Instagram Advertising: Is It Right For You?

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Instagram has recently announced that they are going to start displaying ads in its Explore tab. The Explore section allows users to browse new content while discovering new accounts based on their interests. The platform says they will be introducing ads “slowly and thoughtfully” in the coming months. They want Explore to be the best place for people to discover something new and for businesses to connect with people who may become meaningful customers. 

Instagram is becoming an increasingly popular marketing platform, as it has been reported they’re experiencing more user engagement growth than its parent company, Facebook. This new update gives advertisers even greater opportunities to reach users beyond just their feeds. While the benefits to advertising on Instagram are rapidly growing, the cons are still there. So, how can you be sure that Instagram is the right platform for you? 

How Instagram Advertising Works

As most other social platforms, Instagram advertising is utilized to grow brand exposure, website traffic, generate new leads, and hopefully get leads closer to converting. As the platform is visually based, text ads are not a thing here. Marketers must use images, a set of images, or videos, which can be accompanied with text, to reach users. 

The Pros 

Ultra Specific Targeting Capabilities 

Instagram falls under Facebook, meaning marketers have access to the same demographic targeting mechanisms on both platforms. Companies can target users based on interests, location, behavior, etc. Instagram offers a variety of campaign goal options, ensuring marketers are optimizing ad spend. 

Unique Visual Ad Formating 

Instagram ads allow marketers to maximize the extent of visual content. Companies can captivate users and create brand awareness by using high quality photos or videos. These photos and videos can be displayed as traditional posts, or there is the option to show them as stories as well. Companies have also started to reach out to influencers on the platform. Influencers are users that have a large and established following, whom companies have started paying to promote their products on their account. 

Higher Engagement Rates 

Instagram is a personal, conversational, and engaging platform. Engagement rates are 10 times higher than Facebook, 54 times higher than Pinterest, and 84 times higher than Twitter. Their formatting makes it possible for users to gain access to sales pages in just one click. Marketers can include call-to-actions to begin the checkout process, encouraging purchases straight from the app. This design eliminates the usual obstacles involved with online sales, allowing for instant gratification. 

The Cons 

Limited Audience 

While the platform offers a monthly user base of over 800 million, 90% of their users are under 35 years of age. Instagram is perfect for brands looking to engage with a younger audience, but those with an older target audience may find themselves struggling. While there are older users, very few are active. It’s also not the best platform to reach men. While they are on Instagram, it’s not as heavily as on other apps. Those brands exclusively targeting older ages or men may find it better for ROI to turn to other advertising platforms. 

Time-Intensive 

Staying fresh and relevant is crucial on a platform with large numbers of younger users. Authenticity is especially important here compared to search platforms, such as AdWords. Users begin to notice if brands are constantly regurgitating the same content just to increase posts. Brands have to be consistent with responding to comments, posting new content, and incorporating as many visual elements as possible to encourage interaction.

Required to Work Through Mobile Devices 

While you can access the platform through a web browser, abilities are extremely limited. Users are required to post through apps on mobile devices. Once the ads are initially posted they can be shared easily throughout multiple campaigns, but you must be able to access the account on a mobile device. Brands that aren’t so mobile-friendly may run into frequent obstacles. 

Conclusion: Is it right for your business? 

The biggest factor that goes into the answer to this question is target demographic. If your target audience is exclusively those 50 and up, Instagram is probably not the ideal advertising platform. That doesn’t mean you should immediately dismiss the possibility of Instagram ads. Similar to what happened to their parent company, Facebook, the number of older users will increase as the platform continues to grow. The decision is ultimately up to what you believe is right for your brand. 

At Onimod Global we are experts in SEM and social media. We know which platforms are best for brands, and create visibility for brands where customers are searching, interating, and ultimately converting. Find out more about we do here, or contact us today here.

LinkedIn’s Newest Update Makes Advertising More Transparent

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Company transparency is especially important when advertising on the internet, social spaces in particular. Social media users want to feel safe and ensured that their information isn’t going to be exploited for advertisements. LinkedIn just recently announced it has launched a new update, called Ads tab, for company pages. The intent is to bring even greater transparency to ads, increasing trust in their environment, while benefiting companies and users.

