Tag Archive for: facebook marketing

How to Maximize Lead Generation via Facebook Posts and Ads

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With billions of people using Facebook each month, the opportunity for lead generation is endless. Facebook recently shared tips on how to maximize lead generation via Facebook posts and ads to help businesses boost the performance of their Facebook marketing efforts. These tips cover the four critical elements of effective lead generation, intending to help marketers formulate a better strategy for reaching and connecting with potential customers. 

1. Lead Capture

According to Facebook, one of the keys to capturing leads is ensuring that your audience clearly understands what they’re signing up for. They should also clearly understand what makes your product or service worthy of giving their personal email address or other information. Being upfront and having clear communication from the get-go helps ensure that those that are converting are a part of your target audience. 

2. Lead Magnets 

Facebook’s second tip is that brands should adopt the “give before asking” mentality by offering users something in return for their information. This could be a one-sheeter, eBook, discount code, free trial, newsletter, webinar, etc. By providing value upfront you establish trust and a connection with your audience, leading to a better relationship and more brand-loyalty in the future.

3. Landing Page 

Landing pages are a critical element to ads. It’s important that once you get a user to click through your post or ad, that your landing page matches what you’ve explained. It’s also important that it has a quality design and effectively collects the information you need. Facebook advises brands to test different versions of landing pages to see which have the high click-through and conversion rates. They also suggest that you should consider setting up a custom audience to then retarget those who have clicked through, but not yet converted. 

4. Lead Scoring

Facebook’s final tip is to create a lead scoring matrix in order to better customize their outreach efforts and prioritize leads based on past engagement. For example, downloading a white paper is worth more points than unsubscribing from your email list. This can help you save time and effort by only contacting the leads that are more likely to convert first. The way you go about establishing your lead scoring table will vary, depending on your offer and goals. But the idea is that by segmenting each of your leads will allow you to better focus the outreach for each of your strategies. 

Final Thoughts 

Lead generation is key to maximizing your Facebook marketing efforts. The more insights you can gather, the better you can hone in on where the right people are for every campaign. Either by focusing on groups directly or using them for Lookalike’s to expand your research. At Onimod Global, we’re experts in digital marketing, specializing in Facebook Ads. If you need additional assistance in the Facebook ad space, or any area of digital marketing, we can help. At Onimod Global we’re experts in all areas of social media and digital marketing. Learn more about who we are and what we do, and contact us here today. 

We also release the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here.

3 Tips for Facebook Video Success

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As most are aware, video is the best performing content type across all platforms. But each platform comes with its own set of unique strategies and tactics to succeed. On Facebook in particular, creators usually find that the community connects with you on a deeper level, through finding similar interests and passions. Engagement is generally higher and more meaningful than other channels. 

Recently, Facebook released three best practice tips when it comes to creating video content that will be the most successful on their platform. 

1. Include a 3-5 second trailer. 

Capturing users’ attention is one of the most crucial aspects of content. When it comes to video, the first 3-10 seconds of the video are extremely critical. You want to make these moments visually interesting because users will make a split second decision around what they want to engage with and spend the time watching. Including a 3-5 second trailer at the beginning of the video can help captivate and hold your audience. 

Facebook advises to take advantage of Creator Studio to see where your viewers are dropping off. To do this open up Video Details by clicking on your video in the Content Library of Creator Studio. Then check the Audience Retention curve and uncheck “only include views over 15 seconds” to see where people are dropping off in the first few seconds of your video. They also recommend to look at your retention curve often and work to improve it over time. This will ultimately help increase your reach on Facebook. 

2. Edit your videos with a 4:5 aspect ratio. 

It’s essential to optimize the video for whatever platform you’re sharing it on. Today, most people are watching video on mobile in vertical orientation, rather than turning their phone to landscape. This is why you want to frame your visual story and build for vertical format. Edit your videos using a 4:5 aspect ratio, as this seems to work best for videos on Facebook. 

3. Engage back with your community. 

Engaging with your viewers is just as important as creating the content itself. Joining in on the conversation in your comment section of your posts creates a good relationship with your audience and helps maximize your reach. Leaving long-form comments, like sharing special insights or answering questions can also help to spark even more engagement on your posts. 

Facebook also shared 5 things to keep in mind when creating videos: 

  • Engaging: You want to create videos that spark meaningful interactions and authentic shares. 
  • Original: You don’t want to create videos that are clickbait or shared from a third party.
  • Relevant: Capture people’s attention with things that are relevant to their interests. 
  • Consistent: Create videos that people will want to seek out and return to regularly. 
  • Retentive: You can drive longer views by creating high quality videos and are 3+ minutes long. 

