Facebook Beacon for Your Local Business

The Facebook Beacon is Facebook's version of a local, notification system that will alert people who are in the vicinity, as they receive this information logged in to Facebook and have their Bluetooth operating.

This type of prompt can be used  in many ways and can have great impact in raising awareness about your business, positioning it to a specific market segment or promoting specific products and services to those targeted niches.

Many shoppers look favourably on receiving business messages that include key information, pictures, recommendations from their friends that have had experience with the business, a link to  access the site, etc.

The Facebook Beacon is a simple and free way to augment your businesses exposure to mobile users who maybe your perfect customer group.

You may request a Facebook Beacon on: 
https://m.facebook.com/business/a/facebook-bluetooth-beacons  for your business page. 

It’s an excellent way to increase the visibility of your business page for any people who are using Facebook nearby.

So until next time, good luck and good marketing.
Regards,
Daniele.

LinkedIn's New Showcase Pages Will Improve The Ability To Sell On LinkedIn

Newly Arrived

Most if not all businesses are perennially searching for better ways to promote their products and services via the world's preeminent, professional  networking site LinkedIn. The release of the new LinkedIn showcase pages is providing exactly that possibility.

Precise Targeting

These new LinkedIn showcase pages enable you to promote certain products or services to specific customer segments.

How Do Showcase Pages Differ From Company Pages

Showcase pages are an advance on the better known Linked company pages that many of you will already have in place and they now make it possible for a business to focus on a specific product or service that they would like to feature.

Starting with a traditional company page, you can now build a Showcase Page which is a separate entity with its own unique criteria, followers, updates and functions.  The way it works is that all your showcase pages are listed in the right column of your company page.

How To Set Up A Showcase Page

1.  Choose a Page Name

Select your page name. At this point you will want to take full advantage of SEO and include any keywords into that page name. For example for Deep Earth Gemstones you may want a page on diamonds so the URL would be: https://www.linkedIn.com/DeepEarthGemstones/Diamonds.

2. Build a Showcase Page

To build a showcase page, go to your company page and simply click on the down-pointing arrow next to Edit and press Create a Showcase Page from the drop-down menu.

Each LinkedIn company page can have as many as ten Showcase pages linked to that company page. claim up to ten showcase pages for your company.

3. Optimize the Page for Search

As is the case with everything on the internet it is vital to optimise the page for SEO purposes to help Google rank your page as high as possible on their search engine.
Apart from the page title there is an allocation of up to two hundred characters where again you can use the appropriate key words that will help position the page for your target audience.

AS well you should always include live back links to the on the website portion of your page and ensure to upload a logo and header imagewhich can be either a PNG, JPEG or GIF format. The maximum file size for the image is 2MB, and it must be 974 x 330 pixels or larger.

As always LinkedIn are coming up with new and exciting ways to provide additional value and functionality for businesses to better position, promote and commercialise their products to the right audience and in Showcases pages we see another way that smart businesses will do just that.

So until next time, good luck and good marketing.
Regards,
Daniele.

Google Improves Alignement between Dispaly Ads And Marketing Objectives

What is your marketing objective

As marketers we are all aware that we need to understand what any promotional tactic is trying to achieve before it even begins. Namely the promotional or marketing objective for that promotional activity. Google have now announced that to aid product managers in providing better alignment between these goals and the Google Ads that are being set up by businesses through the Google Display Network, it will now allow the campaign manager to nominate what the key objective is.

Depending on the nature of the business the key objective will vary of course. For example for an online lender it will be to funnel qualified leads to the corporate website and provide personal details through a capture page that will drive a face to face meeting.

 Whereas for a stationery retailer with thousands of stock items, it may be to drive actual eCommerce on the website and subsequent fulfillment of orders.

Whereas car retailers want potential owners to gain a better understanding of the range of cars, colours, features and prices that are available for them through the business.

Specific Focal Point Chosen

Based on this diversity Google have now unveiled an exciting new, easier approach that will allow you to build Google Display Campaigns where you can proactively choose the specific focus for your campaign based on these underlying promotional objectives.

This updated settings options is a natural extension of these different types of promotional aims and helps to provide key support in driving positive outcomes in one of the following three ways.

 Namely:

• Building better awareness: E.g. The Automobile show room wanting to position and promote its' new range of vehicles
• Influence consideration: E.g. A service provider that wants to demonstrate the level and consistency of service through the validation of numerous glowing endorsements on site.
• Drive action: E.g. A Caravan parts and accessories business that wants to drive the purchase of actual sales parts through the site via Magento, PayPal or other payment gateway.

