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4 Tips to Maximizing Video on Facebook

Around this time last year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed in an interview that he “wouldn’t be surprised if you fast-forward five years and most of the content that people see on Facebook and are sharing on a day-to-day basis is video.”

It’s no secret that video is a powerhouse marketing medium, and is only gaining strength. On social media platforms like Facebook, companies are quickly discovering the engagement and conversion potential of video.

Unsurprisingly, this leads many of our current and potential clients to ask how they can make the most of video on Facebook. With that in mind, here are four steps we recommend companies start immediately to maximize video marketing on Facebook.

1. Upload Videos Directly to Facebook

While it’s certainly easy to upload a video to YouTube and then share the link across social channels, that’s not the smartest move when it comes to Facebook. Over the last couple years, Facebook has slowly updated its algorithm to provide high priority to videos uploaded directly to the platform.

This means along with uploading videos to YouTube, companies should be uploading their videos directly to Facebook. Just that simple action will help the video show up in front of more followers and potential followers, and will also allow the video to take advantage of the auto-play feature on Facebook.

2. Provide a Quick Visual Hook

Facebook has organized the news feed so that as users scroll through, any videos uploaded will automatically start playing. However, once a person scrolls past it, the video will pause until the user scrolls back to it.

This means companies have about a second or two to quickly grab the attention of any users scrolling past the video. So it’s imperative that as business owners and marketers prepare videos, they carefully plan the hook that will be used in the first few seconds.

3. Incorporate Subtitles into Videos

While Facebook automatically plays videos as users scroll through their news feed (unless users turn that feature off), the social media site keeps those videos muted until a person clicks on the video.

Since people often browse Facebook in public settings, they’re not always willing to click on a video to listen, but will instead watch in silence. If your videos rely on telling a story through words as well as visuals, it’s important to provide subtitles for those videos.

Since subtitles aren’t automatically created for videos on Facebook, you’ll need to work with the production folks to add those in during the post-production process.

4. Use Facebook Livestream

While Facebook Livestream seems to be something made for attention-hungry youth, but it can actually be a very useful and successful marketing tool for businesses. Granted, in order for it to be successful, companies need to build a strategy around using Facebook Livestream, but in doing so it can help bring a lot of attention and potential customers to a company.

More Information Available

If you would like more information about marketing on Facebook, or are looking for help with your marketing efforts, contact our team today at 501-372-0393.

Build Your Marketing in Phases

Strong marketing is a necessity for any business to grow and succeed, but small businesses often struggle to find the budget for their marketing ventures. The potential costs of marketing, especially when tallying up advertising, online marketing, social media, search engine optimization, email campaigns, and public relations, can easily reach into the many thousands of dollars per month.

Fortunately, allocating thousands, or even tens of thousands, of dollars immediately for marketing isn’t always necessary. Often, companies can find success by starting small, and growing their marketing efforts in phases. But to do so successfully requires a company to know where its marketing dollars will have the best effect for sales and growth.

Having helped many clients start small and grow their marketing budgets, we have discovered a few helpful considerations when starting or ramping up marketing efforts. Whether you’re a small business interested in starting your marketing for the first time, or a larger company looking to expand your marketing, these tips should help provide some guidance.

Know Your Audience

When deciding where to start your marketing, it’s important to first understand the audience you’re looking to connect with. You need to know how they prefer to receive information, the problems your products and services can solve, and the messaging that will drive them to your business.

We’ll note that if it’s been more than a year since you last researched your target audiences, or even considered who those target audiences are, it’s imperative to do so again. The winds of the market have likely changed, and as technology and communication continue to expand and progress at a quick pace, it’s possible your target audiences are slightly different than they were even a year ago.

Once you know how to connect with your audience, and the messaging that will persuade them to purchase your products or services, take a moment to prioritize the various marketing tactics that will best help you reach them. For instance, some businesses may find email is the best avenue, while for others social media will reign supreme.

