facebook advertising strategy

5 Simple Facebook Advertising Strategies

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Facebook has an enormous user base that’s only continuing to grow every month. As of the first quarter of 2019, Facebook boasted 2.37 billion active monthly users — up 55 million from the previous quarter. Additionally, roughly 1.56 billion users are logging into Facebook on a daily basis. These are numbers that no marketer can ignore, which is why you should be using Facebook Ads. However, just because Facebook has a big audience doesn’t mean that you’ll reach your target audience. It’s why you need to put some time into crafting an effective Facebook advertising strategy. The following are five Facebook advertising strategies that will help you reach your target audience:

1. Target Life Events

Depending on what your business is, you can target users based on major life events. Users commonly share big life events, such as if they bought a new house, got engaged, had a new baby, moved to a new city, or got a new job. Facebook is well aware of this, which is why it offers advertisers a Life Events parameter. You can select what life event you’re targeting and the date range from that event that the event will remain relevant. For example, if you’re a moving company, you might want to target users who have just closed on a new home within a three-month range. If you’re a jeweler, you may want to target newly engaged users within a year of their engagement.

2. Target Custom Audiences

Another unique feature that you can use on Facebook is the ability to target Custom Audiences. The feature works by uploading who you want to target, such as a customer phone list, an email list, or even your Facebook followers list. You can then specifically target these audiences. Doing this can be an excellent way to increase your lifetime customer value and to boost brand loyalty. You can also choose to specifically exclude the list you upload if your goal is to target completely new leads. facebook advertising strategy

3. Use Geo-Targeting

As you can imagine, targeting all of Facebook’s 2.37 billion monthly users is a ridiculous idea. This is especially true if you’re running a local business that provides a local service. This means that targeting an audience in a different country or even a different state is going to be a waste of time. Geo-targeting allows you to target users who are located within the vicinity of your physical location or the locations that you serve.

4. Retarget Engaged Users

Retargeting users who have engaged with your brand via Facebook in some way can be effective for a number of reasons. First of all, they’re aware of your brand. Secondly, they’ve shown interest through interaction. For example, if you ran a Facebook video ad campaign, then you can retarget users that watched the video all the way through with an additional call-to-action.

Similar Article: How Much To Advertise on Instagram And Why It ‘s Worth The Cost

5. Take Advantage Of Look Alike-Audiences

Lookalike Audiences lets you mirror your Custom Audience list or Facebook following. By doing this, you’ll target a completely new audience that has a lot in common with your current leads and customers. You’ll be able to expand past your reach while still targeting users with specific profiles. 

These are five ways you can implement a Facebook advertising strategy that will allow you to effectively target your audience. Just keep in mind that these strategies work best if you’ve already done the basics. This means developing your buyer personas, understanding who your target audience actually is, and establishing the main goals of your Facebook ad campaign.

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earned media vs paid media

Why You Should Invest In RTB Advertising As Part Of Your Paid Advertising Campaign

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In this day and age, there are countless ways that you can run ads. Even if you don’t take into account traditional advertising (such as running newspaper ads or magazine ads), there seem to be new online advertising opportunities popping up every day. For example, in addition to running banner and popup ads on certain websites, you can also target your audience more effectively using Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, or Twitter Ads. While you may have already invested in these types of advertising campaigns, there’s one other advertising opportunity that you should look in to — RTB advertising.

What Is RTB Advertising?

RTB (Real Time Bidding) advertising refers to a process in which online impressions are bought and sold during real-time auctions within the few seconds that it takes to load a webpage. These auctions are ran by supply-side platforms or ad exchanges. The way it works is relatively straight forward. During the few seconds that an ad impression loads, information about the webpage that’s loading and the person viewing the page is sent to the ad exchange. The ad exchange then auctions the impression off to whoever is willing to pay the most for it. The winning bid will get their ad onto the webpage almost instantly. This entire process takes milliseconds to execute.