As an advertiser you will be able to select your primary promotional objective on AdWords and the program will align you to most relevant bid settings and key word targeting for your needs.

To illustrate this, if your aim is to build awareness for a new product or brand that has little or no unprompted recall, AdWords will show bidding on viewable impression link which is designed to help to maximise the reach of ad campaign you are wanting to run.

Alternatively if your goal is to promote actual back end sales from the site, AdWords will show CPC Bidding so you pay only when a user is interested enough to click on your ad and be taken directly to your purpose designed landing page where they will have the option of buying the product.

Simplifying keyword selection and audience targeting

Additionally Google have also announced that it will be simpler to create keyword lists for your Display campaigns now with the updated process.

All that is required is that you provide your landing page URL and AdWords will automatically create suggested keyword that are personalised based directly on the  content of the landing page.

As an example a bread shop may have words such as: fresher bread, widest range of bread or healthiest bread, depending on what is actually written on the site's landing page.

As well Google will also display in-market and affinity audience ideas also based directly on your landing page content. As an example a comic book shop wanting collectors to visit their store may, AdWords may come up with comic book inspections as a possible search term that can be used.

Total Control of Campaign

As always, Google allow the promoter running the campaign to have full control of the campaign specifics where any changes that the business wants to make over time can always be mage quickly and easily. Importantly over time as the businesses position changes you will also be able to maintain or change your stated marketing objective or perhaps with no marketing objective if you prefer to do so.

Regardless then of what your product is, how long it has been on the market, its' cost or the nature of the market in which you operate, it is even simpler now to use the Google advertising tools and  perfectly align your campaign settings to your stated marketing goals.

As always should you wish to learn any more about marketing or any aspect of social or digital marketing just contact up directly and we will be pleased to discuss your needs further on: http://www.roadscholarstraining.com/services/accredited-courses.html

So until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Regards,

Daniele.

Slideshare Introduce New Lead Generation Tool

Worlds Leading Slide Sharing Facility

For at least ten years I have been telling anyone who will listen to me that Slideshare is the biggest with around seventy five million users and most respected slide sharing platform in the world which in my opinion is tragically overlooked and underutilised by most businesses especcially in Australia I'm very sad to say.

Over the last year and a half as I have literally presented in front of people in workshops and one on one coaching sessions for the Federally funded, Digital Enterprise Program I have been absolutely amazed as to how few businesses had an active role in Slideshare for their businesses. Without exaggeration I would put the number at around one percent of all businesses.

A Reason To Come On Board

So the scenario outlined above only means that most of you reading this post will now have another great reason for including Slideshare into your digital strategy. Namely that they have now announced the exciting new lead generation tool that will help you drive more business leads.

We know that most forms of visual content such as power-point style presentations, video and in more recent times the increasingly popular infographic, represent great ways to position, promote and ultimately drive qualified leads to your business through the broad strategy of content marketing where the business continues to provide additional value to both current and prospective customers.

Recently Slideshare announced the arrival of a new tool that will allow businesses to directly build their prospect list via the new Lead Generation tool. This tool will mean business owners can identify the individuals who are  looking at their content and importantly be able to connect with them.

How It Works

The new lead generation tool allows the marketing team to be able to gain greater insight into which segments are looking at the respective data and content and see if this is in line with the positioning the bsuiness has set itself.

In each case the person searching the content will be asked to fill in a simple capture form and that will provide you with the data you need to start better understanding who is looking at your content, what they need to learn and why.

Key Features of the New Tool

Convenient sign on: Convenient cross integration with LinkedIn so viewers can easily fill-out lead forms on the SlideShare platform with their LinkedIn profile sign on data.
Extended lead collection channels: Collection of data is now available through mobile devices
Enhanced customisation of forms: Businesses now are able to craft the precise questions relating to the key data they require for more effective segmentation of prospects
Automation integration: Effortless for businesses to align their Slideshare leads with their Hubspot and Marketo accounts to more effectively manage their incoming leads

This latest update to the already impressive Slideshare platform does nothing but make it an even more vital cog in any businesses digital arsenal of promotional options. I urge all of you to ensure that you make it part of yours.

Naturally if you need any assistance or training on any aspect of social or digital media marketing please contact us directly to have a chat about the many options available for you to use and enjoy. Click here to see the Nationally Accredited courses

So until next time, good luck and good marketing.
Regards,
Daniele.