rolls around during a pandemic?

There are a few marketing tactics that can be used to adapt to the pandemic and keep customers excited and ready to do business with you. Black Friday and the holiday season in general is something businesses don’t want to miss out on. And in a year that has been financially straining, these sales could be more important than ever.

Get started now!

Most big box retail businesses like amazon and best buy and walmart are opting to host a sort of “black friday month” this year. They have planned out exclusive sales that either last the entire month, or have flash sales sprinkled throughout the month.  

A large number of retailers began their holiday season of discounts before Halloween even arrived. If you’re waiting until that usual last week of November, you’ll be way behind. Let customers know that your exclusive holiday discounts are already available and will be throughout the month.

Starting sales early is a great idea for small businesses, as it means customers won’t feel the need to all show up at your store at the same time. People are selective about when they go out this year, so if you have multiple dates in which customers can get access to your sales, your chances of getting their business go up.

Build a system for customer safety

Customers need to know that you’re being conscious of their safety during the holiday season. One thing you can do to make this clear is by offering appointment visits to your business. Naturally people will be hesitant to enter a store or office if they don’t know how many other customers might be there when they arrive. 

An appointment-only operation has the benefit of ensuring customer safety, while also making customers feel like they are being catered to specifically. A customer that came out to a business at a preset appointment is more likely to spend money than if they casually strolled into your building on a whim. You’re enabling a level of commitment. Make your customers think “well I bothered making an appointment, it would be a waste to leave without buying something.”

People need to also know that you are enforcing policies that will keep everyone safe. Post signs out front that clearly explain the rules for entering the establishment and be upfront about things like your cleaning procedures and social distancing systems. And most importantly, find a way to enforce whatever mask mandates that apply to your location.

Offer up exclusive digital discounts

It would also be wise to lean into online-exclusive offers this year. Encourage customers to give you their business through digital sales, and you’ll be opening up future business opportunities even when the world starts returning to normal.

Digital sales are also a great way to encourage financially hurting customers to opt for payment plans. These types of plans are becoming more and more commonplace for customers of any financial background.

Adopting contactless payment systems is great for in-store and online safe purchasing.

Making the online purchasing experience easy is also very important in 2020 and beyond. Set your website up with payment systems like Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, Amazon Pay, etc. 

You want to open the door for those less familiar with online purchasing systems. And as digital privacy becomes more and more important to consumers, you’ll want to avoid asking them to enter their credit card numbers into yet another website form. Systems like those mentioned above have safety nets for those who are concerned.

These systems can also be utilized for safer contactless in-store payment.

Get the word out through email

In years past, the strategy for informing customers about your holiday sales would be to plaster signs along your storefront. This is obviously different for each type of business, particularly those that don’t have a storefront and for businesses that sell services without the need for in-person stores and salespeople. But email messaging has already taken over for all kinds of businesses and is a key factor in pandemic marketing.

Getting people on board with your email marketing and keeping them engaged is your starting point, and you’ve hopefully been working on this over the recent years already. But once those emails are rolling into your customer’s inboxes, you need to make sure you are being transparent this season.

Being empathetic to your customers safety concerns is equally important in your emails as it is in your operational decisions. Truly showing customers that you’re caring for them means giving up something on your end. You can offer free shipping with the messaging of “we’ll throw in free shipping so you can stay safe at home and avoid the black friday crowds this year.”

Be empathetic in your marketing messaging

The perfect messaging balance in holiday 2020 will come from showing that you care about the customer’s finances and experiences. This doesn’t necessarily mean directly addressing COVID-19, but try to shift the message away from excitement and overjoyous hype. 

Think carefully about tonality and show sensitivity to how your product or service fits into the lives of customers living in a pandemic. Naturally, a direction to go with this is touting the affordable prices you’re offering. Let customers know that you’re bringing prices down for them out of respect for the mutual struggle that both customers and businesses are dealing with this year.