Advertisers make a number of decisions prior to bidding based on what websites they will appear on and the previous history and behavior of the user viewing the page. Such decisions include what ad impressions they want to purchase and how much to bid on them. The cost of each impression will be determined in real time based on what bidders are willing to pay.

How To Transition From Traditional Advertising to Inbound Marketing

How Is RTB Advertising Different Than Programmatic Advertising?

Programmatic advertising is a process in which the buying and selling of online ads is automated. As such, it’s not difficult to see why you might think that RTB advertising is the same thing; however, it’s not. While RTB advertising is a type of programmatic advertising, not all programmatic advertising involves real-time bidding. For example, some programmatic ad platforms allow publishers to sell their inventory of ad space for a fixed price ahead of time instead of auctioning it off in real time.RTB advertising

Why Should You Invest In RTB Advertising?

  • You don’t have to work directly with publishers. There is no more wasting time negotiating ad prices with individual publishers. You can simply use ad exchanges to access a massive inventory of impressions across a huge number of sites.
  • RTB advertising is more cost-effective. Because you have access to a big inventory of impressions, you can choose what impressions are most valuable to you. This helps reduce the number of impressions that go to waste on the wrong users.
  • Reach niche audiences. Because of RTB advertising’s use of cookie matching to obtain user information, you can more effectively target niche audiences with your RTB ads.
  • RTB advertising fits any ad campaign and budget. RTB advertising can be an effective strategy no matter what size your ad campaign is or how big of a budget you have.
  • Obtain valuable data. Over the course of an RTB advertising campaign, you can collect valuable data on your marketing campaigns. This data can help you to determine what types of ads drive the most engagement, what websites perform better, and more.

RTB advertising is not only a cost-effective way to run an online advertising campaign, but it’s also incredibly effective when it comes to advertising to your target audience. As such, it’s well worth looking into RTB advertising if you haven’t done so already.

Inbound marketing will help you grow your business by attracting website visitors, converting them into leads and closing leads into customers
what is an ad exchange

What is an Ad Exchange and How Does it Work?

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Before ad exchanges began popping up, the only way for marketers to purchase ad space online was directly through publishers. This process was not very cost-effective. It was also time-consuming. As new ways to purchase advertising space online have popped up, including programmatic ads and RTB (real-time bidding) ads, so have ad exchanges. Ad exchanges have made it much easier to buy ad space that’s both more effective and more efficient. But what is an ad exchange, exactly?

What is an Ad Exchange?

An ad exchange is an online marketplace for ad space that functions as an auction. Publishers (such as website owners) make their digital advertising space available. Then, advertising agencies and marketers then purchase this ad space through the ad exchange. It’s worth noting that ad exchanges are autonomous, meaning that they aren’t on the side of either the buyers or the sellers.

While ad exchanges are simple for publishers and advertisers to use, the way they actually function can be a bit complex. When a publisher lists ad space on an ad exchange, they provide details that include the page location, audience, topics, and URL. When somebody visits the publisher’s website or mobile app, data about that user is collected. That user data is transferred to the ad exchange. The ad exchange then sends a bid request to DSPs and ad networks. Each DSP inspects the bid request and the parameters of the advertiser to decide of the impression will be relevant to the advertiser. If it is, the maximum bid amount will be sent back to the ad exchange along with the location of the advertising copy to be placed in the ad space.

The ad exchange will review all the bids, eliminating bids from advertisers that don’t meet the publisher’s requirements. The impression will then go to the highest bidder. Their copy will then be displayed on the publisher’s website in front of the user that’s visiting the website. As complicated as this process may appear to be, it takes milliseconds for it to occur.

What Are Marketing Qualified Leads And Why Do They Matter?

