Browse Author: Adnan Ghadiali

https://www.linkedin.com/in/adnan-ghadiali/

LinkedIn VS Facebook- From A Marketer’s Perspective

With the increasing number of social media platforms, as a marketer, we need to make a crucial choice of focusing our social media efforts on a limited number of platforms. This decision is vital to the existence of a brand and can make or break it as well.

In this blog post, we will discuss the difference between LinkedIn and Facebook and which platform will best help you achieve your goals and objectives.

A brief introduction of our two contestants for today:-

Facebook– People tend to spend more time on Facebook than on LinkedIn for the simple reason that it is perceived as a more ‘fun’ platform where friends are able to get together and share their thoughts and opinions over a casual post like a meme or joke. Facebook is clearly in the quantity win with over 2.07 billion monthly active users.

LinkedIn– LinkedIn, however, is a more serious platform where users log in for a specific purpose, be it recruitment, job hunting, connecting with colleagues or sharing their professional expertise on specific industry related topics. LinkedIn is far behind Facebook when it comes to the numbers game, with around 467 million members.

1. Audience Profile

Facebook– General consumers. Facebook is primarily a platform where friends and family get together to de-stress or connect with known persons. Marketers on Facebook need to keep their audience interests in mind, keeping the tone light and friendly. Create content which your audience would like to consume.

LinkedIn– Companies/organizations/businesses. LinkedIn allows users to create a professional, job-oriented profile, offering a variety of ways for a marketer to target based on seniority, job function, industry and more. Marketers on LinkedIn should keep the tone serious and professional, industry-specific and to the point. LinkedIn is primarily used by B2B businesses to connect with users in the same industry segment.

2. Analytics-

Facebook- Facebook provides real-time, built-in reports consisting data of the type of audience, their country of origin, and others ranging from likes, reach, visits, posts, people, events, videos, messages to a lot more. This data is very useful to a marketer as their job hardly ends after an advertising campaign is created. They constantly need to optimize it to achieve the best results at the lowest cost.

LinkedIn- LinkedIn does not provide extensive insights on page performance limiting to updates, interactions, clicks, impressions, reach, followers and visitors. This makes it difficult for a marketer to analyze and extract data on the performance of a LinkedIn campaign. 

3. Cost-

Facebook- Facebook gives the option to adjust how much you’re willing to pay per day (starting at Rs.40 per day), which corresponds to the number of users you reach out to. Overall, Facebook is a much cheaper option, with the average CPC of Rs. 5, being the lowest across all social media platforms. As a marketer, a lower cost is of vital importance in determining the success of an advertising campaign  

LinkedIn- LinkedIn offers a specific way to reach an audience but the cost is higher than Facebook’s. LinkedIn is said to be one of the most expensive advertising platforms in terms of average CPC of Rs.150. The minimum amount that LinkedIn will generally require you to allot for your CPC and CPM bids is Rs.100 (for either). And the minimum budget generally allotted by LinkedIn for your daily budget is Rs.500. The huge difference in cost from that of Facebook, shy away many marketers, making LinkedIn a secondary consideration. That being said, there a number of successfully launched campaigns on LinkedIn as well,  like the Volkswagen Campaign, where the results were far greater than the initial cost.

4. Branding-

Facebook- On Facebook there is a strong distinction between a user’s personal profile and a brand’s page. The content posted on a personal profile and a company’s page is completely different and unrelated. A marketer must build his company’s brand and his personal brand separately and simultaneously.

LinkedIn- On LinkedIn there is no distinction between personal and professional branding as it seamlessly integrates with each other in the form of a common profile. Through a user’s profile, it enables the audience to connect with the brand. Vice-versa if a brand posts valuable content then the employees of the brand are known as well. A marketer needs to be able to sell himself as well as his company through the use of one single profile.

5. Thought Leadership-

Facebook- Facebook is not a platform where users generally express their professional opinion but rather a light and casual conversation amongst friends. Marketers cannot hope to get their audience to pour out their expertise and insights into their industry or job.