One way to avoid sounding salesy is to focus on informing customers. For example, if you’re in the business of selling office furniture, don’t point customers directly to product pages on your website. Instead, write a blog that helps them identify the right office chair for their home setup. Identify different issues that people might be individually facing in 2020. 

Don’t just scream “buy now!” at your clientele, offer to help them first. Your discounts will look even more attractive when the customer knows you’ve helped them find their exact, right product or service.

How to Promote your Award-Winning Success

Posted on | by Peyton Riddle

Charleston’s Choice is the community-based award that customers use to show love and support for their favorite local businesses.

The Charleston community nominates and votes for the top businesses in a variety of categories. Then, business owners highlight their honors and give their businesses the extra boost that awards can provide.

Here in Charleston, customers are always on the lookout for Charleston’s Choice honors, as it shows a business is the best of the best. And this goes for all types of awards any business might be recognized for. Let your community know you’ve been recognized through these branding and promotional strategies.

Are you a business owner that has been nominated? This is how you can boost your honor!

Brag in your email marketing

You’ll want to make sure that you’re bragging about your award everywhere you can. Emails are a great place for that. You can make specialized emails focused on your award. Or simply add in the honors to your existing communications.

If you have a regular newsletter, dedicate a special edition to announcing the honors. Make an event out of it and catch subscribers’ attention by detailing how and why you won.

What makes your customer relations the best in the business? Why is your business the top tourist hotspot? Awards carry prestige by nature. But customers want to know just why you’re the best.

This is also a good place to start incorporating the award logo into your branding. This would be temporary and wouldn’t be applicable in all branding locations, so there’s no need to rework your logo. So find the best way to pair your logo with the award branding and place that naturally in your emails. Have employees update their signatures to include that your business is an award winner.

Show off the award with pride

Take advantage of this time to promote your award in the digital and physical space. SEM campaigns can show web searchers that you are a business worth looking into. And traditional web page ads catch the attention of audiences in your area, if you are employing geomarketing capabilities.

Businesses with a customer-facing storefront will have an easy time showing off their award. On-location signage promotes your success to all potential customers or clients. 

But businesses located within a large office complex in their own suite don’t have the opportunity to flaunt as much. Local billboards are a good substitute and open you up for even greater reach.

If physical ads by the side of the highway aren’t your thing, you should at least be showing off your victory on your website and social media pages. Update your website’s hero image and fancy up your homepage for a few weeks to celebrate. Maybe even run a contest to show you want to celebrate with your customers, not just tell them how great you are.

Other benefits of winning awards

If you haven’t gotten your business entered into awards, consider the added benefits outside of attracting new business. The prestige of being an award-winning organization affects all aspects of business.

Awards can bring growth to your business internally as well. It’s not always about showing off the award to the public. Current staff will be able to take pride in the work they do and the company they belong to. It’s an opportunity for a great boost in company morale. So even just putting up the award logo around the office can have great effects.

The celebration events for the awards themselves can also be a great opportunity for employees of winning businesses. Award parties can be a place to network with other winning businesses and build new business relationships.

Our Charleston’s Choice celebration brings together local businesses and gives them a chance to show the community why they were selected for the top honors. Restaurants and beverage companies can share their award-winning creations with attendees.

There is always value in building your face-to-face engagement with your community. Event sponsorships can enable you to directly reach your community and professional peers. It is a great way to build your brand image.

Signs, advertisements and published announcements are the wide-reaching way to show off your accomplishment. But, an event sponsorship gives you a more intimate way to connect with potential customers or partners.

Finally, it should go without saying that a little time to unwind does wonders for everyone.

 

4 Unique Hacks for Facebook Advertising

Posted on | by Peyton Riddle

If you have any experience running multiple ads on Facebook or Instagram through business manager, you probably think the process is standard and straightforward. 

The truth is, it can be. You can duplicate your old ads and change up the creative or targeting slightly, and get a whole new audience for your advertisements. You can save tons of custom audiences in your ad account and reuse them for various ad campaigns. The process is quite easy to get a hang of.

