Category: online advertising

    Great Ways to Use Facebook for Marketing

    Facebook is truly a boon to savvy online marketers. Using Facebook for marketing your business is honestly a no-brainer. You can do so much on Facebook, mostly free, that you just cannot pass it up as a great marketing opportunity for your business.

    Set Up a Business Page

    In order to set up a business page on Facebook, you first need a personal page. But once you do have that, you can set up your business page. The business page enables you to promote your business actively while a personal page is not supposed to be used for that. It’s free to set up.

    Set Up a Community

    A Facebook community is very useful in terms of being able to discuss things with your customers, or potential future customers. You can easily set up a community in the same way you set up the business page – just choose “community.” A community has more communication ability between your likes and followers than a business page.

    Set Up a Private Group

    A private group is a great way to run a small mastermind group without having to invest in the technology to have one of your own hosted on your website. You can make them private and even secret. If you have a secret group, you’ll have to actively recruit people to join; you can even charge people money to join.

    Promote a Post

    On your business pages you’ll have the capability to post things and you’ll get a button that offers you to “promote” the post. You can bid a certain amount and choose your audience too. The capability to narrow down who you want to see your promoted post is genius and will enable you to truly target your audience with posts you want them to see.

    Run a PPC Advertisement

    Even without a business page you can create advertisements via your personal page on Facebook. It’s wonderful because you can narrow down your target audience in ways that you may not have realized that you could. You can target with age, sex, location, groups and affiliations. It doesn’t get much more niched down than that.

    Join Groups and Communities

    A great way to market your business on Facebook is to join other groups that consist of your target audience. Then, simply help others without an agenda. Do not market yourself or break any rules of the page owners. Instead, just be helpful, and share when requested to do so. Let your reputation speak for you.

    Comment on Pages, Groups and Communities

    When it comes to marketing on Facebook, a good use of your time is to make smart, intelligent and useful comments on posts that the owner of the page or group post, as well as being helpful to others who post.

    Share and Like

    If you want people to share what you are doing, be sure to share and like what they are doing. When it comes to online marketing, people like helping others when they are helped too. It’s a very generous community when it comes down to it. You’ll find competitors sharing each other’s work most of the time, instead of bashing each other. Although that does happen, it’s not likely.

    Using Facebook to market your business is an excellent way to market online. You can do so many things including contests, share images, videos, blog posts, memes and more. Don’t be shy; get started using Facebook to market your business today. But, be warned, you need to follow Facebook’s terms of service in order to continue.

    Categories: Facebook, social media Tags: Tags:

    Understanding the AIDA Formula

    In advertising there are tried and true formulas that you can use to ensure effectiveness. One of these is called the AIDA formula. AIDA stands for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. Using this formula in all of your ad copy is a way to check whether or not the advertisement will be effective before you even test it.

    Grab Their Attention

    You can catch your audience’s attention with a headline, an image, a special font, or the way you use words. As you know, the best way to ensure that people read your copy is to do something that makes them stop and take notice.

    Interest

    As well as the above, the words on the page need to keep your audience’s interest. The best way to do that is to explain the benefits of your product using words that differentiate yourself from the competition.

    Desire

    Using the right words, you want to create a longing or desire within your audience to follow your call to action. You do this by showing them how your product will solve their problems and fill their desires.

    Action

    Grabbing your audience’s attention, keeping their interest, and finding the words that bring up a well of desire for your product, will induce your audience to answer your calls to action at a higher rate than without applying AIDA.

    How to Apply AIDA

    Craft bold headlines, use active voice, white space, images and other means to use AIDA in your copy. Understand that while you need to write copy for all four stages, your audience also goes through the four stages as they engage with your advertising copy. If you can clearly identify the stages as you create the copy – whether it is a sales page or a pay-per-click advertisement, then it’s likely you’ve accomplished AIDA.

    It’s a Weeding Process

    You have to remember that you don’t want just anyone to click on your headline; you want someone who will read your copy and buy what you’re selling. So, to make AIDA work, don’t use tricky or misleading headlines or images to attract readers. Be up front at all times and as clear as possible about what’s “inside” your headlines for the reader. Use images that are relevant to the copy, and you’ll attract better leads. Ad copy is not just an attraction method; it’s also a weeding process.

    Whether you write copy for digital media or print media, using the AIDA formula will help you creating winning ad copy as often as you need to. Show your audience what your product can do for them and why they need to buy it using this method and it will work. You will get results from AIDA when you put it into effect.