Final Thoughts 

Facebook offers a unique combination of storytelling tools that makes it one of the best places to share things about your brand and grow your audience. That, combined with video content, makes Facebook one of the best places for social media marketing. Here we’ve discussed best practices for creating videos on Facebook, but there are a number of other factors that go into being successful when it comes to social media marketing. 

At Onimod Global, we’re experts in all areas of digital marketing. If you need additional assistance in the Facebook ad space, or any area of digital marketing, we can help. Learn more about who we are and what we do, and contact us here today. 

We also release the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. 

Facebook Ad Tips to Maximize Your Performance This Holiday Season

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The 2020 holiday season is here and for many it can’t be business as usual. Businesses must continue to shift and adapt to everything going on and with many distractions, capturing consumers’ attention is more difficult than ever. If you’ve yet to establish a strong online presence throughout the pandemic, you’ll need to start thinking of ways to create a strong brand awareness and stand out among competitors. 

For many, Facebook is a critical marketing platform, especially around the holiday season. The platform recently gave out their top 5 tips for creating ads to maximize your performance while increasing your brand awareness. 

1. Create a voice for your brand. 

Giving your brand a unique voice is the best way to personify your brand. You want to tailor this voice to align with both your business purposes and their target audience. Many brands find success on social media by adopting a certain persona. Facebook suggests this may be key, in addition to ensuring consistency in your tone. 

2. Position your products. 

Visual elements are crucial on all social media platforms when it comes to marketing. Presenting your offerings up front is also a critical part of the process. Display your products up front and center so your audience knows what you’re advertising and why. You can also include your brand message so users can start to associate it with your products. Facebook has also mentioned that putting your brand messaging within the first few seconds of a video ad is key to effectively building association. 

3. Say it with words. 

While visuals are important, you can’t rely on them alone when marketing. Incorporate value propositions into your ads that feature your products or services, explaining why the user should purchase them, what makes them unique from others and what benefits they’ll get from them. You can also start weaving your brand’s messaging or slogan into your ad copy. 

4. Use branded packaging. 

You can easily take your brand to the next level by creating unique packaging that encompasses your company’s look and feel. This also helps enhance the customer experience, making it almost seem like a gift, which is especially nice during the holiday season. Personalized touches are also a great addition to brand packaging. It can be as simple as a handwritten note, but it shows you care about your customers and create a better, more loyal relationship with them. 

5. Spend strategically. 

Brand awareness is a difficult goal to track and measure. Facebook offers marketing solutions that help with quantifying your efforts. For example, you can run retargeting campaigns to reach audiences who already know about your brand, as well as advertise to people who have already visited your website, app, store or Facebook page, or advertise specifically to people who have already made a purchase. 

Final Thoughts

Even though there is a lot going on in the world currently, brands still have to think about their holiday marketing efforts. If you’re struggling knowing how to get going, these tips are a great place to start. If you need additional assistance in the Facebook ad space, or any area of digital marketing, we can help. At Onimod Global we’re experts in all areas of social media and digital marketing. Learn more about who we are and what we do, and contact us here today. 

We also release the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here.

The Best Times to Post on Social Media for Your Business

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As a business, the goal of posting on social media is to generate brand awareness, engagement and drive more traffic to your website. To optimize your social media marketing strategy, the times you post on social media does matter. A well-timed post can lead to greater reach, more likes, comments, shares, etc. It is important to note that optimal times do vary based on industry and user trends. But in general, there are times of the day users are more engaged than others. We’ve put together a guide for the best times to post on each social media platform, making it easier to find your sweet spot for optimal performance in your specific industry. 

Facebook: 

Reaching people on Facebook isn’t as easy as it once was. Organic traffic has been on the decline over the last few years due to it becoming mostly a pay per click platform. That doesn’t mean it should be ignored, however, as there is still massive opportunity. 

During the week, the best time to post on your business page is between 1pm and 4pm. This is likely because it’s the time of day when users have some downtime at work are browning their desktop or scrolling through their phone screens. 

The best days of the week to post on Facebook are Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Weekends in general show the highest levels of engagement. And Sunday at 3pm is the single best time to post on Facebook. 

Twitter:

With Twitter, timing is everything. The lifespan of a tweet is only 18 minutes so you only have a short period of time to make sure you’re reaching the right people. 

The best time to tweet has shown to be between 12 and 1 pm. Workdays seem to drive the highest engagement, with Wednesday being the single best day. Tweeting during lunch every week day can help increase your general social media engagement. Additionally, the weekends have shown to be the worst days of the week to tweet, driving the lowest engagement. 

Instagram: 

Instagram has recently changed its algorithm for how the platform ranks posts on users’ feeds. In general, it has made driving traffic and engagement difficult for pages with small follower numbers. It favors “recency,” but does not use chronological order. It shows users posts they believe they will be more likely to engage with. This makes it even more important to post during the time your followers are most engaged. 

