How Facebook’s Latest News Feed Change Is Going to Affect Your Organic Rankings

Facebook has always been trying to help its users come across the most relevant and useful content via News Feeds.

In an effort to make it all the more feasible and precise, Facebook has announced some more changes to its News Feeds. Following the new updates, Facebook users now have more control on the content that appears in their News Feeds. They can now:

  • Select friends and Pages they wish to see more in their News Feeds
  • Follow and unfollow Pages and friends of their choice
  • Explore new Pages where they get interesting content

While this certainly is a good piece of news for the users as they will be able to get more content from friends they like, businesses across are a bit concerned as to how this new update would affect their organic ranking.

Contrary to all doubts about News Feed change causing more harm to organic rankings, it can in fact prove helpful for marketers who post relevant content on their pages.

So what exactly marketers need to do?

As the latest change in News Feed allows users to discover and follow more useful content from different brands, marketers now need to work on creating compelling and relevant content. The content needs to be less targeted at sales but be more informative.

They will have to build real connections with their target audience so as to garner more attention and consistent interaction.

Instead of creating random posts or getting too much of content posted, the focus should be on creating stronger and user centric posts that offer some useful information or a compelling story that connects with your users. The post should be such that can encourage your target audience to follow your brand page and have it in their ‘See First’ section.

Make your brand page more substantial posting content that offers useful, precise, interesting and relevant information.

Are you a business that actively markets on Facebook?

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3 Tips to Increase Your Social Media Reach

Having no social media presence simply denotes your non-existent and the same goes true for businesses as well. Along with a strategically done website, an effective landing page, great content and competent marketing ―strong social media presence is also vital.

It helps you widen your reach and target more users by making people aware of your brand, product and services.

However, social media marketing is a strategic process where you reach out to target audience in a convincing manner.

If done wrong, you will end up being a spammer which for sure would never get you through new leads.

So how can you widen your social media reach while building credibility and trust among your prospects.

1. Disperse your content on various platforms: If you have one piece of content, make small changes to it and create versions of that same content for the different social media channels. Post them all on different platforms as FB, twitter, linkedin, instagram, google + and others.

2. Boost your posts: It’s a fact that you can only get a 10% reach organically on social media these days. It’s getting harder and harder to get your stuff seen, and now to get your posts seen you need to pay for it. Boosting your posts is the easiest method to increase the visibility of your content for a reasonable price. Though it does not guarantee actions, it does help for visibility and reaching out to more people. You can also choose if you just want to boost to show it to people who are your fans or also to new people.

3. Get seen on the right platform: Tying up with other brands and giving shout outs to each other on social media is a great way to increase your reach organically and get more people aware about your social presence. This can be done by participating in social events with other brands since images etc of these events later go out on social media, you can then be seen on the radar of the people who follow the other brand as well.

If you can implement these 3 important tips while planning your social media marketing strategy, your social media reach will surely widen up bringing out the desired results.

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5 Reasons Your Facebook Ads Are Not Working

So you took that gigantic leap and actually invested money in order to get your business more visibility. After all, this is what everyone around you advised for. You were made to believe that Facebook ads are simply perfect for your business and they’ll help you build in new customers; get more likes and a lot more.

And now that you’ve taken the plunge, you feel as if everything was merely a bluff. You aren’t getting any clicks, no conversions, no likes―in short; your Facebook ads are not just working.

However, before you put the blame on the numerous advises you bagged, just hold on and see what actually might be causing you the trouble.

Ideally, Facebook ads must help you increase promotional audience and build significant conversions. If you feel your Facebook ads aren’t working, here’s what might be going wrong:

1. Images of the ads are not good

In social media-land, image is undoubtedly the king. Different images tend to produce surprisingly different click-through rates. While designing the Facebook ads, you need to see that the images are eye-catching. They should be appealing enough to hold on the visitor’s attention rather being the case of blink-and-miss. When designing ad images, be clear about your marketing message and target audience. The color coding must be contrasting or complementary so that it attracts the user. Avoid using too much of fonts, limit it to 1-2. And if you can add some text to it like a call-to-action, it will simply be great.

2. Your audience is wrong

Facebook ad targeting happens to be both its greatest benefit and biggest drawback. It can be very frustrating to experience a 90% bounce rate. When setting up ad campaigns, you need to balance between narrowing in on the most important group and widening the reach to deliver the scale you want. When your target audience base stands too wide or too narrow, the ads won’t work well. Keeping a very narrow audience increases cost per click so it should only be used when you have a focused audience that you know will buy from you. On the other end, keeping too wide will have a low cost per click but the ad won’t show so much and frequency will be less owing to which you will miss out on making an impact to the people that matter.

