How to digitalise your market research in 2020-2021?

The company Up Biz – Commercial Agitated Pack gives you commercial training on how to digitalise your market research in 2020-2021.

In this webinar, they  talk about :

• What is market research?
• What’s the meaning of it?
• Which tools can you use?

Although door-to-door selling still works, depending on what you do, what you sell, and who you are visiting. However, in times of the corona crisis, digital market research has the upper-hand.

1- DIGITAL MARKET RESEARCH

When we talk about digital market research, we mean :

a) INBOUND MARKETING (ENTRANT)

Digital Marketing, also called Inbound Marketing (in French: prospection entrante).

Inbound marketing is how your leads (French : prospects) know you and how you draw them to you to get contact opportunities.

The basis for marketing is your website, which you will connect to Google. Google is the motorway, where everyone researches information. Your website must be well indexed on Google to allow good visibility but also be connected to the existing social networks (eg LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram).

In Marketing, we use 3 foundations :

• SEO : Search Engine Optimisation (in French: référencement naturel). This is how you will write relevant web content to be ranked on Google when someone is looking for your company.
• SEA : Search Engine Ads (in French: référencement payant). It refers to Google ads on the Internet. When people will look for you, you will be in the first results shown called “ad”. This allows you to be visible.

Both SEO and SEA are important. Be careful, however, one takes longer to get results than the other one. SEO takes between 6 and 12 months to be effective by following a real content strategy.

SEA is much quicker. In general, you pay Google and you are visible within the next following days. So, it allows you to generate quickly website traffic and convert this traffic into leads.

Both are complementary. SEO is a long-term time investment but doesn’t cost anything, whereas SEA works in the short-term since once you stop paying Google, it’s finished for you. It is recommended to mix both.

• SMO : Social Media Optimisation –(in French : Optimisation des Réseaux Sociaux) allows you to create a community to get your website known what you sell (products or services), in order to generate traffic to your website, convert it into leads or even customers.

Contrarily to what some digital agencies will tell you, the Inbound marketing isn’t a one-solution-fits-all-situations. Outbound marketing (in French : prospection sortante) is still necessary. You will have to market research hard. Outbound marketing still has a big weight.

B) OUTBOUND MARKETING (SORTANT)

When one talks about outbound marketing (in French: prospection sortante), they mean contacting leads either by phone or by email. Although these are more traditional/classic market research techniques, if you do not carry them out, you will cut yourself out of a big market research part. Outbound marketing allows you to connect straight away what you sell to your target market. Furthermore, it’s not because it’s a traditional market research technique, that you will do it the old-fashioned way. Today, we use many digital products to create qualitative research. It is on this that I’m going to delve into and introduce you to different digital products I use.

Note as well that in 2019, 80% of companies in France achieved more than 80 % of their turnover thanks to outbound marketing.

2- GOAL: CREATION OF QUALITY DATABASE

You must create a good database that stands up.

You can do in-depth research on your ideal client profiles with LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Sales Navigator is a paying tool but it does better-targeted research than LinkedIn premium. LinkedIn Premium doesn’t allow a huge amount of data scraping. You can use filters such as :

• Job position
• Job field
• Years of experience
• Turnover
• Workforce
• Comments/Post shares…

You can also scrape data from LinkedIn and automate this process through Phantom Buster.

Phantom Buster will pretend to be You with your LinkedIn profile. To do this, you will need to copy and paste the link to your Sales Navigator/LinkedIn research. It will scrape data from each lead profile and convert it into an Excel spreadsheet table.

Then, you can also use other tools to find the phone numbers and email addresses of your leads. There are many options. Zoho is a free tool, but the downside is that it’s not interacting with any other tools.

Other tools they recommend you use:

• Dropcontact
• Hunter.

These tools allow you to find the information you require and qualify your prospects while respecting the current General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

There is also ProspectIn, but you can’t export the data. Everything is integrated into the tool.

Anyway, what you need to remember is that these tools allow you to sort out market research information.

3- DATABASE CONSOLIDATION AND PROCESSING

Once you have this data, you will need to populate it in a tool, that will allow you to capitalise on the information you just gathered.

The unavoidable tool to do that is the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) database. Without a CRM, a salesperson is nothing today! The CRM will allow you to keep in touch with your clients and keep track of all actions done or required. In other terms, it will allow you to follow-up with your leads or clients.

You have several options for CRM software like:

• HubSpot (free of charge)
• Pipedrive (€12 per month).

