Social media is not just for teenagers to hang out and chat, it is also a highly useful tool for businesses to gain exposure online and to communicate directly with the target market.
With social media, businesses have access to a huge crowd outside the normal reach of a small business. However, to utilise social media successfully for online marketing, consistent time and creativity must be invested. It is not a tool to be taken lightly! Many larger companies choose to employ social media strategists purely to maintain and expand their social media networks.
The key to success in social media, whether it be on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or any of the myriad of social media networks available, is constant interaction. Posting each and every day is essential, including weekends. Social media management tools such as HootSuite can be used to schedule updates so that you can pre-write relevant posts and have them delivered at the best times to reach your target audience, even if you are not available during those times.
Another key to social media success is update quality. No one cares about what you ate for breakfast unless you’re a Hollywood starlet, so keep your posts informative and interesting. Posts about promotions or daily specials for your followers are great status updates to make. Source articles which are both interesting and relevant to your industry that you feel your target audience would benefit from and link to these, giving comments where appropriate.
Lastly, remember to interact with your followers. Pay attention to your followers and they’ll pay attention to you. If you have thousands of followers, it can be hard to pay attention to all of them, but it isn’t impossible to respond to comments and questions they have for you, and it is always appreciated!
If you follow these tips and set aside time each day to focus on building your social media networks, then you will eventually be able to build a following of potential clients interested in what your company has to say.
Online Marketing Strategy Tip: Pay per click advertising
Gaining page views through search engines can be incredibly difficult for small businesses who can’t afford to compete with those who pay SEO firms thousands of dollars per month for page 1 rankings. Luckily, search engines, social media networks and other large sites which are perfect for targeted advertising campaigns offer ‘Pay Per Click’ which allows small businesses to gain quality website hits within their own budgets. The best part? You only pay when potential clients visit your site, maximising the return on your investment. But how do you run successful pay per click advertising campaigns? Read on to find out.
Interesting titles and copy pay per click advertising is quick, short and catchy, utilising very small descriptions, a brief title and occasionally an image. Therefore, your ad needs to be extremely well written in order to pique the interest of your target market. Avoid using your company name or the industry you’re in, for example ‘Company name – web design ‘. This is boring, and it will not sell! Instead, bring focus to your Unique Selling Proposition(s) or other interesting points. For example ‘Stunning CMS websites under $1,000!’
Test and measure
There is no real point in releasing a single ad and hoping that it will work without really knowing if it appeals to your target market or not, so you need to test and measure. Instead of running just a single ad, split your daily or weekly budget across several ads and run them simultaneously to test which ones have the greatest affect and convert the most prospects. You may find that what you thought to be the strongest selling ad actually converts the least, because once viewers click through to your site, the information provided there is not relevant to their needs or doesn’t reflect the content of the ad. Once you’ve found ads which work for you, then you can feel free to use these.
Optimise your site
Why bother running an aggressive pay per click campaign if your website cannot sell your product or service? Having an optimised homepage is essential to the success of your advertising as potential clients will not bother looking any further if you cannot convince them on the first page that you mean business. Don’t use your homepage for a bragging ground or your company’s back story. Make sure that you fully address the needs and wants of your potential client. Outline what their issues and problems are and say what your company will do to fix it. Don’t make it about you, make it about your client. If you’re running a very specific ad campaign for a promo or a new line of products, consider creating a special section or page on your website dedicated solely for your pay per click campaign, so that viewers can link directly to what is relevant to your ad.
Hopefully this online marketing strategy tip has helped you to gain further insight into creating successful pay per click advertising!