The Benefits of Using an Ad Exchange

The use of an ad exchange provides benefits to both publishers and advertisers. The following are a few of the advantages publishers have when using an ad exchange:

  • Establish the minimum CPMs (cost per mile, which refers to the cost per thousand impressions) for their inventory units.
  • Filter and block ads that have sensitive content or that are ads for competitors.
  • Choose the ad format and style, thereby defining what types of ads can appear on their webpage. what is an ad exchange
  • Choose where the ads will be displayed on their webpages.
  • Customize combinations of fonts, colors, and corner style. They can then apply these combinations to multiple display ads at a time.

Ad exchanges don’t just benefit the publishers. They also benefit advertisers who are buying ad space in the following ways:

  • Choose targeting options, behavioral profiling, price settings, and bidding capabilities.
  • Blacklist certain audiences.
  • Blacklist certain publishers.
  • Place limits on the number of times the same ad appears to the same user.
  • Retarget across multiple ad exchanges.

Ad exchanges are incredibly effective because they provide advertisers with a lot of control over where their ads will be seen, who will see them, and how much they are paying for those impressions. They also help you save a significant amount of time finding ad space in general. As such, ad exchanges are well worth looking into.

A GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE MOBILE MARKETING TECHNIQUES

 

innovative marketing ideas

5 Innovative Marketing Ideas To Use In 2019

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When it comes to inbound marketing, it can be somewhat easy to fall into a pattern. If you feel like your marketing efforts are just more of the same, then it might be time to take a fresh approach. You want to stand out from your competition, after all. The following are five innovative marketing ideas that you should consider implementing into your inbound marketing strategy in 2019:

1. Create Eye-Catching Lists

Lists are popular because of how easy they are to read. Audiences can just scan lists and still get the general gist of the content. They’re particularly effective at keeping the attention of readers. Just make sure you format your lists into sections and use visuals for each item on the list for an even bigger impact.

2. Reference Current Pop Culture

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that referencing pop culture is tacky or that it will date your content. As long as the pop culture you’re referencing is relevant to your target audience, it can actually help to engage your audience on a deeper level. For example, you could use the meme of a popular TV show that you know your target audience is familiar with to add a bit of flair to a blog post. Just make sure you keep your buyer persona in mind when you do this.

Local SEO Marketing In 2019: 5 Easy Tips To Dominate Local Search

3. Use More Images

Written content can become stale simply because it’s not visual. Make it a point to use images to break up the text of written content. The longer the text is, the more images you should use. Images help give the eye a break, make the content more interesting to consume overall, and give readers an idea of what the content is about by simply glancing at the images. Even if you’re crafting a white paper or an eBook, using images to break up your text will go a long way towards making it easier to read.innovative marketing ideas

4. Leverage Older Studies For New Content

There is a massive amount of old studies available online no matter what industry you’re in. Many of these studies are not outdated even though they may be older. Look for older studies

that have relevant information and leverage that information for new content. Not only can you use the data to back up new content, but you could even highlight the data on its own in the form of new infographics or other types of visual content (just be sure to cite your sources).

5. Create Time-Lapse Videos

Video content is the most effective content there is because of how easily consumable it is. People love watching video content and do so on their phones on a daily basis (as long as that video content is on the shorter side). Time-lapse videos are extremely effective because they’re basically videos that are displayed in fast motion, making them even easier for viewers to consume. Time-lapse videos tend to be on the shorter side, which is perfect for present-day audiences, which have shorter attention spans (which is why social platforms like Snapchat are so popular). There are lots of ways that you can create time-lapse videos as well, from showing how products are made to the showing the effects of a product over time (for example, showing a stain remover product removing a stain from a carpet).

You should always be on the lookout for innovative marketing ideas to keep things fresh and to keep your audience interested and engaged. These are five innovative marketing ideas that can help to inject some life into a marketing campaign that might be growing a little bit stale.

