TAGS:  #video, #social media, #digital video, #brandiing, #marketing

​​Before you can create any kind of a great Facebook advertising campaign, you need to know what your goals are and how to read those goals. (analytics) You’ll need to measure to determine how successful the campaign is. Avoiding these steps can really take a toll on your ROI. Take advantage and use Facebook Insights.Generating sales: Your approach will vary depending on whether you’re in the B2C or B2B sector. When in the B2C, your best bet is to use page post ads to promote in the news feed, where you can use larger images to promote your products and services. When in the B2B sector, you should use both page post ads and right-hand column ads to focus on acquiring more leads you can nurture through the sales funnel to convert to sales. Your goal is to send more traffic to your website or landing page, and you should target based on interests, age range, and gender keeping in mid that is appropriate to do so.
Building more brand awareness: Use page like ads to get more likes for your page. You should aim for likes only from highly targeted people, so it means using targeting competitors, similar interests, and custom audiences to get newsletter subscribers to like your Facebook page. Exclude people who are already fans of your page to avoid wasting your hard earned advertising bucks.
Getting more engagement on your posts: Use link ads, photo ads, and video ads to get more engagement for your posts. Your ad creatives should be extremely visual with stellar photos. If you’ve built a relevant audience, start by advertising to them. If not, target people who fit your ideal customer persona based on interests, age, gender, and purchasing behaviors.
Getting installs of your mobile app: Use the mobile app ads for install ad type. Once your app is published in the app store, you should implement Facebook event tracking. Use app screenshots in your creative, and target based on the audience you believe to be most interested. Thought check. Mobile apps although a bit costly if you are a small business owner, are great to have but also it is for more on lines sales or retail type businesses-e-commerce. If you are a consultant or in the service type of industry, having a app for smart phones may not work for you.
Keep Desktop and Mobile Ads Separate
Facebook gives you the option to run various advertising in different locations. You can run on mobile newsfeed, desktop newsfeed, right column, and Instagram. It’s a good idea to keep your desktop and mobile ad campaigns completely separate, even if you’re aiming to achieve the same goal. Again, your budget needs to come into consideration.
Keeping them separate allows you to optimize your ads, bids, and conversions based on device. Your ads and calls to action are likely to perform differently on desktop than they would on mobile, so your ad setup needs to fact that in. If you’re using the Power Editor to design and build your ads, then you can choose the device targeting on the ad set menu.
Test Different ImagesImages will draw attention to your ads, but no two images will perform the same way. That’s why you should test the same ad copy with different images, to see which ones your audience responds to better. Then, stop running ad campaigns that use the images with the lower click through rates and conversions, so you can maximize your ROI.
Use Lookalike AudiencesA Facebook Lookalike Audience is a list of users who have similar characteristics to your website custom audience. You can use it to find other people who are already like your customers, or to find people like the ones who are already like your page.
If you want to create a lookalike audience, login to the Facebook ads manager and click audiences. From there, click “Create audience” and choose “Lookalike audience” from the dropdown menu.
Then, choose the source of your look alike audience, such as the people who already like your page, or the people who’ve visited the thank you page on your website. Choose your target company, and select your audience size. The smaller audience size you choose, the more targeted it will be.
Use the Remarketing PixelAny potential customers who’ve visited your website from any traffic source, but didn’t convert, are likely comparing prices and providers. They’re in the research phase and are trying to get the best possible deal. So, by the time they’re ready to actually make a purchase, chances are high they’ve forgotten about you.
The Facebook remarketing pixel allows you to target people who’ve visited your website in the past on Facebook with ads. This is an excellent way to make the most of traffic that originally came to you from AdWords. All you have to do to setup a remarketing pixel is login to your Facebook advertising manager, click on Audiences, then click “Custom Audience and Website Traffic.” From there, you’ll be able to start the process of creating a remarketing pixel.
You’ll need to install the code in the footer of your website. It may take a day or so to start pulling in data, but you can then go back to your website traffic menu and choose “people who visit specific web pages.” From there, you’ll be able to create lists of people who are visiting a certain page on your website, and target them or exclude them from your campaigns. One of the best ways to make use of this is to exclude anyone who has visited your thank you page, since they have already converted. You’re not wasting time or money advertising to them.
Target Your Email ListFacebook lets you create a custom audience based on your email list. Create a .CSV or .TXT file with a single email address per row. Remove any other data your email marketing platform includes in your exported file.
Click “Audiences” and click “Create Audience.” Then choose “Custom Audience” and “Customer List”. From there, you’ll be able to upload your list.
You can also upload a list of phone numbers and target those people on Facebook ads, but it only works if their phone number is listed in their account. You can create a lookalike audience based off of these targeted lists, too.
Schedule Your AdsOn Facebook, you can segment your ads by days and hours, if you have a lifetime budget, rather than a daily budget option. This issue is why many businesses aren’t using this feature. If you use this approach, you’ll need to think of the total budget of your ad set. If you don’t have a successful performance pattern over time, then don’t use this setting. It’s not a good option for the first run of an ad for testing purposes.
If you have an ad you know works, you can set up the days and times you want it o run in the budget and schedule section of your ad set.
Use Carousel AdsIf your audience seems to respond well to a series of product images, you can combine those images into a single ad with the carousel ad. This is a newer ad type that allows you to show more than one image at once within a single ad. Ecommerce brands can use dynamic product ads that allow them to cross-sell complementary products, or even retarget customers who click through to their websites, but don’t make a purchase.
Ecommerce brands can also improve their Facebook marketing strategy using multi-product ads. This allows you to show multiple products in a single ad, giving customers more to choose from. You can also use these ads to show different benefits of a single product. An Adobe study showed these ads are more cost efficient per acquisition, saving you up to 35 percent in cost per click because of higher engagement. And, they can boost your click through rate as much as 50 percent to 300 percent.
Advertise on Instagram, TooSince Facebook owns Instagram, you can create the same ads on Instagram that you can run on Facebook. You can choose to run your campaigns solely on Facebook, or duplicate them on Instagram. If you know your audience can be found there too, then it’s a good way to build more traction.
The key with Facebook is to segment, and run multiple ads on a small scale to see what works before spending more money. Always be testing, and paying attention to your conversions.
Some portions of this article from "Small Business Trends"

