How to Market on Instagram

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If a picture is worth a thousand words then a video is probably worth a hundred thousand. Luckily Instagram has both and provides a great way for you to engage with users and spread your brand message. The founders of Instagram wanted a system whereby a relationship did not need to be established between users in order to view content. You simply follow whomever you wish, similar to Twitter. More importantly nearly 60% of users are under the age of 30, cough, Millennials, cough.

What businesses should post on Instagram

If you have a very visual brand, say a ski resort, you should be posting amazing images of scenery and guests having fun. You want potential customers to envy the view. If you’re a newspaper brand maybe you post images of journalists out on assignment, or showcase your personality with quirky office gags. The goal is to position your brand in an environment where people are seeking out content. For instance, don’t post a picture of a Coke, post a picture of friends enjoying one.

Should You Use Videos on Instagram?

Yes! According to NewsWhip engagement with Instagram videos is up 53% in 2017. Videos offer a more immersive engagement and allow brands a longer message. But similar to the above statement about photos you have to follow the same tactic. Don’t be boring, don’t be stale. Do be exciting and outside the box.

Pass the Hash…tag

Hashtags group images and videos together the same way tweets are grouped in Twitter. Sites such as Tag Blender or Tags for Likes show the most popular tags in addition to providing some recommendations based on your content. But be careful not to use tags that are irrelevant to your post.

Instagram is a great tool for brands to show off their personality. Don’t count on a ton of direct conversions, but Instagram is a born branding machine and if you think outside the box you can remain at top of mind for your target customer year-round.

The Death of Facebook Advertising

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OK, so we’re being a bit dramatic with the headline, but reports over the last week or so have not been kind to the beloved social media giant. Take the eMarketer report where they estimate usage to fall 3.4% year-over-year with the 12-17 age group. Or perhaps you saw the BuzzSumo article about Facebook engagement falling 20% year-over-year. Or, just take my own usage patterns and the fact that I rarely logon to Facebook but my 65-year-old mother does daily.

How To Target Customers on Facebook

So is Facebook really dead? Absolutely not. In fact that same eMarketer article points out that despite that 3.4% drop in usage the 12-17 age group still makes up 14.5 million people. As a marketer I feel like I could use 14.5 million customers. While usage and engagement will absolutely fluctuate over time as a marketer you must understand WHERE your customers are and HOW they want to receive messaging. Facebook provides amazing targeting capabilities, but remember that you are competing with baby photos and the latest political gaff.

  • Choose your messaging wisely : Brand reinforcement & passive voice may be better as opposed to the “Buy Now” message.
  • Be visual : There’s a reason Instagram is getting more popular as the younger generation is incredibly visual and seems to prefer scanning over reading, so what imagery can your brand leverage?
  • Please don’t get political : First off you might get blocked, but secondly no matter the issue there are always opposing views and they spread like wildfire via social media channels.
  • Target & Specify : The targeting capabilities are nearly endless on Facebook so use them to your advantage and craft messaging and imagery that speaks to that consumer

So How Do I Target Millennials?

Remember that the baby boomers and generation X seemed impossible to target at first. Take a moment to map out your target audiences and jot down their wants and needs. Remember that “Millennials” is a very vague term and within that population there are several sub-segments. Then evaluate where they spend their time and craft messaging specific to those wants and needs for the particular channel.

Facebook is not dead, but how the audience uses it has changed a lot over the years and thus your marketing needs to change right along with it!

Why Analytics Projects Fail

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“Hey, we’re launching this Commerce site and we need to know if we made more money, can we track that?” I’m paraphrasing, but seriously, this happened. The first ‘shake my head’ moment would be that a site is nearly ready to launch without fully understanding HOW to track it. The second is looking at this project in a vacuum, assuming this is a piece of a larger strategy. There I go again, assuming.

