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Digital Marketing, Online Marketing, Our Blog

What Every Website Should Incorporate By The End Of The Year

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Are you paying attention to your web presence today? The web is full of extremely unpleasant sites these days. We’ve been so busy trying out shiny things to keep up with the technology – smartwatches, internet of things, artificial intelligence – that many of us may have forgotten the important elements that should on a website in the first place. The key here is not only to make your website customer-friendly — not to mention something that inspires them to actually do business with you. Q4 is fast approaching and by the end of it, the Internet will likely have more innovations going on. This means you’ll have a new set of expectations for features and functionality. Yet, don’t get discouraged, though— some website design staples never go out of style. Here are the essentials that every business website should have before the end of the year for it to effectively help you do business. Take note that few of the things mentioned are familiar to you. You’ll also stumble to some new trends you should be on the lookout for. A Mobile Responsive Design Google uses mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal in search results, rewarding websites that are fully optimized for mobile platforms. These days, we’re very much mobile-first operating systems inclined. We access the Web’s most popular sites from the comfort of our favorite pocket computers. What are the implications of a responsive, mobile-friendly website? Here they are: If your website doesn’t have a mobile-friendly layout and functionality, you’re seriously behind. Your potential customers might view your website on their phone and continue the purchase on the desktop. At EmergeLocal, we recommend a responsive web design. To check if you have a mobile-friendly website, we highly recommend to start here: Take the Mobile-Friendly Test to see how your website stacks up. You can test a single page or all to see exactly what Google’s search algorithm is looking for. A great example of this type of desktop-mobile synergy comes from a clothing retailer Modcloth. Both the desktop and mobile versions of their site scale perfectly to your screen. Robust Online Security Online security is a billion dollar industry. No wonder that it’s close to the heart of modern internet users. Security is a top priority for Google. Last year, they introduced HTTPS as a “very lightweight search signal” in an attempt to raise awareness of online security issues and encourage more webmasters to get SSL certificates for their websites. For the benefit of the people who are not familiar with Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS), it provides a secure connection to users on the pages where they share personal data with you. If your website captures payment information, it’s great to have an HTTPS on your entire website. If you’re ready to put a security on our website, we can set it up for you. A Sticky Menu Is Quicker To Navigate Navigation is one of the critical components of a website. Traditionally, you have to scroll down to see everything your visitors might need to the point that the website becomes cluttered. With the help of a sticky navigation, it’s possible to give your visitors the information they want while maintaining an intuitive and clean interface. The example above from Grovemade reveals a finely tuned fixed menu navigation at the top of the page that stays no matter how far down the page a user might scroll. What’s the implication of this? The navigation bar can give you a snapshot idea of what a site is offering, as well as what it’s expecting in return. If it’s not properly orchestrated, the bounce rate will increase. Fast Web Page Load Since our website is newly-launched, by end of 2017, we’re hoping to kill off slow page load times. People like fast sites. Why should you care? Let’s take a simple computation here so you can see how much conversion loss could be the result of a slow page loading time. One example revealed that a website which enjoys about 10,000 visitors each month and loads critical web pages in six seconds could add about $30,000 (P1.4M) to their annual profits if they cut their page load time in half. That’s a whopping amount of money to lose. Interested to find out how you can solve your website’s page loading time? Use Google’s Page Speed Insights. At the end of the analysis, you’ll get suggested ways to fix the loading issues. Protip: Do a competitive analysis based on fast page load times. Conversion-Optimized Design In 2017, the Internet affects our lives in a massive way. You’ll see politics, entertainment, and social movements dominate the web. These will influence how we purchase commodities and spend our hard-earned money. Let’s take the “traditional” business model out of the picture – for just a moment. Crowdfunding platforms like IndieGoGo, Kickstarter, RocketHub, GoFundMe, and more reach out to people on the web without putting efforts on review sites and word of mouth. On the other hand, other business owners prefer to go through a bit of a rough patch using traditional marketing. In other words, if you do it right and do it well, there’s probably somebody out there who is willing to buy your product or services. Your website can accept payment by putting a PayPal, credit card, or other payment methods like Stripe or Apple Pay. In this example, if you subscribe to Forbes’ magazine, you can easily do that online with a simple credit card entry on desktop. You Can Now Start The Work Hopefully, the above to-do list doesn’t seem too overwhelming. Truth to be told, web design isn’t daunting if you put the work in already. There always be new technologies, platforms, and innovations. The internet doesn’t stop changing. These details shouldn’t be recognized unless you apply the fundamentals and what’s really important to grow the business. Buckle up your 2017 and make your business come to fruition with your top-notch web presence. You wouldn’t know what

