Release Notes: Jivox launches purchase predictions for eCommerce

The solution generates and actions real-time purchase predictions.

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Why SEOs should care about brand

Brand is already affecting the performance we are held accountable for, so we can use the data we have as SEOs to benefit the whole company.

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5 tips for starting international PPC

Be ready to watch for nuances of your targeted regions and adapt your strategy on a regional basis as you begin to track performance.

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Google adds CCPA opt-out handling for publishers in Ad Manager, AdMob

Publishers can also start testing the Funding Choices integration with IAB Europe’s Transparency and Consent Framework for GDPR.

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Using Facebook Live to Quickly Create Content

Need to create more content but don’t have a lot of time? Have you considered using Facebook Live to speed up your content creation process? To explore how to use Facebook Live to quickly create content, I interview Ian Anderson Gray on the Social Media Marketing Podcast. Ian is a live video expert. He’s host […]

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Did the Facebook Ads boycott actually work?

Ad spending data from thousands of advertisers suggests the boycott had little impact on Facebook’s revenues.

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Facebook’s default Limited Data Use period ends Aug. 1: How to stay CCPA compliant

Advertisers can now opt to extend the LDU transition period to October.

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Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook set to preview antitrust defenses before Congress

Sure to be a marathon, the hearings could be dramatic or incredibly dull.

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Set Your Marketing Ablaze: Ryan Stewart Talks Cannabis Marketing on Marketing Smarts [Podcast]

To celebrate episode 420 of the Marketing Smarts podcast, Webris founder and CMO Ryan Stewart joins us to discuss cannabis marketing for B2B and B2C organizations. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

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Set Your Marketing Ablaze: Ryan Stewart Talks Cannabis Marketing on Marketing Smarts [Podcast]

To celebrate episode 420 of the Marketing Smarts podcast, Webris founder and CMO Ryan Stewart joins us to discuss cannabis marketing for B2B and B2C organizations. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

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Here’s an alternative to cookies for user tracking

Instead of having your analytics toolset read a cookie, pass a unique identifier associated with the user ID. Learn how to do it and keep it privacy compliant.

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Expert tips on using Facebook for your small business

As an owner or employee of a small business, we know your time is limited. Marketing isn’t your only hat and if you’re confused on where to start for Facebook, we’re here to help. Over 90 million small businesses use Facebook and its related products.

There are many reasons for a small business to use Facebook. The network boasts 2.45 billion monthly active users and 74% of its adult users who earn more than $75k are on the platform.

Not only does Facebook cover a wide demographic range but it also serves as a multi-use platform for small businesses. Potential customers use Facebook to discover new businesses, research them, receive ads and more. Having a Facebook Page establishes brand credibility and for some businesses, can take care of a customer from start to finish without ever leaving the site.

From setting up a Page to the promotion, here are some expert tips on how to get the most out of your Facebook Page as a small business.

Facebook Page setup for small businesses

Facebook offers a wide range of products so it can be understandably daunting to figure out what works best for you. If you’re starting fresh on a Facebook Page or it’s been a while since you performed a Facebook audit, these tips are for you. Not every feature is meant for every type of business, but it’s especially important for small businesses is making sure everything is up to date.

Choose the right category & template

You can change your categories, subcategories and templates anytime so don’t sweat if you don’t pick the right one at the beginning. However, refining to the right selection is specifically important for small businesses because categories are key for discovery, and templates unlock important features like shops and reviews.

Customize your tabs

When you go through the Page templates, you’ll be able to see which tabs are available to you. After applying the template, you’ll then be able to hide and add select tabs, as well as rearrange their order. So, for example, if you think you’ll be investing in a video marketing strategy, then you should move the Videos tab up further in the lineup.

Customize CTA button & link a catalog

If you’re a service or product-based business, then taking the time to set up your call-to-action button and linking your product catalog is important. These features allow your customers to book directly or purchase from your Page without ever leaving the site.

PRUDY Braiding Studio lists its services and has a CTA button for booking appointments. When a customer is interested in a service, they can click it to learn more and then use the button to book their appointment. This flow provides a seamless experience for customers.

At the time of this writing, Facebook Shops is rolling out to all businesses as a way for them to promote new products.

Tip: A bonus for setting up these features is that they also become available to you if you have a linked Instagram account. Set this up once for two networks.

Set up Messenger & more

A prime advantage of being a small business is that you’re more nimble than the larger ones. This means that direct communication with customers via Messenger might not need to go through as many approval hoops.