​Did you know that one third of on line activity is watching videos?  Really, it is.
We have known for a while now that video is only increasing in popularity, but I don't think people truly realize the huge influences of video content.  
Here's some perspective: did you know that 45% of people watch more than an hour of Facebook or YouTube videos a week? In addition, over half of video content is viewed on a mobile device.

What's interesting, though, are what those stats mean contextually. Think about the turnaround of social content these days.  By the time you've come up with a good idea, created it, and then posted it to your Facebook page or YouTube channel, people are onto the next thing. Sad but that is the world we now live in.  No attention span because people are just too busy and trying to absorb all this “stuff” in their heads.

When people (brands especially) think about video, they think about it as a long-form, high value piece of content. And the truth is, video is a high value piece of content. It just shouldn't be thought of as an asset that requires thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment and months of work to create. Video is no longer a "professionals-only" content piece. Apps like Instagram and Snapchat (and its long-lost cousin, Vine) have made the barrier to entry for video extraordinarily low.  SMB’s still need us video production professionals but yes, those apps do a pretty good job.

Which means, if you want to get into the video content game--and you should--then what's equally as important as coming up with good video ideas is your process for getting from start to finish as quickly as possible. In the world of social media, speed is as important (if not more important) than the idea itself.
Honestly, the same could be said for the blogging world--and really all social content, period. It's a game of attention with a very short lifespan.

It's just that video has been such a "luxury" type of content for so long that the vast majority of brands still consider it out of reach. They think, "Well, we don't have the equipment or we don't have the budget to make something professional," so they don't even try taking a step in that direction. Meanwhile, Instagram personalities are vlogging their daily lives on video in their Stories and not only attracting the most attention, but reducing the barrier of entry.

Video doesn't need to be a big production anymore.
​
But it's also about business goals. The vision has never been about just creating one amazing video, assuming the world will stop, look at it, and clap their hands. Social doesn't work that way. You need to create video content, quickly and easily. It's the consistency that drives business. Try and figure out what drives your customers.  What drives your brand and put those thoughts into your video.
Here's another stat that proves the value of social video from a business perspective: videos on landing pages can increase conversions by 80% or more.
 The habit of consistency is what differentiates the "one-hit wonders" from the brands, businesses, and influencers that create content on a regular basis--and actually build audiences around their video content. Consistency. That's what your video strategy should be based around. Remember, don’t spend months on a video project and no, you don’t need thousands of dollars anymore to hire equipment and an advertising agency to get your video out. You can do it!  And if you feel you can’t reach out to us.  We are happy to help.
 