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How To's, Our Blog, Social Media

How Smart Digital Marketers Use Facebook Messenger for outstanding Customer Service

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Do you have a Facebook page for your business? Are you looking for a new and efficient way to connect with your customers or prospects? 200 million small businesses all over the world use Facebook as one of their main tool to engage with their customers because of its user friendly interface and tons of functionalities. Although that’s the case, Facebook is crowded with features and settings, leaving business owners feeling overwhelmed and wanting to ask for help. In this blog post, I’ll explain how to use Facebook Messenger’s everyday features you can use to improve customer service for your business. It means you’ll learn how to: Filter out the urgent messages Use the same reply without typing it all over again Put important notes in the conversation Take advantage of instant replies, greetings, and much more. Without further ado, let’s start digging. How To Use Facebook Messenger for Customer Service 1. Use Labels to filter important messages Consider them folders to keep together everything that is related. Labels can help you organize your messages. Here’s how you set up your labels. Go to your Inbox and click the ‘Add & Manage’. Then type the name of the labels you want to put. You can enter as many labels as you want here. Click Add. Once done, you can go to the specific message and apply the label. Your labels will then appear on the name of the person you’re talking to. You can also filter the messages according to the label. In this case, it’s filtered by ‘Follow Up’ label. 2. Send instant reply in single click Writing same reply over and over again consumes time. If it’s not handled efficiently, chances are it can bring inconsistencies and unprofessionalism towards your customers or prospects. To streamline your Facebook communication, write and save several replies so even if you’re busy, you can click and send a message quickly. Let’s say you are receiving frequently asked questions, what you can do is to write them ahead of time. It also helps you and anyone on your team easily and quickly reply to anyone who contacts your business. Facebook gives you two default saved replies to start: “I can’t chat right now” and “How can I help you?” To add your own saved reply, click the message you want to reply and click on the dialog bubble at the bottom right. Then click create new reply. Then, you can add the title of the reply, message, and image. An image could be your product or company logo. You can even personalize your messages to appear more human to human conversation. To personalize your messages automatically, click Personalize at the bottom. There multiple options for personalization. Next, select what you’d like to add to your message. You can place the personalized field anywhere in your message. 3. Keep track of details about your interactions Messenger allows you to add notes so you can easily manage conversations. It’s optional but I highly suggest that you take advantage of this feature. To add notes, click the message you want to put some notes to and click on the Add Notes at the bottom right. Then type in your notes and click Confirm. The notes are very helpful if you have multiple admins on duty taking care of the messages. This is to ensure you’re communicating the necessary information to your colleague which means all of you are on the same page. 4. Set up instant replies and greetings Do you agree that customers don’t like to be ignored? Absolutely. Entrepreneurs are often busy with many things when they’re not chatting with customers. Answering questions in an instant seems not easy for busy entrepreneurs. Facebook understands that problem that’s why they created a Response Assistant. To access the Response Assistant, open your Facebook business page settings and click to the “Messaging” tab to set up autoreplies. Below the Response Assistant, you can do four things: Send Instant Replies to anyone who messages your Page – you can set it to Yes or No. Response Time – choose a specific response time. Stay responsive when you can’t get to your computer or phone – enable the autoreply when you’re not online. The autoreply won’t be sent to users if your messaging status is set to “away.” Show a Messenger Greeting – enable the message when they open a conversation with you on Messenger. Facebook Messenger is always evolving. Now that you can know who your customers are – you can look not only at ages, genders, and locations, but also these people’s interests, events, and communication style. Those information are very useful when you want to personalize your conversation with someone you’re chatting with. Keep this data in mind as you steer your Messenger conversations to be personalized and friendly to the maximum. Are you using Facebook Messenger in a unique, unlikely way for your business? Share your thoughts in comments below.