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    Using PPC to Build Your List

    It’s a well-known fact that email marketing is number one when it comes to conversions. If you’re not actively building your list, then you’re leaving money on the table. In fact, you should always be building your email list. Always.

    The way to do that using PPC is to follow the steps below.

    * Create Link Bait – EBooks, eCourses, video courses, checklists, PowerPoint slides, an app, a template or something like that will make great link bait. Ensure that it’s something only your audience will want, to discourage freebie seekers. It needs to be valuable to your audience, something that will wow them and excite them about what else you have to offer enough that they’re willing to exchange their email address for it.

    * Create an Autoresponder Series – Get the autoresponder set up with preloaded information that will market your other products directed toward the target audience who you made the free item for. Always remember who is reading your content.

    * Craft anRun the Campaign Optimized Landing Page – Using software like LeadPages.net (which works with your email marketing software like AWeber.com) to create a landing page that encourages them to easily sign up for your free item. Don’t distract your viewers from the goal by giving them more options than signing up for your email list.

    * Set up Your PPC Account – Whether it’s Google AdSense, Bing or Facebook ads, set up your account so that you are ready to get started. If you use AdSense or Bing it may take longer to set up than Facebook does, so be prepared for that. For the point of marketing your freebie and getting email addresses for your list use one keyword phrase, at a time directed toward a small portion of your audience.

    * Run the Campaign – Once you have everything set up, run the campaign within your budget. Check daily to ensure you’re reaching your goals. Readjust as needed. Ideally, you should be able to run this campaign indefinitely; only change it when the material you created is out of date.

    * Collect the Email Addresses – The landing page and the freebie do the work for you, but once you have the email addresses you must immediately start marketing to them. The autoresponder series is supposed to follow up after they had a chance to use the free item, and then start educating and recommending other items to them.

    * Keep Them Interested – Cross-promote people on your list to your social media accounts. Remind them about your blog posts; tell them about your interviews, webinars, and other events going on that will be of interest to them.

    * Repeat – Do this same thing for every email list that you want to build. As long as you are attracting targeted list members and those members are converting to buyers, you can keep the campaigns going.

    Email lists are an integral part of every business today. Whether you’re online or offline, a big business or small business, email marketing is important to take part in. Start with building your email list using PPC.

    Categories: Email Subscribers, online advertising Tags: Tags:

    Ad Extensions: What Are They and How Can You Use Them?

    When you place a pay per click (PPC) advertisement, there are many ways to enhance your advertisement so that it works harder to produce the results you desire. One of these ways is to use ad extensions. Essentially, an ad extension is special format for advertisements online that help extra information show on a search result.

    Not all ad extensions show, even if you’ve enabled them or added them. Many factors, such as how high your advertisement shows up on the search engine, will affect whether the algorithm determines that extra is needed for the consumer to make a good choice. Your ad will be compared to another ad, and as you learn more you can improve the likelihood of extensions showing for your ads.

    There are several extensions that you can use, such as:

    * Social Extensions – This extension is an automatic extension that you can include just because you have a Google+ account or other social account that you list.

    * Location Extension – This is a special extension that you have to set up with Google Business and go through a bit of proving that your business is real.

    * Seller or Consumer Ratings – An automatic extension that will appear if you fill out the information and someone has made a rating or written a review about your business.

    * Call Extension – A manual extension that you can add if you want people to have the ability to click to call you from the search result.

    * Sitelinks – Another manual choice that allows you to add the link to your site. Those who see the search results for your site can click on it.

    * Callout Extensions – This extension allows you to put extra information and descriptive text for the searcher to help them make a choice of what to click on.

    * Previous Visits – This is an automatic extension that shows the searcher whether or not they’ve clicked through this particular site before.

    There are many other extensions and more being created all the time that you can add to your PPC ads. Using ad extensions offers increased visibility for your business as well as helps make it easier for a customer searching for your business to find what they want. By providing as much information as possible, you allow searchers to determine if your link is right for them before they click through.

    Most extensions don’t actually cost anything to add, but they do offer more opportunities for a person searching to click through. Plus, it requires a little more thought and time to put them together.

    Ads with extensions generally appear higher in search results, which causes them to be a lot more effective in producing the results that you want.

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    Using the Right Keywords for your PPC Campaign

    When you run a PPC campaign, choosing the right keywords is an important part of having a successful campaign. There are many places you can waste money, and one is over-bidding on the wrong keywords. Therefore, it’s important to understand what type of keywords you need to bid on and why.