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chatbot examples

Chatbot Examples: How Businesses are Successfully Using Chatbots

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Businesses are constantly looking for ways to engage with their audience in any way they can. The more you engage with them, the more effectively you can nurture them. It’s one of the reasons why companies are beginning to implement chatbots more and more. Chatbots are a form of artificial intelligence (AI) that engage with website users via a messenger. Chatbots use data such as user information and behavior to personalize interactions. They are a great way to keep visitors engaged as they navigate your site by answering basic questions and providing assistance any hours of the day. Considering how popular online messengers are in general (Facebook Messenger alone has more than 1.2 billion monthly users), it should come as no surprise that chatbots are a form of customer service people appreciate. The following are some chatbot examples.

Types of Chatbots

When it comes to implementing a chatbot, it’s important to know that there two main types to choose from: a simple chatbot and a smart chatbot. The following is a brief rundown of their differences:

  • Simple Chatbots – Simple chatbots work by implementing a series of commands written by the developer based on pre-written keywords. Basically, the chatbot will only understand a user query if it contains one of these pre-written keywords. If a user engages with the chatbot but doesn’t use any of these keywords, it will automatically respond with something like “I do not understand.” It’s a very basic chatbot, but it can still be useful for answering simple questions.
  • Smart Chatbots – Smart chatbots use AI to communicate to users. Instead of replying to user queries and responses with pre-prepared answers, a smart chatbot will respond with appropriate suggestions on the topic. The words of the user will also be recorded for additional data.

How Major Brands Use Chatbots

Now that you have a better understanding of what chatbots are, the following are a few examples of how some of the more well-known companies have adapted chatbots and why they have been so effective for them:

  • Adobe – The Adobe chatbot helps users troubleshoot issues by responding to questions with links to pages that contain the solutions. It’s a no-frills chatbot, but it’s one that users can rely on when they have questions or issues.
  • Arsenal FC – The London based Arsenal soccer team has a chatbot that provides users with real-time updates about ongoing games. It is useful for anyone who can’t catch the game on TV. Their chatbot also provides information about upcoming games, team line-ups, and team-related news.
  • Universal Studios – The chatbot used by Universal Studios in hugely helpful in a number of ways. First, it can provide a significant amount of information while users are at one of their parks, such as where the nearest restroom is or what the wait times are for certain rides in real time. It also gives users the chance to speak with a human representative if the chatbot can’t provide the answer they’re looking for.
  • Dominos – Dominos lets its customers order food through its chatbot. It’s like someone is taking their order over text. The chatbot asks customers what they want and will follow up with specific questions about customization options. It’s particularly customer-friendly because customers don’t have to download or sign-up for anything. The chatbot can also save your preferences for future orders.

These few successful chatbot examples show just how helpful using chatbots can be, especially when it comes to improving your customer service.

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Brand Ambassador Programs

How Businesses Are Using Brand Ambassador Programs To Increase Brand Awareness And Trust

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Generating brand awareness and building brand trust are two major marketing goals all businesses have. One of the most effective ways to achieve these goals is by encouraging loyal customers to increase brand awareness and trust on your behalf. This is because positive word-of-mouth can be incredibly powerful, and because consumers tend to trust one another when it comes to brand recommendations. As a result, many businesses have established brand ambassador programs in order to turn their loyal customers into official ambassadors.

What are Brand Ambassadors?

Brand ambassadors are consumers who work closely with you to advocate your brand. Companies generally choose loyal customers who already have a history recommending your brand, and also have some online influence. Someone with tens of thousands of followers on Instagram is going to be more effective as a brand ambassador than someone who only has LinkedIn and a handful of connections.

Having brand ambassadors can influence their followers by recommending your products or services, incite conversations about your brand, and create content on your behalf. For example, a brand ambassador on Instagram might post a picture wearing a jacket your company sells.

To take advantage of brand ambassadors, you’ll want to establish a brand ambassador program. You’ll need to do a lot of research to identify individuals who will make good brand ambassadors. Consider making the program membership exclusive. People are more likely to take their brand ambassadorship seriously if they know that not just anyone can be one of your brand ambassadors. Additionally, you’ll need to provide some sort of compensation, whether you actually pay them or you give them free products. Many companies will provide their brand ambassadors with new products before they’re even available to the masses.

