How to Deal with Facebook’s Declining Organic Reach

Source: http://blogs.constantcontact.com/

Organic reach refers to how many people you can reach for free on Facebook by posting content to your Brand’s Page.

 Facebook has been pretty regularly rectifying its news feed algorithm over the past few years in an effort to show users ‘higher quality content’. It doesn’t want you promoting your brand for free (that’s what paid ads and sponsored posts are for).

With this, Facebook’s potential for organic reach has come into question lately.

Brian Boland (VP Advertising Technology, Facebook) mentions two major reasons for the decline-

First, the massive amount of content shared by publishers on Facebook. Second, Facebook wants to increase the engagement in its News Feed. So, its algorithm ensures that only the most relevant and high-quality stories appear in a user’s feed.

However, it is possible to counter these changes with some efforts. Let's explore some tips for dealing with the decline in organic reach.

·         Have a complete profile

This is obvious, but still many brands miss the mark on this. Your page should have a recognizable profile picture (your logo), an engaging cover photo with a call-to-action, a completely filled ‘about’ section, and other relevant info that your followers should know. Add a Link back to your website, and use keywords in your about section so that your audience knows exactly what you are all about.

·         Engage

Social media is about conversations. If your posts and content don’t start conversations or at a minimum, add to existing conversations, then you’re doing it all wrong. Remember that engagement is a two-way street. Make sure that you quickly reply to all the comments. It’ll increase the engagement on the page and give the user another reason to visit you.

If you are not engaging, the user won’t hesitate in clicking the unlike button on your page (it’s just a click away).

·         Ask Questions

 Ask easy questions that can get interest of the readers. Posts with a question get more engagement than posts without a question.

You should always place questions at the end of your post rather than at the beginning or middle of the post to make it stand out. Posts that end with a question have a 15% higher engagement rate than posts with questions at the beginning or in the middle.

·         Post Quality Content

Always post high-quality content. Engage your audience with humour, inspiration and educational content.  The content you post shouldn’t promote your brand, but instead should provide value and quality to your followers. This creates brand recognition and can further help in building brand loyalty.

·         Keep it short

 The longer the length of your wall post, the less engaging the wall post is. Posts of 80 characters or less are the most engaging. Learn to edit your posts and keep them short and simple!

·         Posting Time

There are so many studies on the best posting time on Facebook. One study claims that it’s around 5 PM PST (Mon – Thu). Another claim that it is around 4 PM, I found that 3 PM works best to get clicks. Scratching your head already, aren’t you? Don’t blindly follow these claims. Dig into your Facebook Insights and find out when your fans are online. You can also test by posting at non-peak hours (10 PM to 3 AM). This works under the assumption that when there is a little being shared online, your content is more likely to stand out.

·         Frequency  of posts

Don’t post more than 2-3 times/day. It can irritate your audience.

But, you can post more often at widely different times if you’ve got an international audience. This will help you reach out to different segments of your audience (who live in a different time zone or log on to Facebook infrequently). You can also be successful, even with a higher posting frequency, by providing variety. Mix your posting schedule and post types. Also, test your page insights. Only your data can reveal your audience’s exact response.

·         Use Organic Post Targeting

Step 1: Enable targeting on your page settings.

Step 2: Check Facebook insights for data about your audience.

 Step 3: Run 2-3 targeted posts using different parameters.

 Step 4: Open Facebook insights and check your results.

Step5:  Target accordingly, with parameters that give you best results.

·         Get more shares

Share posts from your Facebook Page on your Facebook Profile. This strategy is for the avid Facebook user. You may have 1000+ friends on your personal Facebook profile and sharing the content with them can add on to drive significant results.

 If you still struggle with organic reach, chances are you need to do more testing on your Facebook Page. Every business is different and the things that work for one page may not work for the other. Study your insights, test with different variants and go with the ones that suit you. Happy posting!

The Essentials of an Effective Landing Page

A landing page is a page where the visitors ‘land’ after clicking on an ad, e-mail or any other targeted campaign. It serves one clear objective- moving a visitor down the conversion funnel, that is, turning a visitor into a prospect lead( by capturing their e-mails and other info).

Think about it- They have landed on your page while browsing the web. They are anxious to move on and will only stay if they find you worth their attention.  

Crafting a competition-crushing landing page is essential to hold their attention, get your message across and convert those visitors into leads.

There are dozens of different essentials to keep in mind, a whole science of psychology involved, and the idea of “what the customer wants” whispering in the background.

So, how can you unleash your landing page, to the amazement of the watching world?