LinkedIn- LinkedIn is the primary platform where users come together to influence others through their professional opinions. The most common place of thought leaders is LinkedIn groups where experts speak about their opinions with respect to a specific industry.

6. Marketing Objectives-

Facebook- As a marketer, Facebook provides a number of opportunities to achieve objectives such as Awareness, Consideration and Conversion but is more suitable for Direct Sales and Traffic. The level and detail of targeting on Facebook is world’s apart that of all other social media platforms, making it ideal for marketers to grow their brand.

LinkedIn- As a marketer, LinkedIn cannot be used to directly sell to your industrial buyers as users on LinkedIn login for their own personal and professional development rather than to outright buy a product or service. It will lead to a very low conversion rate and more often than not, a poor brand image.

Conclusion-

The controversy of which platform is better for marketing has been chewed over and over in the last years by marketers, entrepreneurs and bloggers.

Lately, Facebook is focusing on improving their paid marketing campaigns and continue to develop new and innovative features appealing to B2B companies and marketers alike, in a strive to reach above LinkedIn in the B2B space.

Having a deep understanding of who you are marketing to (your buyer personas) and how they use these platforms at each stage of the buyer’s journey, will enable you to become more customer-centric in your marketing.

Instead of focusing on which platform is better for your marketing strategy, simply being aware of how and when to use each on the potential journey your prospects go through before they decide to buy from you can make a dramatic shift in your marketing strategy.

 

To know more about effective ways to maximize Facebook conversions, check out ‘8 Types Of Facebook Content To Drive Engagement‘.

Image Source- Hootsuite, Pear Analytics, Pinterest, Social Media Examiner.

5 Steps To Set Up Your Own Drip Email Marketing Campaign

Before proceeding onto Drip Email Marketing, we need to be clear with the concept of Lifecycle Emails. “Lifecycle Emails are sending the right emails, to the right people, at the right time.” -Patrick McKenzie. Customer.io, a leading email automation company defines Lifecycle Emails as “sending people emails based on what they do or don’t do.”

Drip Email Marketing is a part of Lifecycle Emails which divides communication into a series of emails and sends them out to your users based on your understanding of how your users can consume it. To put it in simple words, right from the first stage when your users enter and view your website or content, to the final stage of purchase.

The essence of this kind of campaign lies in the fact that unlike your website or regular email marketing, with Drip Email Marketing you send out only a part of all that you want to convey to your users, little by little, in each email that you send them; eventually taking them forward from one stage to the next.

5 Steps to Set Up Your Own Drip Email Marketing Campaign

  1. Define The Start Point-

The first stage of any Drip Email Marketing Campaign is to determine where your subscribers are entering from. Users may enter into your email list from any of the following sources:-

  • Existing Customer Information
  • Website Chat Integration
  • Conferences and Seminars
  • Lead/Subscription Form
  • Etc.

Your initial objective must be simple and easy to define. For example, your objective can be to target all those who have downloaded your most popular e-book rather than trying to get all those to convert who have d0wnloaded any file or whitepaper from your website. Try to be a little specific when you define your start point. Defining the start point will help you determine what kinds of segmentation you require to collect the data as well as choose the right tools to collect the data in the most efficient and cost-effective manner.

2. Attribute-Based Segmentation-

Once we have defined our start point, we then need to compile all our historical data and past records to segment allocate) our subscribers into different baskets based on their interests or activities.

Users may be segmented on any of the following attributes:-

  • Industry
  • Role
  • Company Size
  • Product of Interest
  • Etc.

You will be sending out a different communication to different audience segments. For example, someone watching a video may be more interested in viewing audiovisual content and should be targeted only through webinars as compared to someone who has spent 10 minutes viewing your blog post.

Note: You should be in a position to actually arrange the data you require from your audience, i.e. they should be willing and able to provide you with this information.

