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Buying Facebook Ads Directly

Facebook is the great advertising platform of our time. Were once television ads and billboard ads were the go to platforms for advertisers, they have now lost ground to Facebook ads. Retaliate1st discuss the reasons why you should focus on this platform for your advertising.

Customers Can Buy from You Without Leaving Facebook

This is huge for both your business, where can sell directly to a warm audience that you’ve built a strong relationship with, and for Facebook, which can help businesses sell more products, buy more ads, and have the whole thing take place on Facebook’s platform, without having users click away from the social media giant.

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It works by giving your customers the option to buy products in Facebook messenger. If they’ve already filled in their Name, address, phone number, etc. for their profile, all they have to do is click “pay.” If not, they can do so at point of purchase.

Payments will go through PayPal or Stripe. At this point, these are the only two usable payment platforms, and you can only sell in the U.S. However, both of these rules will likely change as the program grows.

Facebook ads

If you’ve ever fretted about the transition your customers make between Facebook and your landing or sales pages, now you don’t have to worry. If you crafted a great ad or promoted post, your customer can now buy with one click.

How to Sell In Messenger

This will take some finesse. Facebook is allowing click from ads in the newsfeed to be sent directly to messenger now. This is a slow roll-out, but it will take off soon enough. Obviously, some customers will be put off by having their messenger blow up with ads, but it seems Facebook will allow consumers the ability to choose who they receive ad messages from.

Once there, your customer can chat with a “sales bot” or they can buy direct. And, in a further move toward utilizing similar buy-sharing options as Amazon, Facebook will allow your customer to send the ad copy to their friends if they need help deciding between multiple products. So, if your customer can’t decide between the wing-tips and the quarter-brogues, they can now share it with their friends.

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This helps them take the plunge and make the purchase, and it exposed your products to an even larger pool of warm prospects.

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Boosting Leads Through Twitter Ads

Facebook and Instagram get the most attention when it comes to social media pay per click advertising. But, don’t neglect Twitter; it can be a great source of new leads and sales.

If, you do it the right way…

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What’s a Twitter Follower Worth

The first thing to figure out is what is a follower worth to you? “Follower” campaigns are the most popular, and cheapest ads to run on Twitter.

But, don’t blow your budget attracting followers until you run the numbers and figure out what a follower is worth. This can be tricky, as the metrics are not as helpful as they are on Facebook or Google. So, you’ll need to figure out the best method to track sales and legitimate leads that came directly from your followers.

This will look a lot like figuring out the lifetime value of a client, because that’s exactly what you’re doing.  Try to plan for the long term when running follower campaigns, and not focusing so much on cost per click and trading clicks for dollars. In this case, the dollars will come later. If you can figure how many, you’ll know how much to invest.

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Advantages to Twitter follower campaigns? Like Facebook, Twitter allows you to be very specific in your targeting – age, location, sex, interests, etc.

Disadvantages – if you don’t do the math first, you can end up overspending for followers that don’t buy from you.

Traditional Twitter Ads

You can also use Twitter ads to drive traffic and conversions.

The interface for ads is much like Facebook, so if you’ve used Facebook ads, you’ll have an advantage here. IF not, the program is not difficult to master. It’s a matter of targeting a very specific audience according to the parameters that bring you leads. Usually this is age, location, and interests.

You develop your creative, add a photo, and send users to yoru landing pages.

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Alternatively, you can create a Lead Generation Card where users can sign up (opt-in) directly on their Twitter feed. This again comes down to choosing a stellar picture, and strong, benefit-rich headlines. This can be a more simple lead generation effort as well, since this is a one-step process.

Advantages – decent analytics, highly-targeted demographics are available for your ads.

Disadvantages – the main disadvantage is figuring out conversion rates and long-term value of followers, clicks, and leads. This will take tracking, but if you can figure out the sweet spot for your business, Twitter can provide a steady stream of leads and sales.

