Marketing

The Big Idea: Social Media Marketing

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There’s no doubt about it, the world of social media can be a vast and confusing place if you’re not totally familiar with it. Even if you are an active user, a lot of people still don’t know how to utilise it effectively when it comes to marketing their business — that’s a whole other ball game. The good news is, we’ve more than dabbled in the social media sphere and have learnt a thing or two that we want to pass on.

While there may be a whole lot of stuff you’d rather not have to see or read on these platforms, the reality is, they are an unmatchable resource in more ways than one in terms of generating interest in the products and services you have to offer. Not only can you increase your business visibility, but socials like Facebook and Instagram also act as a way for current, and more importantly, potential customers, to engage with what it is that you do and what you can do for them. Ultimately, the ability for people to easily connect with you and your brand is going to result in tangible business leads that pay off.

So how do you take full advantage of social media for marketing your business? The list of ways to do so is extensive, but instead of rattling on about every single one, we’ve come up with a handful of key things to keep in mind in order to make the most of this tool we call social media.

Actually Connect with your audience

The most successful business socials are the ones that show the people behind them. Because posting on platforms is all done behind a screen, it can often take the authenticity away from it all and make it difficult for customers to connect with. Almost every post we put on our social media that actually has us, our clients, or even our office pets in it (yes, we also run a zoo), performs substantially better than if we were to just post a stock or text image. It’s as simple as this, people want to interact with real people, even in the digital world. Not only does it let consumers put a face to the brand, but it’s also a whole lot more personable and relatable. When you can run your platforms as similar as possible to an in-person exchange, that’s when you’ll see results. 

Post Regularly

You may or may not have heard about social media algorithms — they are very much a thing. Essentially, the more you post, the more your page is going to appear on other users’ newsfeeds, which in turn, will lead to more people engaging with what you’re posting. We recommend posting a few times a week or every second day to show you’re active and available to engage with your consumers. At the same time, you don’t want to bombard people with a whole lot of irrelevant content either because that can really put them off. Post with intention, whether it’s tips, facts about your business, insights into what you’re working on, or even pictures of the team having a bit of good old bonding time. Planning your posts a month in advance can also be really beneficial when you’re time-poor, that way you can simply schedule them in Creator Studio and not have to worry about content planning until the next month, just don’t forget to engage with any comments or messages when your post goes up.

Ask and answer questions

Find out what your target audience wants to see on your socials, literally by just asking them. Maybe there’s something they want to know more about or need help with — be the solution to their problem. The same goes for answering questions, if people are taking the time to comment on your posts, always reply in a friendly and professional manner and react to it so they know you value their engagement. The more you interact with the people posting on your page, the more your overall page engagement will increase — this is the ultimate goal for social media marketing. To get results, it has to be a two-way street. You can’t expect to get if you’re not giving back! Be consistent and you’ll reap the rewards with time, and of course, that means being patient. You know what they say, Rome wasn’t built in a day and the same goes for your social media engagement. 

Keep it Fresh

Nobody wants to see the same thing harped on about over and over again, and the same thing goes for images and designs. In saying that, that doesn’t mean you should get too off-brand and start using colours and styles that aren’t reflective of your business’s look and tone. Get creative with what you post and alternate the copy that goes with the images. One day you might talk about something personal about you and your team, like introducing a team member, and the next could be an informative fact about your business or the industry it‘s part of. Always try to think to yourself, “What would I want to see from this business if I was looking at their social media?’’. If you’re stuck on ideas, there’s no harm in looking at other business pages for inspiration. What we find super helpful is sitting down once a week or even once a month to brainstorm as a team. That way, we end up having a whole host of new and unique ideas brought to the table to keep our socials appealing and relevant. 

If after reading this you’re still unsure about what to do to get your social media marketing off the ground, don’t stress. We’re here to help when you’re feeling a little lost or just don’t have the time to invest in your socials. The bottom line is, it’s a marketing technique that really does work, you’ve just got to give it a chance.

 

Read enough? Contact us here. 