If you’re marketing or selling products, the best time to post on Instagram is 11am to 1pm during the week or evenings from 7pm to 9pm. Because Instagram is favored on mobile, most users tend to avoid it during the work day. When it comes to days, the best performing are Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, with Wednesdays driving the highest levels of engagement. But the single best time to post on Instagram has shown to be Saturdays at 5 pm. Overall, Sundays are the worst days to post. 

LinkedIn: 

LinkedIn’s algorithm is very different from all other social media platforms. Oftentimes, it will show posts from weeks ago. This makes it even more important to create compelling content that will stand out amongst the crowd. 

Considering most LinkedIn users are business professionals, the best times to post are between 10am and 11am on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Weekends and after office hours tend to be the worst times to post. 

Final Thoughts

It’s important to note that this is all a general guide. To be successful on social you really need to know your own audience. Consider their age, their location, their challenges, pain points, etc. It’s also essential to continue to test and optimize. You never want to get complacent because things are constantly changing, especially when it comes to social media. 

If you need assistance with social media marketing, we can help. We’re experts in everything from SEO and SEM to social media marketing and website development.   To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here. To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here.  

 

Tips on Managing Negative Social Media Comments

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Social media is a unique public environment that has its own culture and expectations. And at some point in social media managing, you’ll have to deal with negative comments on your brand’s page or posts. While some of these comments may be from blatant trolls, others will be clear criticism of your product or service. It’s important to know how to effectively deal with these comments. Here are 5 tips on how to manage negative comments on your social media. 

Don’t ignore or delete. 

The worst thing a brand can do is ignore their negative comments. This can aggravate the commenter even further and may lead them to continue to leave negative comments in more places. This can also look bad to other users and existing customers. You want to remain transparent with your audience. Deleting messages rather than addressing them head-on conveys that you might have something to hide. 

It’s important to note that this doesn’t remain true for all negative comments. If a comment is inappropriate, offensive or derogatory, it should be deleted. To make this decision, exercise your own judgement or refer to your organization’s code of conduct. 

If it’s your fault, apologize sincerely. 

The saying goes, “the customer is always right.” Even if you disagree with their point of view, it’s still best to apologize. This is the first step in resolving a conflict. Keep a calm, cool and sincere tone throughout the conversation. When someone is bashing something you’re passionate about, this can be difficult, but it’s crucial to not let your emotions get in front of professionalism. 

On the other hand, you don’t want to admit fault for something you had no control over. If that’s the case of the complaint, lead with something like, “We’re sorry to hear you weren’t satisfied with your experience.” This shows you still care, but doesn’t recognize that you or a team member did anything wrong. 

Take offline if necessary. 

It’s best practice to resolve the conflict privately. Try to shift the conversation off of social media to another place. Whether this be through direct messenger, email, over the phone, etc. After you apologize, close the response by asking the customer to contact you through one of the mentioned forms of private communication. You never want to get in a further argument in the comments for others to see. Depending on the issue, the customer may write dozens more negative replies, which can reflect poorly on your brand. 

Be personable. 

No one likes their frustrations to be met with automated replies. This also looks bad to anyone else that reads the conversation on social. It’s beneficial to have a plan for negative comments, but you want to personalize the message as much as possible. This shows real empathy, authenticity and sincerity. You want to show that you really do care about your customers. See the following conversation between Delta and a customer. 

source:https://www.socialpilot.co/

It’s evident that these messages were written by a real person and are not automations. They effectively communicate with the customer and show that they genuinely want to help. 

Be timely. 

Timeliness is key with negative comments. Most users expect a response within 2 hours. If necessary, follow up with the relevant departments to give your customer a satisfactory answer. Word travels fast on social media, which is also why it’s so important to respond quickly. A slow response can make it seem like you don’t care or are ignoring the complaint, both which can quickly damage a company’s reputation. 

Be sure to consistently monitor your reputation throughout the day, whether it be through Google Alerts or other social listening tools. This will help to ensure no negative messages go unnoticed. 

Final Thoughts

Negative comments are unavoidable, but if managed the right way they can actually do more for your brand than positive ones. Responding to positive comments is easy. Dealing with negative comments is how you show company integrity, sincerity and personability. This is where long-term customer loyalty stems from. So if you want your company to succeed, watch what people are saying about your brand on social media. React to all the comments you get and be attentive to the problems of your customers.

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

Common Facebook Ads Mistakes and How to Fix Them

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The benefits of advertising your business on Facebook are endless. With over a billion active users, cutting edge features, and detailed targeting ability, why wouldn’t you market yourself there? Despite all its advantages, many businesses still struggle to gain qualified leads from Facebook Ads. 

Advertising on Facebook isn’t as easy as everyone believes it to be, but it can be worth it. If you don’t put in proper time and effort into your ads, it could result in the waste of a lot of budget. Here are the most common Facebook Ads mistakes made by marketers and how to fix them. 

