Digitalisation has evolved how businesses operate and work in a global economy. Businesses can now harness online tools, programs and strategies to help improve processes, collaboration and innovation in the workplace.
Many businesses will have explored or at least know about search and facebook/instagram advertising. These are not the only options available though. Many businesses default to these channels as they are the most well known and search advertising is intent based.
Outside of these channels exists a suite of options to get in front of your audience via paid ads, digitally.
Five channels that you may have heard of, but not advertised on that are seeing considerable growth all for different reasons are below. It’s worth exploring if these channels are being used by your audience and if they would be a good fit for your advertising dollars before defaulting to Facebook/Instagram. Channels include:
Check out our short video on alternate social media platforms.
If you are looking to take your business to the next level, then search advertising could be very useful for you. Search campaigns are among the most popular and effective types of online advertising.
With billions of searches per day on search engine results pages (SERPs) such as Google, paid search advertising presents the opportunity to get in front of customers when they’re actively looking to research or purchase products or services.
With Google Search Ads you can tailor your ad campaigns to centre around the objectives you have for your business. Your objectives could be to drive sales, get leads, increase website visits or build brand awareness.
Google Ads offers the tools to easily manage and monitor your account. When used properly, Google Ads has the potential to send you large numbers of people who want exactly what you have to offer.
Benefits of Google Search Ads:
Check out our short video on google search ads.
When it comes to social advertising, there are a lot of channel options. Each channel has a different following and different audiences with different intent. So we’ll go through the top channels, but make sure that you have a look at what would best suit your audience.
The channels that we will focus on are Meta (Facebook), Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, Twitter, and LinkedIn. One of the most important things to remember when socially advertising is the strategy SMART. When it comes to ads, you want to be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
Another thing to remember is your funnel. You want to make sure that you’re following these five steps in order to advertise in a well-timed manner.
As mentioned previously, finding the right channels is really important. Below is a list of channels and their demographics so that you are able to find the right platform for your audience;
Facebook funnel
Instagram funnel
LinkedIn funnel
Pinterest funnel
Check our our short video on utilising social media platforms.
LinkedIn is the place to be when it comes to B2B marketing.
Looking to target the decision makers? There are over 46 million of them on LinkedIn. Do you want to make your company known to someone in the C-Suite? LinkedIn has over 10 million C-Level individuals. From entry-level professionals to influencers, to experienced decision-makers, everyone you need to target for B2B is on LinkedIn.
It is also the number one business and career driven social media platform. Users go on LinkedIn to find out the latest in industry trends, so your ads will reach an audience who is open and receptive to your business.
We’re gonna touch briefly on the LinkedIn funnel. The funnel consists of four steps in order to keep your audience top of mind and keep them attracted to your business.
B2B strategy
LinkedIn has some amazing capabilities, which we’ve previously touched on, but for B2B it’s brilliant. You can target someone based on their company name, their company industry, the company size, job title, job function, job, seniority, member schools, field of study degrees, member skills, member groups, member gender, and member age and location. Check out our short video on engaging in B2B marketing.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of influencing organic search results to display your business listing as high as possible in the unpaid (organic) search results for relevant search terms.
If you want a fast track to page one of Google, then consider search advertising but if you’re keen to have Google and other search engines recognise your website as the most authoritative website for whatever a user is searching for then you’ll need to invest time in SEO. The ‘time’ part is important to remember as the efforts you invest in SEO today potentially won’t be reflected by search engines for weeks, if not months.
Whilst the world of SEO can become incredibly complex very fast, there are three key components that you should be aware of to have long term visibility in organic search results.
Technical foundations
Check out our short video on SEO.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is the process and associated technology of managing relationships and communications with your customers. The goal should be to provide value to your audience. It can serve many goals such as:
Typically, the method of communication that a CRM platform will materialise in is email and or SMS. Having a well structured CRM platform is critical, especially for the longevity of your brand and revenue. The first party data that you own is a gold mine for both insights as well as a tool to use in paid advertising channels for future campaigns.
Common platforms
Which platform is right for you? If you’re a small business and are simply looking for a way to talk to your audience, then consider Mailchimp or Klaviyo as a starting point. Whilst all available options will offer the basic functionality of communicating to your customers, keep things simple until you have a requirement for all possible inclusions that a more expensive system may use.
Segmentation
Within your CRM software, you will have the ability to segment your customers based on their attributes or behaviour. Investing time in this is very important. For example, if you sell shoes online to men and women, then you wouldn’t want to email everyone about a sale you’re having on female specific designs.
Other segmentations include people who have added to cart and not checked out with automated card recovery emails.
Consent upon collection
It is incredibly important to gain consent from your audience if you intend on utilising their data in any way. Upon first purchase or if you’re collecting their data via another first-party-data capturing strategy, it is essential that you allow them to opt in and opt out at any time.
Check out our short video covering CRM.
There are two main things to remember when it comes to organics post-scheduling. The first is a social media audit to ensure that your posting is relevant. And the second is a social content calendar, which is setting this up, what platforms to use and when to post The social media audit.