Messenger has evolved from a peer-to-peer chat box to a customer service platform. Add your availability times, FAQs and even automated responses.

The above are just the basics for setting up a Facebook Page for a small business. There are far more tips you can explore, including using Facebook Business Manager to manage multiple permissions and learning about the verification process to further establish your brand credibility.

Facebook Page promotion & execution

Once your Facebook Page is set up to your liking, it’s time for promotions and posts to begin. Explore a variety of post ideas to bring in more engagement and consider using a content calendar to plan out your work. Having this is in place helps you understand what’s missing and how to space out your posts.

Run occasional discounts or flash sales

No one likes to miss out on deals. The latest Sprout Social Index indicates that 40% of consumers follow brands on social media to learn about promotions and discounts. Why not give them what they want?

To enhance your social promotions, use Facebook’s ad offer feature so you can track how many are actually taking advantage of the sale.

Cross-promote your content

As a small business, you need to be savvy about how you use your content. One platform’s content could be reused on another if the audience and goals fit. A small tweak in caption is less time consuming than creating fresh content.

Even better, if you use Instagram Stories frequently, you can link your Facebook Stories to them so every time you publish Stories on Instagram, you also publish the same content to Facebook.

Set up expectations for social customer service

The same Sprout Social Index report found that when consumers follow brands on social media, 74% of them will reach out for customer service or support. If you’re going to use Facebook as a platform for social customer service, you’ll need to set up those expectations beforehand with clear information for your customers. Don’t wait for someone to message and then wonder what the next step is going to be or when they’ll hear back.

As mentioned earlier, Messenger has multiple ways for you to manage this expectation, including your own availability for responding to messages. Your away message here should include your hours and helpful links if you have those available.

Schedule posts

Once you have the content and calendar all ready to go, it’s time to schedule all those posts. Facebook has a robust native scheduler or you can use software like Sprout to help manage posts across multiple platforms.

The Sprout schedule not only shows drafts and scheduled posts but the ViralPost feature will automatically schedule based on your brand’s highest engagement times. You may not need a scheduling tool if you’re just starting your social presence, but over time you’ll likely find saving the time and effort for other parts of your social strategy to be an advantage.

Learn more about Facebook for small business

Facebook isn’t a set-up-and-done kind of social media platform. It’s constantly evolving in features, ads and newsfeed algorithms. Your campaign strategy from last year might not work as well this year if you repeat it without consideration of new social trends and features. Because of this constant evolution, it’s important to continue learning and exploring new strategies.

Custom audiences for ads

One of the strongest ways to advertise on Facebook is to use the custom audience feature. You can retarget those who have visited your website, engaged with your ads and most recently, taken certain shopping actions. Custom audiences take advantage of sources that you already have in place, like a newsletter list, and advertises to them. These people are likely more receptive to the ads because they’ve willingly followed or interacted with you already.

Review analytics

Without analytics, you can easily find yourself floundering in the midst of all your content efforts. How do you know if a post was successful if you don’t look at how it performed? Facebook’s native Insights tab gives you a plethora of information from engagement to clicks to Page actions.

However, with business growing, you might find yourself with a need to present analytics graphics to investors or management. Analytics tools like Sprout help you easily understand what’s going on with your Page and will generate presentation-ready graphics for you with the click of a button.

Keep up on new features

As mentioned before, Facebook is not a static platform. New features are constantly added and the advantage of being a small business is that you can easily test these out without a complex and time-consuming chain of approvals and inputs.

For example, your business might benefit from adding a Shop feature, allowing you to tag products on a post and for consumers to purchase from it. A larger business may have difficulty linking a huge catalog but a small business with a focused offering could do it easily.

COVID–19 grants

With the COVID–19 pandemic severely impacting small business operations, Facebook announced a $100 million cash grant for small businesses and an additional $100 million to Black-owned small businesses, creators and nonprofits. Take a moment to see if you qualify for the program.

Take Facebook for Business courses

It’s to Facebook’s advantage for business owners to get the most out of their platform. Because of this, the company created an entire resource library for businesses. The resources range from new features relevant to businesses to singular courses to helpful case studies for inspiration. Exploring resources like this and reading about new Facebook strategies puts you ahead of the curve and at a competitive advantage to other small businesses.

Conclusion

Facebook doesn’t have to be a daunting platform for small businesses. Once you break it down into steps, a Facebook marketing strategy is easy to learn and execute. Small businesses need to pay attention to details like the CTA button and set up Messenger to take full advantage of what the platform offers. With the right approach and upkeep on new features, you’re well on your way to being a pro at Facebook. For the latest data on how marketers and consumers are using social media, explore the Sprout Social Index.

