(MKTG 297) Week 9 - Location/Language and Device Targeting

In the last blog post I discussed targeting your audience based on keywords and display networks. In this blog I will discuss what I learned about location/language and device targeting.

Location targeting is just as it sounds, you use a specific location to reach your intended audience. You can choose to select an entire country, a specific region, a state, or even a town that you want your ad to appear. Say you are a small business and you only want your ad too appear to people living within 30 miles of your business. All you have to do is put in your location and then track a thirty mile radius around it. Another important bit of information to keep in mind with location targeting is that you want to pick areas that you are able to serve. If you only ship within the United States then targeting your ad outside of the USA would not make sense.





Language is another key way you can target your ads. If you create a product that is known internationally then you can target your ads to reach people who speak all different type of languages. For example, if you sell furniture that people in Paris love but you are located in the U.S. you can target your ad to French speaking individuals. You should remember that your keywords should be written in the language that you are targeting as well.

Device targeting is another way you can reach your target audience. There are many different types of mobile devices on the market right now that have various different screens. This means that you can tailor your advertisement to fit these screen types. Some larger mobile devices have screens with larger browsers while others can only show mobile friendly pages. You can choose to target your ad to a specific type of device that you believe your audience may be using.

(MKTG 347) Week 9 - Boosting Posts on Facebook

When you create a page on Facebook you have the option to boost your post. This costs money so it may not be something you are looking to do right now, but it is always something good to know. The Facebook page I have created was for a project I created for one of my marketing classes. I was looking into all of the different features Facebook offers for my page and came across a tips section. This section showed me the option to boost my post. And here is what I learned when I read over the suggestions Facebook gave me.

First off, you may not know this, Facebook does not actually guarantee that your post will show up in newsfeed of people who liked your page. Seems kind of weird right? But it's true. So when you post something you have the option to boost your post which will tell Facebook that you want more people who liked your page to see what you posted. When you boost a post you have a few different options of who you want to reach. You can reach specific people based on gender, age, location, language, etc. All of these demographic variables can be taken into consideration when you decided to boost your post.

You can also set up your own budget for this. You can use one of Facebook's preselected budgets or you can create your own. Facebook does ensure that you never spend more then you have indicated. You have the option to add a debit or credit card or use Paypal to pay for your boost. A payment form needs to be saved because your card or account will be charged differently based on how you set up your budget. Facebook has also made it easy to boost your posts from a mobile device as well.

While these next few tips do not directly relate to boosting posts they can be helpful in creating a post that is worthy of being boosted. Facebook actually provides a link to a page that gives something interesting tips on creating content that is relevant and worthy of reading. Facebook suggest that you keep your post short because people scrolling through their newsfeeds are not going to want to read a lengthy paragraph. You should also include images to make your post more appealing and intriguing. Make sure your image is relevant and high quality. Make sure that you link to your website or link to the item you are talking about in your post. The worst thing you can do is talk about how amazing your product is and then not give the reader anywhere to find your product. Lastly, you should always respond to any comments left on your boosted post. You paid money for people to see this post and if they have any questions you want to address them so that the customer can go ahead and make a purchase. Make sure to follow through with what you are doing.

So really boosting a post is up to you. If you think it could be effective for your business and it can help you reach more people then give it a try. There's no harm in running a small scale trial and seeing what type of results it produces. Just remember to always track your ROI so you know what works and what doesn't.

This is what you would click on if you wanted to boost your post.

(MKTG 348) Week 9 - Sending Effective Emails

Email Marketing? Is that still something we do? Yes! Email marketing is still really important and something that if used right can be very effective. According to Hubspot, email marketing is growing and the number of people that still use email today is exorbitant. Email allows you to converse one on one with your customer, there's no middle man in the way. When you use a social media site like Facebook, Facebook will always be in the middle of you and your customer. You own your email. Hubspot also makes the claim that you will get a 4300% ROI when you use email marketing. So for every one dollar you spend you can make forty three dollars back. Pretty crazy right? 

When you create an email you need to make sure that you are sending it to the right person at the right time with the right message. You need to be aware of what part of the buyer's journey your potential customer is in and tailor your content to meet that customers needs. You do not want to bombard your customer with thousands of email's trying to force them to make a purchase. You want to inform, create enticing offers, and send gentle reminders. 