Digital Marketing, Our Blog

Digital Marketing for MSMEs – Philexport R3 GMM

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Exporting is a huge and booming industry in the Philippines. According to Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), the country has a well-insulated economy, characterized by steady remittances, robust private consumption and capital formation, and lastly, a well-maintained services sector and a booming industrial base. In this case, there’s a big opportunity for businesses who do exporting and be known globally. We’re honored to be invited by Philexport R3 to speak in their General Monthly Meeting last July 7, 2017, Friday at Widus Resort & Convention Center. Our managing director, Richard Noromor shares his expertise on the use of the Digital Media as a marketing and promotional tool for the MSMEs and members of the association. More than 25 attendees were present and actively engaging with the speaker. To see more photos of the event, click here.

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Facebook Advertising, How To's, Our Blog, Social Media

How To Increase Facebook Page Likes And Engagements Using Video For FB Ads

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Are you looking to increase your Facebook page likes and engagements? Have you tried promoting your page without doing Facebook ads? What were the results? Video ads are among the most powerful Facebook ad formats for generating user engagement and page likes, in fact more than 500 million people watch 100 million hours of video content on Facebook daily. Enough reason why we need to tap in the power of video to gain more Facebook Page likes and drive more engagements. In this article, you’ll discover the ways for using video in your Facebook ad campaigns. But before that, here’s why having thousands of page likes and engagements are very important to entice potential customers. Most marketers say that likes are vanity metrics. It might sound true but I don’t fully agree. By the way here’s a Bonus technique on creating more traffic and engagement rate using Lo-fi Videos. Watch our video or Listen via our Podcast Episode. Why brands are crazy about getting thousands of likes and tend to compare the number of likes they have to their competitors? The reason is they believe that it’s the starting point in reaching out to your target market. Let’s take this first scenario. Imagine these two pages that offer the same services. One has 80 page likes and the other one has whopping 156K likes. Facebook Page 1 Facebook Page 2 By looking at the Facebook user’s perspective, the page that has more likes will get noticed more than the other one. Why? It’s because the company took the time to grow and engage with their fans. It builds more trust and people will be more interested in your brand. More Facebook likes + More engagements = More trust = More purchases Without further ado, here’s how you can increase likes and engagements. Increase Page Likes Using Video To focus on increasing likes, the objective should be Page Likes. A “Like Ad” is created inside the Page Like campaign and is simply an ad on Facebook that shows one of your friends has Liked a certain page. 1. Create a Facebook Page Like campaign 2. Target the people who have similar behavior with your existing fans. This applies if you have small or huge fans. Protip: Start with 1% lookalike before you dive into 2%, 3%, 4%, 5%, or more. The reason is you want to test first the similarity and response of those people in the lookalike without compromising the quality. 3. Choose video instead of image. In this case, the page has existing video that already has a social proof (likes, shares, and comments). Now you know how the video ad is set up. You might want to know next the result it generated. Results of the Video Ad for Facebook Page Like Campaign In the result I’m going to share with you is from the experiment I did. I tested two creative types: video and image. Here they are: VideoPage Likes: 2,464Cost Per Page Like: P0.54 Image:Page Likes: 435Cost Per Page Like: P3.39 It shows that the video is more effective in generating likes than the image. Increase Post Engagements Using Video You might argue with the next statement I’m going to say. Huge number of likes are nothing if there are no engagements. Again, this equation will explain why. More Facebook likes + More engagements = More trust = More purchases Likes and engagements are tied to each other. Here are the three reasons why a Facebook page has a lot of likes but no engagements: There’s a possibility that their fans are from fake profiles People who like the page are not their target market Facebook posts don’t resonate with their fans There’s no call to action on their posts Post Engagements objective is boosting posts to reach more people. Engagement can include likes on your post, comments, shares and photo views. Here’s what you need to do to create a video ad for post engagement objective. 1. Choose the Page Post campaign objective. This objective will focus on driving more engagements to your posts. If you want to use images instead of videos, it’s possible. But this time, I’m going to use video. 2. Choose your target audience. 3. In creating an ad, instead of choosing image, select video. Results of the Video Ad for Facebook Engagement Campaign The results below are from the test I did. I run 2 ads to see which performs well in terms of the number of engagements. VideoPost Engagements: 6,580Cost Per Post Engagement: P0.05 Image:Post Engagements: 1,568Cost Per Post Engagement: P0.06 Based on the results, video performed well than image. Even though, the cost per post engagement is close, the number of post engagements of video is way to higher than the image.​ ​Conclusion Engagement comes from the people who like your Page. So give your fans content they want to see. Run through all your posts and see which type of post they most engage with. If they engage more on your videos, post more videos. Launch Facebook video ads to help you get more likes and engagements. What do you think? How do you increase likes and engagements on your Facebook business page? If you’ve tried advertising on Facebook using video as your creative ad type, what are your results. Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Ways Facebook fans engaged
Facebook Advertising, How To's, Our Blog, Social Media