In your CRM tool, you can add tasks such as dates for follow-up calls. You can also add details on the follow-up call results such as:

• Not interested in – do not call back.
• Follow-up call in X days…

If a lead answers you that they are not interested in, you can just answer; ‘I take into account…I am available…’. Most importantly, do not re-contact someone who replied they didn’t want to hear back from you.

You can also use Buffer to schedule your social media post, which will also allow you to do a follow-up.

Afraid of cold calling? And why not start by cold emailing? Before start sending any emails, of course, do your research to find out the best approach to use to tailor your emails to your leads. For your research, you need to answer questions such as :

• What are the issues your leads are facing?
• Why?
• Is it relevant to exchange on the topic? (it is also a question you can ask your lead)
• What do they post, talk about?

For cold emailing, they recommend you to use Lemlist, in order to create campaigns.

Lemlist will tell you the success of your campaign by giving you data like :

• Open rate
• Answers
• Clicks
• Bouncebacks…

You can also add your email pictures.

Before starting reaching out, make sure to find out what problems your target market is facing, in order to customise better your campaign. Then, schedule on a monthly basis follow-up calls with a targeted lead list. If there are customers that aren’t online in your target market, you can connect with them through business networks and associations.

Finally, they recommend you to dedicate 1 to 2 hours to market research every day and count roughly €100-160 per month for all comprehensive market research tools, as these will replace a good few of your car trips to visit customers.

If you wish to get in touch with the UP BIZ, you can contact David Julien by email at david.julien@upbiz.fr. He is based in Rouen, Normandy in France.

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How to generate business growth through Facebook advertising funnel

Facebook advertising funnel

I signed up for a Learn Inbound Marketing event a few months ago and I must say the content of the Facebook Advertising funnel presentation was outstanding! It also complements very well my previous blog post on Instagram organic and advertising growth.

This presentation delivered by Susan Wenograd is divided into 4 topics:

1. Mistakes advertisers do with Facebook Advertising
2. Facebook Advertising funnel
3. Creative Ads
4. Beyond selling: messenger and bots in a new era of service & growth.

If you prefer listening to a podcast than reading, please find the presentation recording below.

If you have a more visual memory, you will find the podcast transcript and powerpoint presentation further in this article.

PODCAST transcript

1. ADVERTISERS MISTAKES WITH FACEBOOK ADVERTISING

• The first error advertisers do is to open an account and go straight into the conversion campaign.
• Then, the target population told by Facebook is probably more than what you are trying to reach. I’ll explain to you what I mean. When you pick the actual targeting, for eg 1.4 million people, in reality in that pool of target audience they are not all likely to convert. Indeed, some may prefer watching videos, others engaging with your posts and a portion will convert into customers. Consequently, when you select that ‘conversion campaign’ target, you are actually selecting a very small subset of that 1.4 million people.
• Besides, the conversion rate has the highest Cost Per Mille (see this article for more information on C.P.M). Indeed, they are the most expensive adverts you can run on Facebook.
• Furthermore, by selecting the conversion campaign, you are trying to optimise towards the very high-value action, for which Facebook wants you to have 50 conversion events firing per ad set per week. That’s a lot!
• In addition to the expensive adverts with limited audience data, people usually need more than one experience to buy and convert.

Remember that on Facebook, people have no idea who you are, why they should buy your stuff. So you have to convince them like pretty much in any other sales cycles. It’s different from Paid Search (SEO), where people are looking for you.

2. FACEBOOK ADVERTISING FUNNEL

Why an advertising funnel? Funnels are used in marketing and advertising to think about the long sales cycle.

The funnel follows 3 stages:

• Awareness:
• Consideration
• Conversion.

So, you need to complete one stage before moving to the next when you get started with Facebook Advertising. Make sure to run one campaign at the time.

1. Awareness: this is the lowest cost phase of them all. You use cheaper campaign types to cast a wide net and identify interested users through:

• Video views
• Reach
• Website Clicks
• Post Engagement

2. Consideration: this is when your audience is warm, has started to know you. You can use campaign types such as:

• Website Clicks
• Reach
• Conversion

This time, you will measure more their reaction to your advertisement such as users who:

• watched 10 seconds of your video
• interacted with posts
• submitted lead ad.

3. Conversion: this is when the audience is accustomed to you and ready to convert. During this phase, you will use retargeting strategies.

To manage complex funnel cycles, let’s use a good methodology.

3. CREATIVE AUDIT

A creative audit starts with the brainstorming of ideas for posts. For this:

• make a list of things to offer or sell to your audience. Think about the content to repurpose. Go through the list from top to bottom. Now you have enough of content to get you started.

