Things You Should Know For 2017

January 27, 2017 / Andrew McCluskey

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

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categories / Advertising, Mobile, Social media, Strategy, Newsletter
tags / Facebook, Video, Mobile, Strategy, Advertising, Taylor Digital Marketing, Molly Taylor, Facebook Ads, Blogging

The Juggernaut you Need To Be On

July 28, 2016 / Andrew McCluskey

'Cos Facebook ads are best experienced with your ears!

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

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categories / Advertising, Mobile, Social media
tags / Facebook, Advertising, Mobile

State Of The Internet 2016 - What You Need To Know

June 09, 2016 / Andrew McCluskey

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.

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

Image Credit: Internet Trends 2016 by Mary Meeker

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categories / Strategy, Social media, Newsletter, Video
tags / Mary Meeker, Advertising, Facebook, Snapchat, Mobile, Voice Recognition, Self Driving Cars, Millennials, Video, Images

Get On Your Phone!

April 21, 2016 / Andrew McCluskey

This is what your customer looks like when they're looking at you...

You know the difference between you and your customers when it comes to your business’ digital footprint?

You experience it on a big screen - they experience it on a phone.

Think about it - when it’s time for you to “do marketing” you’re at your desk using your office computer or a laptop.

Social Is Mobile

We all have Facebook pages, most of us have Twitter and Instagram accounts. We have them in order to increase the reach of our messaging.

Having run several rounds of Facebook ads for different clients I can tell you that the vast majority of social traffic that comes through to your website is overwhelmingly mobile - in some cases over 90%.

Design For Mobile First

We just changed the landing page for a current Facebook campaign when we discovered that the average time on page for mobile visitors was less than half that of desktop visitors.

Turned out that the beautiful layout that worked perfectly on a large screen became way too text heavy and complex on a mobile screen. It was a simple fix, but with nine times as much mobile traffic as desktop - we should have started with the mobile design first.

Get Off Your Desktop

The next time you “do marketing” spend some of that time on your phone, you might be surprised at how different you look.

Find yourself procrastinating and avoiding your work? Listen to this, it really helps you get things done

Image Credit: Smartphone Abstraction by Jonas Smith on Flickr

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categories / Advertising, Design, Digital Footprint, Mobile, Newsletter, Social media
tags / Facebook, Advertizing, Ad Campaign, social media marketing, Social media, INstagram, Twitter, Mobile Phone, Mobile, Design, Marketing

2015 Internet Trends - More Mobile - More Video

June 04, 2015 / Andrew McCluskey

2015 Internet Trends Report from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

I always look forward to Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends report, it’s 196 slides of the sexiest business intelligence you’ll read all year, and as you probably won’t, here are some of the main takeaways:

Mobile ads are getting good
The power of messaging and real time communication
The growth of Men’s imagery
How to manage Millenials
The importance of customer reviews
How to capture the teen market
and much, much more…

What’s most relevant for you?

While 2013 was about mobile and 2014 was the development of the tablet audience, this year it’s about video. But just to underline how important mobile has become consider this, back in 2011 people spent less than 1 hour a day on mobile devices (phones, tablets etc) - now they spend almost 3 hours and that accounts for over half the time they spend online!

That’s nuts!

But while mobile traffic grew 69% last year, the real insight is that over 55% of that traffic was video! Just check out these figures from Facebook:

50% of all Facebook users watch at least one video a day
53% of those views come from shares
75% of those views happen on mobile.

Takeaway for 2015

Now before you all leap off and start your own YouTube channels let’s be real. Those videos getting shared on Facebook probably have more to do with puppies than they do small businesses.

The takeaway for me is that video is now a mature channel and is just one of the options you have to communicate your story. Have a think about where and how you could use video as part of your overall communications strategy, with all the different options and platforms, you should be able to find something that works for you and your customers.