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How To Optimize Your Thank You Pages to Increase Sales

Every page of your business website counts. Don’t waste one of the most important pages, the ‘Thank You’ page. Many businesses do this by leading buyers to a simple, near-blank page with little more than “Thank you for your order, check your email for the receipt.” If developed properly, the Thank You page can help you increase sales. It can also help gain social media followers, and build brand awareness. Wouldn’t you do anything to increase sales, so check out the Retaliate1st guide to increase sales.

5 Ways to Optimize Your Thank You Pages to Increase Sales

  1. Link to Your Strongest Content

Adding links to blogs and articles related to their purchase is a great way to keep your customers on your site while they’re in a buying state of mind.

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If your content is informative, but pulls them toward a sale, you will increase your sales just by driving “hot” traffic to these pages.
Plus, the extra views on these pages will help with Google’s rankings, so you win even if your customer doesn’t make a second purchase.

  1. Show Off Your Testimonials

Listing your best reviews and testimonials on your thank you page helps in two ways:

  • It helps reassure your customer that they’ve made a safe purchase, so it decreases buyer’s remorse
  • It shows your customer that you’re a great company, and gets them excited to do business with you again

If you link to strong content (as in number 1) under your testimonials, you should see a spike in both page views and sales.

New Product Debut

  1. Debut a New Product

Have something new that’s not on your site yet, or hasn’t been promoted heavily? Are you thinking of coming out with a new product or service? Show it to your customers while they’re still in a buyer’s mindset. If your product or service isn’t ready for sale, this is a great opportunity to encourage customers to sign up for a special mailing list. It’s a basic pre-sell, but it plays well on your Thank You pages because you can demonstrate value to someone who’s already convinced that you’re worthy of buying from.

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  1. Make New Friends

Thank you pages are excellent places to add members to your social media tribes. List your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pintrest, and other social media accounts and encourage buyers to follow you. If you can give a discount or something free for following, you’ll dramatically increase engagement.

  1. Discounts

Upselling on a thank you page is increased when you offer a “special” discount for customers. Tie it into your other products, specifically, and you’ll see an increase in sales.

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Best Days and Times to Make Sales Calls

Does your sales team make many sales calls to leads. Do they ever wonder what the best days are to perform these sales calls? Well there is a little science behind it and the Retaliate1st sales team provide their insights on what days and times are best to make sales calls.

Best Days and Times to Make Sales Calls

Wednesday and Thursday are by far the best days to call on prospects, with Friday coming in a distant third. Tuesday is the worst.

Why mid-week?

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Perhaps because it is mid-week, and most prospects will have a lull in their responsibilities, motivation, and to-do list. A sales call that would annoy them on Monday morning may be welcome on Wednesday afternoon.

Best Time for Sales Calls

4 pm is the best time of day to call sales leads, by far. Between 8 and 9-am was second, with the rest of the day coming in all over the map.

If you have an important sale to close, wait until the afternoon. This could be because prospects are at their “Weakest” as far as energy. It could result from boredom, similar to the mid-week phenomena. Whatever the reason, batch your most important sales calls for the morning or late afternoon.

Sales Calls and the Follow-Ups

Studies show that nearly 30% of leads are never contacted.

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Many salespeople and businesses fear making too many contacts with the same prospect, but the research shows that 6 seems to be the sweet spot for number of follow ups needed before significant contact is made.

  • Making 4+ calls lead to a 70% increase in conversions.
  • 80% of sales require 5+ follow ups
  • Over 60% of customers requesting info on your company will not make a purchase for at least three months, some will take as long as a year to buy. Combine this with the fact that 35% of sales go to the company that makes the first (or most recent) contact.

 

The fact that so many leads are never followed-up with is startling. If you are hurting for sales, the first thing you should do is make sure your salespeople are following up several times. If you view sales as a long-term process, with many taking almost a year to buy, you will see that consistent follow up is vital to growing your business.

What About Becoming a Pest?

Yes, some salespeople are overly aggressive, or follow up with information that is of no value to the client. There are entire libraries dedicated to the art of the follow up. Pick a few of the best sellers and study them. You can follow up effectively without becoming that damn salesperson again!

