Are you frustrated with the results of your Facebook ads?

Have you ever thought that those results were caused by the ad copy?

Chances are your ad copy sucks.

Fret not.

Here are simple tips for writing compelling Facebook ad copy. Plus, watch out for the Ad Copy Cheat Sheet as a bonus at the end of this blog post.

Make the ad copy relevant to the image

Relevance is critical for success when using Facebook advertising. Remember, it’s a form of PPC which means you’re paying when someone clicks on your ad. If you’re showing ads that aren’t relevant to the ad image or target market, you’re wasting your time and money in doing Facebook ads.

If you want to determine if your ad is relevant, Facebook advertising has this feature called “Relevance score” (counterpart of Quality score in Google AdWords) which measures the relevancy of your ad copy, image, and landing page to your audience.

Let’s take the ad of Quizony below, the headline “What Kind of Fairy Are You?” is relevant to the image. People will determine the purpose of the ad because the word “Fairy” is related to the image (a fairy).

Looking at the result of the ad, it has 1K likes, 330 comments, and 410 shares which means the ad resonates to its target audience.

Ask a question

People tend to become alert when they’re being asked. Asking your target audience a question can be a good way to encourage them to read, think and click on your ad.

Here’s an ad from Quizony, their ad copy started with a question, “Ever wondered what gender your brain is?”. Plus, the headline is a question. If you will see this ad, definitely you’re going to pause, read the ad, and be curious about it.

Test the long form ad copy

If you frequently create a short copy for your ads and are not seeing great results, maybe it’s time to test the long form copy.

In the ad with long text, you would be able to tell a story and explain everything. I recommend to test two ads with same image but different ad copy version (short ad copy and long ad copy).

Mention price

By including the price, the ad allows users to self-select based on whether they can afford the product or service. If they can’t afford it, they won’t click through, thus saving the advertiser money on unqualified clicks.)

Let’s take the example of the ad below. Dreamland Jewelry includes the price of the product. If your target market click through the ad, it means the price $10.38 is a good price for the product. This weed out the your unqualified target audience.

Create a sense of urgency (scarcity model)

Adding a time frame to your ad copy creates a sense of urgency.

In the ad example below, Emirates uses the word “until” that indicates time.

Aside from “until”, there are other words or phrases you can use to add a sense of urgency including “today”, “now”, and “this week.

Clear Call to action

Having a clear call to action (CTA) is vital to the success of your ad. It is giving your target audience an idea what to do next. Your CTA should encourage people to click on your ad now.

In the ad example below, Plexuss.com includes the words and CTA button “Sign Up”. It makes you want to click the article to learn more and act on it. It maybe filling out a form or purchase.

Wrapping Up

There you have it: Six tips of turning your Facebook ads into profits together with a few examples of awesome ones from all different brands.

Getting Started

Writing ad copy is both an art and science just like choosing an image. That’s why we created the Ad Copy Cheat Sheet. (Click the button below to open). Save it, print it, share it with your team.

Thinking of improving your website’s loading on mobile devices?

Is your website takes longer than 3 seconds to load on your smartphones or tablets?

If your answer is a big YES, then accelerated mobile pages, or AMP for short is the perfect solution.

In this article, I’ll share what Google AMP is, then we’ll discuss the benefits for your website.

But before we dive into that, let’s check out this scenario.

Imagine on your way home and decided to cook a dinner for your partner. Not sure what ingredients you have to buy on your grocery list, you take out your phone and do a search for “nachos recipe”. You’re on the road driving and the internet access is limited, and it feels that the websites you’re browsing is too slow. You get frustrated so you decide to close your browser instead.

You are not ALONE.

In fact, according to the study done by Forrester Consulting, 73% of mobile internet users say that they’ve encountered a website that was too slow to load and 40% of web users abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.

This kind of problem has a solution – the Google AMP.

So what is Google Accelerated Mobile Pages?

​Google Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is a project backed by Google to make websites load quickly on mobile devices and across different platforms.

Last February 26, 2017, Google has started to show search results on mobile phones with websites that AMP is implemented.

To see what a faster mobile web might look like, Google developed this demo:

​What are the AMP benefits?

Improve User Experience

In the Philippines, 117% of Filipino are active mobile phone subscribers while the average daily use of internet via mobile phones is 3 hours and 14 minutes. These are the users who feel bad when they browse your website and when it loads too slow for them. With Google AMP, your website will load fast even if user is connected on a 3G signal. They can get the information about your business without wasting time and effort.

