Were you too busy this September to read our digital marketing articles? Not a problem! We’ve put together brief summaries of each informative article that you can check out. If a post interests you, simply click on its title to read the full-length version!
Throughout September, we covered:
● How to Set Up an Instagram and Facebook Shop
● Facebook Marketing Do’s and Don’ts
● What Is Marketing Automation
● 8 Tips for Creating the Best Email Subject Lines
● 5 Marketing Tips and Ideas for Your Ecommerce Site
● 5 Powerful Restaurant Marketing Strategies
● How to Utilize Call to Action Buttons
Let’s take a look…
Instagram and Facebook now offer a new platform feature called Shop. Barely a year old, Shop is an eCommerce feature that enables your visitors to purchase your merchandise directly from your social profiles. Yes, by utilizing Shop, your Facebook profile is transformed into an eCommerce store unto itself, likewise your Instagram profile.
This article was a step-by-step how-to guide for setting up a Shop on Facebook. We chose to focus on setting up a Facebook Shop because it will easily link to Instagram, enabling you to sell on both platforms.
There were five major sections to the how-to guide, which covered the Facebook Shop itself, setting up Commerce Manager, importing your catalog of inventory items, selecting payment method options, and finally defining your shipping standards.
Your Facebook marketing strategies have the power to either grow your brand quickly or waste your time. You don’t want to be pouring your time and energy into using marketing strategies on Facebook that are destined to fail, which means that your top priority should be to research the strategies that will work and avoid the ones that won’t.
In no particular order, here are the biggest don’ts:
● Don’t buy Facebook “likes”
● Don’t constantly push your products or services
● Don’t use too many hashtags in your posts
● Don’t use click bait headings
● Don’t argue with customers, followers, and visitors in public
And here are the do’s:
● Do use your website to promote your Facebook page
● Do broadcast branded messages using Facebook Live
● Do respond quickly to Facebook comments and DMs
● Do post compelling content to start conversations
● Do share articles and other relevant information your followers will appreciate
In this article, we went on to define the different Facebook Business Manager administrative roles that you can assign to your employees and laid out five key marketing areas to be mindful of as you create, schedule, and manage your Facebook marketing, so be sure to read the full article when you can.
Automation is the process of replacing manual, human tasks with technologies. Setting up an online auto-debit to pay for a monthly bill is an example of automation. Instead of having to remember to pay that particular bill every month and going through the online process of electronically submitting a payment, you instead set up an auto-debit, and the online banking platform will handle the work of paying the bill on time every month.
Your marketing tasks can also be automated to save you time and effort, and reduce human errors. Marketing automation is defined as any technology that manages the digital marketing processes you ordinarily handle by hand. Marketing automation utilizes artificial intelligence to a degree, as well as machine-learning strategies, and can streamline multifunctional, omni-channel campaigns for you.
Any online platform that offers marketing automation in the form of Software as a Service, or SaaS, is considered a marketing automation platform. These platforms provide marketers with the tools to upload, organize, and schedule all of their digital marketing content and campaigns, including automating social media posts, blog article posts, and email marketing campaigns. Marketing automation platforms also integrate with content management systems (CMS) and customer relationship management (CRM) software to centralize all marketing into one software solution.
To learn more, check out the full article that goes into detail about social media automation, email automation, and other forms of marketing automation that can make your life easier.
The subject lines of your emails can either make or break the open rates of your email marketing campaigns. Creative subject lines influence recipients to open, read, and act on CTAs, all of which you want!
In this article, we laid out 8 tips for creating the best email subject lines, and also broke down how you can put our tips into practice, so be sure to read the full article if you need hands-on ideas. Otherwise, here are 8 types of email subject lines you can use to increase the open rates of your campaigns:
● The “how to” subject line
● The “mysterious” subject line
● The “scarcity” subject line
● The “countdown” subject line
● The “personalized” subject line
● The “emoji” subject line
● The “promotional” subject line
● The “follow up” subject line
Implementing the right digital marketing strategy can effectively increase the number of shoppers who visit your website as well as increase the number of sales transactions that occur daily. There are a handful of digital marketing strategies that will deliver powerful results regardless of your industry or market, which was the focus of our fifth September article.
Here are the five marketing tips and ideas that we covered to help eCommerce sites drive website traffic, turn visitors into customers, and increase revenue.
Your eCommerce website visitors will not be able to touch, examine, or handle the products you’re selling, which is why the visuals you provide on your site are so important. Instead of merely using a few product photos, include many high-res photos and a zoom-in function that visitors can use to examine the product in question.
Your eCommerce site should have built-in features that enable shoppers to create their own secure accounts. These accounts should also have a Wish List feature that shoppers can use to “save” items to their Wish Lists. You can design personalized email marketing campaigns to remind customers about their Wish List items.
User-generated content is any digital content that is created by users, consumers, and “regular people” and not by a company or brand. User-generated content that features your products or services is a form of word-of-mouth marketing. When business owners like you recycle user-generated content on their own platforms, it has the same effect. UGC tends to resonate with consumers.
