Things You Should Know For 2017

Facebook

The platform's getting more and more business friendly.  If you’re not spending some of your time every month looking at how your business page is performing, you’re probably missing out.

Video

Continues to grow in importance - particularly on the aforementioned network.  Remember when you didn’t see the point of writing blogs?  Equate that to you currently not seeing the point of doing video.

Advertising

A little bit of money now goes a long way.  If you can’t find $50 a month to spend on digital ads then you’ve probably got bigger problems to worry about.  However, a $20 narrow.io account and a dollar a day on Facebook Ads will have a significant impact on your business.

Mobile

Google is splitting its mobile index from its desktop one and guess which is getting priority?  You don’t really need to understand that - what you do need to do is look at how your website performs on mobile, and if you’re blogging that you’re using AMP technology.  No idea what I’m talking about - you should probably get in touch.

Strategy

If you’d like help developing a plan that makes best use of your time and resources, drop me a line. If you’d like help setting up Facebook ads - get in touch with Molly at Taylor Digital Marketing - she's great.

It's Friday

I'm not going to be sending a regular weekly email this year, most likely it will be monthly or when there's something of particular relevance.

I wish you all a very profitable 2017.
 

Do you love music?  Tell us about your favorite track and we'll see if it fits one of our playlists: http://musicto.com

Image credit: Focus by Kenya Allmond on Flickr

The Juggernaut you Need To Be On

Facebook revenue: $6.43 Billion +59% on last year

Facebook profit: $2.05 Billion +186% on last year

(Oh yeah - and these are just figures from the last quarter!)

It’s About Mobile

4 years ago Facebook made exactly zero dollars from mobile.

Nowadays more than 1 billion people check Facebook from their phones every single day.

As a result, mobile now accounts for 84% of its advertising revenue, that’s $5.24 billion every 3 three months.

So what?

It means that advertising on Facebook works.

It means that ads have to perform well on mobile devices

It means that if you have a product or service that appeals to the general public, you might want to be thinking about how you can use the channel.

Feeling a little down? Listen to this, it really helps you feel better.

Image credit:  AT&T - 1968 rchappo2002 on Flickr

State Of The Internet 2016 - What You Need To Know

It’s my favorite data of the year - Mary Meeker’s State of the Internet report - check out my previous summaries from 2015, 2014, 2013.  

Here are this year's major takeaways:

Advertising

• Internet advertising is growing and Facebook is now a significant player.  
• If you’re going to advertise you’d better be using video and if you’re targeting 16 to 34 years olds you need to be using Snapchat

Social Networks

• Facebook continues to dominate and it’s betting the house on video.  
• Snapchat has exploded in the last year and you need to understand it if you’re targeting millennials

Imagery

• Both video and images are growing in importance.  
• Emoji & Gif use is going to grow twinned with the importance in messaging apps - check out Google’s new IOS keyboard.

Science!

• Voice recognition is almost here and it’s going to change everything!  
• Self driving cars are going to appear faster than we think.

The Rest Of The World

• Less important for local businesses but India and China are maturing fast.
• Western culture is going to be stunned at just how big these markets are.

What Does This Mean For You

People are going to experience your business on a mobile device, with a short attention span and they’re going to be influenced by rich media rather than text. 

If I was a B2C business this is what I would be doing:

• Cleaning up my website and removing any unnecessary messaging and options and distilling the front page above the fold into a single good looking call to action. 
• Looking at how to incorporate video into my messaging
• Experimenting with Snapchat
• Allocating a small budget and be playing with targeted Facebook Ads

Here are 4 more slides from the report - it's fascinating stuff.  If you have a spare hour I thoroughly recommend you have a read - the information is really well presented and you can read the slide deck online here.

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Feeling a little down? Listen to this, it really helps you feel better.

Image Credit:  Internet Trends 2016 by Mary Meeker

Is Your Business Wasting Time On Facebook?

