Social media has quickly become very popular and apparently sexier than SEO. There is certainly more “hype” around social media marketing services in comparison to SEO marketing.  I believe the dominance of social media marketing is mainly because businesses want quick results, rather than building a long-term marketing strategy.

Don’t misunderstand me, social media such as Facebook is a great place to grow your business online.  However, is social media the best use of your time and budgets, or should you be focussing more of your efforts on SEO? You need to take into consideration factors such as whether you are selling B2B/B2C, what your competitors are doing and where are potential customers currently researching your product/service.

Before writing this article I used Google Trends to do some research. In all honesty, I thought that social media services search queries would completely trump SEO services queries but the results said differently.

This blog should give you some insights about the importance of SEO and how it will adapt going into 2019.

SEO & Buying Intent

When somebody is searching using a search engine, they are proactively looking for something, perhaps information about a product, a service or a solution to a particular problem.  A search engine then presents various relevant results based on the search criteria used.  Unlike on social media, where users are bombarded with all sorts of ads; most of them not relevant to their particular need(s) at that point in time.

The good thing about SEO is that you can optimise your web pages for different levels of buying intent and as a result, the conversion rate can be higher. Optimising for long-tail keywords is a good strategy for capturing someone who may be close to actually making a purchase.

At Fly High Media, we have a high conversion rate on our own pages, because they are optimised to attract and convert visitors who are ready to take the first steps towards hiring a digital marketing agency.

In your business, you could easily spend lots of money on social media ads in the hope that someone, who is interested in your product or service, will see them.  Alternatively, you could invest in SEO which will get your offer in front of people who are genuinely interested in the exact product or service you are promoting.

SEO & Facebook Ads

Okay, so previously I have said that SEO is most effective for B2B sales.  However, we got some great results in 2018 for our B2B clients, by combining SEO and Facebook ads.

The organic traffic that comes to your website, will already be interested in your offer, assuming your website is optimised for the right keywords.  However, research suggests that consumers need to see your offer about seven times before they are ready to buy from you.  Therefore, you need to build a rapport with these visitors to win their trust.  The most effective way to build rapport is to retarget visitors using Facebook ads to encourage them to go back to one of your service pages, a blog, a product or eBook. Facebook ads are relatively inexpensive and will certainly help to move your visitor traffic towards eventually making a purchase.

SEO & Conversion Rates

A key part of SEO is conversion rate optimisation (CRO). This is the process of testing and optimising web pages to ensure they convert visitors into customers.  Successful CRO is heavily dependent on the user experience which, incidentally, is also a key factor when Google ranks a website in search results.  Any work undertaken to optimise a webpage for conversions will also help improve PPC campaigns and social ad campaigns.  Other key aspects of successful CRO are the degree of mobile responsiveness, page speed, navigation and more.

Voice Search

As marketers, we must respond to the volume of people who are now searching with voice commands, using technology such as Alexa, Siri and Google Home.

This means optimising search queries to be more conversational, optimising for local search and further optimising for mobile. By 2020, 50 per cent of all searches will be voice searches according to Comscore. This means that your audience will be searching for your business using voice search.

Statistics

Here are some more statistics to think about when it comes to SEO in 2019:

• 57% of B2B marketers stated that SEO generates more leads than any other marketing initiative. Source: Junto
• 72% of consumers who did a local search visited a store within five miles. Source: Wordstream
• 50% of people who conduct mobile searches for a local business will visit the store within one day. Source: Search Engine Land
• 80% of people ignore paid search results, choosing to only click on organic listings. Source: imFORZA
• SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads have a 1.7% close rate. Source: Search Engine Journal
• 45% of marketers plan to increase their SEO budgets. Source: Marketing Charts

Conclusion

In conclusion, SEO covers a lot of things. There are lots of exciting advances coming in 2019 and there is no time like the present to start planning your marketing budget. Before making any decisions, make sure you plan based on your audience. See what competitors are doing and what are the search volumes are like for the keywords for your products/services.

If you are weighing up your digital marketing options going into 2019 then why not bounce ideas off one of the Fly High Media team? Book a free consultation to get the ball rolling for a successful 2019.

Trying to find the right balance between friendly and business whilst simultaneously replying to your follower’s queries and planning a good ad campaign?

The world of social media can be a difficult one to juggle and ensure popularity, however, we are here to help. Today we are going to help you with what NOT to do on social media with a countdown of the most common reasons why people unfollow.