What is Ads Tab & How it Works

The Ads tab will be available on company pages, showing sponsored content ad history for the last six months. Members can view all native ads running in the LinkedIn feed through the tab, but the advertisers will not be charged for these engagements and the clicks will not impact campaign reporting.

LinkedIn said in the announcement that “the Ads tab builds on similar tools they’ve recently introduced to help members understand and control their ad experience, including new ad settings that each member can access from their LinkedIn account.”

They also added that this is just the first of many updates they have in the works to provide members with useful information about the ads shown to them on LinkedIn. The Ads tab will be implemented across their platform over the next few weeks, meaning it won’t be available to all companies immediately.

Why We Should Care

Transparency is something that benefits both companies and LinkedIn users. This extra layer adds more security to the LinkedIn platform, making it a more trusted source, attracting more users. An increase in users means the potential to gain a larger audience, and ultimately larger ad reach.

Putting it to Use

At Onimod Global we are your in-house cross-channel digital marketing experts. We offer services in SEM and Social Media. We handle paid advertising on Google, Bing, and across all social platforms, including LinkedIn. We market across multiple social platforms to create visibility for your company in places your customers are searching, interacting, and engaging. Having your brand in the correct positioning in essential, and we at Onimod Global have the expertise to know exactly where you and your ads need to be.

Learn more about what we do here, or if you’re ready to become a client, contact us here.

How to Optimize Your Dark Social Usage

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Private messaging apps such as WhatsApp, direct messaging via social media, emails, etc. are all referred to as “Dark Social” by marketers because content shared through these platforms are particularly difficult to track and analyze. This is becoming an increasingly popular way for users to do their social sharing. Read more

Updates To YouTube Advertising Platform

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A social site that is growing larger and larger everyday is YouTube.  As its followers have grown significantly in the past few years, so has their advertising platform.

With growth comes some changes, and the experts at Onimod Global are here once again to give you the latest updates.

 

According to MarketingLand, YouTube announced it is changing the attribution criteria for TrueView for action video ads. This specific type of ad is known and designed for advertisers that perform and feature call-to-action banners at the base of the video ads.

MarketingLand also shares with us two specific key attribution points that will be changing:

  • YouTube will now count an ‘Engagement’ whenever a user clicks or watches 10 seconds or more of a TrueView for action ad when using maximize conversions or target CPA bidding. That’s a change from 30 seconds.
  • A ‘Conversion’ will be counted, by default, when a user takes action on an ad within 3 days of an ‘Engagement.’ If you want this changed, you will have to ask your Google rep to customize this time frame. That’s a change from 30 days.
  • For users who click your ad, YouTube will still attribute conversions according to the conversion window you have set (the default is 30 days).

 

What does this mean for advertisers?

This change will most likely significantly influence your budget spend and the performance. If you use the SmartBidding tool, this change will effect you being charged per engagement. Any target prices set by the advertiser will be billed on an impression basis due to TrueView for action campaigns using Target CPA and maximize conversions.

 

Always stay updated on the latest digital marketing news on our Onimod Global News page.

 

 

How To Drive Event Engagement With Social Media

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Social media marketing can be a fantastic tool to use in a variety of campaigns, especially in event promotion. This tool has not only changed the ways people promote events, but it has also changed how influencers and consumers can engage with brands and events associated with them. Social media marketing strategies allow for an open conversation between a brand and the consumer, and this is one of the most crucial steps in ensuring a successful event with high engagement.

Whether your event is a corporate event, an influencer party, a festival or concert, social media marketing can be a driving factor in your success if used correctly. Here are several ways you can use social media to drive engagement before, during, and after your event.

 

Pre-Event

 

Content Strategy 

In the initial stages of event planning, you will want to have a rough outline of social media content for the months, weeks, or days leading up to your event. Your company may already have an existing content plan in place for event management, but it is always in your best interest to customize the strategy to your specific event.