Look - I get it - we all need to be on the platform - that’s where the people are and that’s how we can be found - but this idea that once you’ve got your page up and running you need to keep your audience engaged by posting great status updates is just ridiculous.

Unless you have a dedicated resource and they’re really good at finding and identifying hysterical stuff that is even funnier than the stuff your own friends post and share - well - ain’t nobody got time for that!

Do This

Have a good looking business page, share your blog posts, shoot and boost video, otherwise use Facebook as a super targeted advertising platform to go and find new customers.

If you have no budget, use the time you’d normally spend finding and posting stuff and login as your page and start liking and interacting with other businesses where your customers might hang out.

There are of course exceptions to this rule but for most business owners who don’t have a marketing team, the days of organic reach are over - Facebook is an ad platform, and a bloody good one at that!

Feeling a little down? Listen to this, it really helps you feel better.

Image Credit: The Internet!

How To Build A Super Targeted Audience

The Past

Door to door salesmen - telesales calls during dinner - cultural memes that millennials don’t even know about, existed for a reason - they took a B2C product and put it directly in front of the consumer.  Aside from being massively inefficient, such an invasive approach pissed more people off than it pleased.

The Now

While ads on billboards, television and websites solve for efficiency and invasiveness, they lose out on relevancy.  Programmatic advertising is certainly more targeted but the ads are already super annoying as they follow you around the internet like a lost puppy.

The arrival of social media delivered the opportunity for digital door to door marketing, but just as before, people found it to be invasive and annoying and of course it took forever.  While targeting influencers to share your message is more efficient and brings secondary benefits, the sheer volume of content makes it hard to cut through the noise.

The Way

If you could identify the customer who was interested in what you had to offer and find a way to connect with them directly without freaking them out and coming across like a stalker - wouldn’t that be awesome?

I’m playing with a number of different tools but the one that’s really beginning to stand out is The Dao - http://darwineco.com/dao/.  Originally conceived as a research tool built around IBM big data and cognitive technologies,  I’m using it to develop an audience of people who are talking about what I have to offer.

If you’re interested in learning more about your market and building your own audience, I highly recommend checking it out.

Feeling a little down? Listen to this, it really helps you feel better.

Image Credit: Yin Yang - Wikipedia

Time to Revisit Facebook

I’ve not been a particular fan of Facebook for business.  Sure it was amazing in the beginning but over time if you didn’t have a huge budget and content team - it was tough to see any kind of ROI.

But as with everything in the digital marketing world - things change, check these facts out:

• Last year about 20% of the world’s population logged into Facebook - on the same day!
• Business’ organic reach - which has been steadily declining for years is now back on the rise
• In some markets, Facebook is sending more traffic to websites than Google

Google Ads Vs. Facebook Ads

Google grew because its core product - selling ads - worked and businesses made more money.

But what was Facebook’s core product for businesses?  A place for them to hang out & meet customers?  The ability to organically move their annoying message into the news-feed?  No - it was and is again - Ads, but for years Facebook Ads sucked.

Facebook Ads No Longer Suck

Whether it’s the amount of people, the easy to use interface or the incredibly granular control that allows you to target all single female nurses between the ages of 25 and 33 who have a passion for bodybuilding and theme parks, love beer, own a dog and have just got a new job,  I’m beginning to see Facebook Ads work for small businesses again.

There’s 3,500 people on the planet, using Facebook, who meet the above set of requirements.  Think about what image you could put in their mobile news-feed to grab their attention!

Huge Mobile Ad Distribution

One recent campaign we did for a local business saw less than 3% of click throughs come from the desktop- whereas 48% came from the mobile news feed and 47% came from off-Facebook mobile apps and networks.

Try It Out

You can get in the game for as little as $150, so long as you get creative with your Ad imagery and have a decent landing page that will convert.  If you need a hand - get in touch.

Written while listening to: Music to Grieve to - Acceptance #1 by music2work2

Image Credit: dinero facebook by Esther Vargas on Flickr