Be Relevant.

You might be thinking that this is quite an obvious point to make and we understand that, however, it appears that there is still a huge amount of social media presence that is in fact not relevant to the company that they represent. In fact, 41.1% of people said that the reason they unfollow accounts is that their information is not relevant. If you’re posting to your personal account, by all means, let people know how your day has been or what you’re doing next, because the people that choose to follow you want to know that kind of information. On the other hand, the people that chose to follow your brand on social media, unsurprisingly,  they’re interested in the brand! This doesn’t mean don’t have fun with it, by all means, joke with your following and show that you have a lighter side but just make sure that it is relevant, interesting and professional.

Stop Over-Promotion.

This will be one that you have definitely come across during your time on social media, promoting too much. We understand the way that promotion works and of course, it does work, whether this a is self-promotion of an item, a new line or even your company as a whole. Equally promoting other people in exchange for promotion for yourself; you promote them and then they in turn, promote you. The occasional promo goes under the radar of a follower or they are willing to see these kinds of things occasionally, but we also understand that promos can be a complete failure if it is in fact losing you followers as opposed to gaining them. Even worse still, even if you are picking up new customers you are losing long-term followers, people that have shown an interest in you for a long period of time which could be crushing in the long run as these are the people that you want to keep happy. In fact with 49% of people saying that this is the main reason they unfollow social media accounts it goes to number 1 on our list of annoyances that lead to an unfollowing. Give your followers what they want and keep them in mind when you’re planning your social media posts.

Posting too much can be a sure fire way of getting yourself unfollowed, you will be coming up on the newsfeed a number of times each period that people spend online. They will begin to see your name everywhere that they go online and therefore will be able to see you are posting too much. Even if your content is engaging or fun if people are seeing too much of a brand they will unfollow. People follow brands to see products that they like, but they are on social media predominately to keep up with friends and social situations at the time. Too much of anything can be too much, however, with 34.9% of people saying this is the main reason they unfollow brands online, this is quite a big one with regards to scaring your followers away.

Post Regularly.

Equally a lack of posting is going to lead to your follow count plummeting, while you aren’t in peoples faces like in the last instance this is going to make you lose followers a little bit slower. People will see your account appear on their timeline, recommended or even just browsing through their ‘following’ from time to time and when they see an account that they rarely see posting, it is likely going to end in an unfollowing. In a time where people are bothered about their following to follower ratio and the image that they portray online you might be an easy one to lose should you not be posting regularly enough and with 18% of people saying they unfollow accounts because they go silent, don’t be expendable be interesting and engaging.

Consistency is key, work out how regularly you want to post and stick to this vague structure. We don’t say tweet every day at 2:00 and 8:00, instead just that you need to ensure you are keeping your following interested in your business and posting too often or not enough is detrimental to your following. The way to get around this is not to worry, get used to what your fanbase wants, try different methods and regularities out until you realise what makes your following tick and then stick to it. While we are here telling you guidelines for how to work social media but it is essentially you trying to build connections with people which needs a personal touch!

Don’t Be A Robot.

This next point follows directly on about the importance of a personal touch. The internet is full of bots so if people are suspicious as to an accounts authenticity it will result in an unfollowing. You don’t need to have a rigid timetable where you post at the same time on the hour every day or every week. Equally, you don’t need a rigid structure to some posts format people like human interaction and therefore if you show yourself as a human this is going to be greatly reflected in your follow count. This has been covered in a previous blog post about gaining Twitter followers. 

Use Sensible Humour

Here is one of the more subjective features of this blog, one of the main reasons people unfollow an account online is because they are trying to be funny when they aren’t with 32% of people saying this is a reason that they unfollow accounts. The problem here is people do enjoy humour just not from people that they don’t find funny, so how do you know if you’re funny? Truthfully we don’t know and we don’t think anyone knows until they experience someone’s humour. So again, this is trial and error, you’re going to have to find out what makes your following laugh and what they don’t like that you post. This means not being too full on, should you be going for a humour aspect to your posts, ease your way in and find out what your following likes. Being too full on could lead to an immediate unfollow, equally should you think humour is not your thing, I would stick to the information side of your posts to social media.

Stop Ignoring Customers.