Brand Identity

A website that loads slowly means unhappy site visitors. That’s a bad impression to your potential customers. Google AMP gives your brand a positive impression to your potential customers. A mobile website that loads fast gives you a competitive advantage over your competition.

Improve Search and SEO Performance

Google says that nearly 60% of searches are now from mobile devices. Google is now heavily improving the user’s experience from searches coming from mobile devices. Since April 21, 2015, Google Search expands its use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. With Google AMP, it makes your website not just mobile friendly but loads faster on mobile phones.

Protip: You can check your site’s loading speed using the Mobile-Friendly Test tool.

I can create a tutorial, if you’re interested, but really wanted to go over the benefits of AMP with this post.

Final Thoughts

If you haven’t used Google AMP on your website, it’s time to give it a shot. Google AMP is the future of the web and it’s the perfect solution to speed up your website loading. It could turn your site visitors to real customers.

Comment below if you are interested with a tutorial about the implementation of Google AMP to your website.

Thinking of new ways to have a great conversation with your followers?

How about doing this in real-time?

Facebook Live lets you connect with your fans, friends and followers by sharing real-time video of what you’re seeing and doing.

It made its debut last 2015 in its early stages with selected accounts including Dunkin’ Donuts, Tastemade and The Young Turks news network.

Fast forward to 2017, it’s now available to all users provided that you have a video camera, an Internet connection, and a Facebook account.

Facebook Live Marketing – A Primer

So what is Facebook Live anyway?

Facebook Live allows you to show your expertise in real time, take people behind the scenes, and much more.

This is a good news for marketers and business owners because of high engagement and significant long term gains in social marketing.

Simply put, engaging conversations with your followers can be capitalized. They can also share the video with their friends and family, potentially increasing its reach.

By following these tips for Facebook Live, you’ll make it easier to market your products or services with a higher success rate. Here’s what you need to know.

Provide a behind-the-scenes experience to customers

“Customer experience is everyone’s business” is a mantra that I often hear from customer experience leaders. Of course, it’s true.

Give your customers a peek behind the curtains of your business. By showing “behind the scenes” content, your prospective customers will be enticed to your products or services because they will know what you’re offering is a value for money.

Show to your customers that your pair of shoes is handmade or your beer is “pure”. But giving customers a peek behind the curtain doesn’t have to end with physical products. The “behind the scenes” strategy is applicable in quite a variety of industries.

Below is an example of a behind the scenes LIVE.

​Show sneak previews of new products or updates

Product-oriented business can share sneak peeks of new products with their followers via Facebook Live. For example, if you just launched a new product, but it’s not yet available on your website, you could use a Live video to tease it to customers.

As for the updates, this can be applied in service-oriented businesses where they can share daily updates, tips, and helpful hints. For example, if you are a real estate broker, you can some tips about real estate 101. In this way, you’re giving value and is positioning yourself as an expert in the field.

Check out an example of an updates or tips LIVE by Benefit Cosmetics.

​Promote events

Since Facebook Live lets you broadcast video in real-time to your followers, as well as directly to an event page or group, promoting an event via Facebook Live is definitely possible.

For example, if you are a real estate developer, you can live-stream the “Open House” event. Chances are, you can still engage your followers who want to attend the event but can’t afford to.

Answer questions

Mark Zuckerberg did this during his first live public Q & A last year. He invited users to post questions in the comments, and for others to vote on them by “liking” the comments.

Encourage further comments and questions to get more news feed activity and engagement.

Protip: Compile all the Q & A and create a blog post version. Share it with your followers so they can still refer to it every now and then.

Conclusion

There you have it!

We hope this has been a realization to you as a business owner or marketer that live video is worth a shot.

As for Facebook, we’re curious to see how they develop their live video platform to help brands connect more deeply with fans and followers, and individuals connect more deeply with friends, family, and community.

For more Facebook Live tips and tricks, check it out here.

​This week, I’ve noticed a change in the new Google ad label. Instead of a solid green background, now it has a green outline and white background. Google appears to be testing a green outlined label.

According to the statement of Google to Search Engine Land,

“We routinely test potential improvements to the look and feel of our search results page. After experimenting with a new search ad label with a green outline, we’ve decided to roll it out. The new ad label is more legible and continues to make our results page easier to read for our users with clear indication of our ad labeling.“

Here’s another statement from Sundeep Jain, Google’s director of product management for search ads, at SMX Advanced last June,

”We want to make it easier for users to digest information on the page, so we’re gradually trying to reduce the number of variations of colors and patterns on the page and bring a little bit more harmony to the page, which is why we reduced one of the color elements on the page.”

