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Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads

Facebook vs Linkedin ads: Which is better? [3 Things to know]

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Are you looking to generate leads or sales for your business through online advertising, but are not sure which channel is better- LinkedIn or Facebook ads? Well in this article I’m going to go through the pros and cons of each channel when it comes to doing paid advertising. When it comes to Facebook vs Linkedin ads, we will be looking at three main things: Targeting options available Algorithmic Intelligence behind the advertising platforms of Facebook or LinkedIn Cost/ROI: which one is going to be the most cost-effective and likely to give a better return on investment? One thing to keep in mind is that when it comes to which channel is best, there are a lot of different variables. So it’s not always a one clear-cut answer. Ultimately the only thing you can do to know for sure is to test it, and see which channel works best for your business. What I’m going to do to help you out is go through what I’ve experienced and learned when I’ve tested Facebook and LinkedIn. That might give you a jumpstart to set up your own campaigns. Another thing to keep in mind is that when it comes to advertising on LinkedIn and Facebook you need to have the right overall strategy. If you don’t have the right strategy, it doesn’t matter which channel you use. It’s just not going to work. Now with that, let’s start with the first thing we’re going to look at which is the targeting Facebook vs LinkedIn ads: A comparison of 3 Parameters 1. Targeting By targeting I mean how easy and effective it is to find your ideal clients on those respective channels. Now, people have experienced that Facebook ads- when it comes to things like targeting business owners or people inside of businesses at specific designations- is just not as powerful as LinkedIn. With LinkedIn, because of its detailed company targeting, you can really drill down and find exactly who you want to target. However, there are certain advantages that Facebook has over LinkedIn. First of all, Facebook has a lot more data than LinkedIn. I mean data in terms of the behaviour of actual users who are using Facebook platforms (and also remember Facebook owns Instagram and WhatsApp.) You can also advertise on Instagram through Facebook ads, and Facebook and Instagram are the largest social media channels. They are much bigger than LinkedIn in terms of total users and daily active users. Also note that when it comes to Facebook’s data, it’s not just about the amount of people Facebook, Instagram, etc. Facebook also has the Facebook pixel installed on a lot of different websites. Most websites will have the Facebook pixel installed, whereas most websites will not have the LinkedIn pixel installed. All that data is compiled together by Facebook. LinkedIn, on the other hand, has a lot of specific data when it comes to individuals, such as job titles, what company do they work at, what size is that company and very specific things like that. Over time, Facebook’s algorithm can see which people are responding to any ad and then they can look at those people and find similar people. So, the targeting will get better over time automatically. So ultimately which channel is better when it comes to targeting? I would give Facebook the advantage mainly because they’ve got so much data. There are some exceptions, but for a majority of businesses, FB ads can really help them target extremely well. 2. Algorithm Which advertising platform uses the best algorithms to get you the best results? How effective is the algorithm at optimizing your ads automatically? In this regard, Facebook algorithm is a lot more effective and smarter. Again, it just comes down to the data that Facebook has. FB Ads is the clear winner in this one. 3. Return on Investment Which one is going to be the most cost-effective solution for your business, and which one is going to get you the best return on investment? This one is difficult to answer because it’s going to be different for every business. I have had success both on LinkedIn and on Facebook – for myself as well as for my clients. Both channels have been able to generate good leads and sales. Both have potential for successful campaigns for nearly any business. However, for most businesses, the overall cost on Facebook is a lot less and the return on investment with Facebook is better than LinkedIn Using the sponsored messaging ad on LinkedIn can be somewhat better, but still not comparable to FB ads for most cases. Also note that the more generic the group of people in your target audience , the more advantages Facebook is going to have. I have found LinkedIn ads to be much more expensive in terms of cost per click and how many people you can reach and how many impressions you get and things like that, which ultimately means your cost per lead is usually higher on average. Conclusion on Facebook vs LinkedIn ads So, which platform should you use to set up your digital campaigns- Facebook or LinkedIn? My answer- If you want to know for certain you have to test both and just see what happens. If you have a limited budget or time, though, I would recommend Facebook ads over LinkedIn to start with.