3. Identify All Events You Want To Capture-

Events can be decided based on:-

  1. Page Views:- Number of pages viewed or time spent on each page.
  2. Action:- The actions taken by a user. E.g. to download an e-book.
  3. Email Activity:- The response of users to the email communication sent to them. E.g. Open rate, Click through rate.

You can then decide which events you want to track and segment users on.  Based on these events, users would be sent a different communication.

4. Create Workflow-

The most critical part of a Drip Email Marketing campaign is to create workflows. Based on the various segments and trigger points that you have decided, you will now create the workflow. Similar to a content calendar in the case of social media marketing, a workflow will enable you to plan out the communication that will be sent to a user based on the activities that he/she performs.

The workflow can be altered based on changes in the customer lifecycle and ensure that it is in sync with the audience segment.

A typical flowchart for a Food Blog.

5. Write Drip Emails For All Nodes In Your Workflow

Once the workflow is created, in the final stage we will actually design the emails for each of our audience segments. Each audience segment will have a different trigger point which should be clearly communicated through your emailers.

People usually don’t like to be bombarded with irrelevant emails. Make sure you maintain an adequate time gap in between the emails sent to your audience and keep a track of the open rate. The emails should be short and precise, addressing the users in a friendly and personal manner. At each stage, users have certain blocking questions which prevents them from converting. These questions should be promptly addressed in the email, based on their relevancy to the audience.

Conclusion-

Two leading tools used for Drip Email Marketing are:-

  1. Drip:- As the name suggests, Drip is an excellent Email Drip Marketing Tool through which you can easily send abandoned cart messages and customized emails that drive sales and deepen customer relationships. You can easily design comprehensive, custom email campaigns and simplify your sales funnel. A major strength of Drip is that you can create customized workflows (paths that determine what emails will be sent to which user and at what time) based on their attributes. For businesses in the B2B space, Drip is an excellent platform for lead scoring (categorizing users based on their value).

2.Customer.io:- An advantage of using Customer.io is that you can easily implement and do A/B Testing. You can segment people based on their Page Views (viewed a particular page of your website), Events (actions performed by users on your website like spending more than 5 minutes on a webpage) etc. or a combination of several of such activities.

3. MailChimp:- MailChimp is one of the leaders in the section of attribute-based segmentation and helps you to easily manage subscriptions with a user-friendly interface for all our non-techies out there. I would recommend this tool for beginners who are new to the practice of Drip Email Marketing or have little or no technical skills.

I would suggest you go ahead with a trial version of all 3 tools and then decide what suits you the best.

Image Source- Google

5 Common Questions Every Landing Page Must Address

Before we begin discussing how to build your ideal Landing Page, we need to address what exactly a Landing Page is.

Each page on your website that is used as an ‘entry point’, is called a Landing Page. A user can be directed to your website from any source, be it a Facebook post, a result turned up in Google search or a display add published on a website.

5 Common Questions Every Landing Page Must Address are:-

1. What Is It?-

You have to clearly define your Value Proposition. Value Proposition is defined as an innovation, service, or feature intended to make a company or product attractive to customers.  It should be the most attention-grabbing element on your Landing Page. It has to be crisp, short and loud so that a user that enters onto your website for the first time is exposed to this Value Proposition within the first few seconds and that’s what makes all the impact. A lot of marketers tend to ignore the power of a strong and impactful Value Proposition.

The above Landing Page of a popular marketing automation tool, Customer.io, clearly defines its Value Proposition, ‘Automate Your Product Messaging- Build, Test and Send From One Platform’. A user that visits their website for the first time immediately knows what it is, who is it for, how are they differentiating themselves from others and how it can be beneficial for him/her. They go on to further explain the Product Features, describing their Value Proposition through an infographic, followed by bullet points, keeping it neat and easy to understand.

2. Is It For Me?-

In order to communicate most effectively with your visitors, your Landing Page must contain the language your visitors understand.

A student visiting a University website would want to know about the course curriculum, fee structure, alumni association etc. An entrepreneur visiting an analytical tool website would want to know how that particular tool would help him grow his business.