    Don’t Use Broad Match Keywords

    Since broad match keywords are the default, most people make the mistake of bidding on them. A broad match means that if you want to bid on a keyword like snowflake, if someone types in “snow” then it will assume “flake,” or if someone types in “flake” it will assume “snow.” This isn’t the way you want your searches to work, especially when you are working on a low budget.

    Use Exact Match Type Keywords

    This is especially important when you are trying to build your email list. The exact match type keywords are the best ones to use because this means you’re sure of your keywords and keyword phrases, as well as your audience and what words they’ll choose.

    Choose Fewer Keywords per Campaign

    Instead of bidding on many keywords and keyword phrases, choose one to three phrases per campaign. This is the best way to ensure that the right people find your products at the right time. You’ll need to do a lot of research to determine what these keywords are, but it will work best if you do it this way. In an email campaign, consider using only one keyword phrase.

    Find the Right Keywords

    Use a keyword tool such as Google Keyword Planner or Keyword Tool, which is a good alternative to Google Keyword Planner. Once you’ve chosen your niche, you can start finding the best keywords to market your products. You want to find keywords that are low competition and high demand. This means people are searching for them, and there isn’t a lot of supply. These keywords will be your most lucrative yet less expensive.

    Links:
    Google Keyword Planner – https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner
    Keyword Tool – http://keywordtool.io/

    Test Your Keywords

    Try out the keywords to see if they work. Run a test campaign to see if your targeted audience clicks the ads, joins your email list and buys your product. If all those things don’t happen, then you should choose a different keyword. You want keywords to attract the right people at the right time.

    Keywords are an essential element in your marketing efforts, most especially pay-per-click marketing. However, it’s also important, vital really, to remember that you are creating content and products for people. The people who are your target audience have desires, needs, hopes and dreams and problems that you need to solve. Never forget that.

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    Common PPC Campaign Mistakes to Avoid

    A pay-per-click (PPC) campaign can take your marketing to the next level. You can run PPC campaigns on social media networks like Facebook or on search engines like Google. Even some popular websites offer the ability for you to place PPC ads on them. But, if you want to be successful then you must try to avoid these mistakes.

    * Not Having a Goal – Your first job when you want to run a PPC campaign is to understand your goal. Each marketing campaign that you conduct will have a different goal. Some are to bring traffic, some are to spread brand awareness, some are to build your email list – but whatever your goal, know in advance what it is.

    * Not Making a Special Campaign for Each Channel – Don’t recycle an old PPC campaign to another network. Each network is unique and should be treated as such. The mood, the size of the images, the guidelines for the type of ad that will be approved, are very different between networks.

    * Not Niching Down Your Offerings – When you run any type of PPC campaign, it’s important to have only one CTA. Know exactly what you’re offering and to whom, and convey that in the imagery and copy of your advertisement.

    * Not Having a Clear CTA – Your call to action must be noticeable and clear. You want it to denote an action that gives a clearly defined benefit to the person viewing the advertisement. If it’s not clear, people will not click.

    * Not Using an Appropriate Picture – Don’t just use any picture; be sure to use the right image for the right advertisement. You want your PPC campaign to speak to your audience using images that they understand and that mean something to them.

    * Not Considering the Headline – Your headlines when creating a PPC campaign are critical to the success of the ad. The reason is you have very little space when it comes to PPC campaigns and you want every word to mean something and add value.

    * Not Targeting Narrowly Enough – Many people run ads and think they want to cast a wide net, but this can be far more expensive and lower your conversion rates. You want only people who really need, want and desire your offering to click through.

    * Not Setting a Budget – You need to know what you plan to spend before even getting started. Most platforms allow you to set your budget on a daily basis, or even a total allotment for the entire campaign. By setting the budget you’ll end up saving money in the long run.

    If you avoid these common PPC campaign mistakes, you’ll be a lot more successful with all your PPC campaigns. Avoiding mistakes in all aspects is not possible, but avoiding common mistakes is. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel when it comes to marketing. People with deep pockets have already done the work for you; all you have to do is set up a campaign for success by learning from others.

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    Eight Ways to Market Online with PPC

    Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing is a very popular form of online marketing. It consists of an ad that is delivered to various websites that have the ad code on it. You can run PPC ads via Google AdSense, Bing, Facebook and others. You simply create your ad according to the guidelines of the service you choose to use, pick your keywords, the price you want to pay and your budget, and you’re good to go.