Social media content should be centered around the concept of your event, and all of your posts should match the tone, whether that be serious or more creative. Anything you create should also drive consumers to a landing page for sign-ups, donations, or anything related to the promotion of your event. Be sure to include educational pieces about featured speakers, sponsors, and any topics the event will be covering.

 

Influencer Involvement 

Get your sponsors and speakers involved! Most times influencers will be excited to help you push your event on social media, especially if they are a featured speaker. Create graphics and other messages that are easy to share on all social platforms, and also create content specifically related to sponsors that they can easily share as well.

Sharing, in this case, is caring for the success of your event. Be sure that any social content you post and push to consumers is readily available to share among event attendees. Don’t under-estimate the power of social share, this will increase your visibility with little to no cost associated.

A great strategy would be to invite a sponsor or influencer to take over your Instagram account or do a Facebook Live feed. It’s a place for your own followers to get excited about the event that you’re hosting, and it also gives the fans or followers of the influencer a chance to be directed to your page for more information on what they are sharing.

 

The Day-of

 

Vlog

Especially if this is event is annual, creating excitement around the event for years to come will be based out of any content and footage you have from years past. Occasionally, this may not be allowed depending on the privacy or overall tone of the event. However, if your company allows you to do so and it makes sense in your content strategy to create footage for the upcoming years, we absolutely recommend filming as much as possible.

 

Live Stream or Social 

This is an example of a live Twitter feed wall shared by Social Media Today, which are typically big hits at any conference or event. Common tools that will help you build a live-feed for your event are: TweetBeam, Twitterfall, Twubs, and HootFeed from Hootsuite.

 

Live Updates On Your Social Networks

Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat are perfect platforms for this strategy. A unique content idea you could do at a convention would be to interview guest attendees on your company Instagram or Snapchat story. Tweeting live updates from the event is also a great way to interact with any attendee using the event hashtag that you create. This will allow you to retweet easily, and Instagram also has the new feature of being able to share photos on Instagram stories with credit to the user.

 

Post-Event

 

Gratitude Via Social Platforms

The content strategy doesn’t end at the event, the really successful conventions and events will always take it one step farther. Here are where the opportunities to engage with your attendees with give you the maximum value of social media marketing. Starting with gratitude, it will always go a long way to thank speakers, sponsors, and guests via social media to ensure they know that their presence was appreciated by your company. This will in turn help you build bonds and gain lifetime customers.

 

Creating Promotion For Next Year

Now that you have all of this material and content, it is time for your social team to get to work on compiling a promotion video or more social content for next year’s event. This can include testimonials from this year’s attendees, quotes from speakers and sponsors, and any footage of your guests having a great time!

 

More From Onimod Global

We would love to work with you and help you optimize your social media strategy for any event your company is hosting. To contact our experts or request a quote, please click here. We can’t wait to hear from you!

Which Digital Marketing Strategies Produce The Best ROI?

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At the end of the day, the main factor that matters most to businesses utilizing digital marketing is return on investment (ROI). There are several digital marketing strategies available, but some are geared towards short term ROI and quick sales while others are long term focused. SEO, SEM, content marketing, social media, and email marketing can all be beneficial digital strategies, but depending on the main goals of an organization some work better than others. This post will explore the different digital strategies, benefits, and which have the potential to produce the best long term ROI.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Many businesses claim to have effective SEO strategies in place, yet are they sustainable? SEO is all about optimizing your website to increase organic search rankings and overall online visibility. This includes both on-page and off-page optimization factors. The ultimate purpose of SEO is to drive more traffic to an organization’s site, which hopefully results in increased sales. Some long term benefits of efficient SEO include:  sustainability of rankings, precise keyword targeting, brand credibility, flexibility, data is traceable, and it typically costs less than other digital strategies. If implemented and monitored correctly, SEO is clearly an efficient digital strategy that can boost ROI.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Depending on the industry, SEM campaigns can be hit or miss. SEM is a digital strategy that allows organizations to rank ahead of their competition on search rankings through sponsored advertisements. It is typically associated with short term ROI and obtaining quick leads, but does have some long term implications. Google AdWords and Bing Ads are the clear front runners in the SEM world. AdWords is the more popular option among PPC marketers, but the quality of Bing Ads can’t be ignored. SEM offers some major benefits such as increased visibility, higher quality leads, precise targeting, development of audiences, and campaign data that can be tracked. Ultimately, SEM is a great digital strategy if done right, but it typically coincides better with organizations seeking short term ROI.