Read on to find out-

Killer Headline

A headline is where everything begins — interest, attention, and understanding. The singular goal is to get the next line read.  It should be short (never more than twenty words, and preferably only ten) but strong enough to show the visitor that they are in the right place.

Persuasive Subheadline

The best way to keep your headline short and sweet is to add a supporting headline. If the headline makes the user look, then the subheadline should make them stay. It should extend the message by applying an additional persuasive message to support the primary one.

Visuals

The adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” is especially true in the short attention span world of the landing page. The brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text and hence, visitors will be affected by the images on your landing page immediately. You need to note that the picture should be large, of high quality and should be relevant to your product or service.

The benefits of your offering

In seconds from landing on your page, the visitor would think -What can I get here? So don’t talk about yourself. Talk about what will the visitor get from you and how will that benefit him? How are you better from all the other websites he just saw? Try to focus on answering any questions they may have.

Social proof

Social proof is a powerful persuasive element. Simply put it’s the use of social links to illustrate that other people have bought/consumed/read/participated in, what you offer. 

Some examples of social proof are:

·         A count of how many customers you have.

·         Awards from reputable organizations.

·         Customer reviews – One of the most powerful elements when prospects are comparing and shopping.

Call to Action

The last position is for the most important element of all — the call to action. It is critical to conversions as it’s what you want people to interact with on your landing page. How you design it, where you place it and what it says are all important considerations.

The best CTAs:

·         Stand out (e.g. using high contrast, bright colours, strategic placement on the landing page.)

·         Are designed and formulated as a call to perform an action – often starting with a verb (e.g. Start, sign up, download, etc.)

·         Make it clear what you get when you click on them.

Once you’re done creating a landing page by implementing these essentials, do some A/B testing, and keep improving. The process of creating a landing page is never finished. You can always improve.

Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Marketing Automation System

The field of Marketing Automation is growing at an amazing rate. It has become a buzzword in the world of digital today. As the term suggests, marketing automation takes traditionally manual tasks and, well, automates them. Activities such as contact management, list segmentation, lead scoring and nurturing, A/B testing of website pages and offers, email marketing, content marketing, performance measurement and reporting can all be done more efficiently through automation.

 Thanks to the advances in technology and more intelligent use of software, marketing automation software promises more leads, more conversions, more sales and all these huge profits, in less work.

 Marketers that use marketing automation systems state that it helps them get more out of their marketing efforts by taking repetitive tasks out of their hands.

Because it takes repetitive, unskilled tasks out of the marketers’ hands, it frees them up to do higher-level work. They will no longer have to be concerned with monitoring every customer and prospect in every section of their sales funnel. Instead, the marketing automation system will keep tabs on this for them, so that they can dig deeper into their market and brainstorm new ways to connect with their audience.

 According to Marketo and Ascend2’s latest statistics:-

·         91% of the most successful users agree that marketing automation is “very important” to the overall success of their marketing across channels.

·         75% of all businesses that use marketing automation see positive ROI within the first year,

·         63% of companies successful in Marketing Automation plan to increase their Marketing Automation budget.

Not only do these statistics emphasize the benefits of marketing automation, but they prove that your business probably needs a marketing automation system to maintain a competitive edge in today’s marketplace. If you haven’t already done so, it’s time you bring your company’s marketing efforts up, to speed with the current marketing landscape.

Personalised Marketing – The Next Big Thing!

Source: www.marketo.com

Digital marketing is similar to dropping crumbs for your customers to find the trail and then follow it, eventually leading to your company’s products and services. But, unlike a clear-cut path, digital channels allow prospects and customers to venture on a maze-like passage toward purchases.

It is challenging for marketers to strategize this maze pattern; especially as the tools we use to connect with customers change along with the ways they want to receive the information.

Hence, the bread crumbs dropped for the potential customers need to be as per their liking and taste. There should be an engagement that allows building trust of the customers for the company. This is where personalisation comes into play.

Personalisation involves using technology to accommodate the differences between individuals. In the online marketing world, it means creating customer experiences, or interactions, that are relevant, unique, and convenient in order to build a mutually beneficial relationship between customer and business or between businesses.

It can be called ‘super-powered’ marketing as it helps in creating an emotional bond between the customer and the brand. This bond creates trust and eventually a long-term relationship that increases engagement.

When you get to know your customers well, you can use data to make predictive and intelligent offers to them.

And finally, it also helps with delivering relevant content and engaging design. This, in turn, improves the overall customer experience by helping with branding as well as conversions. Customers will view your company in a different light and your associates and competitors will take you much more seriously when you put digital marketing in a full-court press for your business brand. 

So, how do you go about it?

