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What is the Difference Between Facebook Ads and Boosted Posts on Facebook?

Facebook Marketing

Simply posting to your Facebook page and hoping that many thousands of people see your content was the way of social media 5 years ago.  However, organic reach in social media is just not a viable option any longer.  If you don’t at least boost your post, it is unlikely that even 10% (probably much less) of your audience will see your content.

Small businesses, especially those that have a local presence, (meaning not an online store only), can reap huge benefits from Internet marketing on social media, as opposed to Google Ad words.  They can reach a much more targeted audience, within very close proximity to their location, while only spending a fraction of the cost of larger Search engine ads.  The two most popular and useful platforms for social media advertising currently are Facebook and Instagram.

It should be noted that Facebook owns Instagram and as such, when advertising with one of these platforms, your marketing can be seen on both platforms with one campaign, giving you a whole lot of bang for your buck.  To keep this article on-point, we will address adverting started through the Facebook platform, where there are two primary ways to go about this.  You can boost a page post, or you can set up a Facebook ad through your Ad Manager.

Boosted Posts:

A boosted post is the simplest form of advertising you can do on Facebook.  It is essentially a post you have created on your business or fan page that you want to share with more people than just those that have liked and followed your page by paying a small fee to promote this post just as it was seen on your page, with the exception of adding a button such as “Learn More” or “contact us”  Without adding a budget to promote your post, it is likely only going to be seen by 3 – 5% of people who like or follow your page, which is of course a limited segment of your current audience.  There are of course things you can do to increase the chances of getting likes, but some type of promotion will make a very big difference. Boosted posts are used to achieve audience engagement such as clicks to your website or get people to like or share your content. 


Facebook Ads:

A Facebook Ad allows you to incorporate much more targeted demographics and utilize more graphic and video options than a simple boosted post.  Facebook News Feed ads allow a business to market a targeted campaign to meet a specific goal where you can choose what type of user sees it including desktop vs. mobile user, Instagram or tablet users.  This is not an option with boosted posts.  You also can select more specific conversion goals in addition to audience engagement you can also target people who are more likely to fill out a form, purchase a product online, install your app, RSVP to an event and other similar more complex goals.  You also can use a Facebook ad to incorporate your Facebook pixel to create custom audiences for your ads including look alike audiences and retargeting those who have already been to your website and did not purchase an item.  Another benefit of using a News Feed Ad is that you can enhance the look of the post by adding headlines, link description, and the display URL.  Finally, you can do a split test with 2 ads running simultaneously with different target audiences, or the same audience but change one thing in your creative, say the headline, or the image to find the perfect ad for your business.

Which is better:

If you have no real knowledge of how to use Facebook Ad Manager, then a boosted post is much simpler and easier to set up, especially, if all you are trying to do is target people in your geographic area.  If, however, you want to use advanced targeting, or advanced marketing functionality such as adding in Headlines, News Feed Link Description, Display URL, split A/B testing then News Feed ads are the way to go. 

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How to Evaluate Who You Should Hire for Your SEO Needs?

making a business deal - shaking hands

Businesses today are inundated with unsolicited offers to help them get more leads, and land more sales though online marketing companies and search engine optimization consultants. You probably receive dozens of these types of emails and phone calls every week. Let’s say that you have decided you do need help and would like to hire an expert to help you with your digital marketing. How do you go about determining who is a good vendor to work with and who is just going to take your money and provide no return on investment? There are a few factors that you really need to consider, outside of just price, and where their websites rank on Google. The following are a few of the key factors to consider.

The first question I would ask is what specific SEO strategies they will implement on your website. This is critical because transparency is essential when dealing with web marketing. There is no secret sauce that cannot be disclosed, and if an agency does not want to tell you exactly what they will do, how will you ever know if there efforts resulted in gains, or even if they have done anything at all to justify their bill. In addition, there are certain things that can harm your website ranking, such as reciprocal links (offering to link to another site, only if they link to you).  Also, adding a bunch of keywords to your pages that don’t make sense or hiding those words with white text on a white background.  This shows that the agency is using either outdated or “Blackhat” techniques that at best will only result in short term gains and ultimately will fail.

Social signals have become a huge factor in Google and Bing’s ranking algorithms. Meaning how your company engages with its audience on Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, etc., and how many reviews of your company are found on Facebook, Yelp and Foursquare can impact your rankings. As such, you should ask, what social strategies the company will use for SEO. Will they create content to post on Facebook and Instagram and will they boost those posts to try to get likes and shares? Will they engage your followers to provide reviews?

Being found locally on Google is so important for mobile searchers.  You need to know if an search agency has a strategy to come up on the maps when someone searches for your businesses service and city location. Not appearing in the first 3 listings under the map would mean losing visibility and business from your local community. Ask if “Google Places” is part of their strategy and if so, how they optimize your local listing.

Noting is a guarantee in life and being #1 on Google is no different. With that in mind, ask if they guarantee #1 ranking on Google for any of your competitive keywords. If they say yes, then they are likely going to buy the keyword phrase for short-term proof, but once they stop spending money, you will lose your ranking.