But the tools that business manager provides you with can allow for some creative ways to market your business and find a valuable audience online.

I’ll run through some of the more unique and useful hacks for Facebook Advertising through business manager.

Unicorn Ad Targeting

This hack goes against conventional advertising wisdom, at first glance. But depending on your business, it could lead to stronger customer acquisition and retention. 

The idea of unicorn ad targeting is that you can combine unrelated interests to get such unique targeting that the customer can’t help but pay attention. Audiences have become very used to seeing advertisements that target one of their interests. But they aren’t used to seeing ads that target multiple of their unique interests.

For example, you can target someone who has an interest in boating and sunflowers. Your ad can sell them a boat flag that features a sunflower. The people who fall into this audience and see this ad will be very surprised to see this overlap and will think something like, “wow, this ad really was made for me.”

The goal here isn’t to shy away from the public’s aversion to data tracking. The goal is to lean into it so that the viewer stops in their tracks and strongly remembers your ad. You’re not hiding anything here, when it comes to customer targeting.

The reason why I said this goes against conventional wisdom, is because this might feel like a weaker use of your money. Why spend $50 to target such a small group of people? Surely your estimated reach numbers will be higher if you were to align related interests in your targeting. This is true, but through unicorn targeting, your ad will catch attention much better and customers will naturally remember you more.

Create a Web Traffic Bomb

Facebook ads can be used to send a rush of users to your product or web page. This is especially useful if your business benefits from being listed on any page that shows trending products, pages, or articles.

The idea here is that you can use business manager to serve ads to the widest and cheapest audience possible. This tends to be by using audience network as your placement, since this tends to be very cheap and reaches a large number of users. 

You can also expand your location targeting wider than you typically would want to. It doesn’t matter so much if the users end up purchasing your product or service. You just want the clicks.

Once this traffic bomb starts occurring on your page, aggregate or other “trending now” type of services or websites will lift you to the top and people will find you that way. This creates a stronger impression with the user than your original paid ad would have. They are being told by a trusted service that your business is valuable among their peers.

Utilize Messenger Ads

One of the more underutilized placements in business manager is Facebook Messenger ads. These ads appear like traditional ads in the users feed, but the clickthrough takes them into facebook direct messaging, rather than a landing page you provided.

These ads can create a conversational relationship between your business and your potential customers. And the approach you should take to make the best of these ads is to use them for customer segmentation.

You have the unique advantage through messenger of finding out more about your customer lead. You can make note of what the users actually says their interests or traits are. And you can ultimately send them into applicable funnels for further marketing.

But how should you converse with the user once you have permission to message them? One good way is to apply active listening. You can set up a default initial message, when they click through, that asks them if they are a novice or expert at your industry service or product. And then you can make note of their experience level in your reply.

You don’t actually have to come up with a new product to sell them based on their experience level, if you don’t already have one. But you can acknowledge their answer and present them the product in a way that addresses their experience level. 

As an example, lets figure you’re selling a standing desk product. When the customer clicks on your messenger ad, they get a message from you asking if they are a first-time standing desk user, or an experience user looking for a better desk. 

If they respond saying they are a new user, you can reply saying “our desk is great for new users and is easy to swap between standing and sitting, as you get used to standing at work!”

If the user is an experienced user, you can craft a response saying “our desk outperforms the competition by using advanced hydraulics to achieve a smooth and fast lift into standing mode!”

Both responses fluff up the value of your product, but don’t’ distinctly state that your product is either only for beginners or experts. You sell these audiences the same product, but you make them feel listened to and acknowledged. The path to conversion then becomes much easier for you.

Skip Straight to Remarketing Ads

This hack says that remarketing is so much more valuable than regular marketing that you should skip the first step entirely.

Traditionally, you would set up an ad to run on facebook networks and then capture the info of the people who interact with your ad and then remarket to them. You create a second impression on the user after they already have brand recognition with you. They are now much more likely to make a final purchase.