4. Campaign types

Let’s talk about them. Pick an asset and find a good and cheap way to run it.

• Got videos:  Video view campaigns
• Downloadable content: Lead ad campaigns
• Healthy conversion data: Conversion campaigns.

5. AUDIENCES

Aligning with audiences, email list and website traffic are generally the two main ways for people to create custom audiences.  You can do so by, for eg, uploading your email list, specifying certain URLs…)., like in any other types of remarketing.

In the last year and a half or so, Facebook released ‘Engagement Audiences’. This is meant to get people to stay on Facebook and consume content within the platform. Most people don’t want to click and be re-directed to another site.

Consequently, Facebook created ways to retarget these people based on what they did on Facebook like:

• video watching time, i.e engagement
• lead form fill out
• interaction with/on your page…

When you create a custom audience, you tell Facebook ‘I want you to find more people like these’, which Facebook calls ‘look alike’.

When you do that, consider how much percentage of the population you want to match to the audience you specified. If you are on a restricted budget, select a small percentage. Contrarily, if you have a large budget, pick 5+ % or more of look alike.

Then, start testing:

• exclude people/interests or include others
• Facebook feed or Instagram
• mobile vs desktop

Think about what you are optimising for, so don’t pick a conversion campaign unless you have 1.5 million followers or more.

5. Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) 

Auto-bidding does most of the time a better job because Facebook has more data than we do and bid more strategically.

There’s a new feature rollout for e-commerce, the optimisation to value, i.e optimising return on spend. It works very well.

Don’t generalise too much about creatives. Follow these tips to get a better ROAS:

• Video: high engagement, low conversion
• Static image: cheap, still has a decent conversion
• Slideshows: generally don’t do great
• Carousels: generally get great results from them, high interaction. However, testing is crucial (ensure it picks the correct images)
• Canvas: expensive and can be difficult to get results.

Why creative matter to your media cost?

It is because it’s highly related to ‘relevancy scores’. A relevance score measures how relevant you are to people you are targeting to. You can add it to your campaign. The higher relevance score rewards you with low media cost/spend.

Relevance scores are based on social interactions (likes, comments, shares, loves…), in other terms to the virality of your posts.

6. PRO TIPS TO GET INTERACTIONS

Start A/B test ads assigned to post IDs. If you duplicate that ID, it gives another ID number but it’s the same ad. You can cumulate social proof by ID. Stack that proof in a split test with two IDs/posts having different types of interactions.

When you create an ad. follow these steps:

• Click on that ‘preview’ arrow and then view your Facebook post with comments.
• Look for a URL at the top, that’s the ID you want.
• Copy that ID to your other ad.
• For that, you go to your other Ad set B, select ‘create an ad’
• Click on the button for ‘use existing post’ in the post ID
• Paste that ID there.

Now everything that cumulates on that ID will show up in every ad set that you put that ID into. It makes your social media proof stack up way faster than having to run several ads in silos. You only have to do it once. You can do the same with another ad by adding your ID.

Warning: A/B testing is hard on Facebook because:

• you can’t have multiple ad units in the same. They will always add more relevance to video campaigns than any others. It will only select that type of campaign
• Rotation 50/50 picks the campaign with the highest social media proof because Facebook doesn’t want people to leave their platform.

7. SOLUTIONS TO A/B TESTING ISSUE

1. Create a split test with two different targets that do not overlap. Choose what you want to split test. The issue with split testing are:

• it must remain within a set budget
• the ad has to end, it can’t run continuously with your winning test ad.

2. Facebook recently invested in ‘dynamic creative’. You can add up to 5:

• headlines
• text
• line ads
• calls to action
• videos…

It will automatically test and rotate all that for you.

Warning: It won’t tell you which is the best picture, it will only provide you with the best combination. So, you won’t know what’s the ad winner.

8. The FUTURE OF FACEBOOK ADVERTISING FEATURES

Facebook is currently running out of Advertising space in the newsfeed.

So, here are few solutions to remedy this issue:

• Place ads in Messenger. That’s a better way to monetise.
• The chatbot is becoming a thing for e-commerce with its automatic responses walking customers through all the way to purchase. Its virtual assistant also guides and advises people and offer a free shipping voucher at the end. Facebook, with its chatbot, is leveraging itself as a customer service platform.
• You can also buy and sell in the ‘Marketplace’. It has a lower reach. Nonetheless, it is less crowdy and competitive. But most importantly, it’s a very cheap way to advertise as it costs only 1$ per CPM (1$ per 1000 impressions).

Keep an eye on new features as there are new things rolled out every month. I would deter you from using third-party. Indeed, the can’t keep up with what is going on.