ECommerce retailers should set up Shops on both their Facebook and Instagram social platforms. The marketing possibilities that will result from having an Instagram and Facebook Shop are endless. Once your Shop is functioning, you can tag specific Shop items within your social posts, Stories, and even in the description boxes of your Facebook Live broadcasts.
Our final marketing tip will help consumers emotionally connect with your brand, which is necessary if you want to gain and retain loyal eCommerce customers. Feature your company’s values in your marketing campaigns. In other words, we recommend that, first and foremost, you advertise what you stand for. Once you convey to your audience your brand’s ethos, then you can suggest relevant products that they might be interested in buying.
Effective content marketing campaigns have the power to increase SEO ranking as well as web traffic and convert visitors into customers. But what makes a content marketing campaign “effective”?
The fact of the matter is that no two businesses are completely the same, which means you aren’t going to find a one-size-fits all solution. Your content marketing strategy will need to be as unique as your brand, and speak to your unique audience.
To help you to define your audience and leverage their interests, here are the 5 content marketing tactics we covered in our sixth September article:
● Create brand buyer personas
● Launch multiple, targeted landing pages
● Segment your email recipient list
● Use adaptive content
● Curate content from other websites
The restaurant industry is chock-full of competition. In order to stand out and succeed, restaurateurs must provide diners with delicious meals and impeccable service, and that’s not all. Restaurants must also provide diners with convenience, community, and conversation. In other words, today’s diners expect to have an excellent experience, from the moment they decide to dine at your restaurant to the moment they sign the bill, and beyond.
For this reason, we dedicated one of our September articles to helping restaurants market their menus and locations to local diners. Here’s what you missed:
Mobile apps spell convenience, plain and simple. Does your restaurant offer customers a mobile app with ordering and payment options? This is not to be confused with a responsive web design that functions smoothly on smartphones, though it wouldn’t hurt to make sure your site is responsive. If you haven’t launched a mobile app for your restaurant, consider investing in a white-label app.
Successfully marketing your restaurant can be tricky due to the fact that you’re not aiming to target a nationwide or worldwide audience. Quite the opposite, in fact, your goal as a restaurateur is to draw a local crowd of customers to your business. Using the hashtag #foodie on Instagram and maintaining a recipe blog are actually not going to cut it. Instead, focus your marketing locally by enhancing your Google My Business page.
Customer loyalty rewards programs have long since been proven to be one of the most effective marketing strategies for increasing customer retention and boosting sales. For restaurants, loyalty programs can be especially beneficial because they incentivize diners to try new menu items, increase order sizes, and return more frequently. You’ll want to choose a loyalty platform that comes with a mobile app and integrates with your online ordering system.
It’s almost as though certain social media platforms were made for restaurant marketing. They say that experiencing a tasty meal begins with drinking in the sight of the food. You can give your diners a virtual taste of all that your restaurant has to offer by posting high quality photos of your dishes on Instagram and Facebook. An even better marketing idea is to include videos on Facebook Live, Instagram Stories, and YouTube that feature your chefs and cooks preparing your most popular meal items.
Consumers rely on customer reviews to help them make purchasing decisions. Unlike other types of businesses, restaurants face extreme challenges because they must provide excellent food and outstanding service. A perky waitress is not going to make up for a bland dish, for example, which means that one subpar aspect of a customer’s dining experience can lead to a low-star review. Restaurants are held to such a high standard, in fact, that you would be remiss to overlook the importance of online reputation management and marketing. Even if you receive a poor customer review, there’s a lot you can do to correct it both publicly and privately.
Our final September article covered how to create the type of CTAs that users can’t help but click.
Call to action buttons can be found in every type of digital marketing campaign, including email campaigns, PPC ads, social media marketing campaigns, and even SMS text campaigns. In indirect forms of digital marketing, like blogs, you will also find CTAs such as invitations to leave comments below a blog article and social media posts that ask followers to “like, share, and follow.”
Common examples of CTAs include:
● Sign Up
● Subscribe
● Learn More
● Get Started
But nothing we do here at FTx 360 is “common.” So, here are creative CTAs you can use in your next digital marketing campaign:
You can use a Free Trial CTA on your website landing page, in a paid social media advertisement, or anywhere in-between. But you’ll first need to decide whether the free trial should be for 30 days or 14 days. It’s also a good idea to include a feedback survey towards the end of the free trial period.
When you state the greatest benefit of your product or service, your call to action will be all the more powerful. This type of CTA—the “Obvious Benefit” CTA—can be used to make a strong argument to consumers. For example, consumers might not automatically know that your product ordinarily costs thousands of dollars. By including the regular retail value as part of your CTA strategy, you can effectively convince people to buy the item at its current discounted price.
Social Proof CTAs are all about proving how popular your brand, products, and services already are in order to convince consumers that they should give your business a try. In order to pull off using social proof in your CTAs, you’ll first have to gather data about your brand. Ask yourself, what can you brag about? It should come as no surprise that Social Proof CTAs work really well on social media. Try building a positive customer review into your Instagram CTA, or include the latest industry award your brand received in your next Facebook lead generation CTA.
That concludes all of the articles you missed this month. If you’d like to learn more about what FTx 360’s digital marketing services can do for your business, contact us to speak with a marketing specialist who knows your industry.
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