What type of reporting will you get from your SEO agency?  As I said before, transparency is critical and if your agency does not have some way to show you the results and trends of keywords, clicks to your site, and where people are coming from, then how do you know if you want to continue with the marketing campaign.  Often, a good search agency will also provide you with a unique phone number for your social media and SEO efforts which can be tracked.  This way you know exactly what traffic is contacting you directly from their marketing efforts.  Most successful agencies will have a dashboard you can log onto 24/7 to let you see real time reports and results pulled directly form Google Analytics.

Finally, and although not critical, I would ask what industry blogs and websites they stay current with. Most good SEO analysts will follow search engine journal and search engine watch religiously to keep up with the latest SEO, social media and pay per click strategies and major algorithm updates.

At the end of the day, you will have to gauge the credibility of these answers and compare them to other SEO vendors, but at the very least you will be armed with information and be able to ask the questions that need to be answered.

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How video marketing converts traffic into customers

Youtube video marketing

It’s 2019 and people are still using pictures? Come on guys, it’s the age of video, stop piggybacking the old trends and hop onto the video marketing train and boost your business with guaranteed results.

How can I be certain video marketing is actually more effective than photo / text-based marketing? According to Wyzowl statistics, 63% of business have implemented video marketing.

Not only are videos rapidly progressing, they are more engaging to the customers, and are a much better way of sending messages across. They are also timeless and a give a great Return On Investment.

Here are the advantages of Video Marketing:


Boost sales and get more conversions

Not only can videos have a great Return on Investment (ROI) through sales, but it’s a great way of engaging customers, a tactic which increases conversions by up to 80%.

According to research, 74% of the users that watched an explainer video about a certain product, ended up buying the product.

Videos are just more natural to human beings than reading text, or watching an image, since videos engage all human sense at the same time. Videos can also give a sense of urgency which can result in customers buying the product.

Facebook marketing which use videos are much more appealing to potential customers than video / text based marketing; not only will you get more impressions, but more clicks as well.

Build Customer Trust

For a company, having the trust of their customers is extremely important. The internet is full of fraudulent websites and scamming websites; with effective video marketing, you can effectively lore customers to your website based on trust and the “promise” of quality.

57% of consumers actually say that videos give them the confidence to purchase a certain product online.

Get a better SEO score on Google Search by using videos

Videos are a great way of improving bounce rates of your website. For one, customers will spend more time on your website; the longer exposure will create a feeling of trust between the website and google. This will tell the search engine that your website has better content, based off that video alone.

In fact, you are up to 53 times likelier to show up in Google’s top 10 search results if you have an embedded video.

Youtube videos embedded into your website will positively affect your website’s ranking.

Videos are great for Mobile users

Considering the fact there has been a 233 percent increase in people who watch videos on their mobile phone, there is an expected 100% increase in mobile video consumption every year. The audience is growing by the day, and the expected people watching videos on mobile phones as opposed to other devices is expected to grow bigger than the latter.

Mobile users are also 1.4 times as likely to watch an ad on their devices, and 1.4 times as likely to pay attention to ads and content on YouTube.

Videos get more shares on Social Media Platforms

Videos are better at seizing the emotions of the viewers. 76% of the users say that they would actually share branded videos such as animated sales videos to their friends if they were entertaining or informative.

Creating engaging videos that get a lot of social media shares won’t directly get you more customers, but since more people will reach those kind of videos, they will bring a larger audience that will directly increase conversion rates.

Conclusion

Basically, Videos have a great ROI, they improve sales, increase Conversion rates and engage customers. What else do you want?

If you would like to discuss how video marketing can help you business contact VRG Web Design today:



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    How to Retarget Website Viewers with Facebook Ads

    retargetting customers

    Facebook advertising is one of the most affordable ways to reach customers online. It is also the platform that allows a business to laser target its audience by thousands of interests and behaviors. However, no behavior is more important to target then someone who has already visited your website and did not purchase an item. That is where retargeting strategy comes into play.

    This is the strategy when someone has visited your website or Facebook page and you want to target the same person later with a Facebook advertisement. To facilitate this, you will need to create a Facebook advertising account. Once you have one, you will need to set up an audience to serve you ads. When you select create your audience, you will want to select the goal of website traffic. There are several options to chose from. We suggest you select people who visit specific web pages that you have set up a Facebook Pixel on a site page over the last 90 days, and now save your audience.

    Once you have your audience saved, you need to design a graphic for your Facebook ad. There are specific requirements you will need to follow for this, such as creating a graphic with an Image size of 1,200 x 628 pixels. You also need to ensure that no more then 20% of the image is text, or your ad will not be allowed. Once you have designed your ad, you can go into your account manager, upload the image, select your audience and then simply set a budget. We suggest a very small budget to get started, say $10 a day or less for a period of a week to test out and see if you are getting good results before you spend a lot of money with no return on investment.

    As a preface to this, it is important that you understand how to set up Facebook pixels and that you have added a pixel for a month or two on the page before you want to start a retargeting ad campaign.

    If you would like to learn more about Facebook advertising or feel you need professional help to optimize your ads and reach the right people, don’t hesitate to contact a social media marketing agency like VRG Web Design.