The first step to organic posting is to conduct a social media audit. This is going through your page as well as competitors’ pages, seeing what’s worked and what hasn’t. First, look at all of your previous posts and see which received the highest engagement. There may be a post from three months ago that you noticed had 50 likes and shares, whereas your post normally has 10 to 20.
From there, focus on what you’ve said and what your creative has looked like for inspiration for new posts.
Second, pull together all of your unique social media analytics from sources such as Twitter or Facebook Insights. This includes demographic data about your audience and how people are responding to your posts.
Looking at these, you’ll be able to see what’s worked and what hasn’t in what you’ve previously posted.
The third is if you don’t have old posts to refer to, then look at a competitor. It’s good to do this either way just to understand what everyone else in your industry is also doing.
Once you have an idea of the types of content you’re going to post, it’s important to create a posting schedule. After auditing, you’ll begin to notice trends. So you’ll be able to notice what days and times the posts were posted and on what platforms. Having a look at this and the engagement and any specific things around the post, this information will help you organise and plan your posts to get the most visibility.
There are many online tools to help with organic posting, such as HubSpot, Sprout, Social Co-Schedule, Freely, Airtable, Tweet Deck, Plantable, Skid Social and Post Planner.
When To Post:
Make sure that if you already have a following that you are looking at when they’re engaging and only use the average posting above as a suggestion/rough guide.
Check out our short video to learn more about post scheduling.
There are four things we will touch on when it comes to content creation: canva, other helpful tools, iphone content and stock images.
If you haven’t heard of Canva, Canva is a design platform that was made specifically with small businesses in mind. If you have no experience, it’s not a problem. Canva has a massive selection of pre-made templates for any social media posts that take minutes to edit and are aesthetically pleasing.
Just remember, stick to your brand tone and colours when creating, even with templates!
So we have Instagram posts, Facebook posts, Instagram stories, others, another style of Instagram story, WhatsApp status, Instagram reels, Facebook covers and Tiktok videos.
Canva is great for searching templates based on specific activities, such as an event or a sale.
There are also other content creating tools. Some of these are paid, some of them are not.
Make content with your phone
Creating original content doesn’t have to be hard. You can actually organise and produce much of what you need with your iPhone.
Here are the three tips to help capture content on your phone:
Stock Images have both their pros and cons when it comes to utilising them for content. If you do go down the stock image route, please just remember these;
Pros
Cons
Watch our short video to learn more about simple design tools.
Establishing your brand on your organic socials is extremely important. Your followers should be able to see a post and immediately identify that it’s from you, even without looking at the handle.
Here are four ways to help establish your brand identity.
Types of content.
When it comes to content, it’s important to keep an 80/20 split. The average user is subject to over 1,500 stories per day, and 300 posts. To remain top of mind with your followers, it’s suggested that 80% of your content should be useful and helpful to bring in new followers and build trust, whilst 20% is promoting your brand or products.
Another important content strategy is to include Evergreen content. This is content that doesn’t have an expiration date and will still make sense to someone who is scrolling through your page three months down the line.
One of the most important things when it comes to your organic content is to interact with your audience. If you engage with people and reply to their comments, you’re going to build a great reputation that will spread.
Remember, people respond to people. Make sure to show your audience that there is a person behind the brand.
Watch this short video to learn more about different types of content.
If you’re right at the start of your eCommerce journey and don’t have a website yet, there are quite a few options in terms of how to build your online store. If you plan on building it yourself, we would recommend Shopify for both short and long term benefits.
On the short term, you’re able to get selling straight away after utilising a pre-built store and uploading your products and connecting your domain. Shopify handles all of the payments and will pay you out your revenue every other day. They do, like most eCommerce providers, charge a small percentage for each order sold.
They also have a range of apps that are typically one click connections (think reviews software or a ‘people also viewed’ section). Minimal coding is required to get selling quickly!
Shopify also has incredible support and a community of other ecommerce retailers who have likely already asked the same questions you’re about to!
Other providers with various pros and cons include
If you’ve bought something online recently, there’s a fair chance the site you were on would have offered you the option to purchase items via a buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) provider. The convenience, easy approval and interest-free terms associated with BNPL platforms are attractive to many. More than five million Australians have signed up for at least one BNPL platform.
Offering a BNPL service allows your business to access the growing cohort of consumers who rely on these providers to complete purchases they might not have made otherwise. BNPL providers are fully integrated within an online store’s checkout, which makes the transaction process easy.
Purchasing through a BNPL provider is almost automatic. There’s no need to go to your wallet for your credit card to fill out the details. Customers who use BNPL services receive their items instantly and they make instalment repayments to the BNPL service provider, not the store that the goods are purchased from.
BNPL for small businesses is another way to allow your customers to pay.
Companies take a cut of profits that average from 2-8% of the purchase value. You might be wondering why you should consider offering BNPL to your customers. In fact, there are various benefits, and it offers an important way for small businesses to improve growth.