In the eyes of the consumer, this is by far the worst of all.  You should make your business social media profiles, your first and main priority. Each social media platform can highlight your poor customer service to thousands of people instantly. Because of this social media users want quick responses to their problems and they want someone helpful on the other end who is interested in the issue at hand, too often are people dismissive of customers complaints. 24% of people claimed that this is one of the reasons that they unfollowed a brand and with 76% of people expecting a response within an hour, we’re sure that that number is going to rise as it seems some brands can struggle to stay on top of their social media. While it might be time-consuming and frustrating, this is one of the main ways to keep your social media following happy. Expressing your concerns to the customer’s issues does go a long way.

Do you have any more helpful tips to keep your followers active and engaged?

Leave a comment below and let us know what you think.

As much as 98% of users who visit your site won’t take the action you want them to, whether that be to read your blog and leave a comment, share something on social media, sign-up to your newsletter or make a purchase.

98% – that’s huge!

That means, of all the time you spend setting things up on your website, creating engaging content and perfecting your sales funnel process, all in an effort to encourage users to take some sort of action, just 2% of people actually do the things you want them to. That’s got to be disheartening.

But fear not, because this article will give you some crucial insights into the ways you can target some of that sub-zero 98% and share some of the warmth around.

That’s right:

The ones that got away may not stay away for very long, if you follow some of the guidelines and ideas laid out herein.

But first, let’s get some things cleared up…

Remarketing vs Retargeting

While you may see some people using these terms interchangeably, it’s important to understand that there is a distinction between remarketing and retargeting and that one is not merely a synonym for the other (and vice-versa).

You see:

Remarketing actually covers a whole host of things and you’ll likely encounter some remarketing tactics on a daily basis, whether you’re sat at your computer or not.

• Ever received a flyer from a company more than once?
• How about that “2-4-1 Tuesdays” sign you pass at your local watering hole every week?
• Or perhaps you entered a free prize draw and the company contacted you later on – not to tell you that you’d won, but that you’ve qualified for their special discount rate?

You guessed it – they’re all forms of remarketing. Strategies set up so you, the individual, are exposed to the same company – and sometimes the very same offer – over and over again until finally, it hits home, and you find yourself sipping on your sixth beer on a random Tuesday evening.

What is Retargeting?

Retargeting is actually a subset of remarketing.

The strategies are similar, of course – the company has a system in place that delivers the same or similar messages and/or offers to you repeatedly.

But with retargeting, we’re specifically focusing our efforts on those who have visited our website (or indeed, our competitor’s website – more on that later) but left before they took the action(s) we wanted them to.

Let’s say, for instance, you have a new article that you’ve shared around social media and got

dozens of brand new visitors to the site as a result. Great! They read your article, find it incredibly

useful and entertaining, and once they’ve finished they… leave.

Well, that’s not what you had in mind.

After all, there’s a series of shiny, bright and beautiful social media sharing buttons that some of them might have clicked to let their social world know of your masterpiece.

And there’s a lead capture form in the middle and at the end of your article that clearly states: “If you like this, why not sign-up so you can be alerted straight away when our new articles get published?” They liked it. Heck, some of them loved it! But not one of them signed-up.

Well, ignoring the fact that that’s not a very enticing offer to get people to sign-up, it generally takes more than just the one article to get someone onto your mailing list.

It would have been nice if they’d decided to jump around your site a little bit and taken in some more of your killer content, seeing as they enjoyed the first one so much.

But alas, it wasn’t meant to be.

So, what now? Are they lost to you forever? Or is there a way of alluring them back to the site so they can take the action you hoped they would?

Retargeting Using Facebook and the Facebook Pixel

Of course, there is a way. There are several ways in fact. But the one we’re going to focus on today is Facebook Retargeting using something called the Facebook Pixel.

We won’t get into the intricacies of setting up your Facebook Pixel here as there are plenty of other places online where this information and step-by-step guidance can be found

In a nutshell, a pixel is a tracking cookie that you create inside Facebook (or inside Google, when using them for AdWords purposes) and then install the relevant code onto the various pages of your website.

Even though it sounds ‘technical’, it’s not nearly as complicated as it may appear at first glance, and this one simple implementation will provide you with an abundance of opportunities to remarket to those who visited your site just once.

What follows is our 5 favourite ways to employ this wonderful little tool, plus one bonus tip.

Enjoy!

And be sure to let us know your favourites in the comments below.