How To Keep Your Facebook Fans Engaged

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It’s no secret that having a Facebook page is important. But are you doing enough to ensure your fans are engaged? Whether you post an image, meme, selfie, groupie, or video, your goal is to have it noticed. The maximum number of friends you can have on Facebook is 5000. Let’s say your fan has 1000 friends and 50% of them posted a Facebook update. Do a simple math. Your fan will get a rough estimate of 500 posts on his timeline. Do you think your post will get noticed? So what is your Facebook page lacking? Could it be better? Keep reading to learn exactly what your Facebook page needs to help your digital marketing strategy. Consistently responding to fans’ posts and comments Are you or someone on your team consistently responding to fans’ posts and comments? While we’re busy posting new things on our Facebook page and doing research on what to post, we tend to leave this part behind. Here are the reasons why you might ignore your Page’s comments: Afraid to reply negative feedback Receiving too many comments Run out of script Having no idea in handling the comments When you let those reasons stop you from responding to comments, it’s a sign of weakness. So how can you build better relationships with Facebook fans — and also get them to engage with you? Start replying to comments and be there when your fans talk to you. Below is a screenshot of how it is great to reply in every comment. Tag your friends Tagging is one of the features of social media platforms has ever made. You can see that on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Why? Because it’s actionable. Remember first and foremost what Facebook is used for—connecting with people you know. Asking your fans to tag their friends spurs higher engagement. It expose you to a new audience to increase your following, and it will increase your comments within that first hour of posting. Tag A Friend Who is a great example of Facebook page that does the tagging a friend a strategy. Below is the example of post did just that, posting a meme – another good tactic! – of a drunk person. Then, it asked everybody to tag somebody they know who acts like that. The response – shares and likes – were in the hundreds. Leverage Facebook Live Do you wish more people interacted with your Facebook video? Facebook Live is one of the top Facebook contents in 2017. While Facebook gives priority to video in the news feed, Live video ranks even higher. According to Facebook, people spend triple the amount of time watching a video when it’s live, because of the nature of live content: it’s exciting, in-the-moment, and the next best thing to being there. The good thing about Facebook Live is when you started a Facebook live, all your friends will get notified. The moment they receive the notification, they can easily join your Facebook Live and participate. Protip: Don’t forget to ask viewers to share, comment or like your broadcast, or to follow your page if they have come in via a recommendation. Pay Attention To Your Reviews Do you monitor and engage with Facebook Reviews for your business page? True enough. Not all business owners or marketers respond or engage with Facebook reviews in any way. This led me to wonder: Do Filipinos restaurants know where to find Facebook reviews? Here’s how to find it: It’s part of a timeline. They allow your followers to comment on their experience with your business and assign you a star rating. They are located on the upper-right hand side of your page under your cover pic. Reviews are categorized into three: most helpful, most recent, and star rating. Your review rating is important. Facebook’s algorithm has a component which uses this to determine whether or not your business is eligible to appear in your fan’s news feed. The higher the rating, the higher the reach! Protip: Make Facebook page review work for you by always responding whether it’s positive or negative. These are just a few things that can help create a highly engaged Facebook page. What are you waiting for? Make sure your Facebook page is holding up and doing the best it can to help you build customer relationships.