You should understand your audience portfolio and create Buyer Personas in order to understand the needs, desires and demands of your audience. Your Landing Page should be able to resonate with your viewers.

3. What Does It Cost?-

Cost, in this case, doesn’t always mean Money. Of course, money is one of the costs involved but they extend to much more than money alone. Cost could be in terms of:-

  1. Time- People on the internet enjoy skimming through articles. They scan web pages, not read. You cannot expect them to spend additional time on your website without providing them with an incentive to do so.
  2. Learning New Things- Chances are if you’re reading this post, you like to learn and experiment. But as a rule of thumb, people usually are not the most passionate about learning new things, without knowing how it could benefit them.
  3. Data Import- The cost could be the time and risk involved with taking out your data from an existing system and transferring it to a new one. For example, you would think twice, thrice or maybe even more, before changing your internet service provider just for the simple reason to avoid all the hassle involved in the process.

These are in no way a comprehensive list of all costs involved with all kinds of businesses and industries. The cost, being subjective, would differ from business to business and user to user.

The above image showing a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee, attempts to address the Cost related question a user may have by providing a full refund within 30 days if he/she is not satisfied with the product or service.

4. What Is The Risk?-

In a way, Cost and Risk go hand-in-hand. They are interrelated to the extent that the Cost is a Risk for a user.

As a marketer, we need to address that risk in a way that it mitigates a customer’s concern in using or buying your product or service.

A popular and effective way to do that is to include User Testimonials, which are basically reviews and endorsements of customers who have used your product/service in the past and were satisfied with it. It shows a visitor that there are people like them who are using it and people who they trust (thought leaders) that are recommending a particular product/ service. The more the visitor is able to relate to the testimonials, the less risky he/she would feel in going ahead and taking the next step.

For instance, an entrepreneur would be more convinced in seeing the testimonial of a fellow entrepreneur in the same industry that he operates in.

The above screenshot is an apt illustration of customer testimonials by Elegant Themes, an easy-to-use website builder, that displays its customer testimonials along with their profile picture, narrating a short story about how the services they offer helped their customers build a website in few simple steps, without needing any technical know-how. Testimonials help establish credibility and trust and are able to connect with a user on a personal level.

5. What’s The Next Step?-

The final and most important aspect of a Landing Page is to move a user from one step to the next. The next step should be based on the readiness of a user instead of asking him/her to directly make a purchase.

For instance, a visitor who first visits your page for the first time should be persuaded to sign up for a free trial of your product. Only on expiry of that free trial should they be sent content which persuades them to make a purchase as they are now more mature and groomed towards you and your product and trust you as a brand.

If a visitor who has visited your website for the first time, having no knowledge about the service you provide, is given a link to make a purchase using his/her credit card, there is an extremely likely chance that he/she would simply log off your website without taking another look at your value proposition.

The user should be shown the relevant Call to Action based on his/her readiness in the flow originating from trial or subscription to a blog, to final purchase and repurchase.  “Nobody likes to be sold to, but everybody likes to buy” -Anonymous

Conclusion-

Though each Landing Page differs in various aspects in terms of its objectives and end goals, any marketer interested in obtaining a higher rate of customers moving through the Marketing Funnel must consider primarily these 5 questions while designing his/her Landing Page.

To learn more about Inbound Marketing and how to best leverage your Landing Page check  ‘What Is Inbound Marketing And Why It Is Essential For Every Marketer To Implement’.

 

Source:- Google, Customer.io

5 Criteria To Select The Ideal Content Distribution Channel For Your Business

With more [distribution] channels, it’s important to have ‘must-have’ content and brands that cut through the clutter. -Thomas O Staggs

Deciding the ideal distribution channel for your business is extremely critical. It can potentially lead to huge profits or losses or can also put your future survival in jeopardy.