It is important to remember that once you have obtained a lead as a customer you need to keep sending emails. You want to keep your customer happy and keep sending them offers. Everyone loves getting a coupon for their favorite store and it encourages them to keep making more purchases. Even if your email is just information about new trends or something related to your business you still want to send it to your customers. This will make them feel important and like you care enough about them to keep them in the know. Keeping your customers attention is very important!

Hubspot suggests four ways to create the best email:

1. Decide on your audience. Who in particular are you trying to reach?
2. Segment your contacts so that they match this audience
3. Determine what stage your buyers are in in the buying journey and tailor your content to fit these needs
4. Create an offer or message that encourages your lead to become a customer. Basically, create great content!

Some things to keep in mind when crating emails are that:

A. Personalizing is important: Customers respond to personalization, if they feel the content and email is really tailored to their needs they will be much more happy. 

B. Goals should be set: You should always have a goal with your email. Do you want to increase brand awareness, drive traffic to the site, encourage a purchase of a particular product

C. Engagement should be a main focus: You want to make sure your content engages your customer and makes them want to click on your email or respond to the message you have sent. After all, engagement leads to action.

D. You should test and analyze your results: You should always measure how effective your emails are. Is the content your putting in your email producing results? Could you being doing something wrong?

Now you may begin to better understand why emails are so important and how you can really send an effective email that produces an action that ends in a happy customer!

(MKTG 297) Week 8 - Keyword and Display Network Targeting

Google AdWords provides several options to help you best target your audience. In general there are four options for targeting:

1. Keyword Targeting
2. Display Network Targeting
3. Location and Language Targeting
4. Device Targeting

This blog will discuss the first two options for targeting: keyword and display network. The next blog will discuss the last two options for targeting: location and language and device. 

You can use keywords to reach your target audience. As previously explained in another post, you can use display network or search network to accomplish this task. Google AdWords has something called a keyword match type. There are five different keyword match types you can use to reach your audience. These include:

1. Broad Match: Your ad will pop-up on searches that are misspelled, have similar words, or are somewhat relevant to the search being made. 
2. Broad Match Modifier: The search contains a modified word in any order but not a similar word. 
3. Phrase Match: Just as it sounds, a phrase similar to what your phrase is. Ex: the search term is purchase dog collars with your keyword being "dog collars"
4. Exact Match: an exact match to what your keyword is. Ex: the search term is dog collars with your keyword being dog collars.
5. Negative Match: Searches that do not relate to your term at all. Ex: the search term is tennis shoes with your keyword being children.

You can only use keyword match types on campaigns that show up on Search Networks not Display Networks. This is because keywords on display networks are all considered broad matches. 

There are three different ways you can target your ads to your audience on the Display Network. These include:

1. Contextual Targeting: Matching your content to relevant sites. You can do this by using keywords or topics similar to your sites content. 
2. Audiences: You can target your audiences in different ways. If you want to increase brand awareness you can use affinity audiences. If you want to reach as many people as you can what want a product in a certain area you can try custom affinity audiences. If you want to reach people who are currently seeking out a product or service that you offer you can use in-market audiences. You can target your audience by their interests using Internet categories. You can also use demographic factors to target your specific audience.
3. Managed Placement Targeting: With this option you can pick specific websites or apps that you want your ad to be displayed. You probably know your audience pretty well so you may know sites or apps that your customers may frequent. 

(MKTG 347) Week 8 - Hootsuite

Chapter 7 of CASA Marketing Intro to Social Media Marketing by Todd Kelsey discusses using the website Hootsuite. Hootsuite is a social media marketing tool that can help you manage all of your social media accounts in one place. Hootsuite can be used to post content to multiple sites at once, schedule posts, and track what is being said about your company. This website is free but you can also upgrade your plan and get more options of things you can track and do.

Hootsuite also has something called Hootsuite University which is basically a learning module that teaches you about social media marketing and then gives you a certificate at the end. It may be something to look into if you want to learn more about this topic. For my class we have to become Hootsuite certified which is awesome because it just adds to the knowledge we are learning in our class about social media marketing.

Kelsey actually shows you how to setup a Hootsuite account and get started on the site. He suggests starting with a free account until you know if this website is something you will really use. Often times we get a little excited and think we are going to accomplish so much and in the end what we choose to do may have not been the best thing for our business. So instead, set small achievable goals and see how you do with those. If Hootsuite ends up being something that helps you achieve your goals then you can consider looking at the paid options.