3. The ad copy

If your ad copy is wrong then there’s a high chance that the ad won’t work. Copy is a very important part and there is a strategy on how copy should be written when selling. Your ad copy must relate to your product or service you are advertising about. It’s one way of direct marketing that can result into immediate sale. There is a definite strategy you need to follow when writing the ad copy or content. Read more about writing effective content that converts here:  https://goo.gl/hcfnND

4. Your landing page

The landing page is where the person goes to once they click the ad. If that page is not set up right, chances are that you just wasted the cost of the click since the person landing there won’t be convinced due to the poor landing page and would apparently leave. It can be a very important factor in actually converting people through your ads. Analyze if your landing page is compelling enough to make users take the call.

5. Your selected bid

It’s important to select the correct kind of bid type when creating your ads. Some bid types are CPM (cost per 1000 impressions), CPC etc. Each has its own benefits and is closely tied up with the kind of audience you are targeting and the objective of your ad.

Analyze your Facebook ads to make sure you aren’t making any of these mistakes. If these are averted, there is no chance for your ads to miss on bringing out desired results.

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3 Must Have Elements on Your Landing Page to Increase Conversions

You have substantial pay-per-click and SEO budget promising to deliver high-quality traffic to your website. But are you sure the traffic is being directed to a well-optimized landing page?

A well-optimized landing page helps your customer know more about your brand, product and services thus persuading him or her to do business with you. A poorly optimized landing page will only increase website’s bounce rate as prospects won’t remain on your site for long.

So how to make sure that your landing page is optimized well and helps boost your conversion rates?

For any landing page to work effectively, it must have the following 3 elements at the right place.

1. Strong headlines

As soon as a visitor lands on your landing page, he or she must be able to get all the relevant information about your site. Your landing page should be designed in a way that it answers important questions as ‘who are you’, ‘what services you offer’ and ‘why you have an edge over your competitors in market’. Any landing page that can give crisp and clear information about a company surely wins the visitors’ attention.

2. Strong Quality Images

Images are the best way of capturing user attention. If you fail to have good quality images, don’t expect your user to stay on your site for long. People easily get sidetracked when they happen to be online. The possibility of a user reading through lot of text, except for the fact he is already schemed by your product, is reduced to nothing. Put up images of your products, or graphics displaying any incentive as offered by you like free shipping. This truly helps in making the visitor a valuable buyer for you. Ensure you make use of most constructive image formats.

3. Call-to-action

Your call-to-action is your final chance of turning that visitor into a customer. It’s the destination of your conversion goal. It is very important that you pay close attention on its design, placement and content. Placing CTA above folds is the most common practice but it’s like expecting too much from someone who has just visited your site. A better approach would be to create a mini landing page experience containing critical elements of web page packaged into a block of content just above the fold. It can help customer understand your brand better and will even cut down bounce rate. Similarly, the design must also be catchy and the content shouldn’t be limited to ‘Click Here’ or ‘Submit’. Make it more catchy or awarding as ‘Click here to win instant discount on hair spa’―anything that helps the visitor know what perk he gets in return.

Not sure if your landing page is optimized fully?

Book for a free website analysis with our lead generation expert & get to re-design your landing page. Request a session below.

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How to Write Content That Converts

A content that talks about your business & persuades your potential leads to do business with you can prove to be the most effective tool of marketing.

We have already discussed how effective content marketing actually is goo.gl/hcfnND.  But it will only work out if the content is written in the right manner. Your content needs to be strong enough to convert your potential prospects and help increase the revenue.

So how can you write a web content or ad copy that’s capable of conversions?

1. Give it an objective: Don’t write content just because everyone else around is doing so or you are told that content is a must for any website. You need to be clear with your content objective, it should have a purpose. For instance, if you happen to be a men’s spa dealing with different massage types; your ad copy and content must talk about massages that are targeted for helping men. A person reading your content must be able to take a decision which in the case above would be booking for a massage session at your spa.

2. Be clear with your words: Playing around with words will do more harm to your piece of content than doing any good. Writing content is surely an art of playing with words here and there but that doesn’t mean you serve your reader with anything. Write content that’s straight with its tone and gives out clear information on the subject it deals with.

3. Connect with your audience: Your content objective would never be attained unless you build connect with your audience. And the only thing that can help you strike a chord with readers is your tone. Be emotive and expressive when dealing with a particular subject. Let the reader feel your emotions in each of your words. Your tone should be friendly, appealing and catchy. It should hold onto reader’s attention rather than turning him off.

4. Reduce anxiety: Are you reliable? Why should anyone consider your suggestions or recommendations or, more prominently, trust you to buy your product or service? A good content always cuts down reader’s anxiety. It not just educates them about something they’re anxious about, but convinces them that the words are credible.

5. Write a helpful piece: A reader will turn to your content to get some relevant information about the product or service as offered. The content helps him make a decision whether or not the offered service is of any use to him. And if you provide him with everything else other than the information he is looking for, do you think it will leave him convinced? Definitely not. Write content that holds some useful stuff for the reader.

