Not sure whether to invest in Google Ads or Facebook Ads? It all comes down to your objectives.
A winning strategy often includes both, but the right mix depends on your goals.
We wanted to inform you about a recent policy update on X (formerly known as Twitter). The platform has announced that they will now fully allow users to post consensual adult content, formalizing a prior Twitter policy.
What does this mean for you? While this update may lead to a broader range of content appearing on the platform, we assure you that our team at CIM Marketing Partners remains committed to maintaining the highest standards of professionalism and appropriateness in all content we manage and post on your behalf.
Please be aware of this change as you navigate the platform, and rest assured that we will continue to ensure your brand’s presence on X adheres to your values and guidelines.
Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or concerns.
I know you’ve heard from nearly every marketing professional that you need to know your audience – it’s something I’ve said consistently over the past 25 years with CIM. Knowing your audience is key to reaching people who may be interested in your product or service.
The better you understand who has typically used your business in the past, the more effective your marketing efforts will be in reaching more of those people in the future.
In social media marketing, you may think you’re creating messaging to be consumed by the wide audience of the web. You’re not. Your messaging, ads, shared content, and even the images you use for your background and profile image, all need to speak to your target audience.
If through research, you find that your audience has an aversion to the color purple, it doesn’t make sense to fill your social media channels with shades of lavender and lilac. If you’re creating content for your social media channels to attract clients who are business owners with a high net worth and families, you likely wouldn’t want to create content about how to land your first job – that content doesn’t speak to your audience or anyone in their network that you would want to reach. As soon as you know exactly WHO you want to reach, you can better plan WHAT you want to communicate to them and how.
Take, for example, an estate planning client of ours. After serving the Austin area for nearly 30 years, they know and have a good handle on who their audience is and, most importantly, what their audience is looking for – they are usually information gatherers looking for resources to help make informed decisions about the estate planning or asset protection process.
In understanding that about their audience, our client wrote a book with just that information…then another, and another, until they had a series of books explaining estate planning, probate, asset protection and more, tailored to the audiences that needed to know.
We helped them market these books through Facebook ads, narrowing the target audience for these ads so they hit the sweet spot of the exact person who would be interested in the books’ content.
Interestingly enough, Facebook projected that no one would download these books and encouraged us to expand the target audience to reach more people. We held steadfast in our targets because the client KNEW THEIR AUDIENCE.
To date, their four books have been downloaded nearly 2,000 times. Many times when new clients make appointments with the firm, they mention that the book is what led them to make an appointment.
This is the success of knowing your audience.
Take some time at the beginning of this quarter to make sure you have a clear understanding of who your clients are – their age range, their gender, their income levels, and other defining characteristics that will help you pinpoint them in a crowd. At the end of the day, reaching your target audience is finding your perfect needle in the haystack.
When you know your audience, your audience knows.
~Unknown
For years, we’ve been encouraging and helping our clients to incorporate video content into their marketing mix – website, email marketing, social media platforms, and online advertising. Research continues to show an increase in the number of people who, given the option of watching a video or reading information, choose video. A few statistics:
In addition to well-written content, video is another touchpoint with significant benefits. Videos are natural attention grabbers. Their movement draws people in to watch and learn more. Search engines love video and typically return search results of video higher within the rankings, making your website (and its videos) more likely to be discovered.
What types of videos might you consider creating?
These videos can be a person simply talking about your company, a service or practice area, or two people discussing a particular topic. The content should ultimately focus on the viewers, that is, offering to help them with something they need, or providing a solution or answers.
These animated or sketch videos literally draw a picture while telling a story, describing how something works or walking the viewer through a process. Keywords typically appear within the video, which is narrated throughout.
These videos feature actual customers or clients talking about their experiences in working with your company.
These videos feature the use of a product or “how-to” to illustrate how something is done or used. These are along the lines of explainer videos, but used when providing a detailed walkthrough on using a product or navigating a process.
The most impactful videos are engaging, entertaining and informative. While a mix of video lengths is appropriate (longer for certain purposes), with the shorter attention span of many people today, short videos (under 90 seconds) have a higher chance of being viewed to the end. Even shorter videos (under 15 seconds) may be required for online advertising to very quickly make a point and encourage a click-thru to your website to learn more.
If your marketing efforts don’t include video, it’s a missed opportunity to connect with your target audiences, to let them hear and see what you do and how you help clients. If you would like to discuss how video can be effectively created and incorporated into your marketing efforts, please reach out.