For those who would like to download the Powerpoint slides containing more visuals and her contact details, click on the link below:

Facebook Advertising funnel Powerpoint presentation

 

How to use videos and hashtags to market your business on Instagram

As you may know, Instagram has become a strong social media network player with up to today the highest reach and engagement rate. Video marketing is also getting bigger and bigger and also shows a  high level of engagement.

So, let’s start with the different video formats and features within the application.

Instagram story

An Instagram story is an ephemeral video you share with your followers live or for a 24 hours period. Although it’s temporary, you can save your video in the app or in your mobile phone photo library to share it as a post later.

Why do Instagram stories work?

Your followers crave for new content and most importantly want to get them right away, live! So, want to give it a try and publish your live recording into your story?

To do so, let’s start setting up your story settings so that you can keep or delete them once published.

How can you set up your Instagram story, in order to save your video(s)?

1. You need to log into Instagram and go to your profile page.
2. Then click on the 3 little dots (…) at the top right-hand corner of your profile.

3. In the ‘Options’ menu, click on ‘Story settings‘ under ‘Account’.

4. You will get these options as per below screenshot. To activate an option, swipe the button next to it to right. It will create a blue button indicating you activated that option.

You will have to decide whether you want people to comment on your video(s) or disable comments. For that, you will need to tap into your chosen option to activate it. This will create a rounded-framed tick as the example below.

You may share your story on your personal Facebook account timeline as well. If you select that option, it will redirect you to log into your Facebook account app to authorise this.

Wondering where the Instagram posts are archived?

It will be archived on the app. To access these, you will need to click on the anti-clockwise quadrant at the top right-hand corner of your Instagram profile next to your profile account name.

Are there any of your archived pictures or videos you would like to save as (semi-) permanent posts in your ‘Highlights’ section of your Instagram profile?

If so, all you need to do is:

• click on the 3 little dots (…) at the top right-hand corner
• tap the image or video you want to highlight. It will create a tick at the bottom of it.
• Then click on ‘Next‘ at the top right-hand corner of the page.

• After that, click on ‘Create Highlight‘.

• Create a name for your highlight (not mandatory. Then, click on ‘Add‘ at the top right-hand corner to have it added to your profile.

Don’t like anymore your highlight?

Don’t worry, you can remove it. Just go to your profile, tap on the highlight you want to remove, click on ‘More‘ at the bottom of the screen.

Then you will have these options pop up. Click on ‘Remove Highlight‘. Et voilà!

Now that we reviewed the Story settings, let me explain to you how to create stories.

1. Click on your profile picture to open the story option to film or take pictures.

2. You will be then presented with these options.

• Live: if you click on this option, it will create a live video that will disappear once you end the ‘live’, unless otherwise set. Live videos can be as long as you want them to be!
• Normal: it will create a story post which will be available to view for 24 hours. These posts will not last more than 30 seconds
• Type: you will create a textual post viewable for 24 hours
• Boomerang is a fast-forwarded video but will require you to download an additional application

Now, what are symbols related to?

• The picture on the far left is representing whatever picture or video you have saved in your mobile phone photo library. If you select a video, it will only show 15 seconds of it.
• The left-hand side flash symbol next to the rounded button is to switch on the flash
• The arrows in a circle shape right next to the rounded button are here to decide where your camera will be pointed towards, ie either yourself or something/someone else.
• The far-right picture of a face is to set up any embellishments, add masks, emojis or the likes
• The big rounded button is the one you will click on to take a picture and hold onto to record a video when you select a ‘Normal’ story.

once you have recorded your picture or video in ‘NORMAL Story’, you will get these options.

At the top:

• Sticker: you can add funny stickers to your video
• Loudspeaker: you can adjust the volume of your video
• Highlighting pen: you can highlight a text you added in the picture or video
• ‘Aa’ letters: you can add text to your video or picture.

At the bottom:

• Save: if you want to save the picture or video in your mobile phone photo library (also called camera roll) to re-post it later on Instagram or another social media site
• Your Story: you can send your picture or video to your story to be viewed for 24 hours
• Send to>: you can send your recording individually to any of your followers you will select

If you select ‘Live‘ story, you will get this next screen. To start your ‘live’ story, click on ‘Start Live Video’. For embellishments, you may click on the face symbol before you start your video. You also have again this setting for where to point your camera.

Once your ‘live’ story has started, you may invite someone to be part of the video by clicking on the ‘two faces’ symbol.

You can also invite one or several specific followers to watch your ‘live’ by clicking on the ‘paper plane’ symbol. Once you have finished, click on ‘End‘ at the top right-hand corner.