6. Answer objections: When someone lands on your website, your content should be able to answer any and all objections / questions they might have regarding your product / service.

The right copy or content can completely change results and outcomes in marketing. It has potential to increase sales by actually getting people to take action & purchase from you.

Want to get the best piece of content written for your business? Consult with us for a full content marketing strategy that includes monthly blogs.

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4 Reasons You Need To Upgrade Your Website

A good website doesn’t always mean having an appealing design. A good website is one that ties in design with functionality that guides customers & drives them to take action.

To actually generate customers from your website, it’s important to ensure that it is designed with both design & function in mind. Plus, it should be flexible enough to aid you during your online marketing.

So how do you know if your website needs a redesign?

1. You’re losing out on Content Marketing

We’ve already spoken about how content marketing can help generate more leads – it is a rising star and is the future of building customer relationships. However, without a CMS (content management system) in place on your website, it can be almost impossible to easily upgrade content and allow for people to start conversations through regular blogs.

Having a website with a CMS framework allows you to start making 90% of your website changes in house. Due to its user-friendliness, even people with no knowledge of coding can easily add or change content.

This allows you to regularly update your blog content & change your call to actions as you market it on different channels. Plus, your blogs can be easily updated to include your latest offer in them as you change your campaigns.

2. You can’t track your leads

Did you know that you can actually track each and every person that visits your website? It’s true – you can communicate with anyone who has visited your website without even needing their email address, thanks to the beauty of pixel marketing. Your website should allow you to evaluate things like conversion rates, by having the proper page structures & wireframes implemented.

3. You want to go more social

Social media marketing is the best way of increasing your audience base. If your website isn’t social enough, you lose out on the opportunity to attract potential leads. An effective use of social media helps keep your website fresh, enhances SEO, gets your prospective and existing clients talking and sharing fantastic opportunities to improve customer care.

But it’s not just about posting random content on your Facebook or Twitter page. Your ad content must talk about your business & persuade the targeted customers to do business with you. If your social media activity is properly integrated with your website, your marketing results will be simply outstanding.

4. You want to look more professional

Potential clients are on a constant look out for what you sell, which means your website needs to act as the 24/7 sales machine where a potential lead can get any needed information at any time of the day. If your website makes you appear as an amateur, your customers will simply turn away from your website; but if you have a professional appeal online, they’re much more likely to do business with you.

A few other things you can think about when determining if you need an upgrade:

Are your landing pages actually converting visitors, or they are just aesthetically nice pages that offer little value?

Is your website able to directly speak to your intended audience in a manner that resonates with them?

Website redesigning needs to be done strategically so as to acheive the business goals.

Take the step now and book for a free website analysis with our lead generation expert. Request a session below.

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Why Blogging Is The Best Way To Attract New Customers

Well, you’ve finally done it – you’ve got the perfect optimised website up & running and it’s now time for all the leads to start pouring in.

So.. where are they?

Most business owners think that once their website is perfected, they will automatically start getting new customers. However, this is not the case. In order for your website to make an impact, people should first know that your website exists!

What you need is traffic.

It is only once you are able to send a good amount of traffic to that optimised website of yours that you will be able to see some action. And blogging is one of the best ways to get people to your website.

What’s better is that blogging helps you drive traffic that is actually interested in what you offer, since it captures them on a topic that is related to your product or service.

With each new entry on your blog, you provide an opportunity for your prospects to find you, find a solution to a problem and subsequently learn about the solutions that your company provides.

But it doesn’t just stop at traffic.

Blogging helps improve conversions & boosts the number of people that actually do business with you, since it helps create trust. As you answer questions that are important to your potential customers & guide them through your blogs, you slowly start creating a relationship built on credibility & authority.

Plus, blogging helps you attract new customers in other ways too:

Regular updates on your website through your blogs helps boost your organic rankings on search engines. This means it becomes quicker & more likely that people who are searching for your service/product find you over your competitors.

Blogging helps you create reusable content that can be shared across social media channels – once shared, it allows you to bring the interested reader back to your website to read the article.. where they can then browse.

Moreover, a blog provides the opportunity to nurture repeat business. Once a customer has decided to follow your blog, you have earned an open forum to stay in front of your customers to maintain the relationship. Using your blog to occasionally highlight new products and services offered by your business is a great way to spark continued interest among customers that already value your brand plus target new customers looking at your expertise.

However, your blogging strategy should be carefully designed and tailored to your target audience in order to make a positive impact. Spamming people regularly with junk content will have an adverse, and often hard to bounce back from, effect.

Want to know more about using blogging to generate leads? Sign up for a free content marketing strategy session.

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Facebook is killing the Like Box!!!

The Like Box has become a legend since the introduction of Facebook – it’s used by businesses & websites around the world to increase their Facebook fans & get qualified people to communicate with on social media.

