(MKTG 347) Week 7 - LinkedIn & Social Media Marketing

Chapter 6 of CASA Marketing Intro to Social Media Marketing by Todd Kelsey discusses LinkedIn and how it can work with your social media marketing strategy. Kelsey suggests that LinkedIn is most successful when you are a company that works B2B not B2C. Kelsey also says that LinkedIn is a strong tool for individuals. You can use LinkedIn to basically sell your self to potential employers. You can add skills, work experience, and any other accomplishment you have to help boost your appeal to employers. It is a good networking website and can help you make connections that could be beneficial in the future. If you use LinkedIn properly it is really a "people helping people" website.

Another important reason to keep your own LinkedIn profile up-to-date is because if you begin to work for a company, potential employees will start seeking you out. Also, potential business partners for the company may look at your profile to learn more about the business. It may seem pointless to update your work and keep adding skills to your profile when you already have a job, but you never know who may be looking. You want to present your best self all the time on your page.

Creating connections on LinkedIn is also very important. You should be seeking out friends, family, coworkers, etc., that you can connect with. This can open up doors to other people that may be able to provide you with job opportunities or even keep you connected in your field. The major thing to keep in mind when connecting with people is to not feel shy. Everyone, well most people, are on LinkedIn because they want to further their careers. So you should not feel weird connection because you all have the same goal in mind.

LinkedIn can be used for businesses to update the public about going-ons as well as job postings. LinkedIn has special pages and advertising that companies can explore if they choose to do so. This may not be something your company needs to do, but at a bare minimum you should at least have a presence on this site. Something you may want to do is write a blog and then share your blog posts on LinkedIn. That way potential employees or customers can learn more about you, even if their intention isn't to make a purchase or do business at this point. You can also convince them through more posts or they may even get to know your company well enough that they refer people to you.

(MKTG 348) Week 7 - Landing Pages and Lead Conversion

Hubspot discusses ways to convert unknown website visitors into known leads. HubSpot suggests viewing your landing page as a type of sales rep that tries to convert your visitors into leads. A benefit to having a landing page is that it is operating at all times of the day. Unlike a real sales person, a website is constantly ready to convert visitors into leads.

The most basic way to convert a visitor into a lead is by creating a submission form on your landing page. The form usually includes a space to provide contact information as well as leave any comments or questions. It is suggested that you have at a minimum 15 landing pages for visitors to browse through; one of these pages being a submission form. Here is an example of a submission form:

When creating your landing page it is important to keep in mind the stage of the buyer's journey your visitor may be in. This will help you tailor your content to meet those needs. It is also best if you have a goal in mind of the percentage of conversions you want. A conversion rate of around 20% is suggested by HubSpot. 

A good test to see if your landing page is effective is something called a blink test. With a blink test you should be able to quickly glance at your landing page and immediately know what is being offered or discussed. There are a few guidelines you should follow when you are creating a blink test worthy landing pages. These guidelines include a clear action oriented headline that also briefly and concisely explains the offer. You should also make sure that in the next few lines you explain the benefit and value of your offer to your buyer. It is important to understand that you should make your information stand out. You can accomplish this by using different font styles, colors, or symbols. All of these things will help draw attention to your offer and keep the potential lead engaged. 

Having a focused landing page that defines a clear offer to your potential customers is extremely important. It can truly make or break a sale for your business. 

(MKTG 297) Week 6 - Quality and Cost of Google Ads

If your ad is of high quality you can expect to see the cost of your ad lowered and the placement of your ad better. Seems like a pretty simple concept that can work wonders right? Well the answer to this question is both yes and no. Sure it seems easy to create a high quality ad but you have to think about how many other people are creating ads and then look at your ad and see how much better it really is. Google does two things when evaluating your advertisement which include Quality score and Ad Rank. Quality score is the estimate of the quality of your ad and web pages that is triggered by a keyword search in auctions throughout the day. Ad rank is also known as ad position and will tell you where exactly your ad will be placed or positioned.

