Advertising on Twitter

Twitter currently has 332 million users worldwide. To give you some perspective, the US population is currently 318 million people, 14 million LESS than Twitter! With Twitter having so many users word wide, advertising on twitter is a great way to generate a strong following base and spreading your message!

When helping a client create advertisements, remember that Twitter has a complex base. Clients can select from a list of options on how to reach users who are most likely to become future clients. Some of these include:

 

• Language targetingfocuses on the primary language the user “tweets”
• Gender targetinghelps clients find relevant audiences for gendered products, such as women’s fashion or men’s shaving kits.
• Interest targetingfinds those who have specific interests, like a film, football, or traveling.
• Follower targetingfocuses on those who follow a specific twitter account.
• Device targeting goes after those who use twitter on a specific device. This is useful, for example, for iPad Cases who only wantto target iPad users.
• Behavior targetinguses past actions on social media accounts to target an audience.
• Tailored audiences targetinguses CRM lists to target specific groups of people.
• Keyword targetingtargets those using specific keywords when tweeting, such as “tools” for people who are looking for a new toolkit.
• Geography targetinghones in onthose in a specific geographic location.

Having a presence on twitter is a great way to share small snippets of information! A brief140-character limit forces users to think creatively about how they want to share their message in a form of a headline!

Twitter can also create a variety of campaigns as well. When planning a campaign, make sure you know the different types of campaigns, your end goal, and what resources you have available to use!

1. Website Clicks Campaign: The first type of campaign is called a website click campaign. This campaign focuses on increasing site visits, conversions and sales. With so many people using twitter to follow accounts that interest them, this type of campaign helps bring new leads to your business by effectively showcase your products or services.
2. Building and Audience: The second type of audience is a campaign to build an audience. According to a research statistic by Twitter, 85% of users feel they are more connected to a business after following it on social media. Building an audience is important as its creates a personal bond. Thisis a great way of softly engaging with followers until they need your product or service.
3. Engagements Campaign: This campaign is about creating authentic conversations with those who have similar interest as your company! Displaying content that customers can and want to relate to builds a brand image in which twitter users will want to engage with and read posts!

Although twitter might have a shorter character count and not as many followers on Facebook, Twitter is a great way for users to establish their businesses, create a loyal following, and help continue to grow their business over time!

By Sahil Maherali, Digital Sapien 

This Article originally appeared on digitalmarketingsapiens.com

CreatingAn Effective Marketing Plan

Businesses need a business plan! You have to know where you are going if you plan to get there in any reasonable amount of time. A business plan covers your competitive analysis, design and development plan, marketing plan, operations and management plan, as well as other key variables when operating a business.

A marketing plan is just as important, since it lays out the marketing strategy in your business plan. The marketing plan is your key to obtaining and retaining customers.

A marketing plan will include 8 key contents to create a well-rounded plan:

1. Executive Summary
2. Situational Analysis
3. Opportunities/Issue Analysis
4. Objectives
5. Marketing Strategy
6. Action Plan
7. Financial Forecast
8. Controls

When breaking these components of a marketing plan down, carefully examine your current marketing strategies and review an accurate analysis of your business’s current plans and finances. Make sure you understand what currently works and what needs improvement so the new plan can bridge the gaps.

Executive Summary:Your executive summary is a simple,1-page outline of your current standing, goals, and plan to reach those goals.

Situational Analysis: The situational analysis is a key part of the marketing plan. It first explains the macro environment of the business such as legality, supply chain, sociocultural norms, and economy. The situational analysis then explains the market which the business is within, providing information like the size of the market and segmentation. The situational analysis for the marketing plan analyzes the current situation of consumers such as demographics, participants, nature of buying decisions, and loyalty segments. This helps tie into the internal aspects of the situation like the company resources, objectives, and culture. This will all tie back together to explain the external and internal threats and opportunities which transitions to the next part of the plan.

Opportunities/Issue Analysis: This section highlights the threats internally and externally in the company and marketing plan. It also reviews the market research as well. The market research will explain the information requirements needed to complete the objectives. It also explains the research results from the market to see what types of marketing strategies have worked best.

Objectives:The objectives are also an important part of the marketing plan as they define the mission statement and vision statement. They also go into depth about the corporate objectives, financial objectives, marketing objectives, long term objectives, and the business philosophy. These objectives help set the marketing strategy for the business. After all, you won’t know whether or not your business is succeeding unless you define what success is!

Marketing Strategy:The marketing strategy reflects on the product, market shares, price, promotion, distribution, and other aspects.The product strategy reflects the product mix while themarket shares strategy explains the geographical market and customer segment. The price strategy focuses on price zoning, strategy of pricing, and pricing objectives. The promotion explains the goals, public relations, traditional marketing and digital marketing. Lastly, the distribution marketing focuses on geographical coverage and electronic distribution.

Action Plan: The action plan of a marketing plan explains how the finances and objectives will be set into play with the strategies chosen. It is also used to assign responsibility and create a timeline of actions.