And it is now being discontinued by Facebook!

While this may seem like terrifying news to some, it’s actually a plan to improve & enhance the way “liking” happens. The Like box, though discontinued, is going to be replaced by a new feature called the Page Plugin.

So What Is the Page Plugin?

Page Plugin is the new feature that will allow admins to embed & promote their Facebook page on their website. Features of the Like Box will still be available through this plugin, so that visitors can continue to like & share your page without leaving your website. However, the installation process and look & feel will be different.

Benefits of the Page Plugin

1. Incorporates Facepile, which is the plugin that allows profile pictures of people who have connected with your page on Facebook to be displayed on your website.

2. Has added ability to include page’s cover photo in preview, making it possible to keep consistent branding across social media & your website.

3. Allows you to easily show if you would like to show Page Posts as a part of the plugin – this allows websites to now incorporate a mini newsfeed with the Like Box functionality in one go.

4. People visting your Page will see a count of friends that like the Page as well as their profile photos.

5. Customisable look & feel

6. Works with responsive, fluid and static layouts & has an adaptive width.

Make sure to get your website ready for this change before 23rd June 2015, which is when Facebook is officially discontinuing the old Like Box.

What do you think about this change? Let us know in the comments below.

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3 Steps to Start Converting Your Websites Traffic Into Customers

The world wide web has become a tough playground – with your competition just a click away, what does it take to create an online presence that really stands out?

Well, the first step is looking at your website as what it really is: a 24×7 sales machine for your business – it’s not just there to look pretty.. It’s meant to generate new customers for your business.

Your website should convert at least 10% of the traffic that lands on it.

So how do you go about creating a website that actually converts?

Do the 5 second test

The average time to capture a visitors attention is 5 seconds – after this, most people will leave the page. So it’s important to determine what you are saying in those first 5 seconds. Your website should make an immediate statement of what you do, how you do it, and what your unique selling point is.

In 5 seconds.

Guide your visitor

Once you have answered the first few questions your visitor may have about your website & business, it’s important to make it absolutely apparent what they should do next. Tell them how they should proceed & guide them to the next step. The best way to do this is to determine the steps that they would need to take in order to get to the final purchase page, and direct them to go through each of those steps.

Example: for a fashion site, the first call out should guide the visitor to “View more collections”, after which they would slowly be guided through to the final call of “Add to card” & “Checkout”.  (this is, of course, a simplified example)

Don’t make a mess

Do you know those websites that have multiple things calling for your attention at one time? They generally don’t tend to convert very well. When optimising a page for a specific action, it’s important to keep the page clean & focused. This allows the visitor to actually complete the action you want them to take, instead of getting distracted by something else they found interesting. While it can work to some advantage for ecommerce sites, websites that offer services should definitely steer clear of distracting visitors with other elements during a conversion process.

It’s time to take a good hard look at your website & determine if it is generating business for you. Because, quite frankly.. it should be.

Not sure if your website is utilising it’s full power?

Why not have a free website analysis with our lead generation expert? Request a session below.

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Does Content Marketing Actually Work?

If you’ve been doing online marketing in any form, you’ve probably heard the word “content marketing” thrown around recently.

There are marketers who swear by it, and numerous success stories on how content marketing is the new face of advertising and generating new customers.

As savvy marketers ourselves, we thought we’d test the power of content marketing ourselves – and we have to say, we agree!

Content marketing has the power to attract new customers at a much higher level than regular advertising – it captures people on their interests and sells to them when they are at their highest level of engagement, thus generating a higher number of qualified leads than advertising offers directly.

Let’s look at real time results from content marketing

We created a campaign for our client where they had an offer worth AED 1,999

The first ad was a direct ad promoting the offer on Facebook

The second ad was promoting a blog post (i.e: content) on the topic of the same service that the offer was on

Once taken to the content/blog page, the offer was prompted to the reader at the end of the blog post, which then took them to the offer page where they could book (this is the same page that the first ad took them to directly)

 

So what did we find after creating these 2 ads?

The second ad where we used the strategy of content marketing outperformed the direct offer ad by a distinguished amount – 10:1

So yes, it definitely works!

Apart from just increasing conversions & customer bookings, research shows that content marketing has a host of other benefits. Here are some stats of companies using content marketing strategy:

55% more web visitors

97% more inbound links

434% more indexed pages by search engines

However, it’s important to remember that content marketing will only work when you create useful content that will answer any objections or questions your potential customer might have regarding what you are offering them.

The content should be interesting, relevant and engaging. In fact, posting junk or irrelevant content is a sure fire way to seriously harm your online marketing efforts.

There are a number of ways to create the content through which you are going to market, the easiest (and generally the most effective) being blogging.

Want to take off your content marketing strategy? Consult with us for a full Social Media Marketing package that includes page management, advertising & monthly blogs.

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