Content Marketing
The importance of content marketing can often times be overlooked by businesses. Content marketing is essentially the development of online content that provides value to visitors, and is typically created with intentions to drive traffic. It is an integral part to SEO and building long term online visibility. Some important benefits of content marketing according to Forbes include: reputation, building trust, conversion potential, cost effectiveness, and lasting value. At Onimod Global our content marketing strategy for clients is about quality and consistency. We develop content with the purpose of ranking for relevant search queries, increasing site traffic, and converting visitors to leads.

Social Media
Social media is an interesting digital strategy when it comes to ROI. Whether paid or organic, social media marketing is all about constructing an organization’s reputation through channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. It can be difficult to derive ROI from organic social media marketing efforts, but don’t underestimate its value. Paid social media advertising on the other hand can produce ROI sometimes unmatched by other digital strategies. Benefits of social media marketing can include: ease of entry, development of target audiences, cost effectiveness, precise targeting, and massive potential for brand awareness exposure.

Email Marketing
Although Email marketing is one of the earliest digital strategies to come about, it has yet to disappear. There is a reason for this – it still produces ROI. According to Smart Insights, “67 percent of businesses list email marketing as their highest ROI online marketing strategy.” Email marketing strategies today typically consist of newsletters, promotional offers, and other ways to build subscriber lists. The superior benefits that email marketing offers according to Forbes are retaining previous customers, attracting new customers, pure ROI focus, traceable data, and overall simplicity compared to other digital strategies.

Contact Onimod Global
Is your business in need of superior digital marketing services to increase ROI? Reach out to us at Onimod Global and see what digital solutions we can provide for you!

Spotify to Launch a Redesigned App That is Optimized for Advertisers

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Spotify recently became a publicly traded company. Now that stocks are available, it is more important than ever for Spotify to prove its worth to potential investors.

It has been somewhat of a mystery as to how the company managed to continue operating with a deficit of $3 billion. Spotify reported that much of this loss was due to the significant costs of licensing content streamed through the app.

Leveraging Current Assets

At this point, leaders within Spotify are attempting to leverage Spotify’s current technology and large user base to create meaningful insights through the redesigned app for advertisers. Such resources include:

  • Large audience: Spotify reports an active user base of 157 million users. Of these, the platform reports that 71 million pay a monthly subscription to stream their music free of ads.
  • Highly sophisticated algorithm: Spotify has made significant investments into machine learning. This expense is meant to improve the connection between Spotify and their users by suggesting songs or playlists that peak the user’s interest.
  • Data Saver: A new feature to this updated version of the Spotify app is the Data Saver. This feature stores all kinds of data on specific users as well, which can always be leveraged to assist in digital marketing efforts.
  • Simple creative: Digital marketers will not need any sort of training on how to advertise within the Spotify platform. All of the current video, audio, and display ads will remain unchanged so that campaigns are easy to set up and optimize.

Concluding Thoughts

Spotify has proven their potential. Now it is time for them to execute a perfectly planned strategy in order to capitalize on advertisers’ desires to reach target consumers. The platform’s rapid growth and machine learning advancements are their core competencies, which will need to be exploited in the near future in order to maximize potential profits.

Spotify’s global head of partner solutions, Danielle Lee, explained the platform’s current strategy in an interview with Adweek by saying, “We’re consulting our advertising partners on how to deliver a more relevant experience—even thinking about audiences that they didn’t know [about]. It’s not enough to find the right person, but to find them in the right moment where they’re going to be most receptive to your message.”