It’s not the first we’ve witnessed Google’s move in making changes in the ad label – from yellow to green.

Maybe, Google is bored with the green now.

Is this already available in the Philippine?

Yes, definitely.

The change rolled out to the Philippines but in mobile device only. The desktop search results are still using the old label maybe because there are more mobile searches that in desktop. Filipinos also spend more time on mobile than desktop.

Mobile Device Google Ad Search Result

Desktop Device Google Ad Search Result

We just have to wait for few weeks to roll out this to any device completely.

Do you think it will increase the CTR’s? Or reduce the invalid clicks from fraudulent search bots?

A double win for PPC marketers and their clients.

Let us know if you spot the new Google ad label the impact of it to your ads. Share your experience in the comment section below

Are you maximizing the potential of video ads to achieve good ROI?

According to Forbes, videos have much more engagement than any other content format.

Also, Dennis Uy, CTO of Blitzmetrics and also a high caliber social media influencer told the Sleeknote that videos rock because it is a powerful way to generate more sales.

So listen up…

Even in social advertising, Facebook video ads are being widely adopted because they’re more engaging than static ads. But the costs are on the rise because social advertisers tend to produce more video ads than static ads.

The way to combat the competition? Effective video campaigns. Here are five tips to help you see a good ROI, in order to justify the spending of money.

5 Best Practices in Facebook Video Ads

Keep it short and sweet

People tend to have a short attention spans which means they are not willing to sit through a long video. When you create a video, try to keep it to 15 to 30 seconds range because at the end of the day your goal is to keep interested parties onboard for the entire length of the post.

Create an enticing Thumbnail

Thumbnail is what people see at first glance of your video. It is hugely important as the content of the video. I highly suggest to create an attention grabbing thumbnail. Be sure that these thumbnails follow the Facebook 20% text rule. 

Protip: There’s no Facebook 20% text rule anymore but the new image text ratings have various criteria which I believe still goes with the Facebook 20% text rule (theoretically).

Retain conversion as the goal

You can definitely have a conversion goal same with direct response static ad. Even though videos are engaging, you can still drive conversions.

Include a strong call to action

A call to action is just what it sounds like – a call for your viewer to take a certain action after watching the video. I highly recommend including a call to action either in the video content itself or in the description you post along with your video on Facebook, just to make sure your CTA doesn’t pass any viewers by.

Craft direct response ad out of video audience

If you are a direct response marketer, take advantage of the video. Let’s say you’ve run video view ads in the past or post videos to your Facebook page, the people who’ve watched these videos can be retargeted. It’s the best.

You now have the ability to create 6 different “Video Engagement Custom Audiences” based on the length of time people watch your videos. A game changer.

Wrap Up

Facebook video isn’t just a hot future trend. This is happening now. This is the best time to create and run a high-quality Facebook video ad campaign with or without prior experience.

Do you have any smart tips you think should be featured. If you will apply one of the best practices we’ve mentioned here, please share your experience. Let us know in the comments!

Have you heard the Instagram best nine for 2016?
Pretty cool, right?
To give you an idea on what best nine of 2016 is, please check out the images below.
Here’s Selena Gomez best nine from 2016.

Now, I want to make our own version but this time it’s not a collage picture. It’s a list type of our best blog posts last year.

We seek the help of our dear friend Google Analytics to pull out the data (see screenshot below).

So without further ado, here are our blog post best nine of 2016, sorted by number of visits.

Here’s our 2016 Best Nine Blog Posts

The Digital Marketing Landscape in the Philippines

Digital marketing is fast gaining ground in the Philippines, all thanks to majority of Filipinos’ affinity to the Internet, particularly social media. In fact, a special report explicitly said that Internet access in the Philippines enjoyed a staggering 500% growth over the last four years! That’s not hard to believe considering almost everyone in the Philippines, young and old alike, own laptops, computers, tablets, and smartphones.

Key Takeaway

Business owners are great in executing offline marketing strategies but they do struggle in integrating digital marketing. I’ve listed down the 4 things you can start doing to power up your business.

Facebook Ad Types That Will Help You Get New Customers

Every business owner knows the importance of leads. Whether you’re a small business owner or you own a huge company, you must generate leads in order to survive. The more leads, the more potential clients.

Key Takeaway

If you want to know what Facebook ad types you can use to maximize the performance of your Facebook ads, try to apply each of them and see the effects of them in your business.

4 Ways How to Validate Your Business Idea

Driving traffic is great but if your visitors are not taking action on your landing page, then you are wasting your time, money and effort to test your product.

If no one is taking action then you’ll need to work on refining your headlines, landing page copy, text ad copy or even testing different features and buttons colors.

