We check news on Twitter. We search Google Maps for directions. We compare restaurants on Zagat. We take photos with Instagram and upload them to Facebook. All those people on the elevator with their noses in their smartphones? They’re not lazy or anti-social. They’re getting things done.
And do you know what else they’re doing? They’re sharing stuff that interests them, or helps them, or that they think might help their friends. Mobile sharing is the new word of mouth…” [Continue Reading]
A recent study conducted by Kantar Media shows that 77% of brand advertisers (i.e. the ones with deep pockets) still haven’t embraced online video:
“Kantar Media analyzed ads appearing on national TV and leading online video sites in October, and found that of the more than 4,100 brands advertising through either channel, 23% used online video, with 12% advertising on both online video and national TV, and 11% advertising on online video exclusively. Meanwhile, 77% of brands used national TV advertising exclusively.
These insights come from a new online video ad tracking service launched today by Kantar Media that is the industry’s first to monitor actual occurrences and creative for video ads appearing on more than 90 top online video sites…” [Continue Reading]
You can expect more brands to wake up and smell the smelling salt as we see online video continue to dominate the social web in 2013!
Local search performed on mobile phones is exploding according to Google. They sent me this in the mail a month ago just to remind me of this fact. If you’re a small, local business that has yet to put together a mobile strategy, now is the time!
The first part of the equation is to create a mobile version of your site. I’m currently using WPtouch for my site, but if you want a mobile site that is less of a blog and more direct you should check out WP mobile pro (affiliate link).
After that, the next step is to target your customers on their mobile phone. Many small businesses don’t know they can do this by creating a “pay-per-call” campaign on Google Adwords.
This means that you’re only paying when a prospective customer calls your place of business.
This is obviously better than a traditional “pay-per-click” Adwords campaign when it comes to local business because you’re reaching people when they’re already “out and about”. This of course increases the likely hood of them actually doing business with you.
AdWords advertisers have also experienced a 6-8% average increase in clickthrough rates simply by activating call extensions, according to Google.
There are two ways to set-up a “pay-per-call” Adwords campaign:
1. Create a new campaign. Make sure your ad only shows up on mobile devices. Write an ad and make sure to include your phone number in the ad description like shown below:
With this method, the user has the choice of clicking the headline to visit your site or clicking the number to make a call. While it’s good to have choices, by giving users the option the visit the website over making a phone call, you’ll receive less calls than if you did the following…
2. Create a new campaign. Make sure your ad only shows up on mobile devices andinstead of allowing users to visit your site, you can give them only the option to call your place of business by using the call ad extension.
By only giving them one choice, you’ll increase the amount of people taking this action, which is good because it’s generally easier to convert a caller into a customer than it is to convert a website visitor into a customer.
You can learn more about Adword’s “click-to-call” campaigns here.
What can we learn from this hilarious commercial? Find out what really motivates your customer, and make sure you drive this point home with your advertising message!
I still hate the thought of having to pay in order to reach my Facebook fans, but I’ve come to terms with it. I have no choice really. Everybody is on Facebook!
For this reason, I decided to test out Promoted Posts. I figure if I pay every month for a tool like Aweber, maybe I shouldn’t be scared to invest the same amount into a few “Promoted Post” campaigns every month.
My goal for these campaigns is simply to increase readership for my blog. I wasn’t promoting an offer of any kind, just my blog posts. To date, I have promoted 4 posts.
The following post received the best results:
32 clicks for just over $3 is not bad! Google Adwords would have been at least 10 times that price. The conversion rate wasn’t terribly high but I figure that’s because I’m not posting cat pictures or Internet memes.
I received most of these clicks while I was sleeping, which makes me wonder what country the clicks were coming from. Were they bot clicks? I don’t know! I’m not sure exactly how to track that yet.
From what I could tell, there is no way to target the post geographically. I found this to be disappointing.
In the end, I could see myself using Promoted Posts again considering the “average time on site” for my Facebook traffic is double that of other networks.
Have you ran a Promoted Post campaign? How did it go? Leave a comment and let us know!
Hi, my name is Steve Longoria. Thanks for stopping by my site.
I strive to bring you only the freshest, most relevant marketing content from all across The Internet Tubes!
I also enjoy playing the drums, riding my bike, and pretty much anything wrapped in a warm, cripsy tortilla!