In this blog post, we will discuss guidelines on selecting the various channels on which you can aggregate your audience. Some of the most popular options are:-

  1. Social Platforms- Eg. Facebook, Twitter etc.
  2. Email
  3. Forums/Community Sites

You can pick and choose either any one single platform or you could choose multiple channels for the distribution of your content. However, for a small business just starting out into the market with a limited number of resources, I would suggest you stick with one channel, the one most appropriate for you, and then later diversify and expand into different channels.

In this post, for the purpose of easy illustration, we will consider and take into account three different platforms and discuss it’s advantages and limitations so that you can select the ideal content distribution channel for your business:-

  1. Email
  2. Facebook
  3. Twitter

Let’s get right to it then:-

1. Reach-

Which channel will help you to most effectively reach out to the maximum of your target audience?

In terms of an industry benchmark, Email> Facebook> Twitter

Why do I make such a bold statement? Because “there are 3x more email accounts than there are Facebook & Twitter accounts combined.”-Campaign Monitor

“In 2017, global e-mail users amounted to 3.7 billion users” – Statista.com; as compared to “2.07 billion monthly active Facebook users” – Zephoria.com. “As of the third quarter of 2017, the microblogging service [Twitter] averaged 330 million monthly active users.”- Statista.com

Facebook- Think of it this way. You need an email address to sign up for Facebook. Do you need a Facebook profile to create an email address?

Twitter- With respect to the reach of Twitter, it is nowhere near Email or even Facebook for that matter. The only plus point for the consideration of Twitter in this list is due to the presence of thought and opinion leaders on this platform.

But surely email does not get to enjoy all the benefits. The disadvantage of email as a platform is that you will have to begin from scratch, just like a community forum. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter almost hand out their users to you on a red carpet, to be used at your disposal.

2. Content Publishing Frequency-

What kind of content publishing frequency do you expect?

Email- If you have selected email as your distribution channel, you simply cannot bombard your audience with 5-7 emails a day. You will experience an unsubscription rate like never seen before. A frequency of once a day is more appropriate to engage your audience.

Facebook-2- 3 updates a day is acceptable by users, provided that your content provides value to them and is not merely monotonous sales ads.

Twitter- Users are more than happy receiving even 1 content unit every three hours.

This is the beauty of each platform. You need to decide what kind of content publishing frequency your business demands and act accordingly.

3. Content Consumption Pattern-

How do you want people to consume your content? How do you want users to engage (take action) with your content?

Facebook- Good multimedia content like photos, graphics, videos etc. are bound to perform better on Facebook than on Email. In fact, Facebook’s algorithm favours those who publish multimedia over textual content.

Email- Images on email will not be visible in the first view and the user would need to click a separate link which would redirect them to a blog post featuring your content. Seems tiresome, doesn’t it?

Now you see that in case of email, inline consumption is not favoured while in the case of social platforms, inline consumption of content is not only favoured but appreciated and encouraged. In fact, social media platforms allow you the option to engage with your audience. Users can easily like, comment and share your content with the click of a button, which could otherwise not be done on Email.

Here is where our beloved social media platforms rank higher than Email.

4. Profiling, Personalization and Targeting-

Segmentation and Targeting is the place where Email emerges victorious once again. Even though Facebook allows you to send targeted messages to a set of users that have liked your page, email is a free platform that you have 100% control over.

It is up to you what kind of data is available to you and what kind of data you can capture.

You can actually send out an automatic welcome email to visitors who have filled out a newsletter subscription form on your website or a reminder email to those who have not visited your website in the last 30 days. The customizability is endless.

Thus, from the Profiling, Personalization and Targeting perspective, Email is a winner here.

5. Channel Stability-

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. are all proprietary platforms. They own and control every aspect of the platform and have the authority to choose who gets to view your content and who doesn’t. If you think that is not right (or a violation of your rights), take a look at their comprehensive terms and conditions; which we all supposedly read and accept.

Facebook, for instance, changes its algorithm almost every week.