Roy Garton
FDMC Social and Digital Media LLC
www.floridadudemarketingconepts.com

We’re all familiar with slogans like “Just Do It,” “Live Más” (Spanish for "more") and “Because You’re Worth It.” These slogans have become synonymous with the brands they represent, so it’s natural that small business owners would associate the notion of branding only with big corporations. That couldn’t be further from the truth.
Branding should be a priority for small business owners, as well, despite its being one of the most difficult things to tackle.  Half of small businesses close their doors within five years of launching. And one of the causes might be the perception that branding is too “difficult” for founders to dedicate time and brain power to.

Why is branding so important?

 The answer is that it represents who you are and what your company is. It represents who you want to be and your core values and principles. The principles you set for your brand should be your guide, and compromising them means you don’t trust your own brand. Change is a constant in business and someone will always try to rival the services you provide; others may try to copy (or steal) your concept, logo and assets. But the one thing no one can copy? Your brand.

Here are four tips to develop a lasting brand identity:

1. Find your purpose. 
A brand is nothing but a promise delivered; therefore, building a brand must be the core of your company. Your brand’s purpose is to answer the "why." Why do you matter and why you exist? Why did you start your business?
When I ask, “Why do you want to become an entrepreneur?” One of the standard replies I hear is, “Because I want to make money.”
Nothing is wrong with that; I love to make money too, but that cannot be the sole purpose. In this über-competitive world, your brand needs to find the one thing that makes it different.
As a small businessperson, you don't need a purpose that's going to change the world. An example: If you have a small restaurant that serves a type of food similar to that of the restaurant two doors down, but you use locally-grown products to feed your patrons, that’s going to be your calling card.
Your purpose? To help local farmers and help the local community. Customers know that you’re looking to make an impact and will reward you with their loyalty.  
 
 
2. Find your voice.
 Is your brand quirky? Fun? Adventurous? Giving a brand characteristics normally associated with human beings is one way to ensure that people identify with it.
In the beginning, your brand pitch helps you to create key phrases or descriptions and a checklist of touch points and then use those as bookends when interacting with customers. Opening and closing with a strong touch point leaves a lasting impression on the customer and helps you avoid derailing from your message.
If people are trying to get me to buy something and they launch into a hundred reasons why I should do that, I’m not interested, no matter how great the product. I don’t have time to stand there and listen to a whole sales pitch. So, take a lesson here: Don’t parrot your brand’s virtues; live them.
And, be short, concise and to the point: If customers feel and understand your passion, they’ll understand what the brand is trying to convey.

3. Make brevity and simplicity your best friends.
 It’s tempting to think of the multitude of things that make your brand great; therefore, it can be overwhelming to try to simplify what to convey to the public. The key here is: simplicity is best. The most successful brands have the simplest brands. For example, Coke has not changed its brand overall since the 19th century. The company may have changed colors and style, but that’s about it. All of us are familiar with the brand, whether we drink soda or not.
Keeping things simple increases brand recognition and can help create an emotional connection, turning customers into brand loyalists. Also, avoid being vague with your messaging. It’s a trap that many people fall into -- if your messaging says nothing about your brand, your company becomes forgettable. Clichés are also a no-no. They make your brand look lazy and unprepared.
It’s tempting to use vague language to feel "safe," but it makes customers think you’re hiding something from them. Don’t be afraid of offending someone; just be honest. With all the changes taking place in society -- culturally, politically and economically -- more consumers are looking for brands that align with their beliefs.

4. Make them work for you.
 Evangelizing your brand is already a part of your job and that of your employees’. It’s their job to tell your customers why you’re great and why they should buy from you.
When customers understand your brand, what you stand for, what you deliver for them and everything your brand conveys, they take on the role of "brand ambassadors" willingly. When your target consumers understand every nuance of your brand, you’ve hit the branding jackpot. When consumers identify with your brand, they become vocal about it -- on social media or through word of mouth, which is still a powerful medium. 
When customers have that connection, they organically evangelize your brand; they are working for you. Reward them, especially when they’re not expecting it. A discount or special offer, especially if it’s unexpected.
Here’s a bonus tip for you: Every campaign should be personally authorized by someone who truly understands the brand before anything is revealed to the public. If it not you the owner or manager, never leave branding to chance, because even minor mistakes can have a long-lasting effect on your business.
​
Roy Garton
FDMC Social and Digital Media LLC
www.floridadudemarketingconcepts.com