In this three-part series by Premo CEO Joanna Doven and Vice President of Digital Services Jason Anthony, we’ll explore the most common digital marketing blind spots faced by clients in the retail, hospitality and nonprofit industries. If you’re in charge of marketing for your organization, we hope these top blind spots will help you perfect your digital marketing strategy.
BLIND SPOT #1 – Stop overpaying facebook (or your ad agency) to run “likes” campaigns
It is now almost 2020. Social media companies have adapted their algorithms to ensure they make money (no, it’s not really free). This means that they want us to pay for getting our content seen. The change happened in 2017 when all of the sudden we noticed that the percentage of followers who engaged with content dipped to about 3 percent. It didn’t matter if you had 3 million fans or 300 — Facebook controls how much of your content shows up on fans’ newsfeeds. This is why you may hear phrases like: “organic reach is dead.”
So what does this mean for you? We get the importance of “likes”. It’s a vanity metric that makes your organization look important. But there’s a way to get likes through campaigns that are more inexpensive so that you get the vanity metric you want without the high campaign costs.
It also means that your organization needs to “pay to play” utilizing Facebook’s highly targeted digital ad platform. No, we don’t mean boosting posts. We mean creating target audiences and spot on calls to action that relate to your target and encourage them to do something. What is that something? Well — that takes us to #2.
BLIND SPOT #2 – Creative, Creative, Creative. If you want your audience to do something, you can’t skimp on the creative element!
Creative is a loaded word with more than one meaning. First, creative relates to your ad copy. How are you writing to get your audience’s attention? How are you going to grab them? Is your copy relevant to them, engaging and does it include some kind of an “aha” element? At Premo, we have great content writers, but it takes a certain skill and ethos to write for social ads. We know what works through trial and error, skill and good old-fashioned common sense.
BAD:
In this example, it seems that Starbucks tried to be witty, but it leaves the reader asking “What?”. The post is too wordy, it’s confusing and it doesn’t relate to the product. Social media posts should be clear and concise. Inside jokes or riddles will likely lose your audience.
GOOD:
This post is timely (posted around Mother’s Day), funny, eye-catching and it quickly gives the reader all the important information they need.
Good creative starts with your digital marketing strategy on a per audience basis. Second, strong creative connects emotionally with the “buyer” and takes them through a journey to act. What techniques will you deploy to get them to do what you need them to do, whether it’s subscribe up for your newsletter or schedule a consultation? And lastly, we have to remember the importance of strong visuals. If you have the budget, we always recommend video because when uploaded to Facebook’s platform, it’s given preference and ads perform better. Thus, you can reduce your cost per click and ideally, your cost per lead. This can be done with our in-house videographer at a very competitive rate.
BLIND SPOT #3 – Remember that most people get annoyed with ads. Make sure you lead them somewhere where they can get a taste, vs. an immediate paywall.
As a digital marketing firm, we’re always looking at our own social media feeds and inspecting ads. We’re seeing an increased trend in people commenting negatively right on the ad when it offends them in some way — or when the copy doesn’t match graphic, video or call to action. You can’t control for 100% positive sentiment, but you can use common-sense to ensure you’re not literally paying to piss off your audience. Here’s a recent example of an add gone wrong from an Ivy League school:
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