Social media is continuously evolving, and as a result, marketing professionals now have access to a wealth of insightful information on the attitudes of a typical user. Additionally, sites such a Facebook continue to roll out sophisticated features to help advertisers better leverage the viral power of social media. Below is a quick summary on the latest trends and technological updates in the online marketing world.
Facebook Introduces CPA Bidding
Possibly the greatest improvement to the ads manager since the advent of promoted posts, Facebook executives recently announced that they will be rolling out CPA bidding for social marketing advertisers. At the moment, advertisers only have the ability to optimize bids based on a CPC or CPM model. The new CPA bidding will allow PPC advertising professionals to bid based on the following actions: offer claims, Facebook page likes, and clicks/link opens (specific click-throughs to an external page rather than general clicks). Managing CPA programs will allow advertisers to better optimize paid campaigns and control the amount they are willing to spend per on new Facebook page likes.
PPC advertising and social media marketing are two main channels of internet advertising that online marketing professionals use to convert traffic for B2C campaigns. However, the B2B market is a whole different environment with users exhibiting different search behaviours across both channels.
PPC Advertising: Paid Search
In a previous blog post, it was shown that B2B marketing professional reported significant success in driving targeted traffic to their respective websites via from organic search. This post will provide an in-depth analysis of Optify’s study to discover just how valuable search engine optimization campaigns proved to be for B2B companies in 2012, and what type of insights can be applied to general online marketing campaigns.
Search Engine Market Share
A recent report by Optify investigated the major online marketing trends among B2B professionals in 2012. The numbers analyzed for the study originated from over 62 million visits and 350,000 leads, providing a wealth of data that can be translated into valuable information relating to the performance of various internet marketing channels.
A recent study prepared by Google and Nielsen investigated the latest trends in mobile marketing, and the results indicate that the majority of users who participated make frequent use of mobile devices to search for products and services. There’s no question companies will need to optimize websites for mobile search, especially with smartphones becoming more advanced, and the popularity of tablets skyrocketing.
77% of All Mobile Searches Done At Work or Home
An infographic prepared by VerticalMeasures perfectly captures the four pillars of successful social media marketing management for businesses. Incorporating social media marketing can be a difficult task for some small businesses, but it provide enormous potential for brands that want to leverage the viral power of sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
The Foundation of Social Media
1. Customer Service
Twitter and Facebook have been social media sites users have utilized to lodge complaints for quite a while now. Despite the pain this causes businesses, it provides timely resolution and responses for clients, and allows brands to personally connect with users on a regular basis. When preparing customer service guidelines for your social media networks, keep the following expected response rates in mind:
- 80% of Twitter users expect a response within a day
- 50% of Facebook users expect a response within a day.
Developing successful online marketing campaigns can be a difficult endeavor for small & medium sized business working with a limited budget. However, it does not take an extensive understanding marketing theories and the intricacies of the internet marketing world to successfully launch an online business. Below are some helpful tips for new professionals getting their first taste of the e-commerce world.
1. Choose the right online advertising tools
A recent report from CPC strategy compared the performance of the recently revamped Google Shopping platform against Amazon’s Product Ads For small businesses, these forms of product PPC advertising provide new ways to increase exposure among a targeted audience that’s in a “ready to buy now” mode. The results of the study found that after Google Shopping made the transition to a more commercial model last year, it’s performance surged compared to Amazon’s paid advertising products in certain areas.
Round 1: Cost-Per-Click (CPC)
The study found that Google Shopping was able to drive 130% more traffic to advertisers than Amazon’s Product Ads. In fact, the transition for Google proved to be advantageous, as it was able to double the amount of traffic it sent to merchants compared to 2011. Additionally, the average Google Shopping CPC rounded out to $0.31, effectively costing marketing professionals 32.5% less per click in comparison to Amazon’s Product Ads. For merchants, this provides tremendous opportunities to push promotions for specific products via pay-per-click advertising.
Ever wondered what it would be like to make purchases online simply by submitting a keyword or phrase into Google or Twitter? According to the latest reports, Twitter and American Express are making that dream a reality by enhancing its Sync program, permitting users to make purchases via promotional hashtags on the microblogging social media site. For example, users can purchase a $25 AmEx gift card for $15 by adding the hashtag #BuyAmexGiftCard25 to one of their tweets. A couple of other products including the Kindle Fire will be part of this promotion starting next Monday. Users making purchases with these hashtags will receive verification from the @AmexSync official account, enabling them to redeem the limited time offers.
The proliferation and ubiquity of mobile marketing technology has made it simple for users to do practically anything on the go, ranging from shopping online to connecting with friends worldwide. Interestingly enough, it hasn’t been until recently that marketing professionals investigated the behaviour of television viewers when it comes to their mobile devices. As a result, advertisers are becoming more savvy in picking up that consumers are most likely using their mobile devices to research product information after watching commercials.
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