Digital Marketing, Our Blog

Digital Marketing for Real Estate Agents – Fiesta Communities Central Sales Event by EmergeLocal

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Real estate is a huge industry in the Philippines. According to Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), during the year to Q1 2016, the nationwide residential real estate price index rose by 9.2% (8% inflation-adjusted). In this case, there’s a big opportunity for real estate agents or even brokers to get homebuyers in whatever way it is: traditional or digital. Real estate agents are very good in executing marketing strategies offline. You’ll see them handing out flyers and brochures in different places. They do everything under the sun to get prospects agreed to have a site tripping with them. EmergeLocal was invited last June 2, 2017 to speak in front of Fiesta Communities Central Sales team. The mini event featured EmergeLocal’s very own CEO, Richard Noromor to tackle digital marketing. The aim is to help real estate agents utilize personal branding and web application tools to get qualified prospects and turn them into homebuyers. ​After his talk, the activity started. It was a group activity that let them use social media to create an engaging, human-centric, and storytelling posts. More than 25 attendees were present and actively engaging with the speaker. To see more photos of the event, click here.

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Facebook Advertising, Our Blog

Storytelling In Facebook: How To Use It To Grow Your Business

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How can your content break through the noise? How do you influence the people around you with your brand? Storytelling is an experience. People don’t outgrow stories, we love stories, because they’re part of the human condition. In the age of the Facebook “News Feed” overload, marketers and businesses can implement different strategies to make their content stand out and capture the attention of Facebook users. Think about this. Your potential customers might be in the midst of doing errands and will take out a few minutes to scroll through their News Feed. Their attention span is so small that they will likely skip anything uninteresting. So in that case, coming up with content that’s not just creative but also worth engaging from beginning to end. If your company finds itself in similar waters, below are three ways to grow your business through content marketing storytelling. Cover Photo According to the Content Marketing Institute, “content marketing is about developing the story of us.” However, the story is not just about your brand, mission and purpose. Cover photo is part of the Facebook timeline. Facebook timeline is a canvas to paint your brand story. Nokia features a unique, attractive image as the cover photo. Two women hugging each other denotes a very powerful emotion. Here’s another one from Disney, it’s a 20 second video clip of the new movie, Pirates of the Caribbean. Putting a sneak peek of what you can offer is a great way to tell a story. Facebook 360 Facebook 360 launched in 2015, first with video capability, and then photo functionality in 2016. Brands are using 360-degree videos for everything from marketing to education and simply connecting with their audience in new ways. ABC News has shown versatility in the types of stories they have been able to utilize 360 technology for. Below is the video taken in Nepal last 2015. To upload a Facebook 360 video, you may follow the steps here. Facebook Live By now you’ve surely seen plenty of Facebook Live videos from friends, family, and brands you follow. Does live video even work? That’s the question I frequently hear from individual creators to major media companies. Facebook Live has become a tool for citizen journalists documenting violence, protests, and other events that have long gone unseen by most of the public. It’s increasingly a source of breaking news that reverberates across social platforms – a new role for Facebook. The best thing about Facebook live is there’s a community interaction. Imagine the television, you’re talking to many people at once, unaware of what the audience is thinking. However in live video the audience can talk to you and you can talk right back to them. In this modern day, vloggers are the group of people who frequently use Facebook live. When it comes to communicating ideas via speaking to a camera, vloggers are revolutionizing how we view video. I recommend Casey Neistat, Erik Conover, and Fun For Louis. Conclusion Your story can be shared in many ways: a compelling cover photo, a heart-warming Facebook 360, or even an interactive Facebook live. Your business will be naturally engaging and you will connect with your target audience. The trick is knowing how and when to tell your story.