Examples of Successful Brand Ambassador Programs

The following are some of the most successful brand ambassador programs launched by some of the biggest companies:

• Red Bull – Red Bull’s brand ambassador program is called the Wings Team. They focus on students who have an exciting lifestyle to turn their brand into a lifestyle brand. Because their ambassadors are students, they are able to reach a college audience much more effectively.
• Lululemon – Lululemon essentially uses its brand ambassador program to sponsor local athletes, yoga instructors, and influencers. They provide incentive by partnering with their ambassadors to support their local philanthropic projects and initiatives.
• American Express – American Express has a brand ambassador program filled with social media influencers. They target travel and lifestyle influencers in particular since they showcase a luxurious lifestyle — one that obviously benefits from the extensive use of a credit card. They not only showcase the use of their American Express credit cards, but the rewards that they can obtain from their regular use as well.

Even the biggest companies in the world recognize the value of a brand ambassador. If you have loyal customers, then you should encourage them to become brand ambassadors by implementing a brand ambassador program. Use these three examples as an inspiration to set up your own brand ambassador program today.

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Customer Benefits

What Are the Real Customer Benefits of AI?

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming more prevalent in the technology of today, from virtual assistants, such as Alexa and Siri, to Google’s self-driving cars. AI also sorts through massive amounts of data for businesses of all sizes. This technology can also eliminate repetitive tasks. Thought the benefits of using AI are apparent for business, it may not be as obvious as to how the customer benefits. The following are a few ways that the use of AI can help your customers:

Improve Customer Service

As much as you would like to have somebody waiting to speak with every person that comes to your website, that’s going to be impossible to do. A queue of users could build up waiting to speak with someone, which could harm their customer service experience. Not to mention that people will visit your site after business hours as well. Chatbots address the questions and concerns of your customers immediately. Chatbots can be programmed to answer basic questions, thereby preventing users from abandoning your site or waiting for a response.

Personalize Your Interactions

Not only can you segment your email list by the information that users have submitted to you, but you can further personalize emails through dynamic content, ensuring that the content users receive will be tailored to their specific needs and actions. You can even personalize interactions through your live chat or chatbots feature by tracking user behavior.

Help Customers Find What They Need

You can trigger certain product or service recommendations based on users’ purchase history or what they’re looking for. AI helps your customers discover relevant products or services they may not have known about.

Improve Customer Experience

There are AI tools that can not only collect user feedback so that you can identify ways in which you can improve their experience, but that can also track user behavior to identify problem areas on your site (for example, maybe a significant amount of people are abandoning their shopping cart without checking out). You can use this information to improve your customer experience.

The use of AI is growing in all facets of life. AI can be especially useful when it comes to providing customer benefits. These are just a few of the ways you can benefit your customers through the use of AI.

A GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE MOBILE MARKETING TECHNIQUES
marketing trends

What’s Trending in Marketing for July 2019

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Staying current on recent marketing trends is an excellent way to reflect and verify whether your marketing efforts are harmonious with what’s going on in today’s ever-evolving marketplace. We’re aware that keeping up with these trends can often be difficult given the abundance of information thrown at us every day. The following articles come from popular marketing blogs. They highlight current marketing trends that we think are worth paying attention to:

Noteworthy Marketing News

Microsoft Just Dealt A Blow To Google’s Ad Blocking Plans

Google announced their plans to restrict ad blocking Chrome extensions. This means that ad blockers, like uBlock origin, won’t work on the Google Chrome browser. This update will come in the upcoming months and some Chrome users have made it clear that they’ll move to another browser if Google carries out that plan. Microsoft has responded by reaching out to their users to see if they’d like Ad Blockers built into the new version of the Microsoft Edge browser. You can learn more about this story on Forbes.