Determine Your Budget

Budgets can be hard to determine, especially for marketing. But deciding on how much you’re able to spend is an important consideration for which types of marketing you start with and grow into. For example, a small budget won’t land you an ongoing television ad, but may be enough for online advertising.

When you know how much you’re able to spend, you can determine how many marketing activities will fit within your budget, and which marketing tools you should be using. Make sure that if you’re planning to work with a marketing firm, you take into account the cost of paying them for their services. While it may at first seem counterintuitive to pay an agency when you could put that money into email campaigns or Google AdWords, remember that an agency’s expertise will likely get you farther with less money than you can on your own.

Google AdWords and Facebook Advertising

In today’s world, most consumers are Internet-savvy enough to appreciate the resources available to them online. When looking for products and services, consumers often search online for companies, reviews, and help. Additionally, many people turn to social media to get feedback from friends and review the brands they’re interested in.

With millions of people visiting Google and social media sites like Facebook multiple times per day, there’s a good chance your target audiences can be found there. With that in mind, we often recommend our clients start with Google AdWords and Facebook Advertising for their marketing efforts. Granted, if we discover such activities aren’t the best options for our clients, we’ll direct them elsewhere. But that happens so seldom we can say with great confidence that most companies will benefit from using Google AdWords and/or Facebook Advertising as a first step in their marketing.

In addition to being hubs for online visitors, there are a couple other reasons to consider Google AdWords and Facebook Advertising as the first source for marketing your business. One reason is that both are pay-per-click, which means your company will only pay for an ad when someone clicks on the ad and visits your website. We consider these “warm leads” because they’re most likely interested in your products or services, which makes converting them into customers that much easier.

The other reason is the fact that both Google AdWords and Facebook Ads offer detailed stats about your marketing efforts. Using the information provided from both sources, you can analyze which ads are working, and which need improvement. You can make changes based on hard data provided by Google and Facebook and better improve your other marketing activities, such as email, social media, other advertising, and public relations, all thanks to the data provided by Google and Facebook.

Invest in Your Business

When it comes to marketing, it’s important to remember the old adage that you need to spend money to make money. A little marketing is better than no marketing.

When you start your marketing efforts, you may have to pull the marketing budget from other aspects of your business, but in most cases doing so will benefit your business and bottom line. As you find success with your marketing, we highly recommend using new revenues to expand and enhance your marketing. Starting small is good, but continual growth is necessary to maximize the potential of your marketing efforts. The most successful marketing is multi-pronged with many tactics.

Looking for Help?

We recognize that business owners and marketing teams can be very busy. If you have any questions about your marketing, or need help getting started, call us today at 501-372-0393. We’re always happy and excited to help!

6 Tips for Social Media Marketing

Right now, there are almost 2 billion active monthly Facebook users. That’s nearly a quarter of the world population. Facebook has seen so much success, its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, is currently one of the top 10 richest people in the world.

It’s obvious social media isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, it’s more important now than ever for companies to incorporate social media into their marketing efforts. With the current generations of young people growing up with social media as a normal part of life, businesses will continue to witness social media as a viable, powerful marketing tool that drives sales and adds to the bottom line.

However, like other marketing tools, companies can’t expect to treat social media as a side project or less-than-worthy tool, or they risk wasting time and resources with little return. To help businesses with their efforts, we’ve prepared the following 6 helpful tips to successful social media marketing.

1. Start with a Plan

It’s amazing how many business owners we meet who are passionate about their business plans, but fail to create a well-researched strategy for their social media marketing. As with any marketing activity, having a plan to guide a company’s efforts in social media is crucial to success. Moving forward without a proper plan is a sure-fire way to fail or overspend time and money for lackluster results.

Social media is a marketing tool just like a company’s website, advertising, email marketing, and public relations. In order for it to succeed, business owners need to spend time researching the market, understanding their target audiences, and crafting a plan that will make the most of the time and effort they place in their social media activities. Doing so will provide the best opportunities for success.