Facebook Business Online
Facebook Advertising, How To's, Our Blog

How Do You Make Facebook Page Work For You

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Are you looking for ways to turn your Facebook page into a sales machine? Do you know that Facebook can help you get more customers? Most business owners don’t have clue that it’s possible to make your Facebook page work for you. If you’re on the clueless side, it’s not too late. You can learn. In this post, I’m sharing ways you can achieve your goals even at the beginning of your efforts. But before we dive into that, here are some of the questions small business owners need to ask themselves: Is your goal to drive traffic to your site? Is your goal to get people to purchase? Is your goal to get more walk-ins to your store? In every goal, there’s actions to take to reach it. Here’s how. How Do You Make Facebook Page Work For You Keep your social content updated Creating a Facebook page doesn’t end there. Though it’s a prerequisite to have a Facebook page before you can start advertising, having one and abandoning, then wait for it’s own brain to do the work for you is not a good idea. It’s just as important to keep your page fresh with regular posts including tips, specials, photos, and videos. Let’s take the Revlon Philippines Facebook page as an example. Their last post (timestamp is May 26, 2017, 11:04 AM) is one hour ago which means they constantly post new updates. Protip: To make your Facebook page active, allot at least 15 minutes a day to post an update about your business. Link your Facebook page to your website or email signature I’ve seen websites that have no link to their Facebook page. There are also websites that have Facebook page but not visible enough to locate the link. If you already have a website, make sure to include social sharing buttons on prominent pages and content. That way people who find something of interest on your site can easily like and share that content on their social media channels. Here’s a good example from Entrepreneur website. The Facebook icon is placed on the footer of the website. Even though it’s not on the upper part of the website, it’s still on the homepage. If you’re going to include a Facebook link on your email signature, you can easily do that with Wisestamp. It’s a web-based email signature creator where you can setup and design an email signature and automatically integrate it on your email. By linking your Facebook page to your website or email signature, it will increase the chances of getting more fans and engagement. Come up with different social media content ideas Here’s a secret you won’t always see – switch your post ideas regularly! This might seem like a lot of work, but there are a few reasons why having new theme frequently can help your Facebook page. I’m sure there’s a lot of things happening on your business and sharing them with your audience is a great move. You can post about news and upcoming events, upload photos and videos, celebrate milestones, or even share links from other sources that support your business’s message. Protip: Craft posts that are relevant and valuable to your followers. To help with coming up various topics, here’s our social media marketing template you can download and use as a guide. Measure results to improve There are many ways to measure the results of your Facebook page and it begins with one question: What’s your objective? This will help you determine if the results your efforts are driving are hitting the mark. For instance, if your goal is to increase engagement, then you may want to look at reach and engagements as an indicator of success. To do that, simply go to Insights tab and click Overview. In a simple glance, you’ll see if there’s an increase or decrease on your metrics. Engage with your followers Your Facebook is channel for two-way conversation. Here are the ways to engage with your followers: Monitor and listen to comments on posts Monitor mentions Reply to customer reviews Reply to issues you can resolve Say thanks to positive post Reply to private messages Let’s take Poracay Resort facebook page as an example of engagement. It shows in the image below that it’s a two-way conversation. And with the Pages Messaging feature, customers can send you private messages. You can set an automated reply or create a saved reply. Protip: Take note of your average response time to questions to keep customers informed, happy and engaged. Launch Facebook ads Facebook is a pay-to-play platform. If you want to reach more people, you may want to consider advertising. You can advertise for as little as Php 40 or $1 a day. To get started, settle on an objective for your campaign. Do you want to get more likes or engagement to your post? This will give you direction in choosing your objective and your target audience by: Location Demographics Interests Behaviors Connections Then, decide where you want to place your ads (news feed, right-hand column, etc.), choose an image and craft texts for your ads. The easiest way to advertise on Facebook is through boosting a post. This features allows you to promote an existing post on your page to not only the people who like your page, but their friends and beyond. Just set your budget and target audience and Facebook will do the rest. Conclusion Facebook has many ways to promote your business and get it in front of your target audience. But it takes time, money and effort to make your Facebook page work for you. If you have a Facebook page, you surpassed the first step. Following the ways I’ve mentioned above will surely help your business becomes successful on Facebook.