The next step you will see once you create your account is linking your social media accounts to Hootsuite. You can link your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blog, etc. to your Hootsuite account. This is why it is important to have a presence on social media because then you will have more options of where you want to post to reach your target audience. If you do not have official company accounts yet you can always try adding your own personal accounts and just seeing how Hootsuite works. You may want to just get a feel for things before you commit to making a bunch of social media accounts. With the free version of Hootsuite you will only be allowed to link three social media sites so pick the ones that most relate to your audience.

If you want you can add a feature called streams which basically track when people mention your name on social media. This can be really helpful because if a customer is having a problem or has a complaint you can quickly address it and solve any issues.

Remember, exploring Hootsuite may be your best option before you actually purchase any type of package. Free tools are always fun and can actually be very helpful! Give it a try!

(MKTG 348) Week 8 - Thank You Page's

It's always nice to hear a Thank You after you've made a purchase or signed up for something but is it really the proper thing to do for a business? According to HubSpot, Yes! You need to make your customers feel appreciated and on the analytical side you can also track successful conversions this way. So really it's a win-win for everybody!

When creating your Thank You Page it is important to remember that this page can help you send your lead to other parts of your website. You may want to provide links to different pages that can provide more information or entice the lead to stay with your company. If you link to the right content you can help your buyer move further along their buyer journey.

You really want to make sure that on your Thank You Page you explain more about the offer and further expand on when the lead may hear back from you. You want them to be informed and feel confident about submitting their information to you. You should always make it very easy for your potential customer to get to the offer they submitted their information for. And again, if you cannot provide them with the information right away give them a time frame. No one likes empty promises or vague words. Be descriptive, will it take two days? A week? A month? Address this with an honest answer.

You should also make sure that your navigation tab is accessible on your Thank You Page. That way if your potential customer wants to browse through your site they have an easy way to do so. By showing the navigation menu on this page you are giving the potential lead an opportunity to further confirm their decision to work with you. This means that the content on your website should be enticing, correct, and informative. You want to make sure that your potential leads feel comfortable and happy about the decision they made to give you their information.

Although it may seem wrong, you should actually provide another call-to-action (CTA) for the leads to look at. Maybe there is an extension or something else you can add onto what the lead was just looking at or maybe there's another offer that might interest them. It is always important to try and move your buyer along their journey as smoothly as possible. If you have an offer that can help them even more then your previous offer then you should put a CTA to show it. Let these potential leads know that you have more to offer.

A few important things to remember for your Thank you Page are that you should be definitive with your time frame, provide additional information, and create additional enticing CTA's.

(MKTG 297) Week 7 - AdWords Account Structure

The Google AdWords study guide provides helpful information regarding how your AdWords account is structured. It is important to understand this information because it will really help you use the website in a more effective manner. Understanding the basis is the only way to be really successful in your AdWords endeavor.

 In general your AdWords account is structured into three parts:

1. Account: Your account is the information that is collected about you which includes billing information, email address, and password, etc. These are the things you use to log in to your AdWords account.
2. Campaigns: You can have several different campaigns running at once that all have different budgets and goals.
3. Ad Groups: Occur within a campaign and have their own set of keywords

Each of your campaigns should focus on a separate goal. For example, if you want to increase conversion rates and track click-through rates you can create one campaign that focuses on conversions and a separate one that focuses on click-throughs. It is important to separate each goal because you need to know what variable is being effected and if you have more than one variable being tested you won't know what is working for which goal. 

For example purposes, say your goal is to track how well a particular offer is doing on sales of a certain product you sell. With your goal in mind, you create an ad campaign that you believe will really solve this problem. With an ad group you are able to group together keywords that all relate to your ad and in return increase your quality score ranking. 

Ad groups work slightly different for display network versus search network. With display network you can make ads that have content relevant to your target customer and then these ads can be posted on websites similar to your website topic. With search network campaigns, ad groups help you get your ads into the searches of people who are searching for products similar to what you are offering.

Basically the structure of your Ad Words account is as follows (from a shallow level to a in-depth level): 

Account: Erica's Marketing Magic Company

Campaign: Track % of sales being made from 20% off coupon code for magic tools

Ad Groups: Blue Social Media tool. Key words: social media marketing, blue tool. Ad 1 and Ad 2