http://marketingland.com/7-things-cmos-need-know-paid-social-137014

If you have any kind of a marketing budget, you’re using paid social advertising. Whatever your vertical or business model, you know there’s at least one paid social channel that can help you reach the right audience.

But you probably knew all that back in 2013, too. Today’s paid social landscape is a lot different — and more mission-critical, with organic reach shrinking — than it was even six months ago, thanks to emergent channels and the rapid ascendance of new ad types from the major social players. If you haven’t taken a deep dive into where your paid social dollars are going, here are seven things you need to know today, starting with a general look and delving into some channel-specific updates.
Let’s get started.

Paid Social Can Cover Almost The Entire Funnel… For Any Size Budget

​Two years ago, you could have made a salient argument that paid social was good for brand awareness and not much else. Today, every paid social channel worth investing in has robust targeting, attractive ad types (including video ads), better conversion tracking, more flexible bidding, retargeting and even more advanced ways to put first-party data into play to engage people already affiliated with your brand.
Add to that the unique attribute of social proof (hey, your friends like us!) that paid social has always boasted, and you as a resourceful advertiser have all sorts of ways to push those folks down your funnel and toward a desired action. Social is still excellent at prospecting through methods like interest, behavior and competitor targeting, but it’s also better than ever at the steps that come next. Some channels, of course, are stronger at that than others, and we’ll get into that in a bit.
Oh, and even if you’re starting with $100 to spend, you can play. Get your CRM data uploaded into Facebook or Twitter to target the folks who already know you, create a lookalike or similar audience to reach a new base of users who look a lot like your customers, and watch the data roll in.

More Than Ever, Mobile Comes First  

Couple of fun facts for you: In Q2, mobile accounted for a whopping 88% of Twitter’s total advertising revenue and 76% of Facebook’s total advertising revenue. (Remember when Facebook had a mobile problem?)
For e-commerce especially, mobile still struggles at capturing the ultimate conversion. (It’s not easy to fill out all that billing/shipping info on your phone.) But mobile CPCs (costs per click) are generally far lower than desktop CPCs, and there are still plenty of ways to engage potential customers — and then retarget them later on desktop after they’ve pre-qualified themselves. And as the stats in the above paragraph show, your users are on mobile; if you want to get in front of them, you have no choice.
But remember: When you’re pulling users off their mobile feeds and onto your mobile site, that experience has to be smooth and compelling to justify the click. (The same is true of desktop, of course.) Make sure your messaging, tone and creative are aligned from ad to landing page.
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Just as importantly, make sure that the landing page itself is optimized for the mobile mentality, not simply resized from desktop. (3Q Digital, my employer, has a whitepaper that talks more about that, if you’re interested.) If the majority of a channel’s revenue is coming from mobile, and you’re simply tweaking the desktop experience, you’ve got it backwards.

Video’s Not The Future; Video’s The Present  

Facebook has developed already-popular video ads that work for both direct response and brand awareness (more on that later). YouTube is growing so fast, with mobile watch time doubling since last June, that it carried Google to an unexpected earnings surge last month. Those are the two major video ads players, but Twitter, Instagram and others have developed video ads in the last year, as well.
Basically, advertisers now have the ability to combine TV commercials with digital-era targeting and relatively low costs. And paid social video is an outstanding way to test out potential TV content — how it resonates with your target demographics, which calls to action work best — before you blow a ton of money on a TV placement.
If you don’t have video assets yet, now is the time to develop them; the channel capabilities are viable now, and CPCs are only going up as more content gets pushed out.
Facebook Is Crushing ItFacebook can’t match a user’s intent in-the-moment as well as search can, but that’s nearly its only limitation these days.
It can do direct response better than ever, thanks to the introduction of carousel ads and video ads that take users off the platform and onto advertisers’ websites. Its conversion tracking is far more advanced than its competitors’, as is its conversion-optimized bidding. It’s also got mobile lead gen ads in the works that could bring tons of new businesses into the fold.
It’s great for retargeting, of course; Custom Audiences functionality has always led the paid social field in giving advertisers profitable ways to leverage first-party data. As far as brand awareness and mid-funnel effectiveness goes, its Lookalike Audiences feature has a big leg up on Twitter’s Similar Users: a bigger user base, which means a much wider reach. And it’s even beefed up customer support with live chat and quicker phone response time, which is a huge step forward.