Instagram advertisers can now convert organic influencer posts into ads

Instagram confirmed in March that it’s testing a new ad format. It’s going to be possible for brands to create ads using organic posts from the influencers they have relationships with. Marketing Land writes, “Before brands can use influencer posts as ads, the content creator must grant their business partners (the brands they have relationships with) access to promote their posts. Once the creator — or influencer — has done this via their Advanced Settings page, brands will see the influencer’s posts in the Ads Manager under “Existing Posts” and can run the content as an ad within the Instagram newsfeed or Stories format.”

Comcast partners with Charter, Cox to advance targeted advertising

Comcast launched an advertising strategy that will target audiences better in an effort to lure more advertisers away from digital platforms like Facebook and Google. The initiative is called “On Addressability” and the aim is to target advertisements to certain households based on their interests. So far, this has only been done on a small scale in TV advertising. TV is the best way to reach a lot of people at once, but it lacks the big data that digital platforms use. Learn more about this story at Yahoo.

Improving Your Marketing Program

Emotional Advertising: How Brands Use Feelings to Get People to Buy

Informing your audience is important. You want potential buyers to understand what their problem is, and how your products or services can solve that problem. Unfortunately, people don’t generally make purchases based on information alone. It turns out that people are more prone to making emotional purchases than informed purchases. It’s why commercials consist of much more than an explanation of a product’s use. Instead they use emotional advertising to target the viewer. It’s effective, and it’s why connecting with your audience on an emotional level will benefit your marketing strategy.

Simple Ways that Small Businesses Can Use Data to Build Better Customer Relationships

In this day and age, it’s pretty difficult for consumers to not be inundated with dozens of advertisements. As such, targeting your audience has become more important than ever, especially when it comes to running a smaller business. The most effective way to target your audience is to make use of the consumer data that you have access to. Knowing how to use the data you have can go a long way towards building customer relationships.

However, having consumer data is a lot different than knowing how to make it actionable, which can make the data you have very intimidating. The following are the three steps that you should take to so that you can leverage your data to build strong customer relationships.

What Are Behavioral Biometrics and How Do They Fit Into Marketing?

Companies often hold focus groups in order to get direct feedback about products, services, and even website experiences. The only drawback to such focus groups is that people often aren’t sure how to articulate what they feel about certain things. However, new biometric technology, such as eye-tracking software, has made it easier to determine exactly how someone feels about a website experience at any given moment–and they can allow you to do so without holding a focus group.

Recent Marketing Reports, Updates, and Trends

Almost 70% of digital ad spending going to Google, Facebook, Amazon, says analyst firm

Google, Facebook, and Amazon are collecting more than 2/3rds of all digital ad spending. Between the 3 companies, this is about $73 billion. Amazon owns 38% of e-commerce, which is down from almost 50% a year ago.

These numbers matter greatly as the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice will begin antitrust investigation of Facebook, Google, and Amazon in the upcoming 12-18 months. More about this story can be found on Marketing Land.

Political Ad Spending Will Approach $10 Billion in 2020, New Forecast Predicts

A new report predicts that spending on political advertisements will reach a new high in 2020. According to the forecast, political ad spending will total $9.9 billion in 2020. In 2016, $6.3 billion was spent on political ads. Political ad spending in 2018 accounted for 2% of total digital ad spending in the US and it’s projected to increase to 2.2% in 2020. Learn more about this story on WSJ.

Survey finds 89% of marketers seeing increased sales using location data

700 U.S. based mobile marketers from 536 consumer brands and 164 agencies took part in this 2019 survey. The survey found that about 9 in 10 marketers plan to use location data in the future to increase sales. However, of those surveyed, only 24% are using or plan to use location data for store visitation or offline measurement.

This report shows that location data is becoming a popular horizontal tool for audience segmentation and targeting across channels. Learn more about this report at Marketing Land.