When your video has ended, you will be prompted to select one of these options:

• Save: to save in your mobile phone photo library
• Share: you can share your live video for the next 24 hours. For this, please activate the sharing option by swiping the button towards the right until it gets blue. Then click on the ‘Share‘ button.

Not happy with your live video? don’t want to share or keep it?

No problem, you can discard it! You only need to disable the sharing option by swiping the button onto the left until it is greyed out. Then click on the ‘Discard‘ button.

That’s it for the ‘live’ stories!

Instagram posts

Now, let’s move on to sharing videos and pictures as ordinary posts.

1. To create a post, go again to your profile page and click on the rectangular framed ‘+’ button at the very bottom of your screen (centre button).

2. Then, select the photo(s) or video(s) from your camera roll (mobile phone library). Click on the relevant option. You will see other options below the preview image.

What are these optional symbols for?

• The far left symbol representing ‘two opposite arrows’ is to select how you want the video(s) or photo(s) to appear, ie in square/portrait mode or in a landscape mode. To activate the landscape option, click on that symbol.

Normal square/portrait mode:

Landscape mode:

• The far right symbol ‘Select Multiples’  can be used if you want to share several videos or photos in one post.
• The other two symbols require you to download other applications. You will then tap on the videos or photos you want to share.

When you share normal posts, you need to:

1. add a description 
2. add hashtags in ‘caption‘ for your videos or pictures to be found by other users.

Note: you can add stickers and a hashtag to a ‘normal story’ as well.

To add a description, you just have to type your text in the ‘caption‘ area of the post. It should describe what is in the picture(s) or video(s). Keep the most important part of your description in the two first rows. The rest of the text will only appear if your reader clicks on ‘more‘.

To mention someone in the video(s) or picture(s) and this person is on Instagram, you simply type their account name in your ‘caption‘ and add a ‘@‘ sign before it.

Instagram hashtags

1. Then in that ‘caption‘ area, type hash ‘#‘ and whatever hashtags you want your post to be found and ranked for.
2. Unlike on Twitter, with Instagram, you can have up to 30 hashtags. The more hashtags you select, the more your posts will be viewed. However, you must ensure that you select relevant hashtags for your post. Otherwise, you will get the wrong kind of followers
3. Keep in mind that some hashtags are banned by Instagram community guidelines, so don’t select these ones. It is often because they violate Instagram policies. Selecting them will result in your posts getting removed or worse your account suspended.
4. When you start typing your hashtag, you will get a list of tags and the number of time the hashtags have been used. I recommend you to choose both relevant highly popular and moderately popular tags for your posts to get found. You may also create branded hashtags.

Both your description and hashtags will appear under the video(s) or image(s) you have shared. You will also see the number of views on your videos right below your video/picture.

I hope all these tips will be useful for you. Would you like to share further tips on this topic?

 

 

 

How to cross-market your business on Facebook and Instagram

I have come across few people not knowing how to link and use both Facebook and Instagram, including the Instagram ads. Consequently, I have decided to write a series of blog posts on their different functionalities and features.

First of all, f you don’t know it yet, Facebook has bought Instagram, amongst other social media and messaging applications.

So, if you want to get the best of the two worlds, I highly recommend you to have both a Facebook fan page and an Instagram account.

By having a Facebook fan page, you will be able to add a tab for your Instagram posts directly into the page. But more importantly, you must know that you can only advertise on Instagram if you have a Facebook fan page. The Instagram advertising, however, will be the subject of a different post.

Before delving into the conversation about cross-platforms’ ads, let me explain to you how you can add Instagram to your facebook page.

Quite obviously, the first step is to have set up your personal Facebook account. Once done, you will need to create a Facebook fan page. To set a Facebook fan page, follow these guidelines.

Once you have set up your fan page, you will have the opportunity to add a tab to your page displaying all your Instagram posts, comments, likes…

So, let me guide through the process. Please make sure you follow the steps so that your tab is correctly installed and working.

The first series of steps will be completed on your mobile phone through the Instagram and Facebook applications. These steps may take a bit more time to follow than the next stage on Facebook.

1. Go to your Instagram account and log in. Once done, click on these 3 little dots (…) on the top right-hand corner of your profile.

2. Once there, you will come to this ‘options‘ page. You will need to scroll down, go to the ‘Settings‘ section of the menu and click on ‘Linked Accounts‘.

3. Click on ‘Facebook’ and ‘Continue’. You will then get that page, where you will be prompted to log into Facebook.

For you to link Facebook and Instagram from your mobile phone, you will have to download both Facebook and Instagram applications from your App Store or Play store.

