Social Media Marketing…Does it Really Generate Customers?

May 14, 2024 | Social media marketing, Web Design

The Effectiveness of Social Media for Generating Customers

This week, I researched statistics of the effectiveness of social media. I tried hard to find statistics that show the social media is a waste of time. But, to my surprise, I was unable to find any that supported my claim that social media is like a black hole that gets us no where.

I guess the real question to ask yourself is who are you marketing to? Each generation responds to marketing efforts differently. Therefore, we might serve you better if we take each generation, what you provide and best marketing channel for your target market and focus on a different segment each week.

Type of Products or Services you Provide

Nearly 20% of Americans 65 and older are employed. In total, there are around 11 million Americans 65 or older who are still working today. This is important information if you are a company that provides business to business (B2B) products or services. If you provide products or services to consumers (B2C), this statistic is less important to you.

Marketing to Baby Boomers (1945-1965)

Boomers are very loyal to brands. Once they like a brand, it will take alot for them to switch. They appreciate up-sells such as an offer to get an extra 100 GB of storage for an extra $10 month. They love the rewards programs that give them a free gift once they spend enough to build up their rewards. In general, boomers aren’t impressed with discounts. They feel they earned the right to splurge once they retire.

Marketing channels

Traditional marketing channels such as newspaper, TV or radio works for this generation whether they are still working or not. Again, it depends on what you provide as a business.

Facebook is a good social media choice for those who sell to consumers especially when you use targeted ads. However, for B2B marketers, LinkedIn would be the better social media platform if you want to reach baby boomers who are buyers or run their own business or practice.

Baby boomers are watching video based apps and the time they spend on their phones has increased in ten years from 37 minutes in 2013 to 2 and a half hours in 2023. Learn more about this research.

Summary of Successful Marketing to Baby Boomers

  1. Appeal to the brand loyalty
  2. Offer up-sells and Rewards programs
  3. Traditional marketing like newspaper, radio or TV
  4. Facebook for B2C businesses
  5. Linked in for B2B businesses
  6. Video based apps

The Battle between Facebook and Websites

Mar 28, 2024 | Content Marketing, Social media marketing, Web Design

Maybe you didn’t know there was a battle between two of the top methods of digital marketing. Let me share what I’ve observed in the last few years.

The Problem.

Many business owners have been shunning websites for a number of reasons and using Facebook for their primary marketing platform. Both are good for marketing. Together they are very good! However, depending on the type of business you have, one is better than the other. Here are a few things to consider when you are trying to decide on your main marketing channel.

The Investment.

A professionally designed website can be a bit pricey but when you consider all that it can do for you when set up correctly, it will serve you well. Your website is an investment into your business. It’s the difference between buying a building or renting one; buying a truck or leasing one. Yes, your Facebook page is free but remember, you get what you pay for.

The Image.

A professional website shows your visitors that you are a serious business owner and you are in it for the long term. It says you took the time to set up a virtual space share your knowledge, products, or services with those you want to do business with and it shows that you care about how you’re perceived.

A website says you took the time to create a space just for your visitors to learn about you; to vet you or to communicate with you. By the time your visitors call you, they will know exactly how you can help them and they will have a good idea of what they can expect from you.

Privacy breeches are more prevalent with Facebook and anyone can steal your identity and pretend to be you. That can be extremely detrimental to a business owner.

The content.

A well designed website contains your content and that content stays in place until you take it away. You own it and it can’t be taken off your website unless you take it off. A website give you a place to provide as much content as you want to share with visitors and to use for marketing. Content marketing is an excellent way to bring visitors to your website and to show them your expertise.

With Facebook, you are using their platform and they can remove your content whenever they want for what ever reason. You are at the mercy of those who run the platform. Your content is shared only if Facebook allows it to be shared. Just because you added content to Facebook, doesn’t mean your target market will see it…unless you pay for it.

The Sales Team.

Think of your website as your 24-hour “sales team” ready at a moment’s notice to provide prospects with the information, products, or services they are searching for. Your virtual “sales team” doesn’t need benefits, or time off. It doesn’t need a raise and it cooperates with and enhances your marketing and operations. It’s out promoting your business even while you’re sleeping. Once you supply it with what it needs to do the job, it’s always prepared and ready for action. Visitors can stop by your website at any time, day or night and your “sales team” is ready for action!