Audience Selection is too Narrow or too Broad 

Facebook provides extremely detailed targeting capabilities. Most people believe that the more specific you get with your targeting, the more effective it will be. This, however, could actually be your downfall. When your audience selection is too narrow you risk exhausting the segment too quickly, driving up your cost per click. The other issue that can result from overly-specific targeting is lack of responses. No matter how pin-pointed your audience is, only a small percentage will respond. When it comes to upper funnel advertising, numbers are the most important, and if your audience is too niche, the numbers are not on your side. 

On the other hand if your audience is too broad, you risk serving your ad to people who aren’t interested in your offer. Again, you could drive up the cost per click because of a poor audience-message match, or you risk paying for clicks that won’t convert to leads or customers.

Wrong Bid Strategy 

Oftentimes marketers just go with the default option when it comes to bid strategy. This is fine in some cases, but if the automatic option for lowest cost isn’t delivering results, it might be time to rethink. Here are the the other available bid strategies and what they’re best used for:

  • Bid Cap: Best for when you want to set a max bid across auctions to control cost and reach as many users as possible at that bid. 
  • Cost Cap: Best for when you want to maximize cost-efficiency or you need to keep cost within a specific threshold. 
  • Target Cost: Best for maintaining a consistent cost. 
  • Value Optimization within Min ROAS: Best if ROAS is the primary measure of success and you’re able to pass back transaction values to our platform. 
  • Highest Value: Best for getting the highest ROAS, want to spend full budget and when unsure of min ROAS/bid amount.

Too Large of an Ask 

Facebook users don’t have the same intent as those on search engines. If you’re asking for a large commitment from someone that has just been exposed to your brand for the first time, you’ll likely get poor results. When you’re still at the top of the funnel, you should be focusing on smaller asks, such as newsletter sign-ups, likes, comments, shares, etc. Once they have had more engagement, you can begin pushing larger asks, such as purchases, event sign-ups, etc.

Failing to Test Your Campaigns 

Launching ads on Facebook is easy. Finding a successful strategy, however, is not. The only real way to know what works and what doesn’t is by testing it. This sounds like more work, but Facebook actually makes A/B testing simple. A/B testing lets you change variables, such as your ad creative, audience or placement, to determine which strategy performs best and improve future campaigns. An A/B test lets you quickly compare both strategies to see which one performs best. After choosing which variable you want to test, Facebook divides your budget to equally and randomly split exposure between each version of your creative, audience, or placement. A/B testing can then measure the performance of each strategy on a cost per result basis or cost per conversion lift basis with a holdout. If you don’t test your way to success from the beginning, you may never figure out how to make Facebook Ads work for your business.

Final Thoughts 

The Facebook Ads platform is simple, but getting quality conversions can be difficult, which is why many businesses struggle with it. Luckily, these common issues are easy to resolve. Remember, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to campaign optimization. The best strategy for you ultimately depends on your products, website, customer lifecycle, objectives, and intended user experience. 

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

Facebook Is Bringing Augmented Reality Ads To The News Feed

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Facebook is getting creative with advertising content that their users can engage with: augmented reality!

For those of you unfamiliar with augmented reality, and especially the use of it in advertisements, it is extremely interactive and allows you to try out a virtual version of a product in a real-world environment. The example below from Engadget is how this technology will potentially be implemented into the Facebook advertising space.

 

This advertising will be available to only U.S. users in the entry launch. You as a consumer will be able to try on clothes, accessories, cosmetics, and even try out some AR-based games and apps.

Michael Kors was the first company to try out the new AR ads, and as you can see above, consumers were able to try on sunglasses and purchase them straight from the ad they were engaging with. In addition to Michael Kors, Wayfair, Sephora, Pottery Barn, NYX Professional Makeup, Bobbi Brown and King are all companies testing out the AR ads as well.

Due to the significant increase in AR popularity, the release of AR ads was no surprise to marketers. Almost 80 million people in the U.S. engage with AR monthly, and this number is expected to rise to 120 million by 2021.

AR is already regularly used and very successful in Facebook Messenger, so incorporating it into the News Feed is a natural next step for the technology. Nike used AR in Messenger to sell exclusively their new Kyrie 4s shoe, and the shoe sold it in only one hour. Clearly there was a ton of room for opportunity in sales with this interactive form of advertising. Digiday shares an example of AR advertising being used and how revolutionary it really can be:

In May, Snapchat said more than 100 advertisers were already buying its AR ads pro-grammatically and that a Foot Locker and Jordan Brand campaign using four AR ads saw an average play time of 45 seconds and over four million impressions.

An additional tool, the Video Creation Kit, Facebook has introduced will help advertisers create video ads with existing images. More news will come in August when it will be available on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Facebook’s Audience Network.

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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!