BNPL’s appeal is greatest among millennials, 70% of whom said they are highly interested in using instalment plans at luxury and specialty retailers. The data shows that 26% of millennials paid for their most recent online purchase with BNPL, and 15% did so in stores.
Overall, different BNPL has pros and cons that are suited to your business and customer base, take the time to pick the one that works best for you.
Check out our short video to learn more about BNPL providers.
Product feed management, sometimes called ‘data feed management’ or just ‘feed management’, is a process by which businesses control and promote their products on a variety of platforms and channels from a single source.
It’s an extra layer of rules and product information that you customise to distribute your digital listings and optimise their performance. If you have an online shop and want to sell your products, your goal is to have your offer displayed with the right information and in the best possible way.
No matter where you sell, your potential customers expect to receive product information that is accurate, comprehensive and up-to-date. That’s why building and optimising product feeds is crucial for online retailers.
A product feed typically contains a product image, title, marketing copy, and product attributes that are unique to your business. You can continuously respond to product updates and capitalise on social trends if you want to dominate. There are certain metrics that should be prioritised above all others to remain competitive.
The best product feed management tools for eCommerce websites will help you optimise your data and make your ads much more effective across the channels.
Management tools.
A feed takes the information from your online store and allows you to make changes then displays information on advertising channels like Google Shopping, Facebook and other online platforms.
Check out our short video on product feed management.
Every year is packed with leverage points for your advertising campaigns and marketing messages. Not all events should be utilised as a message or reason for a sale, but there are some that, if approached smartly, can yield a strong result for your business.
Whether sporting, cultural or just a good old fashioned sale date such as boxing day, 2023 will not be short of dates to latch on to and run with when it comes to your content and marketing.
Highlights in January to September that can work for most businesses to structure marketing messages around include Mothers Day, EOFY, School Holidays, Click Frenzy (multiple dates), Father’s Day and Footy Finals (AFL and NRL).
Q4 however, is unique in that most opportunities, especially for eCommerce businesses revolve around dates designed purely to promote online shopping.
General considerations and recommendations for winning Q.
Check out our short video on eCommerce sale dates.
At a bare minimum, you will need two things to enable fulfilment from your eCommerce store so your orders can get to your customers.
Once you’re sorted on the packaging and label front, you’ll need to decide which carrier to have deliver your items. Australia Post is often the default, and to print labels for business use you’ll need to create a business account. Sendle is another great option that offers pick up from your address as well as drop off at various sendle partners, like BP service stations for example.
Check out our short video on eCommerce fulfilment.
Google Sheets, Google Slides and Google Docs are all available for use in the Google Workspace. Each of these formats can be utilised for various tasks. Google Docs can be used for longer form writing, meeting agendas and so on. Google Slides is similar to Powerpoint and should be your go to for visual presentations, while Google Sheets allows you to add and manipulate data.
All formats can be used to collaborate with your team members or external suppliers through the view, comment and edit functionality. View allows you to share a presentation without the user having permissions to edit or comment. Providing commenter access enables a user to add relevant comments at any point throughout your presentation, spreadsheet or document. Editor gives the individual with your Sheets, Docs or Slides link the opportunity to collaborate and adjust your presentation, spreadsheet or document.
To share with a user, click file > share > share with others, toggle to ‘anyone with the link’ and assign a user role.
Google Docs
Google Slides
Google Sheets
Formulas
=SUM(A2:A10) allows you to add up a total from a range of cells. Simply adjust the cell numbers as needed to use this formula.
=(A2/$A$9) allows you to find a percentage. If you are working with a constant figure such as a cell range total, add the $ sign into your formula.
=COUNTIF(A2:A10, “Victoria”) allows you to count the number of times the same piece of information occurs in a range of cells.
Filter
The filter icon enables you to filter out information from a subset of data. For example, if you only want to look at individuals from Victoria, you can select this and the cells will filter for you.
Check out our short video to learn more about using Google documents.
Data Analytics is all about finding meaning in numbers from various sources like websites, mobile applications, among others. It combs through huge amounts of raw statistical information, finding patterns, analysing trends and testing theories, all measured with KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).
To give you the breakdown, analytics can tell you directly a variety of things about your business. A few examples.
It’s the process of examining data sets to draw conclusions and help enable businesses to make management decisions such as:
Ultimately, helping you make the best of your business and to find what areas need more improvement over others.
You can also use analytics to get a better understanding of your customer. Find out:
With these, you can get better at targeting towards new and existing customers.
There are a number of platforms you can use to help track the analytics of your business. The most common is Google Analytics, which is free! In Google Analytics, you can track other platforms your website is using, such as Facebook Ads, Pinterest Ads and Google Ads.
Arguably, the best part of data and analytics is how you can capture customer behavior that is much harder to get offline. You can go from the beginning, how did they become aware of your website, see how they engaged with your website during their consideration phase and what kind of purchases it resulted in. But you don’t just have to track sales, you can also track:
Check out our short video about data and analytics.