Your Facebook “sales team” must continually feed more and more content into your free space. If they miss a few days, that content doesn’t get shared or it becomes dated. Even if your “sales team” shares your content continually on your Facebook page, the only visitors that can stop by and receive full access to your free space are Facebook users. So sharing more and more content every day becomes almost like an endless cycle and there’s no guarantee that your free space owners will share it.

The Brand.

Your website brand is a reflection of you and can be designed with whatever colors, fonts, content you desire. The list of colors and fonts is nearly endless. Facebook’s brand is it’s brand and doesn’t give you much of an option to personalize your free space. For the most part, you’re stuck with the Facebook blue. That’s their brand, not yours!

The Distractions.

When visitors come to your website, all they see are the virtual rooms you created for them. There are no distractions. They are in your business space and competitors aren’t shouting for your attention while they’re in your virtual building. You have their complete attention and you are the boss!

With your free space, visitors may see your content but at the same time they can easily peruse through your competitors content as well. It’s kind like a farmer’s market where tables are side by side and they can easily move from one table to the other limiting the full attention you receive from your own website.

The Summary

Please hear that I am not saying you shouldn’t use Facebook. It’s an excellent companion to your business website along with all the other popular social media platforms. Each platform has it’s primary audience and each is very helpful to boost your reputation and your reach.

LinkedIn’s primary audience is professionals doing business with other professionals. It’s best used for B2B companies to provide a place to network with others in that segment while Facebook is best for businesses selling to consumers (B2C). But, you must consider your industry, your target market, your priorities, and your goals for the future of your business when choosing your main marketing platform.

Using SEO to Boost Traffic to your Website

Mar 17, 2024 | Content Marketing, Mailing Lists, Social media marketing

Monday Morning Marketing

Using SEO to Boost Traffic to Your Site

This week we offer you tips to draw traffic to your landing pages and website by optimizing your website for the search engines (SEO)

  1. Make a list of words and phrases you want to rank for on search engines.

Do keyword researches online to determine which terms have high relevance and search volume.

Consider choosing terms with less competition.

Optimize the relevant pages by including the words and phrases on their content.

2. Metadata is used by search engines to determine the content of a page.

Your meta titles and meta descriptions must include relevant content and keyword phrases to move up your ranking.

3. Add Internal links to other pages on your website.

Identify keywords in your page and link them to pages with more content.

4. Optimize your website speed.

Google includes load speeds as ranking factors.

Optimize your images and videos before posting them on your site so they don’t need to be compressed or resized before displaying.

5. Be sure your website is mobile ready.

Learn more below about making your website mobile ready

What does it mean to make your website ready for the search engines?

 

1. Your website must be designed to be easily readable on your mobile phone.

This means your mobile optimized pages, when designed correctly, will resize themselves when viewed on a mobile phone rather than showing the entire website in one long image that no one can read.

2. Why is this Important?

Google considers this important in order for your website to rank higher in the search engines result pages (SERP) on mobile devices because more people are using their mobile devices to search for information and access the internet.

3. Google reports that 58% of all searches in Google are now done from mobile devices

Because of this trend, Google has now transitioned to a 100% mobile first index. This means that your website now needs to be designed from a mobile perspective rather than the desktop perspective. In other words, before designing your website to be optimized for the desktop; it’s more important to first design for the mobile device!

Next Week:

Reaching a Broader Audience with ADA Compliant Landing Pages

 

Using Social Media to Create Awareness

Mar 4, 2024 | Mailing Lists, Social media marketing

Monday Morning Marketing

Using Social Media to Create Awareness

by Jillian Stone

1. Decide what social media network is best for your target market and start posting here. You can always add more later. For example:

      • Facebook or Instagram work best for businesses who sell to consumers
      • LinkedIn or X (Twitter) work best for businesses selling to businesses

2. Post at least once a day and be sure to add a link to your landing page in the post. Be consistent. Remember building awareness takes time, so being visible on social media consistently is important.

For tips on WHAT to post check out our Facebook page and consider following us while you’re there.