In fact, you can learn to make multiple follow up calls and emails, stay in front of your prospect, educate and help them, then make new sales and have a constantly-full sales funnel, without bothering your prospects.

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How To Optimize Web Forms for More Leads

Leads are the life-blood of any sales driven organization. Businesses focus on ways to create more sales opportunities and that means that leads become critical. While driving traffic is important, it is also critical to make sure there is a system in place to capture those leads as they come in. This is why Retaliate1st recommends making an effort to optimize your lead generation via perfecting your web forms. Here we list our 4 ways to optimize web forms for more leads.leads-generation

4 Ways to Optimize Web Forms for More Leads

  1. Don’t Neglect Your Headline

Almost all lead forms come with a space for a headline. Most companies waste this opportunity to gain a lead. You may be super excited about your product or service, but to the stranger who just landed on your page, you are just another business trying to get their email address. What can you do to turn stranger danger into a new business relationship?

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Promise something that they want, and deliver on it. But, get to the point. Your form’s headline should promise a benefit for your visitor – an ebook, a discount, free stuff, etc. Don’t waste prime site real estate being pithy or cute. Promise something that they want, then give it to them.

  1. Don’t Ask Too Many Questions

Or, ask the bare minimum. Studies by Marketing Experiments have shown, over and over, that the more fields you add to a lead form, the lower your opt-in rate. If you’re giving away a White Paper or Discount, then you may only need their email. First Name is usually a safe bet, too. Last Name is going to lower opt-ins a bit. Do you need their phone number? If you do, ask for it. If you’re selling a high-ticket item or service, or you set leads over the phone, then get the number. If you don’t really need it, don’t ask for it.

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The Phone Number field can decrease opt-ins by more than 5%. If you do need the phone field, consider making it optional. One site doubled their opt-in rate after adding “Optional” to their phone number field. What about physical address? Again, only ask if you absolutely need it. If you are doing home improvement services or selling home-related items, address may be needed, and simply asking for it will eliminate tire-kickers.

CTAs To Close Leads

  1. Benefit-Rich CTA

Does your call to action button display only the lowly “Submit.” If so, you’re losing leads every day. “Click Here” is simple, direct, and it works. So does adding the benefit – “Click Here for Your Free Estimate,” “Click Here to Download Your Free Book.”

  1. Test Forms

Like any other aspect of marketing, you won’t know what works best on your web forms until you test them. A simple A/B test is a good start. Continue until you find the version that pulls the most. Remember, all these percentages add up quickly when you have thousands or tens of thousands of visitors on your site daily. A 5% dip for a phone number, 4% more for the address field, 2% for “Birthday,” can cost you hundreds of leads per month. This makes testing a must.

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4 Places to Generate Ideas for Content Marketing

Marekting has many trends that rise and fall. The current trend that many marketers are focusing on is content marketing. Content marketing requires that a company creates content to power an inbound engine and drive leads or sales via their website. However, there is a flaw with content marketing. How do you come up with ideas for content? Especially as you start to scale the content up. Retaliate1st has pioneered content marketing for many companies, including start-ups in the pet, tech, wearable and app world. Here we make our 4 recommendations on how you can continually come up with content to power your content marketing and inbound strategy.

4 Places to Generate Ideas for Content Marketing

  1. Google Auto-Suggest

Google’s autosuggest feature is a treasure trove for content creators. Google suggests the actual phrases or questions that people are searching for, so you know that these autosuggests will make great page and blog titles.

Google makes these suggestions based on real searches. The most popular get placed in the auto-suggest categories. If you click on one, you’ll notice at the bottom of the page there are even more suggested links.

How do you use this data to your advantage?

If you have a food deliver service in Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse neighborhood, start by typing in “food delivery”

You’ll see results like:

  • Food delivery near me
  • Food delivery near me open
  • Food delivery Rittenhouse
  • Food deliveries near here

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You just found at least 4 article titles that will carry a ton of SEO value if they’re written and optimized well.