Financial Forecast: This forecast is used to determine the budget for marketing, reviewing the previous budget, and breaking down the cost. The Rate of Investment (ROI) is also key here as it establishes the profitability from the marketing.

Controls: The controls segment highlights the importance of performance reviews and tracking the progress of the marketing plan. It is also key in the controls to establish a way for feedback to be received to help adjust the marketing plan for the next fiscal year. Lastly the controls are a great way to help track your profitability due to marketing.

These 8 steps will help create an organized marketing plan to help a business grow and also track its progress and setbacks.

By Sahil Maherali, Digital Sapien

This Article originally appeared on digitalmarketingsapiens.com

The Importance of Having a Mobile Friendly Website

Is your website is mobile friendly? To answer this question accurately, you must answer these questions:

1. Does your website load in less than four seconds?
2. Is the content easy to read and pictures are clear?
3. Is the content well-formatted and draw attention to key points?
4. Would you spend time on this website if it was not your own website?

If you answered “no” to any of those questions,you need to go back to the drawing board and examine how you can possibly improve your website to be a better experience for users.

But why do you need a mobile friendly website at all?

1. Mobile Users Do Not Wait!

Mobile users are very different than desktop users. They are looking for a quick and easy to read page. The average mobile user will only look at the website for 10 to 20 seconds to find an answer. If they do not find what they are looking for immediately, they leave. Mobile users are recorded to wait less than five seconds for a webpage to open. It is important to have a quick page that is easily organized to prevent them from feeling overwhelmed since they will simply sign off.

2. It’s Easy To Link Pages.

With the average person having accounts on five social media websites, it is very easy to jump from one page to another. A remarkable 51% of Facebook users are on a mobile device. Even more impressively, 83% of Twitter users access the site on their mobile device. Instagram intentionally targets mobile users, which is why about 92% of users are on mobile. These three major social media platforms allow users include a link in their posts. If your mobile website is attached to a post but will not opened fully, you are missing out on a major marketing opportunity. Therefore,keeping a convenient mobile presence is incredibly important.

3. Be Proactive, Not Reactive!

Due to the ease of entry for social media marketing, the competition is high, no matter your industry. You cannot afford to take a “if you build it, they will come” stance with your website! If a competitor’s site is more visible and easier to access, it doesn’t matter how great the quality of your work is, since mobile users will not stick around to find out. You have to invest in a mobile-friendly site BEFORE the lost traffic becomes a serious problem.

Having a mobile friendly website can help lead to engagement and possible sales. Adjusting your website to be proactive is an important step to keep your client based growing and engage more with perspective clients!

By Sahil Maherali, Digital Sapien

This Article originally appeared on digitalmarketingsapiens.com

Twitter for Business: Here’s What You NEED to Know!

Online advertising is now more effective and inexpensive as ever and Twitter has become a go-to platform for meeting business’ goals with these two concepts in mind. But this form of advertising is a two-way street that may seem overwhelming. It involves conversation, community, and knowing how to interact with your customers (and potential ones) in a way that only your business can.

Ultimately, there are three major problems that businesses face when using social networks such as Twitter:

1. They don’t know how to use them
2. They don’t know how to use them effectively, or
3. They don’t have time to learn about or engage with the platforms.

If you’re running into any one of these problems, worry not! Here are a few tips and tricks that will save you time from searching through meaningless answers and unhelpful tutorials.

Create A Twitter Account For Your Business

In order to properly advertise on Twitter, you need to create an account. Simply spreading hashtags around and getting people to tweet about your business is good for events and trends.However, when you’re trying to establish a social presence, an account on the social network is key. Sometimes literally! An account will give you access to Twitter’s advertising page, where you can create cards and promote your tweets.

Identify Your Business Goals

There has to be a purpose behind creating a Twitter page and creating a social presence. Are you looking to gain followers who can become loyal customers? Are you creating a campaign and want to get people talking? Or do you simply want users to be aware of your brand? Having a clear reason for being on Twitter with an end goal in mind will make your results more identifiable. This will save you the trouble of wondering what you’re doing right or wrong and why.

Hire Brand Ambassadors

Having representatives for your brand will get the ball rolling for your online marketing efforts. Having actual users on Twitter to talk about you and spark conversation can lead to powerful ways of being found online. You can find people who are already loyal customers and hire them to express themselves with your brand. You can also have your employees tweet about your new product. Anyone who is more than happy to be an advocate for your brand will create more customers, more advocates, and more loyal customers. The more brand ambassadors you have, the better!

Get Twitter Cards

Twitter users scroll through tweets faster than the swipe of a thumb, so your advertisement has to be eye-catching. Luckily, Twitter has an outstanding way to make your advertisement noticeable using Twitter cards. These are images, gifs, or videos that are embed with a link to your account or landing page. What makes these cards stand out is that they zoom in and out of your image – something that no other form of media on Twitter can do! Because of this, Twitter cards allow your advertisement to stand out and make users do a double-take when scrolling through their timeline.