Should you dump all of your paid social budget into Facebook? No. The other channels, particularly Twitter, have different audiences well worth reaching and inherent advantages worth testing. But there’s really no reason to ignore Facebook at this point, no matter how poorly its ads might have performed when you first tested them out.
Patience Is A Virtue With Twitter CampaignsFact: Twitter’s user data isn’t as good as Facebook’s (is anyone’s?). This has real targeting implications: Interests are inferred, demographics (including gender) are inferred, and so on. Out of the gate, you have to plan for more and faster campaign optimizations, since the initial targeting is going to be fuzzier and likely won’t perform as desired.
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Our paid social team uses the following tactic in targeting: They make each campaign (whether it’s a user handle, hashtag or interest targeting) its own focus rather than lumping campaigns together, since the latter option limits your range of optimizations.
In any case, Twitter definitely has its strengths, especially for real-time event-based marketing, well-known brands and all things sports-related. But remember not to expect any campaign numbers to sparkle in the first few weeks; give your team time to roll up their sleeves and respond to the data before you make any big decisions on budget.  

LinkedIn Has Its Appeal, But It’s Falling Behind  

LinkedIn still has one huge advantage over its competitors: It lets advertisers target B2B decision makers on a business-oriented social publisher. But LinkedIn campaigns still regularly show inflated CPCs ($8–$9 is pretty typical), which means that CPAs have a long way to go to justify adoption in more brand marketing strategies.
LinkedIn has made some progress — an updated Campaign Manager, for one — but compared with its competitors, which have been introducing new ad types and targeting features at much higher frequencies, it has work to do to position itself to earn more marketing budget.
It’s Going To Get More CrowdedWe’ve covered the big players in this post (Google+, we hardly knew ye), but make sure to keep your eye on a groundswell of second-tier options: Reddit, Instagram and Tumblr, to name a few. Those platforms are just beginning to explore advertising, from Reddit’s small-budget self-service platform to Tumblr’s sponsored posts.
We wouldn’t advise jumping on any of these just yet, as early adopters tend to double as guinea pigs who are paying platforms for the right to help them work out initial bugs. But we recommend that you put them on your radar.
The next emergent channel has already emerged, of course: Pinterest’s Buyable Pins are available to select retailers on a direct basis and to any retailer using Shopify or Demandware. Buyable Pins are a form of Promoted Pins (any brand can do Promoted Pins on a CPC model), and they’ve got a big advantage in that they combine social advantages with keyword-based intent. At 3Q Digital, we think Pinterest could be the most important new platform for many of our clients going forward.
If you only skimmed this post to the end, I’ll boil it down for you: mobile, video, full funnel, more budget. Even if you don’t have advanced attribution solutions in place that show just how valuable paid social is to your overall marketing strategy, a well-run campaign will be enough proof on its own.
Just make sure your team is aligning your goals with the right channels and ad types and testing promising new features as they become available — which, as we all know, is just about every week. Good luck!

Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. 

There are many factors that determine ranking on the SERP for a local businesses.    However with a lot of recent changes there seems to be a lot of misinformation or dated information on what's most important when it comes to getting your business website ranked.   We will take a look at, and drill down into the Top 20 local search ranking factors as voted for by some of the worlds leading local SEO experts.

The local search survey conducted by Moz is a very useful litmus test as to what the general consensus is for local ranking factors moving into 2015.

1 City, County in Landing Page Title
2 Quality & Authority of Inbound Links to Domain
3 Quality & Authority of Inbound Links to Page
4 Physical Address in City of Search
5 Quality & Authority of Structured Citations
6 Product & Service Keyword in Website URL
7 Click-Through Rate from Search Results
8 City, County in Landing Page H1/H2 Tags
9 Consistency of Structured Citations
10 City, County in Most/All Website Title Tags
11 Diversity of Inbound Links to Domain
12 NAP Matching My Business Page
12 Geographic Keyword in Website URL
14 Quantity of Inbound Links to Domain
15 Location Keywords in Anchor Text of  Links
16 Diversity of Inbound Links to Landing Page
17 Proximity of Address to the Point of Search
18 Quality & Authority of Unstructured Citations
19 Proper Category Associations
20 Quantity of Structured Citations

What this list tells us, is that you can no longer rely on a few trusted search factors within local SEO. Local SEO still has it’s own unique factors but as algorithms change and get tweeked, we need to continually focus on getting the product in front of the customer, while maintaining a unified business structure across all properties.