Example: A pizza parlor wants to attract more families on Tuesday nights, when its customer numbers are lowest. By attracting families, the parlor can maximize its marketing by appealing to adults, and capture multiple sales. To start, the owner of the parlor does some research, and creates an extensive social media plan for drawing more families to the parlor on Tuesday nights.

2. Know Your Audience

Every company is unique, with different goals, objectives, and target audiences. Even businesses within the same industry may find they’re targeting different customers than each other, based on their current circumstances and positions. With that in mind, it’s important that each business truly understand their target audiences and customers.

To truly understand a target audience, a business should know both the demographics and psychographics of their customers. Where do they live? What is their social and financial situation? Where do they shop? Where do they hang out? What social media sites do they use, and how do they interact with each other and with businesses on social sites?

This last question is one of the most essential for businesses to understand when developing a social media strategy. Do your target audiences spend time on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn? Do any take priority over the others? Understanding which social sites current and potential customers use, along with how they prefer to interact with their favorite brands and companies, is crucial information for any well-designed social media plan.

Example: The pizza parlor owner understands that many families tend to eat out over the weekend, and prefer to stay home on Tuesday evenings. He also knows that families are working with a budget and want food options that are simple. To reach this audience, the parlor owner devises a plan to reward families with one free child meal on Tuesdays. Additionally, he starts a monthly sweepstakes on social media offering one family (of up to five) free meal on any Tuesday of their choosing.

3. Create Messaging

Once a business knows the social media sites they need to target to reach current and potential customers, it’s time to develop the messaging the company will use on the site. When developing messaging, it’s important to see social media as a marketing tool. Crafting messages that will engage and persuade audiences to purchase products and services is difficult, but can provide great rewards to companies that do it correctly.

Messaging may be different for each target group, and knowing how and when to deliver those messages will impact the success of social media campaigns and activities. Once again, a strong understanding of target audiences is imperative to creating messaging that invites and empowers customers to interact with a company, most important in purchasing products and services.

Example: Knowing his customer base, the parlor owner develops messaging that appeals to parents’ desire for easy, low-cost food that the whole family will love, plus free entrance for one child on Tuesday evenings. He also creates messaging to promote his monthly sweepstakes of one family receiving a free evening of pizza on a Tuesday night.

4. Engage with Followers

Social media is a two-way street. Unlike traditional media, companies can’t blast information and then leave the conversation. People want to interact and engage with businesses and brands. They want to ask questions, share concerns, and offer feedback. When businesses are open to discussion and engagement, they’ll find their social media efforts are boosted, and customer loyalty increases. In fact, when customers feel a connection to a brand or company, they’re often more inclined to spread the word and promote a business to their friends and connections.

We’ll note that because the world of social media is open to anyone with an Internet connection, there will be those who seek to harm or troll companies on social media. This shouldn’t be a deterrent for businesses, but is an important component of social media to know and understand, and should even be included in the social media plan.

A good rule of thumb for responding to negativity on social media is to avoid any posts or people who are only interested in causing mischief or pain for businesses or individuals. On the other hand, when someone has a legitimate concern, question, or problem, it’s vital that companies respond and act swiftly. Quickly offering solutions, answers, or help is a good way to build trust and extinguish negativity on social media. It’s often those moments that show customers that companies have strong customer service.

In that vein, we highly recommend companies avoid any negative or harmful posts of their own. In the heat of the moment, it can be tempting to fire back at critics or lash out against those who look to hurt a business. However, doing so will almost always reflect negatively on a business, and recovery can be long and painful. Social media rants have been the downfall of many companies and individuals. Remember: anything said online will last forever. So it usually pays to take the high road in bad situations.

Example: The owner responds to questions on social media about the deal and sweepstakes, and invites followers to share both with their friends on social media. Additionally, with the consent of the winning families, the owner posts pictures of the monthly winners to the parlor’s social media sites.

5. Monitor and Adjust

Even with a rock-solid social media plan, there will be plenty of twists, turns, and surprises along the way. Businesses need to always be monitoring their social media accounts, paying attention to customer needs and interactions. Doing so will help businesses make needed adjustments to posting schedules, messaging, and campaigns.