Facebook Ads, Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, SEO

Good Copywriting for Facebook Ads, Google Ads and Email Marketing [The 3 skills]

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Copywriting is one of the most underrated skills in digital marketing, and in business in general. Copywriting is writing text for the purpose of advertising or other forms of marketing. In digital world, good copywriting can be used in your Google ads, social media, blog posts, email marketing etc. Many businesses can rise or fail solely on how good a copy they write. Some of the biggest brands we know of- Coca Cola, Pepsodent, Mercedes and Rolls-Royce, have a lot to thank good copywriting for. And genius marketers like Ogilvy insist that good copywriting is the foundation of good marketing. So what, then, is good copy? Are there some principles we can follow to write good copy- each and every time? In his much acclaimed classic, “Tested Advertising Methods”, copywriting genius John Caples gives some simple rules. These rules can help you improve your copywriting for your Facebook ads, Google ads, emails, newspaper ads, and so on. There are three basic rules for Good Copywriting: 1) Focus on the benefit to the user: This seems obvious, but if you look around, so many companies forget this simple rule. It’s important to remember that people DO NOT care about your brand. They care about themselves. How does your brand or product help them? Be direct about this. Headlines that insist how great your brand is without pointing out the benefits it’ll give users are ineffective. For example, “Trusted since 1929” is a useless headline for an ad, even if your company is about to turn 100 years old. Who cares? Headlines like “Amazing offer for you” are useless. You may ask- “aren’t these talking about the user’s benefit?“ On the surface, it appears like that. But there are thousands of offers floating all around a modern user. Who cares if you have one more? It’s too vague. “Best T-shirt offers for you“- now that’s a little bit better. It lacks personality, but at least it’s more direct about the benefit- you will get T-shirts at offer prices. 2) Make it NEWS People hate salesmen and advertisements. They, however, love to know the latest news. Use this to your advantage. Make your sales copy about a news. How can you achieve this? It’s simple. Start your ad with words like “Introducing…”, “Announcing…” or “All-new…” Words like this make your ad copy sound more like a news or announcement, and less like desperate sales. They catch more eye-balls and make more people read the rest of your ad. 3) Use curiosity IF (and only if) you’ve done the first point right (made the self-benefit to the user crystal clear), can you move to the next point of good advertising. WHich of these do you think is a better headline for an ad or email: Improve your sales performance How I went from total failure to massive success in selling in one year Both the headlines get the first point (self-benefit) right- they’re both going to teach the user how to improve their selling skills. But the second headline gets an added advangate, it makes you curious to learn the story. As a caveat, note that using just curiosity without self-benefit is a recipe for disaster. For example, a headline like “how I went from failure to success” in itself is terrible. Even if it makes a small percentage of people curious enough to read the rest of your ad or email, they might not be the ones who’re actually struggling with sales. Those who want solutions for their sales problems are the ones who should read the ad. How do you filter them without even mentioning “sales” or “selling” in the headline (or subject line.) Therefore, above all else, remember to keep the self-benefit direct. Things to avoid while writing good copy: Do not forget rule 1: focus on self-benefit to the user. This is 90% of the game, and still often ignored. Do not try to write like Shakespeare. Good copy should be easy to read. Fancy poetry can be wonderful to read as a pastime. IT IS not wonderful to sell products. Do not write your copy in a hurry. Spend time on making it perfect. Get feedback from others. Especially spend time thinking of the headline or subject line. Do not make it a chore. Enjoy the process. The more fun you have writing copy, the better your copywriting will turn out. The advantage of the digital medium for marketing is that feedback is instant. You can figure out how even a minor change in your copy improved your clickthrough rate or conversions on facebook ads, for instance; and this makes the process more exciting as you really start learning more about human behaviour. Do not forget to use good images to support your copy. It’s a myth that people see the image before the headline when they see ads. Most people read the headline first. However, a good image which makes your product or product benefit obvious will assist your copywriting. Ideal is to have images of person(s) using your product and enjoying it. That’s why all cola drinks have images of celebrities happily drinking from their bottle in their ad campaigns. Do not ignore audience-targeting. Even more important than copywriting is reaching the right audience. If you show a beautiful ad for a Rolls Royce to a family with a very low annual income, and I show a terrible ad of Rolls Royce to families with huge net worths, guess which of us will do better? It’s nice to improve ad performance with copywriting, but audience selection still remains the main skill for a digital marketer.

B2B digital marketing, Facebook Ads, Google Ads

How is the coronavirus pandemic going to impact digital marketing?