The truth is that remarketed ads are 10 times more effective than regular display ads. The click through rate for retargeted ads averages at 0.7% compared to the average of 0.07% for traditional ads.

If your business spends $100 of your marketing budget on targeted ads, but only $10 on remarketed ads after running your initial campaign, you’re doing it backwards. Even if you don’t skip out on the initial ad campaign, as I suggested in the header of this segment, you should at least spend the heavier portion of your budget on retargeting.

The cost per click for remarketed audiences is significantly lower and you’ll end up with more conversions, under the same ad budget.

social media advertising: facebook vs instagram

Social Media Advertising: Facebook vs Instagram

Posted on | by Peyton Riddle

Social Media Advertising: Facebook vs Instagram

The year 2020 has shown us that social media advertising is here to stay, and that allocating your budget to successful campaigns with a high ROI is more important than before. Many times businesses feel the return on print advertising can’t be accurately measured. The beauty of marketing via social media channels is the variety of insights provided that can be analyzed to continually improve your campaigns to achieve successful results.  

Gone are the days where social media was solely for social interaction. In fact, research shows that 52% of all online brand discovery still happens in public social feeds (organic & paid). This suggests that the majority of consumers use Instagram and Facebook to investigate a new company before even visiting their website! 

Build brand awareness and loyalty by engaging with your followers and curating a feed that gives consumers a feeling of trust and relatability. Of course this means understanding the algorithms and the importance of curating captivating content. Let’s break down common questions surrounding social media advertising. 

 

What are the benefits of social media marketing?

Social media is proven to increase brand awareness, inbound traffic, conversion rates, customer satisfaction, brand loyalty, and most importantly is measurable and cost effective.

 

Audience Growth: Facebook v Instagram

Of all social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram are proven to be the most interactive and can produce the best ROI. However, the benefits of each are very subjective and depend on which features are being used, your industry, audience, and other factors.

  • Facebook
    • Facebook launched in February 2004, and introduced Facebook Ads in November of 2007. The platform was originally created to help people stay in-touch with family and friends and became an advertising powerhouse with the launch of Facebook Ads and Business pages in 2007.According to Statista, Facebook reported almost 1.79 billion daily active users and overall, daily active users accounted for 66% of monthly active users.  This number continues to grow by 9% compared to the year before, despite the speculation that Facebook is “dying”. 
  • Instagram
    • Instagram launched in October 2010 and is a younger platform focused on storytelling through images and now instagram reels and stories. Instagram ran its first ad in November 2013. By 2017, Instagram was averaging more than 2 million businesses with purchased ads, compared to Facebook’s 5 million. 
    • However, according to Statista, Instagram has over 500 million daily active users out of 1 billion monthly active users, making Instagram a powerhouse when it comes to audience engagement.

 

Audience: Facebook v Instagram

Facebook may not have the highest engagement, but because it is the oldest platform the audience is huge, with more than 2.45 billion monthly active users. Facebook differs from other social media platforms that show strong trends in users by age. The average age for a Facebook user ranges from 18-49, with little variance in between. However, Facebook is the most popular social network among seniors and the majority of the users are in the United States.

Of this 1.79 billion daily users, the ad audience reach for the U.S. is only 183 million people. This audience size has also seen a decrease in the past year from 3% to .4% - a fairly significant dip.

Instagram’s growth continues to be studied and monitored by marketers. In the United States, the network reaches over 37% of the population. The global audience is diversified, with only 11% of Instagram users represented by the U.S. eMarketer estimates 2020 will reveal a growth of over 5% in the U.S. compared  and anticipates this number to continue growing at this growth rate. 

More adults use Instagram than you would think, with 37% in 2019. The network is also significantly more popular amongst the younger generations. 67% of users are between the ages of 18-29. Here’s a breakdown from Hootsuite:

    • 18-27: 67%
    • 30-49: 47%
    • 50-64: 23%
    • 65+: 8%

Another important and interesting insight to Instagram’s audience is that the gender demographics are pretty even - 48% female and 52% male. 