There are a few different components that Google looks at when generating a Quality Score. These components include things such as CTR, ad relevance, and page experience. Each of these items is given a score between 1 and 10. Ad Rank takes several things into consideration when determining placement on search results. Ad Rank not only takes into consideration relevance but also your Quality Score. No matter your bid amount you can still win a higher placement based on your relevance and Quality Score.

In terms of money and paying Google has three strategies you can use for bidding. These three strategies include cost-per-click (CPC), cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM), and cost-per-acquistion (CPA). CPC is used when you want to focus on driving traffic to your website. If you want to increase brand awareness and increase the amount of time a customer sees your ad then you would use CPM. If you want to focus on conversions or the amount of times some completes an action on your website then you want to use CPA.

You need to set a daily budget for all of your advertisements. This budget is how much you are willing to bid each day for your ads. While you may specify a certain amount of money willing to be spent each day you may not actually end up spending that much in an auction. CPC and CPM strategies will never spend more than necessary to get your ad to the highest placement. However, the CPA strategy may end up costing more because there are factors that google cannot control when it comes to conversions.

(MKTG 347) Week 6 - Twitter

Chapter Five of CASA Marketing Intro to Social Media Marketing by Todd Kelsey discusses the use of Twitter as a social media marketing tool. According to Kelsey Twitter is a social media channel that will stay around for awhile and one that businesses will always use for posts. Twitter is similar to Facebook in the aspect that not many people make purchases from the social media sites. Obviously there are exceptions to this statement but in general it seems that peoples intent to purchase is much lower on social media sites.

Twitter is often used by the younger demographic to complain about a product or reach the company to issue a complaint about a product. With this being said, a business needs to learn how to interact with their customers via Twitter. There is an expectation that if a consumer has an issue and they tweet the company about it that the company will reply in a timely manner.

There are a few basic concepts that you need to understand about Twitter before you start using it. When you tweet something you are only limited to 140 characters so what you say needs to be short concise and to the point. Also, you want to make sure that your name on Twitter reflects your company if you do not use your companies name. This is because when someone tweets to your company they have to @ the company name. So if I was looking for a company called Top Tail  I would start by searching for this @: @TopTail. Another concept to keep in mind is that Twitter uses hashtags (#) to associate the post with a topic. If I were talking about a dog leash from Top Tail and i wanted to say that dogs rules I could easily create a tweet as follows: This @TopTail dog leash is the perfect leash for my pooch and I! #dogsrule . This post is something a customer could tweet about your product and than anyone else searching the hashtag dogs rule will see this post.

Twitter does offer different forms of advertising such as promoted tweets and leveraging advertisements. However, it is important to keep in mind whether or not the money you are spending on advertising is benefiting your business. Maybe there is a different strategy you should be using with Twitter. Maybe you should be monitoring your account more or maybe you should start focusing on another social media channel. You always need to remember to look at your ROI. Always, always, always!

Hashtags can be used strategically to help increase engagement amongst your audience. However, you need to be careful that you do not over use or annoy your followers with your hashtags.

(MKTG 348) Week 6 - SEO and Mobile Content

The article "Mobile Devices Upend Google Search" by Alistair Barr discusses some interesting points regarding the use of mobile content and how it can effect search engine optimization. One major change the author shares with readers is that SEO is no longer about using a million keywords to improve ranking. Now SEO is reliant on content that is not only relevant and consistent but also mobile friendly. With this being said, it is important to keep in mind that if you want better ranking on Google you need to focus on and consistently update your websites mobile content.

The article provides some insight into how the search world has changed since the use of mobile devices. Originally when you searched something it would be in a search engine and then that search engine would give you results based on your keywords. Now a search can come from a spoken command or a typed sentence. The results have also changed due to mobile devices. Now a result can take you to a website, app, email, or calendar event.