Customer Centric Content Marketing

The idea is to get into the mind of your customer. Play around with questions you’ve been asked.

A basic search for “can I order food” returns these suggestions:

  • Can I order food with paypal
  • Can I order food with a check
  • Can I order food to a hotel
  • Can I order food near here

Again, you have 4 SEO-rich titles and topics that people are actually searching for.

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  1. Trade Magazines

If you’re selling B2B services or products, trade magazines are loaded with ideas. Just because something has been written about doesn’t mean that you can’t offer a fresh perspective on the issue.

Plus, every magazine has a letters to the editor section. Again, what better place to address questions than those coming directly from your potential customers.

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Check the back of the magazine. If you’ve been reading it for a few months, you’ll notice a few advertisers that are listed consistently. This is because whatever they’re selling, readers are buying. Study the ads, the products, and services they sell and address these things on your site, in your newsletter, and in your content strategy.

Lead Generation Through Content Marketing

  1. Lead Forms

If your lead form has a text box with “how can we help you,” or if you have a help page on your site, the questions and concerns of your customers can not only help you create new content, but it will also help you from dealing with redundant issues.

If 15-people are writing in to ask where they can buy your widget in Green instead of red, then either make the answer clearer on your website, or address it in an FAQ. Either way, you have new content plus you won’t have to answer another 15-emails about the green vs red conundrum.

  1. Social Media

Searching hashtags, trends, or simply following brands that offer similar, or related, services to yours can help you get into the mind of potential customers. Is there a need out there not being filled? More importantly, is there a want going unsatisfied?

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Content Marketing –> SEO and Social Media

Can your business step in with the solution? Are a lot of Facebookers asking where they can find a product similar to yours? Or, are they confused about how a new app works? Find the questions, craft a response, post it to your website and social media channels. It will help your business climb in the Google rankings, and it will help your customers see why they should buy from you.

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3 Tips to Improve Your Instagram Photos

When it comes to marketing on Instagram, you can subscribe to a lot of theories on what works, but the one common thread among all marketers, and the research, is that your Instagram campaigns live and die with the quality of your Instagram photos.

Better Instagram photos = more views, more likes, more engagement and more sales.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at 3 ways to improve your marketing on Instagram, through better Instagram photos:

How To Improve Your Instagram Photos

  1. Use Your Phone’s Native Camera App

Using your phone’s camera is a better option than using Instagram’s camera. This is especially true if you have a newer version of the iPhone or Samsung Galaxy, both of which come with powerful cameras.

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Why is your phone’s camera better than Instagram’s?

  • You can take photos without filters
  • You can edit photos much more easily, and much more quickly, in your phone’s native camera app and editing software
  • You can set your phone’s cam to take pics that are 640 x 640, making them perfect for Instagram without having to crop
  • Most phones have more powerful zoom, clearer pictures, and better lighting
  • The free, or near-free, photo editing apps on smart phones are actually pretty powerful, and can help you enhance lighting, focus, remove red-eye, and make your IG pictures clear and eye-catching

Interesting Instagram Photos Excel

  1. Take Pictures of Interesting Things

This should be obvious, but we’ve all unfollowed a brand (or person) that insists on posting boring photos.
No matter what your product or service, there are opportunities to post photos of really dynamic content that will engage your followers.

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  • Before and after pics work well for weight loss products, home improvements, design, graphics, and clothing stores.
  • Photos of your product being modeled are always a safe bet. Research shows that including a human face in a picture of a product increase views (and sales). Have great clothes you’re selling? Put it on a model that is a slightly idealized version of your customer and do a photo shoot. One shoot can give you a strong catalogue of content.
  • Cool places – if you are an adventure traveler, restaurant, or you sell lifestyle, pictures of nature, especially breathtaking views, always perform well on Instagram
  • Food – we all love to look at pictures of food. If the pictures are bright, clear, and the food is colorful. This should be a no-brainer for restaurants. But, next time you’re on Instagram, check out how many clothing and watch dealers use food in their photo shoots. Elegant coffee displays are the focus of a picture, but the watch on the wrist of the woman with her hand poised on the cup is the real draw.