Key Takeaway

Business ideas are cheap. Opportunities are everywhere. You can validate if your idea can turn into a business with these 4 ways.

15 Inspiring Facebook Ad Examples Of Brands In The Philippines

A shorter ad copy doesn’t require people to devote much of their time reading your message. Even though Facebook allows up to 500 characters in the ad copy, you don’t need to use all of it.

Key Takeaway

Business ideas are cheap. Opportunities are everywhere. You can validate if your idea can turn into a business with these 4 ways.

25 Great B2C Facebook Ads That Will Inspire You

B2C marketers’ end goal in using Facebook ads is to direct followers over to their website, community engagement and involvement. They want to get plenty of likes, comments or shares on their ads. They mainly use Facebook marketing to promote brand awareness and get people talking about the brand.

Key Takeaway

You can learn new things to apply on your next Facebook ads by observing what other brands are doing already.

How To Create A Social Media Marketing Plan in 5 Easy Steps (Free Template)

With so many outlets like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn, you may be spending 50% of your time to put every action you take on social media. Not cool, right?

A social media marketing plan is a template that is something you can refer to and adjust as you forge ahead towards meeting desired goals.

Key Takeaway

Having a social media marketing plan can help you as a business owner or your entire team to rock social media marketing this year. I highly recommend reading the blog post and download the template.

Instagram Ads Best Practices To Help You Get The Most ROI

For marketers, Instagram ads represent a massive opportunity to drive a large and highly engaged audience to relevant product and content pages outside of the Instagram environment.

Instagram is one of the social media advertising platforms that you can take advantage of in terms of aesthetic, targeting and user base, so don’t just wing it. Use these tips to brainstorm ways your business can advertise on Instagram with positive outcome. Take time to formulate a strategy so that in every ad you run, you’re delivering value and engaging with your audience.

Key Takeaway

Are you planning to run Instagram ads today? Check out our best practices to be successful on Instagram.

4 Reasons Why You Should Advertise On Instagram

One thing where Instagram stands out among other sites is that it’s a creative platform. It has the features and tools that will enhance every photo and give more emotions to what message the photo contains and it doesn’t take too much process to bring out the best output to be posted. That makes it a good platform on advertising for businesses of any form.

Key Takeaway

Do you know that Facebook acquired Instagram? I thought I’d ask you that. By advertising on Instagram, you can lever on the powerful laser targeting feature of Facebook. Pretty impressive, right?

5 Practical Reasons You Should Do Pay Per Click Marketing

Digital marketing is in full swing and businesses are doing their best to be in front of their potential customers online. It becomes critical and essential for them to keep up with the current marketing playing field.

Key Takeaway

Facebook is a pay to play platform. Google AdWords is a demand harvester platform. Adding these platforms to your current digital marketing strategies will give your business greater results.

That’s it.

I hope that this new year, you would be able to apply the tips we’ve shared to you in these blog posts.

Let us know what’s your best nine of 2016. Maybe an Instagram post or blog post (don’t worry, we’d love to check them out). Share it by commenting below.

They are part of the Facebook’s world and we can’t do anything about it.

You know you’ve glanced at them on your newsfeed as you looked at pictures of your childhood crush’s new baby but you’ve probably ignore them.

The truth is somebody’s clicking on them – thanks to Hubspot handy infographic, Facebook’s ad revenue increased from $1.9 billion in 2010 to over $12 billion in 2014.

The numbers are increasing despite of the birth of Snapchat. Good thing, Facebook acquired Instagram which is a great addition to their network. Yes, these kids might spend more time on these social networks but apparently their parents who have buying power spend on Facebook.

A Primer On Facebook Advertising For Beginners

Benefits of Facebook Advertising

Do Facebook ads work for you?

Knowing what Facebook ads can do for you is very important to determine your goals.

It’s huge

With over 1.4 billion people using this space, there is no single platform with as great a reach to the people who are interested in your exact message.

More than 700 million people visit Facebook every day on their phones and tablets. 64% of Facebook users visit the site every day.

Chances are, the customers you’re trying to reach are using Facebook.

It’s streamline

Facebook identifies audiences based on very complex factors beyond a user’s profile. You can choose the audiences that see it by location, age, interests and more.

It’s flexible

Though Google is now challenging Facebook for intent-driven marketing, the latter can still be used as a customer acquisition (using the right strategy), as well as a great place to create brand awareness.

It’s mobile

I’ve mentioned earlier that Facebook acquired Instagram which means they include its 500 million users who access the app only through mobile devices.