It is not as easy for Google to search through Apps as it is for Google to search through a webpage. Due to this difficulty, Google has needed the help of app developers in searching and reading the apps. Some apps like Amazon and Netflix don't actually let Google see their apps. All of these complications have ended up requiring Google to rank apps based on number of users and average use time on app.

Retailers are becoming more focused on product shopping ads on smartphones because Google usually leaves those ads at the top of the screen. "Digital-marketing agency Merkle Inc. estimates product ads generate 5% to 15% of Google’s annual revenue, or as much as $11.2 billion last year (Barr)." As you can see companies are spending a lot of money on this type of advertising. It seems that the more successfulyou want to be with Google the more money you have to spend.

Reference: Barr, Alistair. "Mobile Devices Upend Google Search." The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company, Inc., 25 Feb. 2016. Web. Mar. 2016. <http://www.wsj.com/articles/mobile-devices-upend-google-search-1456396202>.

(MKTG 297) Week 5 - Google Ad Placement

The advertisement you create on Google can appear in several different locations depending upon your needs. The first placement can occur on the side or above the google search engine results page. So when someone searches for your keyword your ad will appear next to or above the organic search results. Depending on your keywords you will be able to determine how much you pay. Your cost-per-click can either increase or decrease depending upon the keywords you use and the maximum budget you set. This type of advertisement would be performed using the Google Search Network

Your advertisement can also show up on specific websites. This type of advertisement would be performed using the Google Display Network. Keywords are what allow your ad to be shown on specific websites. Google will automatically decide where your ad appears based on keywords and then it will match your keywords to a placement. If you do not want Google to do this automatically, you are able to do it yourself. In a Display Network you are able to create the following types of ads: text ads, image ads, rich media ads, and video ads.

Another important piece of information to know is the type of ad that you have created. There are two types of ads, text ads and ads with extensions. Text ads are the most basic form of advertising. A text ad has a headline, display URL with web address, and a description. Ads with extensions are advertisements with enhancements. These enhancements can include things such as phone numbers, location, or links to other content from your website. You can these extras either manually or automatically in the formatting systems.

Google Advertisement Placement Example

(MKTG 347) Week 5 - Facebook Advertisments

Chapter 3 of CASA Marketing Intro to Social Media Marketing by Todd Kelsey talks about how to create Facebook ads. Facebook advertising can be beneficial to some business. However, as I discussed in the previous blog post, Facebook may not be the right social media site for every company to use. If you believe that Facebook works for your company than there are a couple of options for advertising on Facebook. The two most common types of Facebook advertisements appear either on the side of your Facebook page or in your newsfeed when you're scrolling. The following image shows an example of an ad that appears on the side of your newsfeed.

Facebook ads can be used for more than just selling your product or service. You can use Facebook ads to promote your blog or website. If you post content on a topic and you want more people to see it you can try creating a Facebook advertisement to promote the blog and gain a larger audience. When creating your advertisement you should always remember that to make your ad the most successful you should enable it for mobile users as well. If you think about it, a significant amount of people access social media sites via their mobile devices. If they cannot see your ad then you may be missing an important population of potential customers. 

If you do not think that setting up a Facebook page will be profitable then you may want consider setting one up for credibility purposes. If every business that you compete with has a Facebook page and you don't, it may seem a little fishy to customers. Customers like to be able to do their research when attempting to make a purchase and if they can't find you online they may not trust your business. Also, being present on social media allows you to interact with your customers which in return can build brand loyalty. 

One last idea that Kelsey brings up is that purchase intent on Facebook is low when compared to search engines like Google. When people go to Facebook they typically visit the site to see what their friends are doing. So an advertisement on Google may bring in more purchase intent while an advertisement on Facebook may lead to brand awareness. 

Citation: Kelsey, Todd. CASA Marketing: Intro to Social Media Marketing. RGB Press. 2015. Print.