1. Retarget People Who’ve Read One of Your Articles

Think about it:

If a visitor to your site leaves after viewing just one page – which is going to happen, it’s inevitable – you now have the power to retarget them when they open up their Facebook feed later that day (or even later that week/month, if you set up the pixel in that way).

Given the fact that Facebook has 2.19 billion active users every month, it’s maybe not quite inevitable that your readers will browse Facebook after having been on your site, but it’s not far from it.

And because you cannily had your Facebook pixel set-up, you now have the option to present a perfectly suited ad that appeals to them and sends them right back to your site, displayed seamlessly right there in their news feed.

If it was an article about building muscle through heavy compound weightlifting that they’d read,

for example, then chances are they’ll be interested in something along the lines of optimal timing for protein intake too, right?

So, they leave your site, but later that day they magically get presented an ad telling them all about your article “The Best Times to Consume Protein After Your Workout”, and lo and behold, they click the CTA on the ad, and there they are again, right back on your website reading more of your wonderful content. Lovely.

And how does one do that, we hear you ask?

Inside Facebook >> Create a Custom Audience, you’d simply set the “Include people who meet the following criteria” to:

1. Facebook Pixel
2. People who visited specific web pages
3. In the past 30 days (this can also be 60 days, 90 days and so on)
4. URL contains
5. /blog
6. Or, to be even more specific in your targeting, you could swap /blog with a specific article such as /build-muscle-heavy-compound-lifting

Then, your ad which promotes your protein optimal timings article is being presented directly to the very same people who already read the heavy compound lifting one.

2. Retarget People Who’ve Visited a Landing Page but Didn’t Take Action

Good news: people are arriving at your chosen landing page – the one that tells the user all about your new time tracking and productivity tool.

Bad news: generally speaking, people read it, click around a bit, and then go about their merry way without completing the action you want them too. Dammit!

But wait, there’s more good news.

Using the pixel, you can set up a Facebook custom audience so that your ads target those people.

Once you have the pixel created, you’ll need to make sure that it’s added to the relevant pages. So, on your website TimeIsMoney.com you have a landing page called TimeIsMoney.com/TimeSavingMachine that tells the users all about the machine you have that apparently saves time.

In order to track the people who go to that page but don’t follow through and make a purchase, you need to make sure the Facebook Pixel code is added to this page.

Then, once again inside Facebook >> Create a Custom Audience, you’d set the “Include people who meet the following criteria” to:

1. Facebook Pixel
2. People who visited specific web pages
3. In the past 30 days (this can also be 60 days, 90 days and so on)
4. URL contains
5. /TimeSavingMachine (this is the part where you add your own specific landing page URL)

It’s as easy as that.

And to make sure you don’t waste money targeting people who visited that page and then did make a purchase, you simply need to exclude all of those who completed the purchasing process.

You’d do that by repeating steps 1. – 4. above, but this time, when you reach the “Exclude people who meet the following criteria” section, you’d need to add the URL that people reach once they’ve completed a purchase: /thank-you-for-your-purchase, for example.

3. Retarget Shopping Cart Abandoners

If you have a site that sells products rather than services, and several products at that, you may be familiar with the concept of shopping cart abandonment.

For the uninitiated among us, this is the action some people inexplicably take when they browse around your eCommerce store, add items to the shopping cart and then leave your site without making a single purchase. Very frustrating.

But, by following some of the same tactics and rules set-out above, you can start showing them customised ads to get them to come back to your site and complete a purchase.

Have you ever wondered how it’s such a bizarre coincidence that, two days after you’d spent time bouncing around Amazon and even added a few things to the cart, suddenly one of those things has been reduced in price? Jeez, what are the odds!

Well, not all that high, actually, since this is merely shopping cart retargeting at it’s finest. So, we regret to inform you, the universe didn’t conspire to provide you with that little nudge you needed to purchase that brand-new handbag. Some scheming little marketing guy did. Sorry.

To achieve this level of inception yourself, simply retrace the steps laid out above, but make sure you include the URL associated with your check-out process (/check-out or /complete-check-out or whatever it may be), while simultaneously excluding those that reached the Thank You page, thereby avoiding the embarrassing scenario of offering a discount to someone who’s already bought the thing.

4. Retarget Existing Customers

Hooray! Somebody bought something. Oh, rejoice! But don’t rest on your laurels just yet.

That’s because it’s far, far easier, not to mention cheaper, to turn an existing customer into a repeat customer than it is to turn a prospect into a first-time buyer.