How to win at web analytics

Ready for the simplest answer in the world? Plan! It’s really that easy. You don’t need a data analyst to tell you what the business goals are. You may need them to uncover deep metrics that lead to better sales, but your overall goals should be about the business as a whole. So when you start discussing a new project YOU should be the person that says:

  1. What metrics will we look at to deem this project a success?
  2. What is our plan for ensuring we can track those metrics?

We always like to do analytics tagging guides during the wireframe or design phase of website redesigns. This is because often one of those ‘necessary metrics’ will require some level of development assistance. Better the developer team knows about this before they get too far down the line. It also helps to understand what kind of advanced tracking you may need, such as events or custom dimensions.

Don’t do piece-meal analytics

It is a minimal effort to apply Google Tag Manager code across the entire site as it is to do it on a single page. Yet I have been approached numerous times to implement GTM on simply the order confirmation page for commerce tracking. This is reason number two of why a lot of analytics projects fail because it often is never thought of as a whole. Do yourself a favor, even if you are only implementing a new site section make sure to revisit your analytics strategy to ensure all of the pieces fit together nicely!

If you need help with this we are happy to help, but just by keeping the two simple questions listed above you will be lightyears ahead of many of your competitors!

Don’t Bother Me, I’m At Work

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Targeting can be so granular these days. A lot of marketers we talk to use “targeting” as a sort of new buzzword to show how cutting edge they are. Big data didn’t help that conversation because now you’re almost forced into some level of hyper-targeting. The problem is that being too specific can really backfire on your marketing efforts.

I Know Where You Live

As a previous customer of yours you may have my home address and thus can target me in some very specific ways. Lets say you live in Arvada, CO with a zip code of 80001. If I target the Denver DMA I will reach you, but what if I want to hype up a new store opening in your city? Maybe I target all customers in the city of Arvada. Or even more granular, maybe I target by zip code. This is all possible of course, but what if you are a restaurant hyping your lunch specials?

But Are You Home?

In the above example I might send that customer a message about our great lunch special, but alas, they aren’t home. Instead they are at work, in an office out in downtown Denver and absolutely not willing to drive home for a simple lunch special. Thus my efforts would be wasted because even though that message may reach that customer it is absolutely not the right time nor is it the right message.

What Am I To Do?

When you strategize your marketing plan you must consider these things. Instead of using a zipcode database maybe you use geo-targeting by text or mobile display ads? Or, maybe you push a breakfast or dinner special instead? If you don’t think through when and how your message will be received you are risking A) wasted efforts/money and B) making your customer mad and unsubscribing. So target wisely and remember that just because you CAN doesn’t always mean you SHOULD.

Getting Twitter Engagement

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Ever followed someone Live-Tweeting at a conference? Worse, ever followed someone Live-Tweeting and actually been at the same conference? Twitter is a great vehicle to push out content, but the biggest mistake we see people making is simply re-hashing of previously available content. The Re-Tweet feature is a great way to let your followers know you think something is important, but always make sure to add your own little spin on the why! Recently our thoughts on Twitter engagement were confirmed when we added our own spin to a Live-Tweet. Instead of simply pushing out verbatim what speakers were saying our own Brandon Hess decided to doodle away and cover the main themes of each presentation in a creative way. We both weren’t sure if people would think it was stupid or not, but hey, why not. It was something different, something creative, and something more interesting than the simple Live-Tweet. Apparently this resonated with our Twitter audience because we were able to increase our Tweet Impressions by 30,000% (seriously, those 0’s are real) because several different influencers found this more interesting than the myriad of other mundane tweets coming out of MozCon. So let this be a reminder to stand out in the crowd, don’t just do what everyone else is doing, be weird, be noticed, get exposure!

Should You Develop A Mobile App

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While on our way back from MozCon in Seattle (awesome event!) I found myself sitting next to some twenty-something newly hired employees from a national outdoor brand. They were on their way to a training event where one of the topics was to discuss the new mobile app in development. As I glanced over to the slides (seriously, if you’re developing something that is confidential maybe don’t peruse it on the plane without a screen blocker) I noticed that the reasonings for building the app were simply based on the fact that “app usage continues to grow”. While this is true it is not a reason to jump into the app game.