Quote of the week:
Business decision makers LOVE online video because it gives them the most amount of information in the shortest amount of time.
Robert Weiss, Use YouTube Video Marketing to Generate Leads, Awareness and Customers
Are you feeling overwhelmed by social media? For businesses, over the past few years, it has become a necessity to establish and maintain a presence on various social media platforms. Especially now, in a time where an in-person conversation is not always possible, many have turned to social media as a way to communicate directly with their audience. Some companies have reluctantly been forced into social media, simply because this is where people are these days. Others have embraced these new communication channels as additional avenues to build awareness and attract clients. Here are a few “lessons learned” from our team, who is immersed in the social media landscape. They have become guiding principles to avoid becoming overwhelmed, allowing us to focus resources most effectively.
For the past few years, my social media team and I have attended Social Media Marketing World, one of the largest social media conferences in the country. From them, we learned that you fail at social media by trying to be active everywhere and not giving any of them your all. Instead, you should pick one or two and be REMARKABLE on those platforms. Choose the ones that make sense for your company. Where are your current and potential clients interacting? What are their demographics? Match your efforts to your audiences.
If you’re going to have a presence on a particular platform, do so with intent. Beyond building out your landing page to reflect (graphically and content) your brand, plan regular new content and posts, and stick with it. Avoid the bad impression that results from a client or prospect seeing that you haven’t had any activity in the recent past. Build out a content calendar for posts and react/reply to posts of others on your pages.
Visitors to your pages should experience content that resonates. There should be a good mix of posts: Consider product/service updates, testimonials, team member profiles, client stories, and special events. Each post should connect in some way with visitors, making them feel a part of your company. Your presence on social media platforms is an opportunity to further enhance and manage your overall brand and its reputation. Planning and managing your efforts will help you avoid feeling overwhelmed and overworked.
Quote of the week:
We don't have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it.
Erik Qualman
Just as most people like to present themselves in a good light, positioning your brand to make a positive impression takes work. In fact, the way your business presents itself plays a key role in how you’re received by your target audience. An overall aesthetic that’s sharp, eye-catching, modern, and memorable will help promote your brand and ensure your business is top of mind when it needs to be. That must be accompanied by great content. Beyond your website, here are three (out of many) areas to review and potentially upgrade:
Your logo is a visual representation of your brand. A clean, sharp logo will set you apart, help tell your brand’s story and become ingrained in the minds of your intended audience. Your brand’s logo should be unique and play well with all media. It should make a statement and let your audience know about your business. Think about the Nike Swoosh. It’s memorable, it creates interest, and it has become synonymous with the brand and the company name.
A great logo is versatile; it should look just as sharp on your business card as it does on a highway billboard. If your logo doesn’t convey the “brand promise” it should, or if it’s simply time for an update, make that a priority, as your logo/brand mark is truly the foundation piece for so many marketing components.
We hear it often: Do we need printed marketing materials? Our answer: YES! Every business has a need for sales materials. Most of the pieces we create for clients end up as PDF files being used as email attachments and for downloads from a website, as well as commercially printed copies for hard-copy mail-outs and use at events and in-person meetings where a tangible leave-behind still has value. Fewer hard copies (as compared to years past) need to be printed, but when a “wow” marketing piece is needed to make that first impression, you’ll have it.
All marketing pieces should be fully branded with your company’s colors, logo and brand marks. Regarding content, the verbiage should be friendly, informative and “speak” to the reader, focused on WIIFM, “What’s In It For Me?” Sure, the piece will contain background information about your company and its products/services, but it’s also critical to provide details about what you do to help companies, how you solve their pain points and how you provide immeasurable value to those you work with.
While written content is incredibly important for your social media marketing strategy, we also believe the visual elements are equally as critical. A link to a well-written blog post may go unclicked if the accompanying visual graphic is uninteresting. An article may go ignored, where a video may capture the intended audience. A crisp and original animated graphic may stop the scrolling thumb in its tracks. An informative data visualization or infographic may provide jaw-dropping statistics in an easy-to-digest visual format.
The visual assets on social media help catch your audience’s attention. Draw them in with the design and then hook them with your exceptional written content! Make sure your written message lines up well with your visual message, to ensure everything is clear and concise. Whether you want to close the deal on a social media platform or funnel your prospects to your website, the visual design elements can be wildly effective bait.