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In this article I, Neeraj, am going to go through what I think business owners should be doing in response to the coronavirus. We’re getting emails from people asking us what they should do with their marketing amid these unprecedented times. There is a lot of panic, and we’re given everyone the same advice… The news makes people question whether or not they should pause their marketing or reduce their budget or things like this. The funny thing is, there’s a statistic in the classic business book “Good to Great” by Jim Collins that says almost all the successful businesses and Fortune 500 companies were started in recessions… And the reason I bring that up is when there’s so much panic all around, your competitors are panicking too. Warren Buffett is famous for saying that when there’s fear in the air that is when he pounces and buys more stock. When others are optimistic, he stops buying, but when others get fearful, he buys stocks at amazing prices. And we all know how successful that man is in his field. If the marketplace is in fear, and you can be the one brand that’s confident in your industry… that is where great brands are built! So let’s think of the realities about coronavirus More searches come when people are spending more time at home More people spend time on social media as they work from home I’m talking about Google searches for which what matters is SEO or Google Ads… and probably spending more time on Facebook and Instagram too because they’re less likely to be in their office. So this could actually be a time where people are spending more time on the internet and therefore many of you’d want to double down while your competitors are in fear. The way online advertising works is through an auction – a bidding system – and most people have stopped ads during these times. It’s a great time to get more clicks on less spending. For our own clients– we looked at the number of clicks we got, the number of impressions we got and actually on our own advertising account we got more impressions this week than we did in the past weeks. The point is this: though if your competitors are backing out and you’re still going after the impressions in your market even if you’re not getting as high of a conversion rate (because people may not start business any time soon), do you think that’s going to be a win once all of this fades away? And when  it does, these people will already know your brand… Certainly for B2B businesses and services this is something to consider. Coronavirus impact on Digital Marketing So what I would say is this, the Coronavirus pandemic will have the following impact on Digital Marketing: it’s probably going to increase online activity it’s probably going to raise concerns for your competitors and hence lower the cost-per-click for any online ads it’s going to be an opportunity for you to double down on your internet marketing strategyhowever, it’s also going to reduce your conversion rate (people who actually buy the product or hire your services) as a percentage of total clicks or leads A note here: there are obviously businesses for which advertising at this point wont make sense. If you’re a restaurant owner in Italy or run a movie hall or have other such physical outlets where you need a lot of people to come in, this might be too early for you to jump back in to your digital marketing game. For others though, this is a golden time to generate leads and start warming them, or even converting them, while the rest of the businesses stop all their advertisement. So what are your thoughts for your business?

Facebook Ads, Google Ads, SEO

How Digital Marketing will change in 2020

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Before we get into what’s about to change in Digital Marketing in 2020, it’s important to assert that the most important things do not change. Good copywriting will always be central to good digital marketing. Understanding your customer deeply is the first step for any effective campaign.‌ Improving key metrics’ like cost per lead, conversion rate, and retention will still remain critical. Google and Facebook will still remain the biggest advertising channels for digital marketers. And good ole’ SEO and email marketing will still thrive. So what’s new for Digital Marketing in 2020?‌ 1)‌ AI‌ will become more relevant The use of services like Alexa, Siri and Google Asssistant continue to rise.‌ With more advancements in these technologies, it will become important for digital marketers to understand the nuances of reaching the customer through these AI robots instead of directly. One obvious impact of this on Digital Marketing in 2020 is that search results get more personalized. If I am into online education, and keep making searches in that regard, searching “Salman Khan” might lead me to Khan Academy. On the other hand, if I’m a Bollywood movie buff, I‌ might find more results for the Bollywood mega-star Salman Khan. While Google and other companies have made good advances in this regard, it is likely that in the next year they’ll take it to the next level. 2)‌ A trend against social media Until recently, there was nothing bad perceived by mainstream society in social media. It was a way to connect with friends, to find expression for one’s thoughts, experiences and opinions, and a way to collaborate to solve problems or share meaningful conversations. However, in the last few years, a growing percentage of the population seems to recognize the ill-effects of social media. Smartphones, particularly with the social apps on them, have become an addiction for many of us. With the constant stream of notifications, comments, likes, hearts and retweets, many people feel tired. Worst of all, they feel they’re missing out on the real reason they signed up for these services- authentic social interaction. With this trend, many new books (such as Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport)‌ have started advising people on how to have a better, more sane relationship with their smartphone and social media apps. If this trend continues to gain momentum, we may see a dip in the number of hours of social media usage, even among millennials. 3)‌ Video is big To be fair, this isn’t really new for 2020. But there’s no doubt that anyone who’s not already jumped on the video bandwagon that started somewhere around 2012, is missing on huge opportunities to engage with their customers and prospects. Video is replacing how we tell stories on our websites, on social media ads, on landing pages and even on messaging apps like WhatsApp. A‌ good video team, agency, or freelancer may become necessary for almost every company in the near future. 4)‌‌ Voice based search Voice based search takes over a bigger and bigger pie of total searches happening online. It is important to notice the subtle differences this introduces. For example, a conversational tone now has even more advantages to a cold, corporate tone on your website. Answering questions that users might be frequently voicing on their mobile phones, instead of just selling the products, becomes an even better source of traffic. And longer phrases (long-tailed keywords) are preferred even more to short one or two word search terms. 5)‌ Algorithms make targeting easier Social Media companies such as Facebook offer what’s called a “lookalike audience”. This is one of the easier ways to get your targeting right. Let’s say you have 250 customers who bought a particular product on your website. If you upload the list of email IDs or phone numbers of these 250, Facebook’s algorithms can target hundreds of thousands of people who are quite similar in profile and behaviour to your list. This kind of targeting allows digital marketers to focus primarily on design and copy, while letting smarter algorithms determine the appropriate audience. As machine learning and AI make advances, these algorithms continue to get smarter. This means that, for a digitally aware marketer, cost of advertising to irrelevant audiences keeps reducing. Read our Digital Marketing in the Financial Industry.