Need help with your Local SEO?  Contact us today.  

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Website design, simply stated, is important and should be a focus for all online businesses. Whether you’ve paid someone to design your site, used a theme provided by your platform, or built it from scratch, we can all agree that a lot of time and resources are used throughout the process.  The same applies to your overlay designs.  Here's a quick look at four reasons why design is important for your website and your promotions:

Navigation
Quite possibly the most important part of design is how it applies to navigation. Good design makes it easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for while also creating an understandable flow. This is not only pleasant for visitors, but also leads to better onsite conversion which is the main goal!

Branding
The idea of a “brand” has become a major focal point for businesses, specifically online retailers. Design represents the look and feel of your brand and needs to be consistent throughout all aspects of your business. Solid branding grabs attention and establishes trust.

Content
​While there are certain things that can be communicated visually, you still need to use content to relay your message. Copy must be clearly written and easy to read. This includes factors like font type, text size, color, and layout. This is how you literally communicate with website visitors so be meticulous with this stuff.
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Trust
If your business can’t evoke a feeling of trust with visitors, then you probably won’t see much success. A well designed site with consistent branding establishes trust with visitors which increases the likelihood of them purchasing or returning.

Still have questions?  Contact us at Banyan Creative.  We would love to help!

You don't have to be a big-shot marketing expert with a huge budget to successfully market your small business. In fact, businesses everywhere use email marketing as a powerful tool to build customer relationships and attract and retain new clients. No matter your business, email marketing can work for you.  According to the Direct Marketing Association "Email marketing has an ROI of 4,300%"

If you’re not already leveraging the benefits of an email newsletter, it’s time to jump on the bandwagon.  Successful businesses work to ensure their newsletter designs are visually appealing and engaging to keep customers from immediately clicking the delete button.  The great news is that regardless of your marketing budget size you can send a great email newsletter with a little time and thoughtful planning.   Platforms like MailChimp, Constant Contact & CakeMail put you in the drivers seat. 

Create a well-designed email newsletter with these helpful guidelines for new email marketers:

1. Define your goals
Before you even think about your design, you’ll need to decide on a purpose for your newsletter. Are you trying to drive traffic to your website, talk about new products, educate and inform your readers, or all of the above? Your goals will be the force behind the design and distribution of your content.  Know the goal!  
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2. Don’t neglect the subject line
Just because someone signs up for your email list doesn’t mean he or she is actually going to open every email. This is where the subject line comes into play. The key is to give your readers a reason or incentive to click on the email right away.  Get creative with a new, out-of-the-box subject line for each email you send.  

3. Start with a header
A header should include the title of your newspaper, your company name and logo. There’s no need to find someone with graphic design experience, because you can easily create your own header using online DIY tools like Share As Image and Pixlr. Let your logo inspire the color scheme, using your company’s colors for borders and fonts to create a cohesive layout.

4. Stick with traditional fonts
A newsletter is not the time to start experimenting with fancy fonts. Pick one basic font, like Arial or Times New Roman, and use it consistently throughout the entire email.   Remember that people are mostly likely to open your email on a mobile device so simple is always better.

5. Keep it organized
Don’t intimidate your readers with one giant chunk of content. Instead, break it down into short sections with subheadings so it looks and reads more like a newspaper. If possible, use a template through an email service provider. This allows you to simply select a template, upload your photos and start writing.

6. Harmonize with social media
Take your email marketing efforts even further by linking with your social media accounts. Include links to each social account where current and potential customers can click to follow you on the channel of their choice.

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​7. Balance your content
Your email subscribers want to know: What’s in it for them? They didn’t join your mailing list just to read about your products or your latest promotional offer. As a rule of thumb, your newsletter should be 90 percent educational and only 10 percent promotional. Stay away from self-promotion and focus instead on creating a relationship with your customers by providing them with educational and relevant content.
Get ready to launch your email newsletter and watch it thrive. Grab the attention of your audience with a clean design and digestible content. With these tips, you’ll increase readability and customer engagement in no time at all.

Not sure how to get started with email marketing for your business?  Give us a call at Banyan Creative.