Brand positioning has so many facets, including graphics, colors and branding elements that help paint the picture of your company and what your team does. If you would like to discuss strengthening your brand, let’s talk. Our team takes pride in doing that every day.
Quote of the week:
Your brand is the single most important investment you can make in your business.
Steve Forbes
In today’s mobile age, reaching potential clients is now easier than ever, but you’re also facing the constant challenge of excess noise with the endless amount of content being served at any given time. The digital landscape is constantly evolving, and brands that don’t evolve with it will no doubt get left behind. So, how will you stand out from the crowd and do it better in 2018?
Here are three trends you should utilize to make this your best year yet:
Scroll through just about any social media feed, news article or website, and you’re sure to see video. From live streaming to how-to clips to promotional content, it’s clear video is taking over the digital landscape.
Video has been an emerging trend for the past couple of years, but it really gained momentum and took off in 2017. We live in a smartphone world, where we’re constantly being feed content, and video has become a way to stand out from the crowd to get (and hopefully keep) potential clients’ attention.
For 2018, try adding a video content strategy to your digital planning. You can share interesting facts about your brand or industry in short, sharable six-second videos. Try showing off your best services and client experiences with a 30-second testimonial. Or, if you’re hosting an event, go live and share the experience with your followers on Facebook Live, Instagram Stories or Snapchat.
Professional networking social media site, LinkedIn, is finally getting its time in the spotlight. With over 500 million users, LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to connect with right-fit referral sources, express your knowledge as a thought leader in your industry through published posts and reach a targeted audience through the site’s advertising platform.
If you’re new to LinkedIn marketing, a great place to start in 2018 is with an audit of your own profile on the network. Is your profile information complete and current, including a professional headshot and captivating summary? Have you connected with colleagues and others within your industry? Have you joined LinkedIn groups where you can share your knowledge?
LinkedIn is no longer just a place for job hunting; it’s positioning itself to be a major contender within the professional community online, as a social media network and a B2B marketing channel. Establishing yourself, and your brand, on LinkedIn will take time and thoughtful effort, but with its fast-growing network, it’s definitely a platform worth having a presence on in 2018 and beyond.
Maybe you’ve heard of it, maybe you haven’t, but either way, geo-fencing is changing how marketers reach their target audiences. Geo-fencing is a form of mobile marketing that uses a location-based technology to provide brands with the opportunity to hyper-localize their target audience. This is done by setting up parameters around locations such as your business, a competitor’s location or any other places you think your ideal client might frequent.
The integration of geo-fencing into your mobile marketing plans can help you achieve a variety of goals. You can present ads, relevant content or promotional coupons to potential clients. These ads are fired off when a potential client enters your virtual parameters with a mobile device with built-in GPS. Once picked up, geo-fencing allows you to serve your ad or promotion to any specific audience(s).
So, why leverage location-based targeting in 2018? You’ll reach potential clients when they’re on the go and when they’re potentially in need of your services, keeping your brand top of mind throughout the decision-making process.
Silly question; of course, you’re busy. Most of our clients come to us looking for marketing partners that can elevate the visibility of their business, allowing us to take daily marketing tasks off of their plates. We understand exactly how important your time is.
We also know how important personal touches can be to further a personal brand. A personal note or point of contact could be the difference between gaining a new client or losing to a competitor. The best place for those personal touches is social media, specifically LinkedIn for a business audience. While to many, social media can seem daunting and frivolous, it can be quite easy, as well as critical, for your personal marketing strategy.
Consider this: there are 240 million active LinkedIn users across the world, and that number grows every day. Seventy-nine percent of these active users are 35 or older, which given the usual growth of a working individual, these users are most likely mid- to senior-level employees — also known as your direct targets, either for potential clients or an expansion of your network. Still think that social media isn’t for you?
Making social media work for you doesn’t have to be a long or drawn out process. In fact, according to an infographic by BlueWire Media, all you’ll need is five-minutes or less, each day. Here’s how:
If you’re a beginner to LinkedIn, spend one minute accepting pending connection requests. Make sure that you’re connecting with people that you know, people that you want to know, and people that can help to connect you with people that you want to know. LinkedIn can be used in many ways, including promoting events, recruiting new staff, etc., so a diverse and high-level network can help you reach the audience that you need. While you’re accepting the requests, be sure to take about three minutes and send your new connections a message thanking them for the connection. It might be a good time to catch up with an old college friend, find out what a former colleague has been doing or introduce yourself and your business. Finally, in your last minute, request one person. Use the “People that you May Know” suggestions, and turn those people into real connections.