The easiest way here is to click on ‘Log in with the Facebook App‘, then ‘Open’.

4. You are now prompted to log into your Facebook account.

5. And authorise Facebook to link your Facebook and Instagram account by clicking ‘Authorise‘ or ‘Continue‘. In my case, I had already done that process, so I’m getting the continue prompt.

6. Authorising the linkage between the accounts will bring you back to the Instagram application confirming your linked accounts. However, at this time, the accounts that are linked are your Facebook and Instagram personal accounts. 

7. To link your Instagram account to your Facebook fan page, you will need to click on ‘Facebook‘ and will come to this page. Click on the arrow (>) next to Timeline (Default).

8. You will then have the option to select your fan page.

Once you have done that, you can log out of these applications and go to your laptop or PC. The next steps will be all through the Facebook’s site.

1. Log into your Facebook account and type in’Instatab‘ and select ‘Apps‘ in the menu under the navigation bar. Then click on the ‘Use Now‘ button.

2. You will arrive on this page. Select ‘Install Application!‘.

3. It will give you the option to add it to your fan page. 

4. Then, select in the drop-down menu (click on the downward pointing arrow) your own page name and click on the ‘Add Page Tab‘ button.

5. It will then redirect you to your fan page and add the tab to customise (see on the left-hand side column). Click on ‘Instagram’ to bring you to set up page.

6. Fill the blank space under ‘Instagram name‘ with your Instagram account name (not your URL and do not place an @ sign before). Then select your chosen ‘Default view mode‘. Once finished, click on ‘Save settings‘ below your stats’ graph.

Et voilà! You now have your Facebook and Instagram account linked and a tab created on your Facebook fan page!

7. I have selected ‘Small’ in ‘Default View’ and this is how it looks. Remember that you can always change the ‘Default View‘ style by clicking on ‘Application settings‘, selecting the ‘Default View’ you like and saving your settings.

I hope you found this post useful! If you think it may be helpful to someone else, do not hesitate to share it!

Guest blogging and Community Management for other marketing companies

I have worked for a branding agency Anarium, for which I am guest blogging. In other terms, I write on their behalf Marketing Business to Business blog posts (B2B) on any topics related to ‘Branding’.

I also create and share posts on their Social Media Accounts, namely Instagram and Twitter.

3dman_eu / Pixabay

What is Anarium Agency?

StockSnap / Pixabay

It is a Boutique Naming, Branding and Brand Communication and Consultancy Agency based in London (United Kingdom).

It caters both for startups and established businesses from across a range of industries.

Anarium Agency is expert in:

• Brand Naming
• Brand Strategy
• Brand Identity and Brand Communication.

Anarium has worked extensively for clients such as:

• Nespresso,
• Cardio Legend
• Found Generation
• The Glass Pineapple
• Updown Cork Restaurant
• Huddle Pin
• Shower with me…

You can also find and follow Anarium Agency on:

Link:

http://www.twitter.com/anariumagency

Link:

http://www.instagram.com/anariumagency

geralt / Pixabay

In the below section, you will find all blog posts written for them.

Just click on the arrow symbol to access the posts.

 

How to create a matching brand and company culture

 

BRAND POSITIONING: HOW TO DIFFERENTIATE YOUR BRAND FROM YOUR COMPETITORS’

WordPress – Search Engine Optimisation beyond Yoast plug-in

I recently joined a friendly and interesting networking meetup group in Dublin. It was organised by Marcin Kilarski, Rodolfo Melogli and Amit Wadhwa. They talked about WordPress Search Engine Optimisation beyond Yoast plug-in.

The presentation was given by Peter Lawless, sales and marketing expert, coach, mentor, trainer, TV & Radio presenter and published author. He is also a business founder.

It was followed by a Q & A by a panel of WordPress Search Engine Optimisation experts with:

• Amit Wadhwa (Founder, Lead developer at xava.ie)
• Rodolfo Melogli (WooCommerce expert at businessbloomer.com)
• Peter Lawless (Search Engine Optimisation and Marketer at 3r.ie).

In summary, the meetup topics were as follow:

• Is WordPress without SEO like a Shop in the middle of a Forest?

• Is an SEO Plugin, such as Yoast the answer to all your problems?

• How to Set SEO Titles in Just Two Steps

• The 3 Cardinal Sins of Black Hat SEO

• 5 SEO DIY Tips beyond Yoast

• “If you had just 15 minutes to SEO a website, how would you spend them?”