Facebook Advertising Objectives

Before we get too deep into ad unit details, here are some of the marketing goals that Facebook can help you achieve:

• Drive more people to visit your website
• Get website conversions
• Raise brand awareness
• Promote a product catalog
• Get more people to like your Facebook page
• Promote your app
• Get video views
• Generate leads or sales for services or products
• Drive more Facebook page engagement
• Get more visitors to your store
• Get more attendees for your event

Types of Facebook Ad Units

Before you create your first campaign, it’s crucial to better understand the different Facebook ad types.

The good thing about Facebook is whatever your campaign’s objective is, there’s a type of ad for it!

Facebook Ad Placement

To reach your audience across devices, Facebook has carefully adjusted its advertising offering to better suit the needs of its users.
Your ads can appear on Facebook different places which include:

• Desktop News Feed
• Mobile News Feed
• Right Column
• Instagram
• Audience Network

Some placements may have higher costs and has effective results than the other depending on the objective and audience.

Facebook Ad Creatives

Suppose you’re done choosing your ad placement, you will now create an and choose a creative for the ad. Here are your options:

• Static Image
• Image Carousel (see image below)
• Video Carousel
• Single Video
• Canvas

With regards to the type of creative chosen, it can affect results and total costs depending on your marketing objective and audiences.

Facebook Ad Types

1. Click to Website Ads

Do you want to see more people visiting your website, in hopes of getting them to purchase your product, fill up your form, or sign up for your newsletter? These are the ads for you.

Type: Direct Response

Objective: You’re trying to send people to important sections of your website.

Bidding: People within your targeted audience most likely to click the link in your ad.

Metric(s): Cost per Click (CPC), Click-through Rate (CTR).

2. Website Conversion Ads

If you’re looking to boost stagnant sales, then Facebook has the ads that can help you increase your sales or bring in the leads you need.

Type: Direct Response

Objective: You want users to take an action on your site (make a purchase, sign up, install an app, etc.).

Bidding: Targeting people who are likely to convert from an ad.

Note: Facebook only determine users who are likely to convert if there’s a significant conversion volume within the first 24-48 hours.

Metric(s): Cost per Acquisition (CPA), Conversion Rate (CVR).

3. Page Post Engagement Ads

Type: Brand awareness

Objective: You want to get more people seeing, liking, commenting on and sharing your Facebook ad.

Bidding: People who are more likely to engage on your Facebook ad.

Metric(s): Cost per Engagement (CPE), Engagement Rate, Video Views (if applicable).

4. Page Like Ads

Are you looking to increase your Facebook likes? When someone likes your Page, your posts may appear in their News Feed, along with posts from their friends and family, so you can increase awareness of your business and meet new customers.

Type: Brand awareness

Objective: You want to increase the number of likes on your Facebook page.

Bidding: People within your chosen audience who are likely to click on the Like button for your Page.

Metric: Cost per Like (CPL).

Example of Page Like Ad

5. Video View Ads

Facebook receives over 4 billion video views per day. According to Adobe, shoppers that view videos are 1.81X more likely to purchase than non-video viewers.

Are you looking for the best way to ensure people remember your brand and come back to your site? Then the answer is Facebook video ad.

Type: Branding awareness

Objective: You want to bring your business to life with Facebook video ads (behind-the-scenes footage, product launches or customer testimonials).

Bidding: People within your audience who are likely to click or watch your video ad.

Metric(s): Cost per Video View, Average Length of Video View, Video Engagement Rate.

Facebook has the ability to create an audience based on people who’ve previously viewed your video content. Marketers can remarket the users who have viewed a video in an ad.

6. Mobile App Install Ads

Are you struggling to get customers to download your app? Facebook’s Mobile App Install can help you motivate Facebook users to download your company’s mobile app to their iOS or Android device.

Type: Direct Response

Objective: You want people to download your app.

Bidding: People who are likely to download an app on either iOS or Android.

Metric(s): Cost per Install (CPI), Conversion Rate (CVR).

7. Lead Generation Ads

Type: Direct Response

Objective: You want people to fill up a form in the ad without leaving your Facebook page.

Bidding: People who are most likely to convert to your lead ad.

Metric(s): Cost per Lead (Form)

Audiences

1. Facebook Location, Demographic, Interest, & Behavior Targeting

Location

Location targeting allows you to reach customers in key locations by country, state/province, city and zip code.

For example, you want to target the people who are living in Metro Manila.

Demographics

You can target audience based on content people have shared about themselves in their Facebook profiles, such as age, gender, relationship status, education and type of work they do.