SEO vs PPC
Facebook Ads, Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, SEO

SEO vs PPC – How To Decide

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Search Engine Optimization and Pay-per-click (on search engines) are the ways that help you grow traffic on your website. Both the techniques are useful to fulfill your purpose but the selection depends on the type, scale and motive of the business. The end goal of both the approaches are the same but the way they work is quite different. Explore our blog SEO vs PPC to decide which technique is the best for your business. Before you move ahead for SEO vs PPC comparison and determine which one is more desirable for you, let us first understand both the techniques in brief. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO) SEO is the practice of increasing quantity and quality of traffic through organic search results. It is the organic approach of attracting visitors. Google crawls your website and with the help of its algorithm, it determines the quality and content of the site and ranks the pages accordingly on Search engine page results for different search queries. PAY PER CLICK (PPC) Pay per click is the technique where advertisers pay a fee to the search engine every time their ad is clicked. It is like buying visits for your site rather than making an attempt to earn them organically. Typically, if you put any search query into Google, the first few links are likely to be paid ads. (New to PPC? Learn how to set up your first campaign here.) APPROACHES Both the approaches are completely different but a businessman or a website owner’s objectives may differ. A businessman who can afford the cost of PPC and desires to get huge traffic to his website quickly, and demands big turnover, will opt for PPC. But a small businessman who can afford the time to boost the traffic by improving quality will opt for SEO. And a businessman who understands the importance of a website’s quality and the significance of attracting visitors that will get converted to customers will opt for both the techniques. It will be a hybrid approach of SEO and PPC and this approach is often most desirable. WHEN IS IT BEST TO USE SEO? WHEN CONSISTENT RESULTS ARE REQUIRED SEO is not a practice that will happen overnight or in a week. You need to have patience and wait to get your site show up on the first page of search result. Once your site is there, you may get to enjoy consistent and free traffic. If you continue with the same tactics and SEO campaigns, you will be able to stay there and can reap fruits for a longer period. DESIRE TO BE AN AUTHENTIC SITE  It’s like building a reputation for your website on the virtual platform. When the content on your site is so relevant that it makes the other members of your niche to recommend your website. It is like the “go to” website for your niche. Your webpage will get mentions that will generate backlinks and this helps Google to determine how significant your website is in your niche. This way your website will be able to get a lot of traffic which is organic, significant and consistent. INCREASE THE VALUE OF YOUR SITE   In case you think of selling the website in the near future, you can earn a higher price only when the value of your website really stands out in the market. Websites are like real estates on the digital platform. To earn a good price, you need to augment the value of your website. Some of the variables that go into determining the value of your website are: Traffic generated Consistency of traffic generated Page rank Search engine rankings over the period of time Link popularity Likes and Followers on Social Media (Check out our Link Building Guide for SEO.) These factors fall under the ambit of SEO. WHEN IS IT BEST TO USE PPC? WHEN YOUR BUSINESS DEMANDS IMMEDIATE RESULTS PPC results come very fast! The results are instantaneous. Once your paid promotion campaign is started, you can get a lot of visitors visiting your page immediately. This happens because once your PPC campaign is approved, provided that your bids are high enough to get the priority placement, your advertisement is seen by plenty of people who can click on it to visit your webpages. This works really well for product launches, affiliate marketing, seasonal promotions, event marketing and many more. WHEN YOUR SITE DOES NOT QUALIFY SEO CRITERIA For SEO, website needs to be rich in content and must be regularly updated. This is the only way to say to Google that your site is relevant and it must keep your site on top of the pile. But many websites cannot afford regular updates. Also, some keyword categories are so competitive that it seems unrealistic to be among the first few links in that niche. Also, just think about squeeze pages, what is there to update on such a page at regular intervals? (Squeeze pages are pages with forms and no other links, they force your visitors to either sign-up the form and get the offer or to leave the site. They’re usually high-converting pages.) Squeeze pages usually can’t even afford to merit themselves on the second page of Google. Such pages can grab traffic through PPC campaigns. DOMINATE YOUR KEYWORD CATEGORY. When you are very sure about the keywords which are apt and also popular on search engines that will bring paying customers to your business, then dominating that keyword is a great move. PPC results are always displayed over organic search results. And 50% of the traffic goes to the top 3 sponsored links. So if your business requires instant traffic, quick conversions, or to maximize your turnover by dominating the keyword category, then you must opt for PPC. CONCLUSION One cannot choose which method is better without knowing the motive and the website’s situation. In my opinion, you must never believe that there is a trade-off between SEO and PPC. Both the techniques (SEO vs PPC)