Now down to the specifics. When creating advertisements in the form of Tweets, it’s important to remember the following:

HARD SELLING WILL NOT WORK

I capitalized this section title because it’s the NUMBER ONE way to start your Twitter advertising in the wrong direction. A call-to-action has to be relayed around your campaign or social network. Simply urging people to buy your product or service and dropping links left and right will not get you the results you’re looking for because 1)people know when they’re being sold to, and 2)there’s already too much of that going on. It’s spam! Unless you have something to offer to make it worth their attention, users will simply keep scrolling.

If you decide to use hard selling anyway, try an approach that offers value 90% of the time, and your call-to-action 10% of the time. This method is called Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, meaning you repeatedly give them whatever you have to offer without a catch, and the amount of reciprocity will bring them in for a right hook to buy.

Be Relevant

Just like Tumblr has a unique audience, Twitter has a userbase that’s all about short and sweet. Describe your campaign or business in 140 characters or less, and apply holidays, new releases, or special events to your tweet to be a part of what’s going on in the present.

Stick To The Trends

Hashtags created on your own are less likely to spark attention than hashtags that have already caught fire. Luckily this social network also has a “Trending Now” section, which allows to you to find out what people are talking about on Twitter. If you can tailor whatever hashtag is being used to your business or campaign, you know how to properly use Twitter. If you can find these trends before they appear, congratulations, you’ve mastered this social network!

Identify Your Market Audience

Follow users that fit your target market, and create a majority of tweets that are designated for that audience. They’ll begin to follow you back and engage with your posts. However, if you’ve caught the attention of another market that’s giving you a lot of attention, keep doing what works and innovate from there. For example, if you’re a custom home builder in San Antonio looking to reach millennials but are finding stay-at-home mothers retweeting most of your content, make a majority of your content relative to mothers and create the transition to engage with their children.

Use The Platform

Don’t just throw content and run! Engage with people who reply to you. Scheduling your posts with a social media management dashboard is an efficient way to get your tweets out in a timely manner, but automating a conversation or reply is a no-no. People appreciate authenticity, so be a face behind your brand as often as possible.

Study your Analytics

Being able to interpret analytics is a powerful way to be effective at Twitter. There is a Twitter page dedicated to showing you how much activity is going on throughout your page. To be able to understand how many views, retweets, and followers your page is getting over a period of time will allow you to see the results of your campaign, event, or advertisement, and adjust your strategy to improve the outcomes of your goal.

Remember: You don’t have to engage in your Twitter campaign alone! Social media marketing companies like Digital Marketing Sapiensprovide solutions designed to achieve your goals. You’re an expert at what you do, but you don’t have to be an expert in internet marketing. That’s what we’re here for. Contact us to see what Digital Marketing Sapienscan do for you.

By Ramil Rodriguez, Digital Sapien

This Article originally appeared on digitalmarketingsapiens.com

How to Set Goals for Your Marketing Strategy

If you want to succeed, you need goals! Your digital and traditional marketing strategy goals will inform every step of your process. Goal setting is a great way to help everyone understand their place in the process and foster feelings of responsibly for their contribution.

Understanding Your Current Position

A lot of factors come into play when you trying to understand your current position. To make an informed decision, you must see your progress over the last year, six months, three months, and last month. This will help build an idea of how a company has grown – or not! – and inform your efforts to create a roadmap for the future.

Reviewhow your current strategies are reaching to your target bases. Your current position shows your current reach, current following, and your potential reach to a broader audience. Your current positioning will help develop a road map on how you want to target to your target audience and how you can move forward as a business.

Understanding Your Financial Situation

Your current financial situation and expected financial situation can set the tone for your marketing strategy. Your budget will inform how intensely you can pursue new leads along with spread your brand image.

Social media marketing comes free at a basic level but promoting and sponsoring post or running campaigns will require a budget. When taking a traditional marketing approach with ads in newspapers, flyers, and magazines, it is important to remember the hard costsfor each approach. This helps when setting goals as before setting a goal you must see how many resources you have that are expandable.

Setting A Short Term Goal

Setting short term goals are great ways to see you if you are on track to meeting a long term goal. Long term goals can be overwhelming to consider on a daily basis. Instead, come up with a series of quick goals that can be accomplished in a timely manner.These short term marketing goals can range from expanding your following on social media to transitioning to a new style of marketing. Short term goals are important to help assign responsibility within a team and give those who may not see your vision fully a sense of roadmap to help motivate them.

Setting A Long Term Goal

Setting long term goals is just as important as setting short term goals! Long term goals must be made in an informed way as well. The long term goal must be specific or else it will be too broad and easily strayed off and thrown out. It must be measurable as well to help show a sense of movement from the beginning statistics to the end statistics.

The long term goal must be attainable. If employees know they are set for failure they will not push to be better and attack the goal. If the goal is attainable, they will be able to target it and create a series of short term goals to reach their long term goal.

The goal must be relevant for all those involved. With a marketing plan, every person must know their place and role to how to make this goal come to life.

Lastly the goal must be time-bound. Having a long term goal with no end time makes it useless. It is important to have short term goals set up in a timeline to help form a long term goal to help your marketing plan prosper.

By Sahil Maherali, Digital Sapien

This Article originally appeared on digitalmarketingsapiens.com