Powerful small geo targeting facebook
How To's, Our Blog, Social Media

A quick 3 step guide to setup Geo Targeting in Facebook

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Are you targeting ads to serve Facebook users in a very specific location? Do you feel that Facebook is exhausting your city-specific audience and getting high CPCs? Maybe you need a new approach. Generally, we select more than one locations to get larger audiences but cheap traffic and scalability. However, it’s not always the case. Some clients prefer to stick in one city because they feel that their target Facebook are living there and get the most benefit out of their business. Imagine a spa business near you, do you think the business owner will target the people living 25 miles away from its location? I doubt it. In this article, I’m going to show you ways on how to keep your CPCs lower and get the best possible results from your Facebook ads without sacrificing city-specific geo-targeting. How To Use Powerful Small Geo-Targeting on Facebook What is Geo-targeting? Geo-targeting is the practice of delivering different ads to a Facebook user based on their location. That location can be a city, ZIP Code, IP address, or other location specific criteria. In the image below, Facebook gives you an option to select your preferred location. Ways to give your city-specific geo-targeting a boost In our experience, when an audience size is 1M or up, it will down to under 100K when you apply city-specific geo-targeting. For one client, our audience sizing went from 1 million (with all geos in one ad set) down to under 310k when separating out for geo-targeting. The comparison below shows you the difference in potential reach when you apply layers of locations and city-specific geo-targeting. Potential reach is more than 1M Potential reach is 310K If you have smaller size audiences, CPC bidding is ideal than CPM because the latter can increase your costs and drop conversion rates by 50%. Here are few ways to get the conversion rates back without casting a wide net to all the cities in one ad set: 1. Test higher Lookalikes to increase audience size and bid with oCPM Expand those winning 1% Lookalikes with higher percentages like 3% or even 5%. The similarities between users in your seed audience become more general and the similar audience becomes more general, and less valuable in turn, it’s still close enough to drive higher conversion rates, especially with oCPM bidding. For this, try to get the audience size to at least 500,000 and a budget high enough for each ad set to generate 15-25 conversions per week. 2. Test interest-based targeting While interest targeting is your least priority in ad testing stage, this is the time to test it out. You can layer interests to obtain your goal audience size. 3. Incorporate city-targeting in your copy or image Let’s say you want to target people who live in New York City. You can create ads for New York city, maybe with an image that is highly relevant to that city and copy that focuses on that city. Calling out the name of the city or making it obvious that it’s highly relevant to the people in New York will give you a boost in conversion rates. . Conclusion By using these tips, you can build larger audience for your city-specific targeting in minutes. Facebook can give you many ways to do that but you need to be creative. Each of your campaigns can drive more foot traffic without increasing your ad spend and sticking to what your client wants. Have you tested out advertising with small geo audiences on Facebook? What was your experience? Let us know in the comments!