3. Make sure your landing page is optimized for the search engines. More about that next week!

 

Creating Good Content for Your Website and Why it’s Important

Mar 1, 2024 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Small Business Marketing Strategy, Social media marketing, Web Design

Creating Good Content for Your Website and Why it’s Important

Often, in conversation, it’s not what you say, but how you say it that can make all the difference in the world. The same principal can be said for your website content. There are many ways content can be presented, and how it’s presented might make the difference between increasing customer interaction and a customer closing down your website as soon as it’s opened.

Video

Videos provide an entertaining way of presenting content in a short period of time. Because it allows for movement, videos can invoke more impact through motion graphics, visual effects, and musical scoring. Videos can be used to communicate different types of information such as how-tos, demonstrations, testimonials, facts, and statistics.

Charts and Graphs

These have been used for years for visually presenting data. They have their place particularly when providing data in business meetings or research. Statistics add more credibility to your content, but reading them in textual form make them hard to grasp. Turing text into a visualization like a chart or graph makes it easier for people to see why those figures are important.

Infographic

Being a designer, this is my favorite. Infographics have been around alot longer than we think.

Infographics are a great way to present study findings, statistics, and complex information in a way that users can easily grasp and understand. So instead of going through long texts, infographics presents all that essential information at a glance.

You might ask, how are these forms of content used in your marketing. The great news is that once you have them, they can be repurposed in many ways. For example, this article started as an email. The email is created like an outline; snippets of information so as not to force the reader to read through paragraphs of text.

For this blog article, we added a bit more text to the email format. After publishing it here, we post it to various social media platforms. Finally, fleshing out the “outline” more, we use the same content for our newsletter. Developing this process even further, you can create a series of articles on one topic, turn it into an e-book and offer it on your website for people to purchase and download.

As an example of “it’s not what you say, but how you say it,” I created an infographic based on the three forms of content mentioned at the beginning of this article. Which is more interesting to view? Which helps you grasp the data easier? Which takes less time to read?

 

Marketing with Social Media versus your own Website

Feb 5, 2024 | Social media marketing, Web Design

3 Reasons a Small Business Should Have a Professional Website from a Design Perspective

— By Jillian Stone

Home Cooked Meal vs. Fast Food

The difference between using Facebook for marketing versus a professionally designed website is like eating fast food versus eating a 5 course, home cooked meal.

When you have your own website, you have no limitations on how colorful, how interesting, how festive, how spicy, how many courses (pages) you want to have, etc. Having your own website allows you to express who YOU are; with social media, there are restrictions. However, social media platforms are great as a website companion. The two work together wonderfully!

Taking Advantage of e-Commerce

According to Statista, “In 2021, retail e-commerce sales amounted to approximately 5.2 trillion U.S. dollars worldwide. This figure is forecast to grow by 56 percent over the next years, reaching about 8.1 trillion dollars by 2026.”

Taking advantage of e-commerce gives you the opportunity to continue bringing in revenue even when your physical store or business is closed. Even service businesses with no products can take advantage of e-commerce.

Taking Control!

Why let social media dictate the terms and conditions the control over when your content is seen and who sees it?

Your credibility is super important. Without control over your content, anybody can create a page on social media with fake data. This is a concern for any business whose only marketing asset is social media. As a companion, social media is great! But every business needs their own platform to present themselves as they want to be perceived and to be able to control the content that is shown.

3 Reasons a Small Business Should Have a  Professional Website from a Technical Perspective

— By Charles H. Castano, Web and Cloud Services

Website Layout

Your website gives you the opportunity to control every aspect of its layout, making it a reflection of who you are, and how you want to be perceived by your visitors. Making the website simple to navigate and having visitors find what they need quickly makes them stay longer and want to return.

  e-Commerce Benefits

  • Lower overhead costs than a brick and mortar option
  • Reach a much larger customer base than a store
  • Develop a client contact list to stay in touch
  • Easier to manage inventory

Managing Content

Visitors come to your site for answers and solutions. The content you provide will determine whether you convert the visitor to a customer or a client. Content does not mean selling a visitor what you want; it mean giving them what they are looking for. Search engines emphasize ranking on content that answers questions or addressed visitor’s needs, rather than information about what you want them to get from you.

Skip to content