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Marketing

Getting Seen: The World of Paid Advertising

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It can be incredibly overwhelming going into the paid advertising sphere with very little understanding of how it all works. Too often, people shy away from its power because they’ve either been burned by someone who’s pocketed their advertising dollars, or they don’t know how to do it themselves and they’ve overspent. And if you’re entirely new to the concept of paid digital advertising, we want to share the benefits with you too.  So how does it work? Let’s think about the way traditional advertising works — you pay for a space in the newspaper or a slot on the radio for your ad. The same goes for online advertising, if you want to have the space for your ad on someone’s search engine, or that sponsored post on their social media newsfeed, you have to pay for that space. Essentially, paid advertising is one of the best ways to bring in new customers, get leads, increase brand awareness, and get a better return on your investment. Because organic content on social media has been on the decline for a few years now, paid advertising is really the best way to get results. Not only that, but they’re also super affordable and easy to measure — you can easily monitor how your ads are performing and see what is and isn’t working. It’s also incredibly specific, so you can narrow your target audience down to reach relevant consumers who are interested in your brand, fit the demographic of your buyer persona, and show in the exact geographic location you’re wanting to target. Plus, paid digital advertising also allows you to retarget consumers that have clicked through your ad, engaged with your business, and visited your page or website, to encourage them to complete the sales process. If you’re wondering what kind of paid ads you can use to make the most of your marketing dollars, we’ve come up with a list of the most popular ones.

Social Media Paid Ads

Platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Youtube allow users to pay for advertising space on their sites. Due to the advanced targeting options, and the option to retarget users on some social media sites, social media advertising can be extremely beneficial. In the third quarter of 2020, Facebook announced that 10 million advertisers were using the social networking platform to promote their products and services, the majority of which were small businesses. With apps like Facebook, which also owns Instagram, you can cross-post your ads to show up on both platforms. 

Google Paid Ads

Every time you search for something in Google, the ads that come up do so for a reason — the business has paid for its spot on the list. Your ads will display for a specific set of keywords, as well as other criteria you set when you create your ad campaign.  Search ads are also a great way to get to the top of the organic and local search results on Google, even if you’re struggling to manage the back end of your business’s Google Ads account. And because Google allows ads in the local search results, you have a pretty good chance of your ad appearing at the the top of the local search results for your industry, even if you are still figuring out how to get your ad ranking higher up in searches. This is great for businesses just starting out on their paid advertising journey, especially since their ads could show up above their competitors who are only in the local search results. However, in order to do so, you will need to have a Google search ad campaign and link your Google My Business account to your AdWords account with location extensions enabled.  Creating search ads can help you expand your customer base and will show up where they wouldn’t be able to if you were only using local search marketing.

Digital Media Paid Advertising

Paid advertising on news sites is also a great way to reach a wider audience, get the best-performing ad placements, as well as advertise on an arguably more trusted platform than social media. Media companies like Stuff and the online publication of the New Zealand Herald are often the go-to for businesses trying to position themselves in the spotlight. There are a whole host of ways digital media companies can incorporate your ads into their platforms, from putting them in between video breaks to slotting them in between articles, they’re bound to get seen. Here are our tips for optimizing the success of your ads:
  • Make it easy for people to convert a click into a sale by keeping the linking process simple.
  • Test two versions of the ad to see which performs best — ads can always be better so don’t be afraid of doing a whole lot of trial and error. 
  • Target the right audience by nailing details like the demographic, what your ideal customer’s pain points are and what problem your product can help them solve. Base this off your buyer persona.
  • Use consistent messaging and make sure the action your customer makes takes them to the right location. There’s no point putting a “find out more’’ button in that leads to a home page.
  • If the ad doesn’t perform the way you wanted it to, try something different.
If you’re still feeling lost with the concept of paid advertising, as always, the team at Elm are more than happy to lend you a helping hand!   Read enough? Contact us here. 

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Marketing

Any Successful Business Needs a Strategy

We are no strangers to the feeling of having a billion business ideas running through our minds on a regular basis. While it’s mostly fantastic to have an overly creative mind, it can also leave you feeling a bit scattered and lacking direction at times. When you’re just throwing those ideas out there and seeing what sticks, you’re likely going to be left wondering why none of your advertising is working. That’s why we are so adamant about every business needing a solid marketing strategy in order to get results. You simply just can’t start marketing effectively without knowing where you stand as a business.

Essentially, a marketing strategy is a comprehensive, in-depth plan that acts as a blueprint for the marketing objectives you want to achieve, including who your ideal customers are and how you’re going to reach them. Not only does it give you something to consistently refer to, but it also keeps you accountable. Once you’ve done your marketing research, which we discussed in our blogs on content marketing and knowing your target audience, the strategy will help you to concentrate your efforts and resources on the best possible opportunities to generate profit. 

Start your marketing strategy by outlining your business’s purpose, vision, and what makes it stand out from the competition. Then it’s about setting out who your customers are and why they would be likely to engage with your product or service. The strategy will outline how you plan to reach your target audience, what sort of content you’re going to produce and the communication methods that are going to be most effective. It could also include things like your buyer persona, where the brand is positioned with the market, a timeline for implementing those steps, and a multi-channel activity plan such as advertising the business across social media, a website, and so on. 