Once you are, or become, a more frequent LinkedIn user, you can move on to using your five minutes by checking out who has viewed your profile. Send them a message and find out why they’ve recently viewed your profile, and if there is any value that you can bring to each other. You never know until you ask! After that, spend a few minutes sharing some content! Have you written a blog or an article lately? Read an interesting article that you think your contacts would enjoy? Add it to your profile. If you’re reading or writing something interesting, people will appreciate your insight and you’ll become a person that they trust.
For the advanced users, share a piece of content and submit it to the LinkedIn Today editors. This will allow your content to reach all of the active LinkedIn users, spreading your name and company throughout the world. This wider platform will allow you to reach users that you would have never connected with or reached through the earlier steps. Finally, spend a few minutes commenting on the status or content of one of your connections and set up a coffee or lunch with a contact that you haven’t seen for a while.
With a little practice and constant attention, LinkedIn has the power to become one of the most important tools in your personal marketing arsenal. Make sure you’re using it wisely! If you need any help with social media or are interested in learning how to make social media work with your marketing plan, contact us.
As a full service marketing firm, CIM Marketing Partners has built our fair share of corporate websites. A question that always comes up in the planning process is, “Should we add a blog?” The answer? That depends on a few factors. Blogs die every day because of lack of commitment or passion, two integral factors in the success of content marketing. A content marketing strategy is essential to ensure the longevity and success of a blog.
First, as with any business and marketing initiative, the first move is to identify your target audience. This affects every part of your blog, from the design, to the content, even the frequency of new posting. Once you know whom you want to speak to, it will be easy to determine what you want to tell them. Be specific in your target, as well. Creating a personal experience for your readers starts when you identify them and speak directly to what they would be interested in. For example, a beauty brand that is targeting women aged 18-35 will probably alienate a large portion of their audience with a review of the best denture creams on the market. However, an employment law attorney who targets content towards human resource professionals whose companies employ more than 50 employees can tweak their content to speak directly to those individuals, thus creating a more personal experience for a reader, who is bound to return.
Next, figure out your “why.” Is this blog meant to be educational by enlightening your readers about news and information in your industry? Are you teaching and giving tips and best practices to help your readers? While the point of any marketing tool is to drive business, is this blog going to function as an extended sales arm, showing and explaining new products for purchase? Whatever the reason behind the blog, stick with it and make sure that you’re actually fulfilling the purpose. If you promote your blog as a teaching tool, but people leave with more questions than they came in with, you haven’t met your purpose and are doing a disservice to your readers and your brand.
Finally, establish how you’re going to generate the content and when you’re going to share it. Even though blogging and social media seem to be a little more casual than other traditional marketing means, it is still marketing, which means you must be consistent. Content marketing doesn’t have to be time consuming, but you do have to put some time into it. A content calendar can help keep you on track and make sure that your messages are consistent. Building a master calendar a month in advance shows exactly what you are planning on producing, when, and if necessary, who is responsible for the content. Whether you sit down and write the content yourself or purchase content to repurpose, make sure that you are following your schedule and putting the time in to find or produce good content.
Remember, content marketing doesn’t have to be hard or time consuming. Laying down the groundwork and sticking to it will help in the end to create and maintain a successful blog. You’ll thank us when you are considered the master in your field.
It’s everywhere. Articles, blogs, websites, service providers…all compelling businesses to “do” social media. Your competition is doing it. Maybe you’re doing it.
I want to point out a parallel from yesteryear to what we’ve been experiencing in the last few years. Back in the 1990s, it was common for agencies to field these kinds of comments and questions from clients:
These are the same kinds of questions we’ve been answering during the more recent years, only this time, it’s people questioning their companies’ activity with social media, not their company website.
These questions and the answers surrounding them can be perplexing or literally worrisome to some. In particular, we’ve seen this when meeting with new clients who haven’t been guided by an agency in the social media realm. It can simply be overwhelming to strategize and operationalize an effective social media program for a business without dedicating multiple hours a week, or all the way up to a full-time position or more (yes, even full departments!) for larger companies.
What are some top tips for those seeking to build or create their social media presence?
With professional guidance and operational support, you’ll be able to maximize the benefits of social media for your business with the right mix of time and resource investment.