This post Expert tips on using Facebook for your small business originally appeared on Sprout Social.

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8 ways to show your clients the value of social in a tumultuous climate

While nearly everything came to a halt in early 2020, social media never slowed down. In fact, roughly half of consumers report using social more since the coronavirus pandemic began.

Sprout’s Agency Partner Program was built to help our agency customers expand their client networks, connect with other agencies around the globe and use Sprout best-in-class tools to serve their clients more effectively. Agency Partners have always recognized the power and value social, but a common challenge agencies face is demonstrating that value to clients. The events of 2020, however, created a tipping point. Read on to learn about how eight agency experts turned tumultuous times into an opportunity for their clients to level up on social.

1. Social is an essential tool for essential businesses

Ingredient is a food marketing agency and several of their clients are grocery stores, which were deemed essential businesses during COVID-19 and were one of the few places consumers still regularly visited during the pandemic.

“Social media has been critical when it comes to grocery stores keeping customers informed of store hours, mask guidelines, and what precautions they are taking to keep their employees and customers as safe as possible. We’re seeing customers connecting with their local stores at more of an emotional level instead of just a functional level as customers openly express their support of and appreciation for the store employees.

Through Sprout Premium Analytics, we’ve been able to monitor the impact of this on impressions, reach and engagement. More specifically, we saw organic impressions double from February to March as customers looked for and shared this information on both Facebook and Instagram.”

– Emily Tritabaugh, VP Content Strategy, Ingredient

2. Stay connected despite the (social) distance

When the world feels unstable, people search for answers and a port in the storm. Throughout the pandemic, the 123 Internet Group’s top priority was ensuring that their clients are staying connected with their customers and communities on social.

“No matter what industry you’re in, you need to keep in touch and be transparent with your customers. We worked closely with all our clients to help them understand the needs of their customers while providing answers and advice related to the pandemic.

We use Sprout Social to schedule and post regular Q&As so our customers can drum up conversations and take direction as to how they could improve their business straight from their customers. Then we use Sprout Analytics to understand which posts and topics had the most engagement and which stories resonated. As we continue to grow their following we can ensure we continue to highlight these topics to increase engagement”

– Scott Jones, CEO, 123 Internet Group

3. Personal connections > constant sales messaging

Retail is an industry that has faced major disruptions during 2020 like store closures, production plant shutdowns and drops in sales. Connec+, a full-service digital marketing and retail consultancy business, recognized that social media would be instrumental in filling communication gaps.

Thanks to social media we were able to continue to provide the connection that customers were craving throughout this time. We moved our focus from marketing and ads to more direct engagement—one-on-one interaction with other people—and our followers responded.

As we added in marketing messages we were able to convert more customers through social media to sales, and the loyalty we created during lockdown has continued as the stores have reopened. It’s been an important lesson for our clients that personal connections on social media are more valuable than constant sales messaging and we hope that they will continue to see the importance in the months to come.”

– Aimee Stewart, Managing Director, Connec+

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Today’s consumers expect more. 👂 They want to speak and be heard. 🎓 They want to be entertained and to be educated. ✔️ They want to have their needs met without asking #customercentric #socialmedia #getconnected

A post shared by Connec+ Your Digital Partner (@connectplusnz) on Jul 24, 2020 at 9:19pm PDT

4. Give the people what they want and need

 Connection is the new currency. At Aroluxe Marketing, an integrated marketing agency in Nashville, TN, the team takes an empathetic approach to creating deep, authentic connections between clients and their audiences.

“Social media is now more important than ever. It enables your brand to stay connected despite our current environment. The key is finding what your audience needs during this time both emotionally and physically. Do they want to be sold to right now? Would your product or service be valuable to them right now? Maybe your ideal customer just needs some feel good stories or wants to know how your brand is supporting its community. Sprout’s Social Listening tool allows us to dive deeper into whatever those needs may be and build content around those insights.”

– Sara Staats, Social Lead, Aroluxe Marketing

5. Teach clients where they fit into the new landscape

 Emely Roman and her team of “marketing mixologists” at The Foundry Collective ensure that their clients’ social presence is anything but generic. Unfortunately though, social was the first thing to go for some of her clients as the pandemic disrupted business. They quickly realized their mistake.

“In the beginning of the pandemic, we lost a couple of clients because social media had sat on the back burner of their company budgets. However, as social distancing and isolation became a new norm, those same clients and new ones quickly realized how important it was to use social to connect with their audience online.