As a digital marketing specialist from Onimod Global, I personally feel that the future looks quite bright for Spotify and its investors. However, I think it is also entirely possible for the platform to quickly sink itself with ineffective strategies. If Spotify can come up with a plan for success that amplifies their greatest strengths while minimizing their current debt, then they just might be able to come out of this on top.

Vero: The Social Media Platform Free of Data Mining, Bots, and Ads

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Could this be the next big thing in social media? Or is it all too good to be true? The jury is still out, but the future does look considerably promising for Vero.

Comparison

Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg was under fire again this week for the platform’s privacy policies. Zuckerberg simply stated that users all agree to meet each of Facebook’s terms and conditions when they sign up for a Facebook account.

Facebook is very clear about how the platform stores information about users, and this information is then used to better target consumers through the Facebook Ads platform. Since this is the primary source of income for Facebook, it is obvious that this is of primary concern to them as well. As a digital marketer, this kind of information is absolutely amazing, but as a consumer, this is concerning to say the least.

Many consumers are becoming more and more drawn to the idea of keeping their lives truly private. It is often found to be “creepy” and “invasive” when consumers are served ads for items they recently viewed or even those that they merely spoke of. All of these irritants provide a prime opportunity for a social media platform like Vero to strike.

What is Vero?

As stated on their website, Vero claims itself to be, “a social network for anyone who loves anything enough to share it – and wants control over who they share it with. Just like we do in real life.”

The whole purpose behind Vero is to allow people a space to share their interests, free from the worry of being bombarded by ads once they do. For example, if you were to make a post on Facebook about a designer dress, you would likely receive lots of advertisements afterward trying to sell you similar dresses or similar pieces from that designer.

Vero does not do this. Instead, anything posted on this platform is serving no other purpose than to please you by expressing and exploring things you personally connect with.

Vero is also very specific in the types of connections you would wish to make. The platform offers four separate groupings every time you post. These groupings consist of close friends, friends, acquaintances, and followers. Ever wanted to post something for your friends to see but not for your boss to see? Yeah, Vero thought so too.

Each and every feature of Vero is designed with the consumer’s typical social media frustrations in mind. This new platform is clearly trying to break away from the pack by offering everything that others aren’t, and so far it has been working to Vero’s advantage.

Concerns For Vero

In light of all of the positive features to Vero, there are also a few problems to consider. The company recently experienced troubles with their terms of service. This conflict was resolved by an updated version of the agreement that made it clear to users that Vero does not own their own content like they had previously suggested.

The company’s CEO, Ayman Hariri, has also brought a fair amount of controversy to the company. According to Gulf Business, Hariri’s family was sued by 30,000 workers at their construction firm for unpaid wages. Hariri claims to have cut all professional ties with his family and also claims to have divested from Vero to keep the brand image more reputable.

Going forward, it will be interesting to see if Vero can actually manage to capitalize on the public’s discontent with platforms like Facebook, or if they too will fizzle out in the near future like so many other “next big thing” platforms have in the past.

For more articles on social media and digital advertising please visit the Onimod Global news section. There you will find relevant and recent information about the incredible industry of digital marketing. Enjoy!

5 Tips for Your Instagram Advertising Strategy

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More than a year ago, Instagram made a huge change to their algorithm. This change resulted in switches from chronological posts to more relevant posts that users were more likely to engage with.

Many users expressed their discontent with the change, and many advertisers did as well. It was believed that the switch made it more difficult for brands to interact with their audience, and with frequent tweaks still being made to the algorithm it can be hard to know what type of strategy will help or hurt your brand on Instagram.