All of these statistics are important to research when considering your buyer personas. You should always analyze your business’s audience and design your strategy based on this information rather than the overall network statistics.

 

 

Brand engagement: Facebook v Instagram

It’s no surprise that consumers rarely engage with branded social content compared to all content on a social platform. A study by Forrester revealed that on six of the seven social networks, the brands studied had an engagement rate of less than 0.1%. So, between Instagram and Facebook, which platform has the highest engagement? Depending on the blog you read, you’ll render different results. According to the Forrester study, one platform stood out the most: Instagram.

Facebook launched Facebook Business Pages to support the Facebook Ads launch in 2007, and now has over 60 million business pages. 39% of Facebook users that follow Facebook Business Pages do so because they want to receive special offers. Interestingly enough, the average organic reach of a Facebook post is only 6.4% of the Page’s total likes. Statista reports that  in 2019 the social network’s marketing spending reached almost 9.9 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of over 2 billion U.S. dollars from 2018. However, despite this level of spending, the engagement on Facebook with paid branded content is still under .1%. 

A study by Merkle reveals that ad spending on Instagram is 23% higher than facebook. What is driving this shift in ad spending to Instagram’s platform? Story ads and higher engagement.  

 

 

Types of Ads: Facebook v Instagram

Facebook offers Facebook Ads Guide for types of ads. These ad types include: Image Ads, Video Ads, Carousel Ads, and Collection Ads. Facebook provides thorough research where their teams explored the effectiveness of ads based on engagement, exploring text, timing, and format considerations. You can find some of this research here. Facebook’s targeting tools are considerable, and allow you to narrow down by purchase behavior, interests, location, demographics, Facebook communities, and more. You can create Core, Custom, and Lookalike Audiences for your ad delivery to increase relevance, thus leading to higher ad engagement.

Instagram ad types consist of feed posts and story ads. Both types look just like regular posts and stories, but are labeled with a “Sponsored” label and include a call to action button with options to send to your messages, website, Instagram profile, etc. According to AdEspresso, the average engagement rate for Instagram branded posts is 4.3%, compared to Facebook’s 1.5%. 

The user experience for Instagram story ads shows most users don’t realize they’re seeing an ad play back to back, revealing a smooth experience that isn’t too interruptive. Additionally, because an Instagram story takes up the entire screen there is no competition with other content and when targeted correctly, the experience feels organic. Therefore, consumers are more likely to engage.

Both are measured by reach & impressions. Reach is the number of unique views on a post. Impressions are the total number of times a post was seen. Both metrics provide helpful insights to your ad performance and allow you to make adjustments to improve your ad engagement overall.

 

 

Cost: Facebook v Instagram

A study in 2019 found that the average CPM for Instagram is $5.14 per 1000 visits. While the average CPC for Instagram ads is between $.20 and $2.00. Compared to Facebook’s CPM of $5.12 and CPC of $.80, Instagram wins again in this category. This study is a broad estimation, and certain factors like your target audience will affect these costs. Let’s discuss a few factors that affect the ad costs.

  • Ad Relevance - Facebook takes into account the relevancy of your ad amongst your selected target audience and factors this into the cost of the ad. Facebook and Instagram provide a relevancy score that changes while your ad runs. If you receive high engagement, your score will increase. If consumers are hiding your ad, your score will go down. A/B testing is a great way to determine what is relevant to your audience. Remember to only change one factor so that you receive concise data. Similar to a Google algorithm, the more relevant your content is to your target buyers and ad audience, the less expensive your ads will be.
  • Target audience - If you are targeting a popular audience that is high-demand, the cost will fluctuate. 
  • Time of year - like any retail or sales strategy, the time of year will determine the cost of the ad. Popular times of the year, like holidays, will affect the ad cost.
  • Ad Run Dates - Obviously, the longer you run an ad the more your cost will increase. The average ad doesn’t necessarily need to run for a long period of time. Assessing your impression and reach goals will help guide you to determine a reasonable ad length and price.