A restaurant, a public speaker and even a ministry reached out to us to help them enhance their social media presences. All of them were now faced with the challenge of developing new product offerings and reaching out to an evolving consumer base. Thankfully because we had Sprout Social on our side we were able to send proposals with live competitor analysis from their Listening Tool, which showed how much more efforts the brands that are currently being successful were putting on social media.”

– Emily Roman, CEO, The Foundry Collective

6. The only doors that have stayed 100% open during hard times are on social media

 At See.Spark.Go., social media is a pillar of the content marketing they provide for their clients. As their name suggests, they balance long-term thinking and learning with quick reflexes and real-time data.

“As Sprout’s CMO Jamie Gilpin said during Sprout Sessions, ‘the only doors that have stayed 100% open are on social media.’ Whether it was daily changes in store hours or a CEO opening a dialogue about racial injustice, we were able to show our clients data from examples—both good and bad—and connect it to their long-term strategic business objectives.

Reporting weekly, being transparent and adjusting our strategies based on new learnings regularly allowed us to continue to show the value of social media, so much so, that clients who were forced to furlough internal team members saw that the one thing they couldn’t press pause on was social.”

– Jennifer Garrett, VP of Content and Creative, See.Spark.Go.

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⚡️ Enthusiasm cannot be cancelled. 🧡 Care + compassion cannot be cancelled. 💪 Motivation to forge new paths cannot be cancelled. 👥 Relational connections cannot be cancelled. 🙌 Trust, faith and courage cannot be cancelled. 💡 Our dedication to #ShineBright for our clients, our team and our communities CANNOT be cancelled. . We are here together during these uncertain times, and for that we are so GRATEFUL. 🤍

A post shared by See.Spark.Go (@seesparkgo) on Mar 16, 2020 at 2:23pm PDT

7. Social is the where customers go for quick, reliable customer support

 According to the 2020 Sprout Social Index™, 49% of consumers will unfollow a brand on social due to poor customer service. In times of crisis, the need for reliable customer service and support only becomes greater, which Happy Hour Media Group recognized and championed during the pandemic.

“Our agency has shown our clients how powerful social media can be for providing customer support and helping to ease tensions and concerns their customers have during tumultuous times. Businesses that stay silent leave their customers more confused, so we advised them to continue sharing any and all relevant updates on social media to keep customers updated and informed.

Thanks to the help of Sprout, our agency is able to stay on top of incoming messages and relevant mentions that come in through the Smart Inbox. This ability helps our agency and our client be responsive enough to turn a frustrated customer into a satisfied one.”

– Amanda Mueller-Hickler, Social Media Manager, Happy Hour Media Group

We're bringing you a 4-part series on lessons learned from a global crisis full of insights from social media marketers…

Posted by Happy Hour Media Group on Monday, July 20, 2020

8. Convince non-believers with social data

CREW Marketing Partners, a full-service agency that prides itself on growing their clients into leading brands in their industries, proved it’s not just paid media that supports marketing goals. An engaged audience and organic content can go a long way. They’ve got the data to prove it.

“I talk with clients about companies that invest in content and audience building year after year, and explain that those are the brands that are finding themselves in a better place today than their competitors who didn’t make that investment. That’s in part because those businesses that build engaged audiences don’t have to rely entirely on paid media for their traffic when times get tough.

When we halted nearly all paid activity, we pitched a social contest to a client as a way to continue building brand awareness. We were able to use Sprout Social data to clearly illustrate how the contest helped give the brand extensive organic reach and impressions, engagement and new followers. Making the investment in building audiences has recently paid dividends, and will again in the next downturn.”

– Brad Marshall, Director of Digital Marketing, CREW Marketing Partners

Grow with us

Being able to help our Agency Partners excel during challenging times is what Sprout’s Agency Partner Program is all about. The program includes access to co-marketing resources, sales support to grow your network and a community of support and unmatched social expertise. Come grow with us! Learn more here.

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Three Ways to Personalize Your Next ABM Campaign to Close More Deals

Business buyers are inundated with pitches and content, most of which isn't relevant to them. That's good news for B2B marketers: Your prospects are hungry for a personalized experience. Here are three practical ways to make your ABM more successful. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

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Release Notes: Leadsift partners with Intentsify to enhance data activation

Leadsift gathers intent data, Intentsify actions it.

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Feedback optimization: A user-first approach to SEO

Feedback optimization is the process of using readers’ comments to improve your content. See how this strategy can improve SEO performance while creating better search results for your audience.

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