So, let’s take advantage of this by following some of the steps laid-out previously, but this time we’re looking to target all of those wonderful people who completed the purchase and arrived at the Thank You page. To do that, simply add your Thank You page URL to the “Include people who meet the following criteria” as outlined above.

And even though it is easier to get these guys to convert, why not give them a little extra incentive by creating an ad specifically for them, offering a 10% discount to all customers who return to make a second purchase.

5. Retarget and Collect Data Using Facebook Lead Ads

Getting people to take action once they’re on your site is tricky enough. Getting them to firstly click through from your Facebook ad to your site, process the information on your landing page and then fill out the form with the correct relevant data is asking a lot in one website visit, even if it doesn’t seem like much.

That’s why Facebook Lead Ads can be so successful.

If you’re looking to obtain user information so you can send them offers or initiate a drip-sequence via email, you can eliminate the middle step of asking people to visit the landing page on your website entirely but getting them to complete the form right there on the Facebook ad.

They simply click the CTA (“Learn More” for example) but instead of it taking them to your website, they’re presented with a seamless lead-capture form, right there in Facebook. Sending them away from the site they were browsing is sometimes risky, so this eliminates that entirely.

Facebook will even pre-populate the fields with the data they have stored about that user, such as name, email address, phone number etc.

The best way to utilise this functionality is to retarget people who’ve already interacted with your Facebook page in the past.

Let’s say that they liked a post, made a comment or started following your page – all of that counts as an engagement inside Facebook, so you can be sure that you’re targeting users that are both active on Facebook and are also likely up-to-date on the new brands that pop up all the time.

To set-up this type of retargeting, you’d simply need to select ‘Engagement’ when you’re asked, “How do you want to create this audience?”

Then you select your own Facebook page as the retargeting effort and finally chose how specific you want to be in your targeting efforts, ranging from “Everyone who engaged with your Page” to something more generic like “Anyone who visited your Page”.

After you’ve got the audience set-up, it’s time to head over to your Facebook Ads Manager where you this time need to select “Lead Generation” as your marketing objective, in order to create the kind of Lead Ad discussed above.

Bonus: Target Users Who’ve Visited a Competitor’s Site

OK, OK, strictly speaking, this isn’t retargeting as we’ve defined it above, since the people we’re focusing our attention on here may not have technically visited your site at all. But this is the bonus one, so we figured you’d cut us a little slack!

Let’s imagine you own a showroom that sells made-to-measure suits. You’re new in the market, so you don’t have a lot of people visiting your website just yet and you’re struggling to get traction with your content.

But buying and owning a suit isn’t a zero-sum game: most people will own more than one suit and it’s quite conceivable, even likely, that they’ll have purchased them from different stores. Also highly likely is that each suit will be of a different brand.

So, how can we use this information to our advantage? Quite simply, we’d look to convert some customers who have shopped at one of our competitor’s stores by setting the audience to target people who have liked your competitor’s pages.

Additionally, when coupling this with people who have a hankering for high-cost brand labels such as Hugo Boss, Ralph Lauren, Gucci etc., we’re likely to have an audience with a make-up which is exactly the type of people we’d want to target with our high-end, made-to-measure suits.

And to throw in an extra dynamic, you can exclude all of those who’ve already visited your site, ensuring your ad targets new people all the time.

Summary

Hopefully, by this point we’ve convinced you that retargeting is not only an incredibly powerful and influential marketing strategy, it’s a course of action that simply must be a part of your overall marketing efforts.

People won’t be convinced by you at the very first glance. They prefer to take time to consider their options, and the more expensive your product or service is, the more time it’s likely to take them to reach that buying decision. Retargeting tactics and remarketing practices, in general, ensure that you stay in the forefront of your prospects mind when that crunch time does eventually arrive.

And furthermore, you can be sure that the people you’re targeting and dedicating your marketing budget towards have already shown some interest in your company, so you’re not shouting into the supermassive black hole that the internet can sometimes represent.

Oh, and if you didn’t read it yet, make sure you don’t miss the Rule of 7 theory. If you’re not already convinced that remarketing is a good idea, you most certainly will be once you’ve learned about that.

Did we miss any Facebook Retargeting strategies out? Has one of the ideas on our list proven successful for you in the past? Let us know in the comments below.

Still a little unsure about remarketing? Book a free call with us and we will be glad to help you with your Facebook advertising.