Keeping a close eye on social media will allow businesses to discover which tactics work well, and which don’t. Social media marketing is a process, and is rarely perfect on the first try. Even large corporations with teams of brilliantly creative people conduct unsuccessful campaigns. But they don’t give up, and learn from their efforts. Over time, businesses will hone their social media activities, and reap the benefits of patient, consistent activity.

Example: The owner monitors how many families are taking advantage of the Tuesday deal, and how many are entering the sweepstakes. He uses the information to make adjustments to both campaigns to maximize their effectiveness. He may also decide to duplicate his campaigns for other nights if they are successful at drawing people in on Tuesdays.

6. Be Patient

The final tip is to be patient. Growing a social media channel takes time and effort for any small or medium size business. On rare occasions companies may see their engagement skyrocket, but that’s not the case for most businesses that use social media.

Building a working, productive social media presence takes dedication, time, effort, and know-how, but in the end can definitely pay off for companies. Those business leaders who are patient with the process will discover social media can become a great marketing tool, both now and in the future. And considering the way technology is progressing, companies that put in the time and resources now will be glad they did in the next few years.

Example: The pizza parlor owner lets his campaigns play out for a few months to make sure the data he receives about the campaigns’ successes is accurate. Over time, he’s able to make his marketing better by using more data to drive his actions. He uses that information to make needed adjustments, and to start and stop social media campaigns as needed for success.

Have Questions?

Interested in learning more about social media marketing, or have questions about how your business can benefit from social media marketing? Give us a call at 501-372-0393. Our company has over two decades of experience helping companies make the most of their marketing opportunities.

Top 3 Tips for an Effective Facebook Ad

While many companies have used Facebook to promote their business to customers since shortly after the website started, it’s only recently that the site’s pay-per-click (PPC) advertising has become a truly viable marketing platform. As Facebook hones in on how to make its PPC efforts successful for companies, there’s more reason now than ever to start using it.

However, just throwing up a quick ad won’t bring customers to your door. Rather, it takes a certain finesse to make sure the ads are interesting, compelling, and inviting enough to encourage someone to click.

To help companies make the most of Facebook PPC advertising, here are 3 tips you can use when creating Facebook ads to maximize success.

1. Personable Photo

Facebook is a very visual platform, and people are used to seeing photos of their friends and loved ones interacting with each other and the world around them. To this end, it’s imperative that companies mimic this with personable, relatable photos that aren’t too flashy or promotional.

For instance, a electrician would be much better served sharing a photo of a them interacting with a customer (such as explaining what’s happening in a breaker box) than just showing a truck with a logo or a set of wires and wire cutters. People want to feel a human connection on social media, even with ads, so make it easy for them to have that experience.

2. Benefit-Driven Title

You only have a couple seconds at most to grab someone’s attention with your ad and get them to click through to your website. While a picture is the first thing they’ll see, the headline is the next, so it needs to be well written and provide an immediate hook.

In today’s consumer world, people are attracted by what will provide the most benefit to them. It could be a discount, high quality service, or the best product on the market. Companies need to feed on that selfish interest with its Facebook ad headline by making it benefit-driven for a potential customer.

3. Clear and Concise Description

Finally, it’s important that the ad description be quick and concise. Avoid any industry lingo or long-winded explanations. Provide only enough information that drives someone to want more details, which in turn will get them to click.

This is a useful place to provide information on potential discounts or deals, or to point out succinctly why your product is the best option. Remember, you’re taking this person away from their social media activities, so make sure they can read your description quickly and can’t help but click through.

Help with Facebook Ads

At Web International, we recognize that creating an effective, successful Facebook PPC ad isn’t easy. However, we have helped many of our clients find strong results through Facebook PPC advertising using the very tips we presented here.

If you would like more information about Facebook PPC advertising for your business, or would like help getting started, contact our marketing team today at 501-372-0393.