• The Financial Case to Hiring an SEO expert – (Our Secret SEO ROI Calculator).

Please find the slideshow presentation below as well as additional information from the Q&A :

 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 ‘

‘Think like a customer’ means that you should use simple everyday language to write/talk to people.

He gave an example of the ‘Green eggs and ham’ children book written by Dr Seuss, which is using 50 words or less. In other terms, do not use over-complicated and sophisticated terms such as ‘refrain from..’.

What are ‘meta tags’?

Meta tags are used in HTML and XHTML documents to provide structured metadata about a Web page. Meta elements can be used to specify page description, keywords and any other metadata. For more information on how meta tags can impact SEO, have a read of this article:

http://www.wordstream.com/meta-tags

Choose wisely your categories in your articles to reflect the content of your posts.

Regarding the 5 Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) DIY tips, keep in mind that you have to give something of value to people. It can be free information to get them interested in our products or services.

For those who work as event organisers, you need to act as a go-to-place like Trip Advisor by helping people looking for your service.

When it comes to the call to action, make sure it’s available on every page. The call to action displayed on the home page shouldn’t be a sales one. Instead, it should be a form to fill in and provide contact information. Ensure you clearly explain to your customers what you want them to do and why.

As you start writing, podcasting, filming, focus mostly on content first and SEO second.

Be aware of cultural differences in terms of languages (eg different slangs in the UK, US and IE). Thinking about the customer language helps to get people to convert more easily. You can also link your .com website to your other sites. Before you start, ask yourself the following questions (find your niche):

What is the main goal for my blog? What kind of information do people look for? Which parts of my service do you like most? 

Then, follow these steps:

1. Create content suitable for your audience (long for Business to Business and short for Business to Customer. Complex topics generally require longer content)
2. Ask customers if they want to buy
3. Collect addresses.

Pay attention to the design of your site by UX testing.

For example, avoid heavy high-resolution pictures. Too detailed pictures do not tell the story and add loading time to your website. When designing your website, visualise the customer journey through the following stages: excitement, knowledge and learning.

You also have the option to use advertising to boost the visibility of your blog or website. Keep this option as a cheap and short-time solution.

If you go down that route, you can kick off an Adword campaign for 3-6 months. It will drive more traffic. Remember to do some split tests for your meta description/title. The most clicked ads should become your headlines. Do not ever pay someone to be linked to someone else’s website/blog!

Another better option is affiliate marketing as it’s far more valuable than advertising.

Nonetheless, SEO is your best bet for a more long-term strategy.

For a better SEO optimisation, use a long-tail description with minimum 3-4 words. You can also boost your visibility through a joint press release for example.

When you set up your Google Business account and blog/site, make sure your contact details are consistent with all 3rd party websites: name, address, phone number.

Add a picture that Google will link to google map. You must have as well a table of content  (map.xml) with no duplicated content. Make sure to add appropriate tags to the sitemap. Otherwise, you’ll have to have a good navigation menu.

When you monitor your traffic, you can monitor your clicks. You can also check your Google ranking with:

• Alexa,
• Google  Search Console,
• SimilarWeb (similarweb.com).

Finally, you can calculate how much your SEO is worth with this tool:

http://www.3r.ie/website-success-calculator/

Do you have any questions? Any tips you’d like to add to this? Let me know by leaving a comment below!

How to get better Twitter reach and followers with these 3 new tools

Are you using Twitter to get more leads and clients? If so, this may interest you in. 

As you know, social media networks are constantly competing with each other for attention. They research new features and tools to launch in order to get more businesses in the door. Twitter is no different!

Twitter has followed suit with Instagram and Facebook marketing strategies. It has launched a tagging feature allowing you to mention some Twitter accounts to get their attention to your post.

But it’s not always showing up when you are creating a post! There is a trick for that! To trigger that option, you need to add one or several video(s) or picture(s) from your desktop or mobile phone. I will show you how to do this later on. Although adding a photo or video isn’t quite a new feature, the power of visuals must never be underestimated!

Here is why:

They have also added the description or caption you can write under your uploaded image or video. You can use this feature to explain what your post is about for the visually impaired followers.

Now let me show you in practice how it works.

First, you type in the empty field:

• your title
• your blog post or website link
• 2 most relevant hashtags for your topic.

Doing this will help you get your audience interested in reading your article.

Once you’ve done that, click on the following symbol under your text to upload photo(s) or video(s): 

The following sentence will appear below your picture: ‘Who’s in this photo?‘.