Digital marketing trends for 2019
Facebook Ads, Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, SEO

Top 4 Digital marketing trends for 2019

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Today I want to quickly summarize what I think will be the biggest digital marketing trends for 2019. Already, 2018 saw massive changes occurring in this field, so before we go further let’s look at the most significant changes we saw in 2018. Trends from the previous year: 1) The importance of influencers (which is still massive), is reducing compared to direct promotions by brands. Marketers are realizing that buying the influence of influencers proves more expensive than direct campaigns in many cases. 2) Live videos are IN. No matter what the social media, all channels are incentivizing content creators to go LIVE and interact with the audience. The result- better views, more influence and more engagement. 3) Chatbots are hot. Companies want to keep the conversational tone casual, so instead of boring forms, increasingly brands are using chatbots to interact with their audiences. 4) Localization is increasing. More marketers are now spending on localized content in the languages spoken in the relevant geographies they’re targeting. So what are the upcoming digital marketing trends for 2019? Well for a start, I’m almost certain that all four of the above will continue to trend further. Additionally, we are likely to find that: 1) Voice marketing will increase. Every year the number of people searching Google with voice are increasing. With more and more devices aiding such search (Alexa, Google Home etc.), marketers will innovate to make the most of these increasing search volumes. 2) Social media will increasingly penalize excessive use of hashtags, as all channels focus on delivering only relevant content to their users. 3) After the data leak scandals of 2018, another digital marketing trend for 2019 will be that the big digital companies (think Google, Amazon, Fb, MSFT) will be increasingly cautious of how data is used. Legal rules are also changing in many countries around these ideas. This means that gaining and sharing customer’s personal information will get restricted, at least in theory. 4) Visual search will increase. Pinterest and Google Lens are visual search engines. Although still in the infancy, marketers can get an edge over competition by jumping on this trend before it is noticed by others. 5) Stories. Since they disappear after some time, users are likely to engage with them. Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram and now YouTube all have their versions of stories. The newer story-formats are a field that will see a lot of innovative marketers trying different concepts and this should be on the radar of any serious digital marketer. Concluding thoughts AI, IoT and incremental improvements in digital media platforms will all contribute to making 2019 a great opportunity for serious marketers to jump the curve and stay ahead of the game. However, amidst all these digital marketing trends for 2019, the biggest change still remains the massive new user-base that the internet is generating in developing countries. Keeping an eye on how they interact with the web (instead of giving all one’s energy to studying the trends in relatively smaller number of advanced web users) will remain the most fruitful activity for most marketers to do. What do you think are the digital marketing trends for 2019? Do share with me, I look forward to hearing from you. At WebKow.com, our expert digital marketers are well-versed with data-driven and result-oriented approaches to business and digital marketing. We can help you come up with customized, result-oriented marketing campaigns to get amazing ROI. Contact us now to know more about how we can help you. We promise results!   About the Author: Neeraj Ramnani is the founder of GrowthFoundation.in and WebKow.com. He is a digital marketer since 2011, and has pioneered some of the most innovative approaches in this field over these years. He’s worked with over 40 brands for their result-oriented digital marketing. He’s an alumnus of IIM Indore and SVNIT Surat.    

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