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Digital Advertising Display

Pump Up the Power of Your Digital Advertising Display

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Display ads are one of the oldest forms of online advertising. Unfortunately, the typical display ad doesn’t have as much of an impact as it once had. It has been surpassed by many other online marketing strategies. This is in part because display ads are often irrelevant to the consumer viewing them, not to mention they may disrupt the consumer’s website experience. But that doesn’t mean that display ads don’t have a place in your marketing strategy. The following are a few tips for using a digital advertising display in an effective manner:

1. Combine Your Display Ads With Native Formats

Using a native format allows your digital advertising display to blend in with the content on the page that they are being displayed on. Whereas users often skip over traditional display ads, they are more likely to read native display ads because they are part of the overall content experience. Several studies have backed this, finding that consumers view native display ads 52 percent more frequently than traditional display ads.

2. Set Targeting Dimensions Of Your Display Ads

Contextual targeting allows you to target your display ads to specific demographics, which means that your display ads will be more relevant to the user experience. Private platforms, such as Google and Facebook, allow for contextual targeting by letting you choose who you want to target (age range, gender, etc.) and when.

3. Test Your Display Ads On Social Media

Because of how social media lets you target specific demographics when running display ads, it’s also a great way to test your display ads. This is because social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook have excellent analytics tools that you can use to measure your advertising outreach’s value. This means you can test different display ads against certain demographics to see which perform better. This allows you to adjust your strategy so that it’s more effective.

Check out our article: What’s New with Google: How Page Speed Affects SEO and Adwords

4. Make Your Digital Advertising Display Mobile-Friendly

Make sure that you design your display ads with mobile use in mind. Some display ads may look great on your desktop but won’t translate as well to a smaller screen. The fact that the majority of your audience is going to be viewing your display ads on a mobile device, it’s incredibly important your ads are built for mobile viewing.

5. Focus On Delivering Your Message Quickly

A display ad functions in the same manner as a roadside billboard. Billboards can’t be jam-packed with text and information because drivers don’t have the time to read it all as they pass by. They must deliver their message within a couple of seconds. The same applies to display ads. Users need to be able to consume the message with a quick glance.

The traditional method for using a digital display ad is somewhat outdated. However, display ads can still be effective if you know how to use them. Follow these tips and your display ads are likely to have a bigger impact on your audience.

30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips

What’s Trending in Marketing for June 2019

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Staying current on recent marketing trends is an excellent way to reflect and verify whether your marketing efforts are harmonious with what’s going on in today’s ever-evolving marketplace. We’re aware that keeping up with these trends can often be difficult given the abundance of information thrown at us every day. The following articles come from popular marketing blogs. They highlight current marketing trends that we think are worth paying attention to:

Noteworthy Marketing News

Spotify tests interactive ads that listen for your voice

Spotify is testing interactive ads that can be controlled by users voices. The idea allows a user to say “play now” when hearing a voice controlled ad, which would then take them to the piece of relevant content. Two ads are currently running, one for Unilever’s Axe products and the other for a Spotify podcast called Stay Free: The Story of the Clash. Saying the key phrase during whichever ad is playing will direct you to an Axe-branded playlist or to the advertised podcast. This is just one way digital content allows for the development of new ways for consumers to interact with advertising content. You can read more about this story on The Verge.

LinkedIn refreshes Sales Navigator homepage to put focus on alerts

This is a change to increase Ease of Access when using LinkedIn Sales Navigator. The big news with this latest update to the Sales Navigator platform is that the homepage shift. It is transforming from a newsfeed format to focus on alerts.  Knowing the full-breadth of features offered by LinkedIn Sales Navigator helps marketing teams contribute added value to their sales organization. These insights allow companies to take full advantage of their social media advertising platform and investment. Learn more about this update at Martech Today.

Facebook is getting a redesign

The main takeaway from the new Facebook redesign is that groups will continue to dominate the Facebook marketing space. This is an interesting redesign that comes off the heels of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announcing how a lot of users have started using groups and more private ways for sharing content.