One of the biggest reasons that a company should build an app is to make information or actions even more accessible than they already are. Ally’s mobile banking apps make it easy to deposit checks. Amazon makes it easy to purchase items on the fly. ESPN makes it easy for me to update my fantasy baseball roster. These more single-minded actions are great ways to make interacting with your customers easier. As content starts to live centrally in databases as opposed to on websites your information can be sent where ever and whenever for easier direct access to the consumer. A mobile app should be just one of the several vehicles you use to distribute your content so use it wisely!

Back to the outdoor brand. They make outdoor products and this app was more about the experiencing of those products, for instance maybe displaying the weather (NOTE: This is just an example and not specifically in their app). One the one hand this could be great brand recognition, maybe you try and upsell a raincoat when the weather is bad, but I cannot imagine those one-off purchases can pay off the investment. My advice is stick to what you know and don’t try and serve up content you wouldn’t normally serve on your website, make current actions or information easier for users to engage with, and make sure there is positive upside (brand or financial). Don’t just create an app because “it’s trendy” instead create one because it meets your goal objectives. Consider this… I wonder how much easier and cheaper it might be to simply purchase targeted mobile ads on weather sites when it’s raining?

Our MozCon Drawings

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We got a little creative while taking in all of the amazing presentations from MozCon!  (Note: Sadly, we only have half of Day 2 as Brandon’s Surface battery died halfway through the day.)

Check’em out below:

Google’s Trojan Horse : Rand Fishkin

Too Much Choice : Dawn Anderson

AB SEO Testing : Stephanie Chang

Data-driven Content : Heather Physioc

Building Communities : Tara Reed

Cloud-First : Cindy Krum

Growing Business Goals : Matt Barby

Happier Marketer : Tara Nicholle

Paid Promotion : Kane Jamison

Site Migrations : Jayna Grassel

Reverse Engineering Google : Rob Bucci

Thanks Not Ranks : Wil Reynolds

Reddit Upvoting : Daniel Russell

Video : Phil Nottingham

Video advertising Phil Nottingham mozcon

Chat Bots : Purna Virji

Chat bots Purna virji mozcon

Email Marketing : Justine Jordan

Email marketing Justine Jordan mozcon

Content Marketing : Ian Lurie

Content marketing Ian Lurie MozCon

7 Data Driven Design Tools to Get Your Site Converting

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Data-Driven design is the simple idea that the design of your website (product, etc) can benefit from being informed by both quantitative (ex: A/B testing) and qualitative (ex: User feedback) data.

That of course is the simple explanation.  As most of us know, simple ideas typically are followed by complex questions when trying to implement them into existing organizations.

Oli Gardner’s speech at MozCon 2017 (happening now, link to come!) and a 2013 article by Smashing Magazine titled “Data-Driven Design in the Real World” does a great job of answering the majority of those questions and is very much worth your time.

Knowing the difference between Quantitative and Qualitative Data is the first thing.  A great definition by Smashing Magazine is:

  • Quantitative data
    Numerical data that shows the who, what, when and where.
  • Qualitative data
    Non-numerical data that demonstrates the why or how.

So, great, where do I get this data from then?  I’m glad you asked.

Quantitative Data-Driven Design Tools

This list assumes you’re already using an Analytics platform such as Adobe SiteCatalyst, Google Analytics, etc.  If you’re not, then you should definitely start there.

The below are a list data-drive design toolsets designed to gather quantitative data for your design strategies.  The vast majority of these are not surprisingly, Website Testing platforms (A/B, Multivariate) and provide real data on what design updates perform better on a numerical basis.