Here are just a few reasons why we believe a marketing strategy is a no-brainer.

Talk Directly to Your Target Audience

Gone are the days of marketing that is thrown out into the abyss in the hopes everyone will think they need what you’re selling in their lives — you’ve actually got to connect with your audience. People want to know how your product or service will solve their problem, and that they can trust your brand. In order to know how to do this, you need to have an understanding of what’s happening in the world and in the marketplace, which should all be included in your marketing strategy.

Don’t Waste Your Marketing Dollars

It can be tempting at times to put a few dollars on a marketing campaign, whether it’s on Google Ads or social media, and just “see how it goes’’. But in reality, this approach very rarely works and instead, will have you wasting a lot of money unnecessarily. Getting your brand front and centre stage is all about consistency and strategic spending. Having a marketing strategy that lays out your budget, how and on what you are going to spend your money, and then being able to monitor it is what will benefit your business short and long-term.

Keep Your Content Relevant

Without a plan in place, it’s easy for businesses to get off track and lose their target audience. When you’re able to refer back to who your audience is, check if your content is in line with your brand, as well as if it’s what people are looking for, it makes the marketing process a whole lot smoother. 

Measure Your Success

When we set marketing objectives from day one, it prevents us from wandering aimlessly and hoping good things will just happen. Unfortunately, like any other form of success, marketing success isn’t done on a whim and it most certainly doesn’t happen overnight. Setting goals, as well as expectations for your return on investment (ROI), gives you something to look back on and reassess what is and isn’t working.

And as always, if you’re still feeling a little lost when it comes to your marketing strategy, it’s what we do best. So, don’t hesitate — reach out and let us help your business grow.

 

Read enough? Contact us here. 

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Marketing

Buyer Persona: What Is It?

Is it Larry, the 27-year-old young professional who bikes to work every day, only uses Instagram just before bed, and loves fast, healthy meals because he doesn’t have the time to fluff around? Or is it Jane, the 54-year-old who’s taken a step back from full-time work, is learning yoga, and likes things that are simple and hassle-free? You may be wondering where we’re heading with this — we’re talking about the buyer persona.  In our previous article, Do You Really Know Your Audience? we went into depth about what a target audience is, and how to establish who yours is in order to market your product or service most effectively and efficiently. Now you may be thinking these two concepts sound incredibly similar. In a sense, they are. But the difference is that your target audience is a group of people, while your buyer persona is a fictional individual who represents your target audience as a whole.

Know your client

The reason why we create buyer personas in marketing is to have a “person” in mind that embodies all the characteristics of our best potential customers. In a sense, it’s a creation of your ideal customer that you can use for reference whenever you’re making marketing decisions. You can give this persona a name, demographic details, interests and behavioural traits, even a face. You’ll also know their exact pain point and what challenge they want to overcome. Because it’s so easy to get caught up in focusing on your business’s latest engagement rates and the success of your campaigns, creating a buyer persona helps you to re-centre your thinking, and reminds you to put your audience’s wants and needs ahead of your own. At the same time, this persona needs to be based on real-world data, not just what you think it is that your audience wants.

Connect with your audience

One thing we really try to avoid in our own marketing is using a whole lot of buzz words and sales speak to communicate with our clients. Real people want real human interaction, so throwing gimmicky sentences at them and expecting them to connect with it just isn’t going to work. By having a buyer persona, it helps you remain grounded in the way you market to your audience. When your buyer persona is at the forefront of your mind at every step of your marketing strategy, you’re going to achieve more rewarding results — both as a business and as a person. When you know exactly who your ideal customer is, it also means that you’re able to target your social ads a whole lot better. These days, you can choose from almost every detail in the book when it comes to picking who you want to target your ad to — from their age, to their screen time habits, and even the other things they’ve searched for. We know, sort of creepy. But it does have a lot of benefits for both parties. Like we discussed in our blog about target audiences, there’s plenty of online tools you can utilise to gather data and analysis to form your buyer persona. In a nutshell, when you know what your ideal customer or buyer persona wants, you’ll start to notice a better return on investment for your business. Plus, if you notice your engagement slipping, you can always backtrack and see what’s working and what isn’t. That way, you can really narrow your audience down and tailor your marketing to reach the right people, and then build a sustainable relationship from there.   Read enough? Contact us here. 

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