For example, you want to target women with ages 25-50, single and graduated in college.

Interests

Interest targeting lets you define your ideal audience by their interests, hobbies and Pages they like on Facebook.

For example, you want to target people who love beaches and liked the page Rappler.

Behaviors

Behaviors are activities that people do on or off Facebook that inform on which device they’re using, purchase behaviors or intents, travel preferences and more.

Example: If you’re a travel and tour agency owner, you can select the people who are frequent travellers.

Note: You can overlay any additional targeting options from the location, demographics and interests sections to narrow down your audience for refine targeting. 

Perfect for: Campaigns with broader reach.

2. Lookalike Audiences (LAL)

Lookalike Audiences helps you create new audiences based on traits from one of the following sources:

• Custom Audiences
• Website Visitors
• Page Fans
• How It Works

You provide Facebook with a list of customers either through email lists or pixel targeting, and Facebook will then generate an audience that is similar to your customers using their algorithm.

You could ask Facebook to find the top 1% (optimize for similarity) or 5% (optimize for greater reach) of users in a specific country who were similar to their customers.

Perfect for: Campaigns that goals are acquiring leads.

3. Website Custom Audiences (WCA)

How It Works

It’s easier to sell to your existing customers than to look for new ones. You can do this using Website Custom Audiences (WCA). Simply place the Facebook pixel on each page of your site. Once your pixel is implemented on your website, you can build an audience based on your users who fit a specific profile.

For example, you can build a WCA based on people who visited a particular page within the last 30 days. Once your WCA is large enough, you can remarket to them, as well as create a Lookalike Audience that is demographically similar.

Perfect for: Remarketing Campaigns.

Happy 9th of the 9th and welcome to this week’s edition of the EmergeLocal Marketing Blog’s Digital Marketing Updates & Insights!
What We’re Reading From The Experts

Andrea Vahl

How to Maximize Facebook Groups for Business
Facebook Groups are a great place for a “natural group” of people to hang out including local connections, people who are part of a premium product that you sell, mastermind groups, customer service help,and more.
Convince and Convert

6 Benefits and 3 Challenges of Blogging
You need to post regularly to your blog (at the very minimum every 30 days) in order to keep it engaging for your audience, but the exact frequency will depend on your content, your readers, and your resources.
3Q Digital

Programmatic TV – The Rise and Future
As brands seek more robust targeting, ways to optimize, and the ease of automation across channels and devices, programmatic technology offers a way to buy audiences, not just shows, on TV.
Simply Measured

How to Prioritize Your Social Media To-Do List
The real challenge is leaving enough room in the day and week to balance the day-to-day tasks that keep channels active with the long-term planning and strategy that is necessary to drive growth.
Groove

20 Must-Read Books for Anyone Who Does Customer Service
You’ll find an updated list of 20 must-read books for anyone who does customer service.
Digital Marketer

How to Use Facebook Advertising to Grow Your Local Business
Local businesses know something really specific and crucial about their target market: they live or are in close vicinity to their business.
When going to create your first campaign, or to boost your first post, focus on how you will stand out in the newsfeed.
Hubspot

Discover Where Your Competitors Are Beating You Online
Learn the 4 important steps you need to take to conduct an inbound marketing competitive analysis on your top online competitors.
From the EmergeLocal Team Handpicked For You

15 Inspiring Facebook Ad Examples Of Brands In The Philippines
Here are the 15 Facebook ads we’ve analyzed to find out what makes them so fascinating and persuasive.
Instagram Ads Best Practices To Help You Get The Most ROI
For marketers, Instagram ads represent a massive opportunity to drive a large and highly engaged audience to relevant product and content pages outside of the Instagram environment.
3 Tools To Create Stunning Social Media Visuals
Fact: Social media gone visual. To make your social media posts appealing, you need new design tools that will streamline your design process.
In this article, you’ll discover three new design tools that will help you quickly create amazing visuals for social media.

What do Nike, Marriott, and Facebook have in common?
They all made it onto my marketing reading list this week.
As the Head of Digital at EmergeLocal, I spend most of my time reading articles, news and updates from reputable blogs of industry experts and thought leaders. Whenever I stumble to these well-written and thought-provoking posts, I can’t help but share them to you via our newsletter and various social media channels…

I understand that your time is very limited to scour the entire web. That’s where I come in. I’ve compiled some of the most awesome stuff I’ve found on the web this week, so you don’t have to go looking for it.

Here’s what you need to do next. Make sure you bookmark this page, so you can quickly refer back from time to time.

I don’t want to keep you waiting, so without further ado, here’s what I’ve been reading for the week of August 26, 2016.