Instagram Photos Of People Are Most Liked

  1. Use Instagram Photos of People

This can be applied to using models, or taking pictures of your staff having fun, working, or doing interesting things.

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Remember, Instagram is simply another marketing channel. No matter where you’re selling, people want to buy from people, not faceless corporations. This is why product images featuring faces do so well. It’s also why any marketer worth a damn will tell you to include pictures of your staff on your website’s About page. Put a face on your Instagram and your brand identification (and sales) will grow.

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Increase Sales and Leads Using Instagram

Instagram has become the go to platform for millennial and Generation’s Z and Alpha. As the younger generations become the dominant spenders and marketing shifts towards them, platforms such as Instagram will increase their advertising revenue. This makes it a must for growth hackers to master. Retaliate1st have built multiple Instagram accounts into the millions of users and here we list our 5 ways to increase leads and sales using Instagram.

5 Ways to Increase Leads and Sales Using Instagram

  1. Picture Quality is Number 1

No matter what your business or service is, remember that picture quality is to Instagram marketing what headline strength is to print advertising.

You are competing with some high-quality photos on Instagram. Your business needs to stand out. Bright pictures out-pull darker hued shots.

Pictures with blue and light blue as the dominant color pulled 37% more likes than those set in other tones.

  1. Tell Your Story First, Market Second

Instagram marketing is still relatively new. Users and advertisers alike are blazing new territory. But, one rule that’s accepted by everyone is: no one likes in-your-face marketing in their feed.

It’s been said that Google ads are like a carnival barker, Facebook ads are like having a conversation on your front porch and anyone who walks by and is interested by the conversation is welcome to wander up and join in. Well, Instagram is more like telling a few friends about these gorgeous new shoes you bought, whipping out your phone, and showing them pics. They love them, and want to know where you got them.

Mastering the Instagram Feed

You can do this in your feed and with your ads. Simply tell your story through your visual content (pictures and video) and your captions. Most products will sell themselves if the pictures are of the highest quality. Now you just need to give followers a reason to click (free, sale, exclusive content, etc.)

  1. Track Traffic with Short Links

Measuring ROI on social media can be difficult at times. Measuring traffic from Instagram to your site shouldn’t be hard.

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Full links are harder to track than shortened ones, so consider services like bit.ly or TinyURL when posting links in your feed. They’re easier to track, and easier to read for your customers.

  1. Don’t Blow the Bio

Your bio page will get picked up on Google for searches you’re not even thinking about. Instagram is a huge site with a lot of traffic. Load your bio with useful information, and how it can benefit your customer, then link it to a landing page that captures user info. You won’t build a business overnight with this method, but over the long term you’ll attract a lot of leads that would’ve otherwise been lost.

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  1. Use Video – But Not Exclusively

Video, if done well, will capture more attention than pictures. It also allows you to bring your copywriting to life, giving your visitor a visual and auditory tour of your product or service.

But, don’t rely on video alone. Despite what cell phone companies’ commercials tell you, not everyone is walking around with an infinite supply of 4G service. Video can be slow to load, eat into data, and simply not work when your user is low on bars.

Don’t lose a customer because they became frustrated with a feed full of videos that they can’t watch.

Mix in pictures with the same message so you attract those who couldn’t connect with you in your video content.

 

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How To Write Ad Copy To Get Clicks On Facebook and Instagram

If you’ve ever hired a top-gun copywriter, or wracked your own brain for the best possible ad copy on Facebook and Instagram, only to come up with sub-par results, it may not be your words that sunk the ship.

The visual you choose can have a huge impact on the success of your ad copy and posts.