See below screenshot as an example:

Then, you will need to click on this symbol to tag a Twitter user in your blog post: 

To tag someone, all you need to do is to click on the ‘Who’s in this photo’ sentence and type the name of the person you want to be tagged in your post.

Obviously, it may be helpful to know their twitter handle but you may find it by searching their name as well. You can tag several Twitter handles if the post targets different users.

See below example:

Before you click on  , you may think about adding a description to your photo(s) or video(s), so that the visually impaired people know what your picture or post is about.

As the example below shows, you have the following white text displayed just below your image: ‘Add description‘. Click on it to add a caption to your photo.

Once you click on this sentence/field, your post will pop like this:

Once you have added your description or caption, click on:  to apply the changes to your picture.

When finished, you can tweet your post. The added caption/description will not be visible to you but will be viewable to visually impaired users.

Have you noticed other useful Twitter features or tools that may be useful to get more followers or higher reach?

If so, leave a comment in the below box! 

 

How to skyrocket your product or service sales online and offline

I attended on 5th July 2017 an event in Dublin organised by ‘Tech Sales Hookups’ giving tips on how to skyrocket sales with live video and personal lead.

You will find the link to the advertised event in the SlideShare description I will provide you within this post! I thought this could be useful to some of you and decided to do a write-up on it! I will share with you what is, in my eyes, the most relevant information for you! 💡

There were 3 speakers at the event:

• Grazina Orlovska from e-Frontier recruitment agency told us that the most sought out jobs for companies are in the sales field and talked about the recruitment process for such roles
• Greg Fry from Careers Coach and Social Media Trainer talked about how to increase your sales by leveraging live videos
•  Vlad Goloshchuk, CEO and founder at BrightestMinds.io focused on increasing conversion rates in Business to Business (B2B) sales.

All of them reminded us that to be a good salesperson, you need to be extroverted, enthusiastic, perseverant, convincing and excel at building relationships with your influencers. People will buy from you because they like you. So you need to become the likeable person they are feeling connected with.

I will move directly onto the conversation Greg Fry had with us in addition to the above slides from his presentation.

Video marketing, an integral part of the sales process

Indeed, video Marketing is the quickest and most effective way to build a relationship.

What are the most important of video sales and marketing aspects?

1. Follow these 3 core sales principles for your product or service:

• Connect with your audience
• Communicate with your audience
• Build a relationship with your audience.

Example: ‘the happy pear’ Irish based company, successful at building a relationship through live videos on Snapchat.

In order to sell more, it’s important to promote your live videos beforehand and to distribute your created content to people through multiple platforms (social networks, emails). When doing live videos, make sure you interact with your audience by asking questions.

2. Experiment different video formats:

• live videos: interact with your audience by asking questions
• customer service videos: reply to the most frequently asked questions from your customers
• video teasers: create these teasers for the launch of new products or services
• crowdsourcing videos: connect with your clients and suppliers and answer their questions.

You can create these videos from home with the use of this free Open Broadcaster Software and/or this cheap webinar system.

3. Get higher reach with Facebook live video ads

You can use Facebook Ads to promote your live videos and re-purpose them by sharing them on the different platforms. You can also create content in multiple formats and provide your customers with the choice to select the format they like most (Audio, Video or Text/Transcript).

4. Select the relevant platform for your audience

Depending on whether your company caters to Business Clients (B2B) or Private Consumers (B2C), you may choose a different channel. For eg, for B2B companies, YouTube may be the most appropriate channel. As for B2C, the most appropriate one would be Facebook Live streams and Instagram stories.

In terms of video length, videos should last:

• around 90 seconds on Facebook
• around 45 seconds on Twitter
• max 1 minute on Instagram
• between 5 to 50 minutes on YouTube, depending on your audience.

Want to check how you are doing in terms of Social Selling? Click here to measure your sales success with Social Selling Index

The importance of personal lead in a sales environment

Vlad Goloshchuk advised paying attention to the structure of your call/email/sales pitch.

1. SALES PITCH guidelines:

• Identify yourself
• Sell your services/products benefits
• Be credible
• Have a call to action.

2. Email Marketing for B2B sales

According to him, the most successful format for B2B sales is Email Marketing. Indeed, Email is 40 times better at acquiring new customers.

The email subject line of 3-4 words must provide the client with your company name and the benefits your company will give to their business.

You also need to make sure not to send unsolicited emails (emails sent in bulk), as this is illegal. You need to send an individual and customised email to each client.

3. Clients’ follow-up

He also stressed the importance of following-up with clients until they say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ by asking them questions such as ‘what is stopping you from working with us?’.

You must provide business value and your service or product must be related to the same of business your client is into.