    You can use PPC for a lot of marketing needs.

    1. Build Your Email List – One of the best ways to use PPC if you have a small budget and a low-cost product is to use it to build your email list. Create a free giveaway that you exchange for an email address. Ensure that the freebie is well crafted and so that it gives them a taste of the paid items you want to promote.

    2. Promote a Product – Using PPC to promote a product is a great way to get visitors to your website fast. Ensure that you also have a slide or pop-under that only comes up if someone does not purchase the item so that they can get on your newsletter.

    3. Promote a Service – You can also use PPC to promote a service. This works especially well if you offer a high-priced service. It’s imperative that you write very professional copy so that you attract the right visitors to this offer.

    4. Sell Affiliate Products – Even if you don’t have your own products, you can still use PPC to promote other people’s products. It’s especially worth it if it’s a high-converting product with a good payout. Be careful to follow the rules about which keywords you can and cannot bid on.

    5. Use Social Media PPC – Social media sites like Facebook also offer pay-per-click opportunities that are inexpensive and which you can use to promote all sorts of products and services. It’s important to check the rules and terms of service.

    6. Try Bing PPC – Bing offers a pay-per-click program too. You can learn how to start a Bing pay-per-click campaign by checking out their website. It’s the same concept in terms of paying for clicks through to your site.

    Link – http://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-us/create-campaign/topic?market=en&project=Bing_Ads&querytype=topic&query=HLP_BA_CONC_ADCENTER_FLOW.htm

    7. Use AdWords PPC – AdWords is arguably one of the most popular methods by which marketers use PPC. It’s easy to get started with AdWords as they have very few requirements other than that your website cannot be pornographic, spam or illegal.

    Link – https://www.google.com/adwords/

    8. Don’t Forget the Landing Pages – One of the most important aspects of your PPC campaign is your landing page / sales page / squeeze page – whatever you choose to call it. You can use software like LeadPages.net to ensure that yours works as hard as it can for you.

    Using pay-per-click marketing can be very lucrative, or very expensive. It’s important that you understand how everything works and develop a plan of action before getting started so that you don’t waste any money.

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    Eight PPC Tactics That Get Results

    Pay per click (PPC) is often overlooked by small businesses because they don’t realize how effective a well-planned PPC campaign can be for them. But, a PPC campaign that has realistic goals can be very lucrative. Here are eight tactics that work very well to improve your business when PPC is used.

    1. Remarketing – It’s not just for big business; small businesses can also remarket too. Basically you sign up with an agency such as Google or something like Remarketing.com. They will provide the technology which puts a cookie on the computer that has visited your website but not converted. Then, when the visitor goes to other pages, they will see mention of your website.

    2. Build Your List – Instead of using PPC to sell the actual products you want to sell, use it to build your list. You can offer a freebie of some kind in exchange for an email address. Once they’re on your list, you can now market all your products and services to them instead of just one at a time.

    3. Local Targeting – Even if you have a national or international business, local targeting is a good thing to do. Write content that is focused on a particular location that has a high amount of your target audience.

    4. Segmentation – When you plan a PPC campaign, you want to segment your market down as small as you can for each type of advertisement that you create. You can use the tools available to target only certain people with the ads that you create.

    5. Make Better Landing Pages – When you plan a PPC campaign you should create special landing and sales pages for each advertisement. This will help ensure that you target the people that you want to target – not just with the ad that they click, but on the page they land. You can use software like LeadPages.net to make it simpler.

    6. Test Everything – Testing is important in all marketing and advertising, but don’t be tempted to skip it with PPC. Try two different PPC ads targeted to the same audience with just one minor thing changed such as headline, or use the same ad targeted to different audiences to figure out which responds most. The important thing is to only change one aspect at a time.

    7. People First – With all the focus on keywords, content, and technology, don’t forget that first and foremost you’re marketing to human beings; humans with thoughts and feelings and the ability to differentiate between a good deal and a bad deal.

    8. Study Your Numbers – Nothing is ever complete without studying the numbers. At various points during your PPC campaign, compare the results with your goals. If they’re not lining up then you need to adjust the campaign.

    Running a successful PPC campaign is easy for small business owners today with the tools available on Google as well as social media like Facebook. But, before you start, ensure that you have a goal in mind, and that you have prepared for the PPC campaign to be successful. Nothing is worse than having your site crash due to too much traffic, or the newsletter sign-up form not working. Be prepared, get ready, and go.