The 10 Golden Rules of Customer Service

Much of the conversation around customer service best practices revolves around tactics.

Tactics are great. They make us feel safe.

But what happens when you encounter a situation where you don’t have the right technique or script?

You have to figure out the solution on your own.

Whether you have a tactic for the situation or not, having the right mindset will help you quickly and easily deduce the right course of action.

Who Should Read

Anyone who is in charge of making the customers happy.

Key Takeaway

Sales go up and down but customer service stays forever.

Social Media Image Sizes for 2016 [Infographic]

Keeping up with the optimum image sizes across the various presentation options on social networks can be tough.

The latest version takes into account various recent changes, including Facebook’s updated Page layout and Instagram’s updated image sizes.

Download the infographic in PDF form here.

Who Should Read?

Social media managers

Key Takeaway

Social media is now part of our lives. To create a strong social media presence, you need to optimize it with the right images to represent your business or brand.

With 8.6 million followers, Nike’s Jordan Brand is a slam dunk on Instagram

Stories is the latest tool Jordan Brand has in its arsenal for Instagram, which has become of the “main focal points” in the brand’s overall social media strategy. Using the @jumpman23 handle, the brand has more than 8.6 million followers on Instagram, making it the brand’s biggest social platform.

As for Instagram Stories, while the hype is strong, Jordan Brand believes the feature has longevity.

Who Should Read

Everyone

Key Takeaway

The greatest value of social media marketing is your ability to foster and engage with a community of other people. Nike’s Jordan Brand  has done an excellent job of providing value to their customer base.

10 Actionable Video Basics for Social Media Marketing

Video is one of the most effective ways to harness the power of social media.

In today’s social climate, savvy, ambitious social marketers must serve up strong video content.

Some recent stats:

• 73% of marketers say they will increase their use of video in 2016
• YouTube has over a billion users, with hundreds of millions of hours watched daily and billions of views
• Over 4 billion video views happen on Facebook every day

Who Should Read

Anyone who uses videos or is thinking about using videos in your business.

Key Takeaway

Video is the new television. Use videos to target prospective and returning customers.

5 Non-eCommerce Industries that Should Use Carousel Ads Now

Since carousel ads launched, they have demonstrated extremely strong results, and we’ve seen more and more clients start to prioritize this ad unit. Engagement rates seem to be much stronger for carousel ads than for single-image ads; they’ve been reported to drive a 50% lower CPA and a 20-30% lower CPC than single-image ads

Most people assume this ad type works only for ecommerce companies, but you can totally get creative with it and use it for non-ecommerce companies as well as well as on both Facebook and Instagram.

Who Should Read

Anyone who wants to try carousel ad unit for Facebook ads.

Key Takeaway

Whatever industry your business belongs to, you can use the Facebook’s carousel ad unit.

A New Way to Control the Ads You See on Facebook, and an Update on Ad Blocking

Bad ads are disruptive and a waste of our time.

Facebook introduced tools to help people control their experience, improved how they decide which ads to show and created new ad formats that complement, rather than detract from, people’s experience online.

We make ad preferences easier to use, so you can stop seeing certain types of ads.

We’ve designed our ad formats, ad performance and controls to address the underlying reasons people have turned to ad blocking software.

Who Should Read?

Everyone

Key Takeaway

Facebook is doing their very best in giving us the most relevant, useful and well-made ads we want to see.

Why Marriott is so interested in your social media

Marriott’s uses a technology called geo-fencing. They can see every public posting on a social-media platform done from within their properties.

If a guest is having an issue with a stay and posts about it, M Live will reach out to the customer care team and reach out directly to the unhappy customer.

When a celebrity posts about the brand, Marriott gets real-time notifications alerting them so they can continue the conversation with them.

M Live will also reach out to people talking about travel and engage with them.

Who Should Read?

Community managers

Key Takeaway

The key to social media success for brands is … listening. It creates a personal relationship to your customers. Don’t sell to them but delight them by enhancing their experience to your brand.

Facebook Groups: 5 Unwritten Rules

Facebook groups are a great way to connect with your audience and talk about common interests but there are a few unwritten rules that need to be spelled out.

As Facebook changes their algorithm, it’s harder to reach your audience with your Facebook Page.  A Facebook Group can be a great way to connect with your customers, network with new people, and even use as a mastermind space.

Who Should Read?

Social media managers

Key Takeaway

Managing a Facebook group is not easy. It requires time, effort and proper handling. It’s like managing an offline group where there are two goals – ask for help and to help.