Insta Basics

First, it is crucial to know the key influencing factors that the platform’s algorithm takes into account:

  1. The relationship between you and the person (or company that) posted the photo: The more that users regularly engage with your content, the more the algorithm will highlight your new content to those interested users.
  2. Timing: Even though the new algorithm is not in chronological order, Instagram will still take timing into account to make sure that it is showing content that has been posted fairly recently.
  3. Likes and comments: Although the platform said that the new algorithm will not result in a “popularity contest” it is still making efforts to push content that possesses many different engagement factors such as likes and comments. The more interaction your post receives, the better!
  4. Direct shares: Instagram will also be taking note of posts that you share with others since this is another type of interaction that clearly shows a user is interested in the content from a particular brand.
  5. Profile searches: Recent searches will also prompt the platform to suggest new users to follow, or if you currently are following them then even more of their content will be pushed to the top of your feed.

Primary Focus

The entire point of each and every one of these factors is engagement. The more that users engage with your content, the more that the algorithm will make sure to update users when new content is available.

Much of the idea behind the algorithm can be related to the same operations of search engines like Google. The most important aspect that Google’s algorithm considers is relevancy. In this same respect, Instagram’s algorithm is trying to ascertain whether or not users will find your content interesting and relevant, which can be judged by how often they show interest in your brand through likes, comments, searches, etc.

Additional Suggestions

When optimizing your content for Instagram, it is absolutely necessary to make it as interactive as possible. Utilizing unique forms of motion based content can help to increase interactions by posting a video, story, or Boomerang.

Adding hashtags to your post can significantly boost its impressions. In fact, Adweek states that adding even one hashtag can increase engagement by an average of 12.6%.

It is also worth including some advertising dollar in your Instagram strategy in order to make certain that your content is being pushed to target users. In light of Facebook’s recent organic content changes, it would not be out of line to suspect that Instagram may also adopt a similar strategy when it comes to sponsored content versus unpaid posts.

4 Simple SEO Content Marketing Strategies to Drive Traffic

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Producing strong content is great, but does it drive relevant traffic? The ultimate purpose behind content marketing should always be driving as much relevant traffic as possible to your website, landing pages, or any other form of conversion method. At the end of the day, paying attention to basic SEO fundamentals will enhance content marketing efforts. Ignoring the basic, technical SEO issues that arise will come back to haunt you in the long run. Listed below are four basic, but essential SEO content marketing strategies to increase organic traffic.

Pay Attention to Meta Descriptions
It’s no surprise how important meta descriptions are when it comes to organic search results and ranking well. Well developed meta descriptions can result in better engagement rates and generate more online visibility for your content. The downside is however once a meta description is created, most people never think about it again. Why does this matter? Well according to an article from Search Engine Land, “Google increased the maximum length of search results snippets from 160 characters to 320 characters.” Therefore, this could be a missed opportunity, as adding more enticing content to descriptions has great potential to increase traffic.

Include Internal Links
Although having relevant outbound links is important, including internal links in your content is crucial when it comes to SEO purposes. According to an article from Yoast, “adding internal links connects your content and ensures that Google can crawl your site to help with better rankings.” Like outbound links, internal links can also become nonexistent and point to irrelevant or missing pages. This can cause major problems regarding search engine visibility and can upset visitors to the site. Overall, implementing proper inbound links will boost organic rankings and improve content marketing efforts.

Monitor Page Speed
In addition to the other factors previously listed, page speed is also important when it comes to content marketing and increasing SEO rankings. Many organizations fall behind in this aspect because their belief is to implement WordPress themes with plenty of plugins, which just decreases site speed. The Search Engine Land article points out that “CSS and JavaScript files the plugins load add unnecessary HTTP requests. The more HTTP requests, the slower your website will load.” Ultimately, if page speed is not consistently monitored, organic rankings will suffer as a result.

Check Broken Outbound Links
This one seems obvious, but websites come and go overtime with ownership changes and domains shutting down. This means that any links that were directed to a meaningful source at one point may now be irrelevant. The Search Engine Land article recommends utilizing tools like “Screaming Frog” that will scan all outbound links in your content to ensure broken links don’t exist. Moreover, checking broken links is often times forgotten about, and this has a detrimental effect on both content quality and SEO efforts.

Contact Us
For more information on content marketing and other digital marketing news, visit the Onimod Global Website! Our content creation specialists regularly publish new content relating to current industry events and trends.