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5 Ways To Dominate With Ad Copy

  1. Brightly colored visuals, especially those with blue as the dominant color, attract 80% more readers than darker pictures. Both Instagram and Facebook use a white background and a lot of white space. Placing bright, colorful pictures in the info stream helps draw the attention of users.
  2. A recent study showed that nearly 70% of senior marketing execs felt that visual content (pictures, infographics, video, graphics, etc.) were a major part of their branding, marketing, and social media campaigns. Graphic ads are using very short copy combined with stunning visuals to build brands and increase leads on social media.
  3. Facebook Ads: ads and posts with relevant images got nearly 95% more views than those without a relevant picture. This should tell you that you not only need great photos with your ads, but that you should also keep the “zany picture to draw attention” tactic to a minimum. A picture of a clown with bloody fangs may draw the eye, but when Facebookers see that it’s attached to an ad about wristwatches, they’re going to look away. And, they may reject your brand in the future because your ads came off as dishonest.

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Advanced Ad Copy

  1. Infographics get three-times more shares and likes on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Most of your infographics should be purely informational, with a strong call to action built in.
  2. Web users followed directions nearly 350% better when they were showed the path through a visual vs. text only. This can be applied to your Facebook and Instagram ads in an effort to grab more leads. Helping people understand the process visually could land you triple the sign-ups and follows. Instagram posts get nearly 4x’s the likes when using a picture featuring a face. No matter what your product or service is, have it featured with real people to draw more customer attention.
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5 Best Tools for Tracking Your Website’s Performance

In 2016, we have to track everything and that includes your website’s performance. The performance of your website is critical to measuring your business success. We have to be able to see how it is converting your customers. Is your website driving them to your store, or convincing them to be buying online.

  1. Heatmaps

Heatmaps like those on CrazyEgg or Tableau, help you understand the way your customers are seeing your website.

You’ll get readouts on where their cursor lands, where they’re clicking (or trying to click), how long they’re viewing various parts of your website, and where they head for the door.

This is key because we all develop our business site’s with our knowledge of the products or service. Sure, we may try to introduce the connect to the new client, but having a true “beginner’s mind” is difficult.

Heat maps help us see what our customers see, where they go, and what they want, then adjust our business site to fit those needs. You’ll learn where to place your best content, which images are drawing attention, and which elements need to get the boot.

Analytics To Track Performance

You can also measure which elements on your site is distracting your visitors, pulling them from your main message. This is impossible to know without testing, so heatmaps provide real-time tracking that can increase your leads and sales.

  1. Google Analytics

Nothing new here, but Google’s tracking is still number one. While it’s not 100% accurate, no tracking system is. But, you’re getting data from the biggest search engine on Earth, so the numbers are reliable.

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Understating how to get the most out of Google Analytics is a science unto itself. If you have the budget for it, hire someone who can break down the numbers program in your goals (conversions, sales, etc.). and navigate the more intricate areas of the system. It will pay off with more traffic, more leads, and more sales.

Note: if you have an SEO frim running your site, they probably know analytics pretty well. However, make sure they know that your goal is to make money and grow your business, not perseverate over a .003% decrease in top exit page numbers (everyone has an exit page).

  1. Site Meter

A lesser version of Google Analytics, but allows for easy print out of 3-D graphics. This can be useful when presenting numbers to investors and bosses, and cuts out the leg work of taking Google’s stats and turning them into charts, graphs, and other visuals.

  1. Google Alerts/Social Mentions

If you are looking to track your brand building, invest some time in Google Alerts and Social Mentions. Both will let you know when your site, business, or brand has been mentioned in articles, blogs, or on social media.

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Marketing Analytics for Measuring Performance

For small businesses, especially those involved with content marketing, this is also a great way to easily monitor the web for those who scrape your site and repost your content. Rather than you taking the duplicate content penalty, you’ll know where it is and how to get your stuff taken down.

  1. Marketing Grader

Hubspot’s tool isn’t a true analytics tool, but it can help monitor your overall digital marketing and website efforts.

It will track progress on social media integration, SEO, blogging, and lead generation. The system scans your site and gives you a grade.

Checking in with this tool every quarter is a good way to measure overall progress, and can give you a glimpse into what the competition is doing.

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