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Instagram Ads, Our Blog, Social Media

3 Instagram Tips For Small Businesses and Startups in the Philippines

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According to AdEspresso, Instagram is a highly visual platform unlike Facebook, where links, texts posts, and call to action are competing for your attention alongside images. Sometimes copy plays a role but it’s totally images are what stand out. Huge companies like Coca Cola, Starbucks and Nike dominate the space. But how can you use Instagram for small business and startup? When it’s done right, you definitely can use the power of Instagram. Imagery, copy, and aesthetic are the factors that complete the whole forefront of Instagram marketing. In Instagram marketing, if you: Get creative with your photos Post photos of your products Show your product authentically It’s not a guaranteed that your ads will work well. It takes more than a great picture/video to make a successful Instagram ad. The best ads work when they are better connected to the target market. Try the 3 tips below, and see how authentically successful your visual marketing can be. 3 Creative Instagram Tips For Small Businesses And Startups Instagram Tip #1 Have A Theme Think of your feed as the landing page on your website, complete with a color scheme and specific style. Whenever you launch an ad, it creates impacts to the brand awareness of your company in the marketplace. Your brand is what others say about you not what you think it is. All of your Instagram content should reaffirm your brand. How to specifically do this: Showcase your product in the ads using a specific color palette or prop Ensure the company logo is included Having a theme enables the audience to begin to recognize your brand, capitalize on this and make it so that they are so captivated by it that they engage with instantly. For example, influencer marianna_hewitt maintains her personal brand by ensuring all her sponsored images have a similar look by using specific filters, regardless of which product she’s endorsing: Via marianna_hewitt Cetaphil makes sure that their ad promoting new products align with their corporate branding, which frequently uses blue and green: Via Cetaphil Similar color usage on the Cetaphil website Instagram Tip #2 Determine the Goal Whether it’s increasing brand awareness, reaching people near your business, driving traffic to a website, getting app installs, selling a product, or generating leads, make sure you have a goal to achieve and the ad supports the desired action you want your target audience to do. It’s cliché but the ad creative needs to be relevant to the objective. Fitness guru Kayla Itsines uses video ads of her demonstrating her workout routines to promote installing her mobile app: Via kayla_itsines PLDT Home encourages Instagram users to avail their product by applying online: Via pldthome Here are the following ideas for ways to make your ad creative relevant to your goal: Create a visual portfolio of your work Shoot a product demo and answer FAQs Highlight special offers and events Invite fan and follower submissions via hashtags Humanize your brand Increase engagement on Facebook Instagram Tip #3 Think Like Your Audience To Keep Your Audience Imagine yourself as your target audience. Look at everything from that group’s point of view. That’s the first thing you need to do before you start any marketing activities. When you think like your audience this affects your entire marketing strategy. After you have identified and segmented your audience, you need to determine how best to reach each group. Ask yourself the following questions: What does my audience want? What do they care about? What do they dislike? What social media platform do they hang out? Only after you find the answers to these questions will you be able to speak to your audience and have them listen and respond. Once you have clearly defined your audience, you must tailor your message to speak to them. Coca Cola collaborated with popular artist today lizasoberano to target millennials and show how she thinks the product can make her afternoon better: Via lizasoberano Wrapping Up When creating Instagram ads, there’s no need to guess how your images will perform. By understanding which images are resonating with your Instagram followers, you can refine your ad strategy and deliver true value to both the broader Instagram community and your brand. Protip: Once you’ve launched your ad, make sure to make notes on what targeting options, placements, budget, and bid type you used. Once the ad’s run is finished, you can evaluate the performance of the ad compared to the overall goal. Those insights you will get can help you determine the next steps to implement to your ads.

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