by Marketing Manager | How To's & Info you can use, Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Social Media, Video Marketing, Videos
Small businesses are always looking for ways to use their marketing budget as efficiently as possible. One of the many strategies is to incorporate TikTok, the fast-growing social media platform. But how can you use TikTok in your marketing? Should you pay for ads? Should you create content? We’ll outline just some of the ways to use this platform in your marketing. What Is TikTok? TikTok is a social media platform that lets people share short videos. Videos can use music in the background or just use the voice. There are also numerous memes and challenges on TikTok contributing to its popularity. Experts estimate that as of February 2021, there were more than 1.1 billion monthly active users. In other words, a sizable proportion of your target audience is on TikTok. With that in mind, here are some of the best ways to use TikTok in your marketing. #1 Pay for Ads The most obvious option is to pay for ads on TikTok. The ads will appear before and after videos on the application. You can choose from several ad formats. You also get to choose the audience that you want to target. This prevents you from wasting your marketing budget. Common Advertising Formats The ad formats you can choose from on TikTok include: In-feed videos on the “For You” page of your audience. Hashtag challenges that show up on the discovery page. Sponsored AR content, such as stickers, lenses, and filters for your audience to feature in their videos. Brand takeovers that show full-screen video ads when your audience opens the...
by Marketing Manager | Blogging, Content Marketing, E-Mail Marketing, Marketing Tips, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Video Marketing
Digital marketing isn’t optional. The fact remains, though, that only 84% of businesses have a content marketing strategy as of early 2021. 16% don’t. If you’re one of the people who has put off digital marketing or done it haphazardly, it’s time to get serious about it. You may have claimed your Google My Business listing – and that counts as digital marketing. It’s also the bare minimum you can do. So, with that in mind, let’s talk about why every small business – including yours – needs digital marketing, and which marketing strategies we recommend. What is Digital Marketing? Some small business owners don’t understand what digital marketing is and that’s part of the problem, so, let’s start with a definition. Digital marketing is the sum of any efforts you make to promote your business online. It may include: Email marketing Blogging Search engine advertising (PPC) Social media posting Social media advertising Business listings SEO Video marketing The key to making the most of digital marketing is choosing the strategies that are most likely to deliver the results you want. Target Local Keywords The first thing you need to recognize is that in the world of digital marketing, everything is local. If you try to compete for the same keywords used by big corporations with huge marketing budgets, you’re going to lose. You’ll get far more bang for your buck if you think local. Local keywords should be a combination of industry-specific words that identify what your business does and local words that let people know where you are. For example, a dentist in Minneapolis might target words...
by Marketing Manager | Article Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Tips, Video Marketing, Videos
As 2020 winds down in the next couple months there are still a lot of questions that we can’t answer. How soon until there’s a vaccine to Covid-19? When will the pandemic end? When will we return to business as usual? For small business owners, that last question looms large. With COVID cases spiking across the country and the probability that we’ll be back to only essential businesses opening their doors to the public, it’s crucial to take a long view of the marketing landscape. Because there are so many unanswered questions, the marketing trends for 2021 have a slightly different focus than might be the case in a typical year. Here’s what’s on the horizon. Focus on Customer Retention I’ve talked a lot before about how much less it costs to retain customers than to win new customers. In 2021, it’s going to make a lot of sense to put your marketing budget into customer retention. Holding steady in a global crisis qualifies as a win. Social media and email are the best tools you have available to drive customer retention. By encouraging existing customers to follow you on Facebook or subscribe to your list, you’re gaining the ability to stay in touch with them. You can offer special deals, keep them informed, and remind them of why they chose your product or service in the first place. Product and Service Availability as a Priority We’ve all experienced issues with product availability as well as with delayed deliveries due to the pandemic. The key to customer retention is ensuring that your customers have access to your products and...
by Stefanie Blackburn | Content Marketing, Video Marketing, Videos
Just about every smart entrepreneur and marketer is creating content now, which means you have more competition than ever for the attention of your audience. That’s why it’s critical to keep in touch with which content formats are currently getting the highest engagement so you can put your effort into creating content that will get and hold attention. Here’s what you should be producing now! Long-form video Here are some incredible stats about the state of video in today’s market: 85% of US Internet Users Watch Online Videos 88% of People watch at least one video a week 6 Out of 10 People Prefer Online Video to TV People stay on pages with video nearly 3 times longer The average retenton rate for video is 52% across the board Over 500 Million People Watch Facebok Videos every Day 71% of B2B Marketers User Video 50% of People Research Products With Video Before Buying Source: Supplygem While the far majority of videos being produced now are very short, long-form videos that take the time to educate and entertain more thoroughly get incredible engagement and create deep relationships with your audience. There are also more channels for distributing longer videos as well. Youtube still dominates of course, but Facebook Watch and IGTV have both become very powerful distribution channels as well. Video ‘stories’ On the opposite end of the spectrum from long-form videos are video ‘stories’. I’m referring to videos that are posted on the Instagram Story and Facebook Story channels. Stories are seeing incredible engagement and growth, and video is what works best. In fact, social video generates 12 times...
by Stefanie Blackburn | Video Marketing
A simple browser extension makes it easy for salespeople to create videos for prospects. Videos are one of the most effective and powerful ways to communicate a message and add personalization to a salesperson’s follow up process. But creating videos can be a challenge for a lot of people and we certainly don’t want to bog down our salespeople with video editing and too much administration. We’d rather have them talking to prospects. Enter: Soapbox A new Chrome browser extension, called Soapbox, created by Wistia, allows anyone to create really nice looking videos that have an easy transition between screen shares, talking head videos, and split screen. Even if you’re not a video editor and even if you don’t have any real experience creating videos this app will work for you. It is designed, specifically, with salespeople in mind. Some of the features that salespeople will find very attractive about this service are that you can easily add branding and messages specific to your prospect or client to video thumbnails, and landing pages that are automatically created to go with your video. You can also easily edit the video without any video editing skills right within your browser. So you don’t have to download the video to any third-party application to do your editing. Features One of our favorite features is that as soon as you’re done with this video, it is immediately shareable via a link that’s generated by Soapbox. So as soon as you’re done, you can take that link and send it to your prospect or customer to immediately deliver your message. And because this was...
by Stefanie Blackburn | Video Marketing
As we all know, video has become a very important format for marketing for all types of businesses and all types of marketing platforms. From YouTube to Facebook, to Instagram, video has become the most important format of content in today’s marketing world. How can you take advantage of video at your business? There are nine videos that every small business should use that are simple to create, but have a big impact. Here they are. The Origin Story Video First is an origin story video. This is a video about how your business came about, explaining to your customers the history of the business, the story behind why the founders created it in the first place, what motivated them, and what personal hurdles they had to overcome in the creation of the business. The Purpose Story Video The second is your purpose story. Today’s consumer, particularly millennials, love to buy from companies that have a reason for existence beyond just profit and loss. So creating a video that tells the story of the purpose behind your business – the reason why you operate your business that’s beyond just money – can give you a real competitive advantage in the marketplace and create more loyalty from customers. The Positioning Story Video Next is the positioning story. The positioning story is the story that you use to make it clear how you and your products and services compare to other products and services in the marketplace. You obviously want to make sure that your customers know why they should buy from you versus your competition, and the positioning story is...