Are you looking to start advertising on Instagram? Or have you started advertising but not getting great results?
For marketers, Instagram ads represent a massive opportunity to drive a large and highly engaged audience to relevant product and content pages outside of the Instagram environment.
In this blog post, I’ll be sharing some best practices for using Instagram Ads.
Before we proceed to the topic proper, let’s determine if advertising on Instagram for your business works for you.
This guide is for you if:
Are you a brand manager who is interested in reaching out to new customers on Instagram but don’t know where to start?
Do you manage digital advertising campaigns for clients and want to include Instagram advertising as another channel to reach their target customers?
Do you own an eCommerce store and looking for new ways to position products in front of potential buyers?
Are you a business owner who is looking for new ways to promote your products or services?
If you are one of these people, I recommend you to start advertising on Instagram and apply the best practices. So, let’s dive in.
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Instagram Ads Best Practices To Help You Get The Most ROI

Use Lifestyle Images

Instagram is a social media platform and social isn’t about liking and sharing. It’s about engaging and interacting with your fans. That same goes for Instagram ads.
Creative should be engaging. Lifestyle images that represent your brand’s persona work better on Instagram. Don’t get on Instagram to just post photos of your products. I recommend posting promotional content only 20% of the time. Like in all social media marketing, you can tell your brand’s story with as much creativity and thought when you do content marketing posts.
Let’s take the Visit Singapore’s ad shown below as an example. The best part about their Instagram ad is that it looks like anyone could have taken it – a stolen shot. This was certainly intentional. The ad’s imagery is inviting and authentic.

Create Images with Clear Focal Point

Creative should have a clear focal point. You don’t want a super-busy or overly complex image.

Marketers can use focal points in their Instagram advertising campaigns to direct attention to specific elements, enhancing brand recall and encouraging action.

When your audience’s eyes are drawn to your ad, their attention will be held for only a few seconds. So, decide what’s your focal point.

In this ad, Jollibee’s uses a mouth-watering photo to show off their product and catch the attention of their target market. The top background is blurred so it gives room to emphasize the product itself.

Use Clear Call to Action

Ad should have a clear call to action.

Jeremy Smith, a conversion consultant,  says the modern web audience is accustomed to the call to action. He quoted,

“This doesn’t mean they are going to convert,” he says. “It simply means their minds are prepared for the experience of being called to act. They know it’s coming. Their minds have already decided that there will be a CTA.”

In this case, Nivea Philippines’ ad drives action. Their creative includes two strong CTAs in a push to reach their campaign goals. First, Nivea Philippines encourages users to join their giveaway – that’s very clear in their image. Additionally, users can take immediate action on the ad with the help of a “Learn More” button.

Whether you tell your audience click a link, subscribe to a newsletter, download a quote, or request a quote, being able to ask for an action is an opportunity to create impactful Instagram ads.

Ensure Ads are Relevant to your Audience

Ads should be relevant to your target audience. It is incredibly important to assess first your ad before it goes live. Here are the questions you need to ask yourself before launching your ads.

• Are they useful?
• Are they engaging positively?
• Would they resonate?

Instagram uses a similar algorithm as Facebook, allowing a user to hide an ad they see and do not find relevant, and if this happens – Instagram will show your ad to less and less people.

If you don’t want this to happen, ensure your ads communicate to the right target market.

Split Test Different Ad Formats

Instagram offers multiple creative ad units such as video, carousel, single image, etc.

While you can generally use a single image ad format, is that the best thing to do?

Instagram ads are like any social media ad campaigns: You can learn a lot from testing. To keep it simple, use the standard A/B split test method to test one Instagram ad against another. You can run a small campaign trying all three. Once you know which variety provides the best results, you can split test the next element – caption copy.

Example of a Carousel Ad

Example of a Single Image Ad

Example of a Video Ad

Final Thoughts

Instagram is one of the social media advertising platforms that you can take advantage of in terms of aesthetic, targeting and user base, so don’t just wing it. Use these tips to brainstorm ways your business can advertise on Instagram with positive outcome. Take time to formulate a strategy so that in every ad you run, you’re delivering value and engaging with your audience.

Bonus Tips

• Make sure your Instagram ads are appealing and relatable by using images that showcase real life situations and people. It will make your ads more memorable and connects with your target market.
• Standing out from the crowd is not easy if you want your ads to succeed on Instagram. Use bold, eye-popping colors to draw attention to your ads. Run different ads with different images to test which colors and other visual elements drive the most clicks.
• Don’t use the same images in your entire campaign duration. Your audience will lose interest when they see the same creative multiples times!