Making marketing more personal through programmes such as retargeting is one way to start. Email is probably next, and then starts looking at the call centre and the website.

Once you know what channels to address, then come up with a plan for what customer data you are going to use to personalise the channel.

Trying to use all the customer data at once is too difficult. Instead, start off with the name and perhaps an event such as a birthday or a relevant holiday. 

From there you can start collecting behavioural (purchasing) and interest (browsing) data to improve your personalisation. The more you know about your audience, the more insights you can glean to provide value to your customers.

If you’re not using this tool, you’re losing your audience and letting someone else (your competitor) take your place. Get personalisation into your Digital plans and Get Going!!

Looking to put personalised marketing techniques to use? Need cost effective solutions to get the most of digital marketing for your business? Our awesome team is here; ready to fasten a rocket to your digital marketing campaigns. So, what are you waiting for?  Contact us! 

Build an audience that will build your digital business

                             

There’s a big audience out there for almost every business under the sun. But there’s an equal amount of companies and brands competing for that audience.  

71% of marketers already use content marketing to engage customers and generate leads.What you need is the right formula to stand out, stay on top, and keep growing your base.

Image source- smejoinup.com

Content marketing is targeted at building your reputation and visibility and is NOT about promoting your products or services. It’s about adding value to the people who consume your content.

People don’t want advertising when making purchasing decisions, they want valuable information. Content is the best way to achieve what advertising is supposed to achieve— to get people to know, like, and trust your brand, without boring them with advertisements.

It’s content that people desire and seek out, and it’s great content that Google wants to rank well in the search results so those people can find your business.

 Content fuels customer engagement at all stages of the customer life cycle. It helps to educate the audience about the buying process and how to get the most out of the purchase.

When you post content on a continual basis, people begin to feel that they have a relationship with you, even if they are not interacting directly with you. They start to see you as “good people” which leads to their trusting you and what you have to say. Who doesn’t want that?  And if someone trusts you, they are more likely to buy your products and services and more likely to tell others.

Given that relationships are a major goal of content marketing, here are some tips you should keep in mind while creating content for your business:

·        Create new and exceptional added-value content.

·        Invite dialog and ask questions.

·        Respond to comments directly on your posts or on social media.

·        Find ways to help people who reach out to you.

As you do more and more of this, your relationships with your readers/viewers will grow. You will find they will:

·        Subscribe to your content

·        Share it with others

And with time you’ll have a loyal audience for your digital business.

So, when are you adjusting your strategy, skills and resources to make the move forward with content marketing?

What does the future of e-commerce look like?

Are you amazed at how much e-commerce has changed over the last few years?

Do you want to discover what’s next?

         

 Close your eyes and imagine shopping on an online store with a friend, virtually trying things on your avatar that is a representative of your likeness and choice with conversing in real time, all while sitting comfortably on your bean bag.

Does it fascinate you?

The good news is- This isn’t far away.

For those who are lazy but crazy for shopping, e-commerce holds so much more in near future.

           
We're already seeing increased personalization, more individual-to-individual communication, more humanlike algorithms and more specified, diverse social platforms.

These social platforms are connecting businesses to customers continually. The key word here is "connect." What else is social media about if not connecting? By marrying personalized customer information with the power of social media, e-commerce is creating incredibly targeted and robust data-driven marketing interactions in real time. Also, the technology has taken the customer experience to the next level. Days are not far when social media would be even at more fingertips, and people would be connected more than ever. Through smart use of social and online data, companies would create content that would match every step of the customer journey. Companies will compose messages extra personalized  to give their customers a further personal touch when they interact on social platforms. The likes of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest will play an important role and increase in social revenues through ‘buy buttons’ and better paid ‘ad options’ will take e-commerce by storm.

With smaller screen trend, e-commerce players will see mobile commerce as the most preferred route. Much better services than 4G will hit the market, with which internet penetration would take a significant leap, giving another boost to mobile commerce. Changes in lifestyle and shopping choices will see buyers preferring online channel over physical channel to save time and seek wider range and possibly comparative pricing.

 Among other nations, the Indian e-commerce industry will emerge at a phenomenal rate, generating a plethora of digital opportunities with it. Even though the country has made a late entry to the sphere of e-commerce, it is fast catching up with global players like Amazon, ebay, Walmart and will reach new heights further.

There are currently 35 million people buying online and this will increase to 300 million in the next four years. The other overwhelming trends are as follows:

Yes, the future is almost here! The common saying about the Indian retail consumers' "can't touch, won't buy" mentality is diluting at an increased rate and  consequently we shall see online shopping  become mainstream in next few years to come.