Unbounce

Unbounce Landing Page Testing

With a focus on split testing testing campaign landing pages, Unbounce provides incredibly useful data that can help improve the design of your campaign landing pages.  Better yet, it easily integrates in to most paid advertising workflows by giving you a singular landing page URL to use for advertising platforms like Google AdWords and others.

Optimizely

Optimizely A/B Testing

While Optimizely used to be a very similar product to other website A/B, multivariate testing platforms like Visual Website Optimizer, recently Optimizely has begun to broaden their offering into mobile app, engagement and more.  However, Optimizely at it’s core is built as a design optimization tool and does that job well but can be a bit daunting to a newcomers given the complexity of it’s toolset.

Visual Website Optimizer

Visual Website Optimizer

Visual Website Optimizer and Optimizely offer a lot of similar features but where VWO shines is in it’s ease-of-use compared to Optimizely.  While it may lack a few of the features and deeper complexity that Optimizely has begun to add, VWO keeps to what it does best which is user-friendly website optimization.

Google Optimize

Google Optimize A/B testing

Google Optimize is the latest iteration of Google’s Content Experiments and Website Optimizer products and by far it’s best showing.   While similar in features to VWO and Optimizely, where Google Optimize shines is its integration with Google Analytics and their focus on making their toolset incredibly user friendly.  For those with Analytics 360, Google also offers a similar Optimize 360 level of product.

 

Qualitative Data-Driven Design Tools

UserTesting

User Testing

A popular user testing platform, User Testing allows you to create simple or complex user tests with strict qualifying questions to ensure that those providing feedback closely match your desired buyer personas and demographics.  As well, User Testing has a very clear ranking system for testers to encourage them to given quality, relevant feedback to your tests.

Usability Hub

Usability Hub Testing

Usability Hub straddles the divide between Qualitative and Quantatitive data given it’s product offerings and their individual focuses but is a powerful tool when your design decisions are more specific.  Offering user-testing that focuses on navigation, click tests and first impressions, it’s one of the more comprehensive Qualitative data-driven design toolsets.

Five Second Test & Question Tests (Usability Hub)

5 Second Test 

While a recent addition to the Usability Hub suite, I felt the 5-second Test warranted a separate mention given it’s incredibly simple and powerful premise.  With a focus on simply recording a user’s first impression of a design, the 5-second Test has been a long favorite of UX and Usability professionals when trying to get quick, simple user feedback for a potential design.

 

Developing Audience Personas

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I’m a fan of paddle boarding while my buddy can barely stand up on one. We are both the same age, males, similar household income & educations levels. If you were a travel site and showed a picture of paddle boarders you’d certainly peak my interest, but what about his? Understanding your audience is more important than ever but all too often the step of developing personas for your audience goes undone. Here a few quick things you can do without going too in-depth.

  • Write down a list of all the different types of customers who engage with you
  • Highlight the ones that drive the largest value to your business
  • Jot down the needs & wants of those audiences, not just of your company, but in life
  • Write a positioning sentence for each audience that you feel they’d be receptive to
  • Review the differences between them all

This short exercise can provide so much insight into how you ‘should’ be marketing to your audiences. The next step is to understand how to reach your audiences with the messaging you develop and you’ll be surprised at how this might differ across personas as well. Take the time to do some targeting and your strategy will thank you (and so will your CEO).

Bluefin Strategy heading to MozCon 2017 in Seattle

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On July 17 through July 19th, Bluefin Strategy will be attending MozCon 2017 in Seattle.   We’re excited to get to see some talented speakers, meet with fellow marketers, meet face to face with clients (both current and potential) and most importantly, take in a bit of charming Seattle.

If you’ll be attending MozCon, let us know as we’d love to buy you a coffee (Seattle joke) and talk shop.  More importantly, we’ll be doing an exciting giveaway just for MozCon so track us down if you’re in attendance or follow us on Twitter (@bluefinstrategy) or #mozcon to find out the details between July 16th through July 19th.

Bluefin is attending MozCon 2017 in Seattle Washington