Tag Archives: Facebook

Be Sure to Count the Cost of “Free” When Creating a Giveaway

Marketing, , ,

How Much Does Your “Freebie”

Everyone loves free, except of course the people who must pay for it. That is the unwritten truth that lurks behind any “free” marketing method or campaign. There is usually, though not always, a real cost in terms of time and money.

So how can you get a realistic picture of the real costs of a free marketing promotion? First is by knowing the hard costs you are incurring to create and ship, and then by taking into consideration in your time.

What varieties of “free” are we talking about here?

The most obvious places we see free work its way into our businesses is with the act of gathering email addresses. Offering a freebie is a standard operating procedure, and won’t be changing anytime soon. In most cases we are offered a free ebook, report, video series, e-course, webinar or email series in return for our email address and other contact data.

What you must know is there are costs associated with the creation of these freebies. Let’s take a look at several of the actual hard costs you’ll be forced to deal with in the creation of your freebies.

  • Creating the content – Someone has to write, film, record whatever content you are producing. Unless that is totally you, you’ll pay for this.
  • Designing the squeeze page or landing page – There are several great softwares out there, but they cost as well. And we know how much designers cost.
  • Production costs and shipping – If you want to manufacture a hard product, odds are you’ll have to pay to get it where it’s going.
  • Marketing funnel hard costs – Email autoresponders, setup costs for technical aspects, webinar charges. GoToWebinar for example, charges at the bare minimum $99 a month for their lowest plan, which allows only 100 attendees. (to be fair, there are other lower-priced services)
  • Advertising – Are you going to be taking out ads for this freebie in order to attract the widest possible audience?

Using a freebie, or freemium content as people are referring to them these days, remains a very good way to build a list or audience for your products and services. We just thought you should be aware you’ll want to count the cost of “free” when producing your freebie.

Why You Need to Look into Visual Marketing

Uncategorized, , , ,

Why You Need to Look into Visual Marketing

Visual marketing is coming to a screen near you. The truth is, it’s already there! The practice of using videos, images and other content connected with some visual element, (such as blog posts) is getting huge attention now as these mediums show themselves capable of driving far more traffic and sales than just text. The social world we live in fosters near-instant sharing of our visual content which, as we know, can go widespread in seconds.

Since we now know that the human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text, and 80 percent of visual content sticks with us as opposed to 20 percent of textual, it ought to be no surprise that visual marketing is responsible for 84 percent more views and 94 percent more clicks than text.

How to make your own visual marketing work

Utilize the social media image giants – There are several social media networks that join the visual aspect with a thriving and vibrant social media community. The big ones that come to mind are Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. All have visual capacity that boggles the mind.

Make sure to add a visual aspect to your other content – Blog posts with images get clicked on far more than ones that don’t, and shares are correspondingly higher as well. There are many places to find great visuals, or you can make your own with tools like Canva and PicMonkey.

Optimize images and videos – Be sure you optimize visual content with appropriate titles and keywords. This will not just help them rank better in the search results, but also allow people to discover them with a keyword search.

Create Slideshows and Infographics – Two of the most highly trafficked and search engine popular visual content sources are document sharing site like Slideshare.net and infographics. Both are shared widely and can generate an avalanche of traffic and visitors. Slideshows are super easy to create, and infographics are becoming that way.

Okay, let me provide you with one more bit of stunning data that will get you thinking: Were you aware that the average Pinterest user clocks an average of 1 hour and 17 minutes on the site compared to 36 minutes on Twitter and 12.1 minutes on Facebook? Let’s hear it for visual content!

Email Newsletter Metrics You Need to be Keeping Abreast Of

Marketing, , , ,

Want to Gauge Your Email Newsletter’s Effectiveness? Here’s Some Metrics to Use

You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to build a visually attractive, content-rich email newsletter that’s your pride and joy. So, how’s that helping you?

There are several email metrics that apply directly to this, and keeping track of them will provide you with a leg up when you’re tweaking and optimizing for better results. Let’s examine some of these metrics and how you should understand them.

Newsletter metrics you need to monitor

  • Track your clicks and especially conversions – We assume you’re doing this work for a good reason, so it’s imperative to know how many of your readers are clicking and converting, no matter what you’re your conversion goals are. This is your money stat.
  • Monitor your bounce rates – A bounce rate is merely the number of emails that aren’t successfully delivered. You could have a “hard” bounce, which is when you have a bad address, or a “soft bounce”, where the inbox may be full or unavailable, or maybe a server issue. Your email provider will quickly let you know when your bounce rates are too high.
  • Check your open rates – Although not as vital as some of the other metrics, purely by virtue of the fact that there’s really no way to get a “real” accurate number because of image loads, it’s still worth using this as a guideline. An average email open rate is usually in the range of 15-20 percent, dependant upon the industry and the type of email.
  • Low delivery rates and high spam complaints – Your email delivery rate should be no less than 95 percent, and if that’s not the case, there might be a problem with dead addresses, or maybe your email provider. As far as spam goes, if you are getting more than 1 percent of spam complaints, you’ll very likely be sidelined by your email provider, because they take this very seriously.
  • Keep a watchful eye on unsubscribes – It’s normal to have people unsubscribe from your lists occasionally and for any number of good and bad reasons. What you should know is that a typical unsubscribe rate is less than 1 percent, and if you’re anywhere near 5 percent, you need to find out why. Your messages may have slipped off purpose, or here’s a topical one; your emails aren’t optimized for mobile! Since now half of all email is read on mobile, you need to make certain of this one.

Get Ready for a New Facebook Pages Update

Marketing, , ,

There is a new update for Facebook Pages coming our way, and it will need your attention if you are using your pages for anything in your business.

Luckily, the changes are primarily cosmetic, easy to implement, and will make your Pages easier for people to find out information about your business. Indeed, this is mostly a “rearranging the furniture” type of update, but it promises to be beneficial to business pages. Lets’ see how…

New changes to your Facebook Pages

  • Single column Timeline format – Your Timeline will now be found on the right side of the page, in a single column. The left side will have all of your pertinent business information, pictures and videos.
  • Wider pages and posts – The Page posts are going to span a healthy 511 pixels, which represents around a 25 percent increase over the room you had before. This means you can incorporate and feature larger images, making your content stand out visually.
  • Overlaid Like button – This is one that might cause a bit of consternation. The Like button is going to be overlaid onto your cover photo. Which means that if you happen to have a rather busy image on it, there is a possibility that the Like button will be hard to find, and get missed.
  • Apps are further down – Your Apps are now going to be positioned on the left side of the page. This is the least friendly of the changes, as the Apps can be pushed even further down the page by the new Similar Pages feature, making it hard for people to find your Apps.
  • Similar Pages – If somebody likes your page or one of your apps, a new feature called Similar Pages springs into view. This content might also contain your competitor’s pages. Hmmm…

Even though at the moment you have to opt to use the new design, there will very likely be a time when you won’t get that choice. Even if you aren’t thrilled by all the changes, at least it’s more organized and visually cleaner, so that’s a little something.<