Social Report writes, “But this is no new trend. We’ve been huge proponents of Facebook groups since Facebook changed its algorithm to prioritize content from groups and other “content that matters” on the Newsfeed last year.When Facebook changed its algorithm, it plummeted organic reach for Facebook pages. At the same time, however, Facebook gave groups more organic reach—even if they’re run by a brand. This groups-focused redesign shows us that Facebook is continuing its commitment to Facebook groups, and that we’ll continue to see the platform prioritize content from them indefinitely”.

Improving Your Marketing Program

Developing the Perfect Omni-Channel Marketing Strategy

The buyer’s journey has changed a lot over the years. This is a result of the consumer’s ability to explore multiple channels online and to engage in multiple ways. There is no distinct path that takes them from point A to point B in order to make a purchase. While one customer might begin doing research through a search engine like Google, another might ask their followers questions on social media to identify solutions to their problems, while yet another might stumble on an ad for one of your products in a magazine. Basically, every buyer’s journey is unique.

As such, it’s important that you have a presence on multiple channels. You should integrate all of your channels, processes, and strategies to help nurture any stage of their buyer’s journey. This is omni-channel marketing. The following are a number of tips that you should consider implementing that will help you strengthen your omni-channel marketing strategy.

Factors That Influence Consumer Purchasing Decisions: Rethinking the Marketing Funnel

In order to continue attracting your target audience, you need to keep up with the wants and needs of customers. This can be a real challenge if you don’t understand the factors that influence consumer purchasing decisions. Those factors are a lot different than what they used to be, which means that the customer journey has changed a lot as well. This updated journey is referred to by many as the consumer decision journey (CDJ). What makes the CDJ so different than traditional marketing funnels is that each consumer’s CDJ is unique. Keeping that in mind, the following are three of the biggest factors that influence consumer purchasing decisions in today’s digital age.

How to Outshine Your Competition with Effective E-Commerce Website Marketing 

While not all businesses have an e-commerce page, many do. If you’re selling products or services online, make sure you have an e-commerce marketing strategy in place. If you don’t, it’s going to be difficult to stand out from all the other e-commerce sites out there. Through the use of digital marketing strategies, you can build awareness of your e-commerce page to generate more traffic. Thereby, you can improve your chances of closing sales. The following are a number of e-commerce marketing tips that will help you do just that.

Recent Marketing Reports, Updates, and Trends

Mobile to become the preferred platform for video ads by end of 2019

A new report from PubMatic stated nearly 50% of video ads were viewed on mobile devices0. That is up from from 40% in 2018. Video ads are expected to exceed $29 Billion globally according to this same report. This trend follows the amount of content being consumed on mobile devices versus any other device. With 5G on the horizon, content accessibility will only drive increased impressions and ad dollars. More about this story can be found on Marketing Land.

Universal Measurement Standard for video

For years, media companies have tried to develop a universal standard that allows advertisers to compare video metrics across all visual media. The Media Rating Council is getting closer to implementing a single standard for measuring video across all platforms. A standard metric allows marketers to have an effective tool to independently prove how effective ad performance.

Sarah Fisher from Axios writes, “Last week, the MRC finished collecting dozens of comments in response to its long-awaited draft proposal for the new cross-media audience measurement standard, which imposes stricter rules for digital companies reporting video impressions and stricter rules for how TV report commercial viewership.”

Time spent on Facebook, Snapchat remains flat, but Instagram sees growth

A recent study from eMarketer looked at some of the key players in social media. It’s findings offer an interesting glimpse into what 2019 holds for Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram. eMarketer reports the average amount of time people will spend each day on Facebook this year will remain unchanged from last year at 38-minutes. That number is expected to drop to 37-minutes per day by next year. This is a downgrade from the figures eMarketer released during the third quarter of 2018.

Overall, eMarketer reports the average amount of time people spent per day on social networks in the U.S. dropped by nearly 1.5 minutes last year. That number will remain “virtually” unchanged this year according to eMarketer’s forecasts. Learn more about this study at Marketing Land.

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