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    Why Facebook Ads Work

    Facebook ads are inexpensive, effective, and something any small business owner should consider getting involved with. The reason you should be running Facebook ads, whether they are sponsored posts or other types of ads, is that they do work. Here is why.

    * People Live on Facebook All Day Long – People use Facebook on PCs and on their mobile devices, and keep it with them all day long. They take Facebook with them to dinner and some people never turn it off. This is a real chance to connect with your audience that you cannot pass up.

    * They Are Relevant Due to Extreme Targeting – Facebook allows you to target your individual audience down to their interests and gender, and you can even provide email addresses for the exact people you want to target.

    * Easy to Include a CTA – The tools that Facebook offers the people who want to run ads help to create compelling CTAs that your audience will be more likely to answer, whether it’s as easy as liking your page or downloading your app.

    * It’s Easy to Make Professional-Looking Ads – The tools that Facebook offers let you create professional Facebook ads without having the ability to make ads. They lead you through it with their system to make it simple, so you’re more likely to repeat the process.

    * Easy to Include Great Value – You can easily include enough information in each ad that shows the value of your offering. With just a few clicks you’ll have an awesome ad that your audience can see the value in.

    * They Offer Disruption with Significance – In many cases people are blind to advertisements, but on Facebook the disruption is noticeable and your audience will want to check it out. This is due to the ability to target the ads so closely to your target audience.

    * They Are Simple to Create – The ads are easy to create and it gets easier all the time. As Facebook makes the ads work better for business owners, and easier to do with a click of a button, they become more relevant, more valuable, and more useful to you as a business owner.

    * Easy to Run A/B Tests – Due to the ability to duplicate an ad and then easily edit to change one part of the ad such as the title or the image, you can run ads simultaneously. You can even target different audiences to find out which works better.

    Facebook ads work for a variety of reasons. However, they will only work if you plan them out and spend the time ensuring that you run relevant ads. They must be of value to your audience, grab the attention of the viewer and include a compelling call to action.

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    Eleven Tips for a Successful PPC Campaign

    Running a successful PPC campaign requires thought, research, and a deep understanding of your audience and your products. Plus, you need to have a real handle on what your budget is for running a PPC campaign. The only time you should go over your budget is when you are earning a high return on your investment. With these tips you might just manage that.

    1. Know Your Products – To create great ads, knowing the benefits that your product offers the buyer is imperative. You need to be able to explain those benefits easily to your customer and/or your copywriter to ensure a successful campaign.

    2. Study Your Audience – All successful marketing starts with understanding who your audience is, what they want, need, desire and how much money they can afford to spend on solving their problems. This research will ensure a successful campaign.

    3. Create Audience Personas – Within any one audience for any one product or service, there are sub-audiences. If you can narrow down a targeted audience to a specific persona, it will make it easier to write ad copy.

    4. Segment in New Ways – PPC allows you to target your audience by segmenting in new ways, including location, sex, income level, interests and more. Use the segmenting features of the platform you want to choose to ensure a truly targeted campaign.

    5. Promote Various Stages of Your Product Funnel – Use PPC for building your list, and for selling other products higher up on your product funnel too.

    6. Craft Exceptional Landing Pages – Using software like LeadPages.net, create landing pages that are well written, well targeted and that work for your needs and the audience visiting them.

    7. Create Targeted Ads – Using the information you have about your product and your audiences, ensure that your ads are targeted to the right consumer. Use images, copy, and even colors and font to make them right.

    8. Use Remarketing/Retargeting Technology – If you have a lot of visitors to your site who don’t convert, a great way to increase conversions (some say by 30 percent) is to engage in remarketing. That means that if someone visits your site, a cookie is downloaded to their computer, which will deliver ads for your website.

    9. Use Keyword Match Types Correctly – Avoid “broad” match types because you want to really narrow down your keywords to specific keywords to better qualify those who will click through. For example “broad match” will allow part of a word to trigger other words that aren’t relevant to your PPC campaign.

    10. Diversify – Google AdWords, Bing and Facebook are all good places to run a PPC campaign. Instead of using just one, try running on all of them or picking something different from AdWords to see how it goes.

    11. People over Keywords – It’s very important to remember that a real person is going to read your advertisement and click it, and then read whatever is on the other side such as a download page, a landing page, or something else.

    Finally, it’s important to realize that you must have goals, as well as understand the technology you’re using. And, if you don’t know where to start, remember that there is help for you. There are services, apps, contractors and more that will help make running a PPC campaign more successful.

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