In the earlier days, a content unit posted on Facebook would reach out to a significant proportion of your likes, if not all. That’s not the case anymore. In a bid to increase paid ads, Facebook has immensely reduced the reach of your post, persuading you into opting for the paid alternative to promote your post to your own likes.

A study from Edgerank Checker found that between February 2012 and March 2014, organic reach for the average Facebook Page dropped from 16% to 6.5%. Research from Social@Ogilvy, meanwhile, suggests that for Pages with more than 500,000 Likes, organic reach could be as low as 2%.-Hubspot

As a small business, this would most definitely impact you as not everyone can afford to spend lavishly on every post.

However, in the case of Email as a platform, that’s not a problem. An email sent to your audience would most assuredly reach the inbox of that users. (Spam and Promotion is a different matter entirely. In order to avoid our email going into spam, we need to focus on using the right techniques of sending an email.

Conclusion-

The above 5 criteria are a short list of guidelines that every business must consider before opting into a particular platform for the distribution of your content.

Note that in most cases it’s not necessary to choose one single platform or two for that matter. If relevant, you can opt to go for multiple channels as well.

However, as I have mentioned before, you should focus your energy and resources on a single platform and then subsequently grow out into multiple channels.

Image Source- OptinMonster.com, Google, Business2Community.com,

What Is Inbound Marketing And Why It Is Essential For Every Marketer To Implement

If you have more money than brains, you should focus on Outbound Marketing. If you have more brains than money, you should focus on Inbound Marketing.

-Guy Kawasaki

Co-founder, Alltop.com

 

You may have come across this phrase ‘Inbound Marketing’ from various different sources and especially in recent times, its use has increased stupendously… and rightly so!

So let’s dive right into it. What is Inbound Marketing?

Traditional marketing is a one-way conversation – the marketer talking ‘at’ the potential customer. Inbound marketing is an invitation to an ongoing dialogue in which you can communicate with your customers in both a professional and congenial fashion.

In general, Inbound Marketing is an approach focused on attracting customers through content that is relevant to capture and convert potential customers through channels like blogs, search engines and social media which draws the user base to your product or service.

If the content educates, informs and engages directly with your target buyer persona, it serves to build awareness and increases interest generating leads. Once a visitor becomes a lead, based upon on a scoring system, you can pass them into a sales funnel. Once they convert and buy repeatedly you can analyse the process to produce more desirable content and showcase your expertise.

Now that we understand the concept of Inbound Marketing, let’s get onto why it is important because there is no point in learning, understanding and implementing something if it’s useless and does not help us achieve our ultimate objective.

Why is Inbound Marketing becoming so popular these days?

If you’re new to digital marketing, you might be a little bit fuzzy about the concept of inbound marketing. It’s a relatively new tactic that’s almost exclusive to the Internet.

Inbound Marketing did not exist from day one when the digital marketing industry cracked into the traditional marketing world. Today, more and more businesses are trying to jump onto the Inbound Marketing bandwagon and trying to leverage it as a part of their overall marketing strategy.

  1. The Role of Customer in the Buying Process is Changing-

The traditional Marketing Funnel has changed its attributes. This new marketing funnel visualizes the various psychological phases a customer travels through before they actually try or buy your product. In recent times, a customer now passes through all the stages of the funnel, their number dropping out at each stage, and only when they reach the last two stages of Evaluation(final stage before the purchase decision) and Sales(the result of the marketer’s effort throughout the process) does the actual consideration of purchase take place. Earlier was a much simpler and easier time when sales took place right from when a customer began considering a product or service.

2. Majority Are Not Ready To Buy Yet-

Now, with a shorter attention span, massive increase in competition and increasing availability of sources of information, customers are getting onto the web more so for research purposes than to make an immediate purchase.

This normal distribution curve (bell curve) shows that the majority(95%) of qualified prospects on your website are there to research and not to buy.-Marketo

What is important to keep in mind here is that it is not that this 95 % of people are not relevant or not interested in your product or service but rather that they are just not ready to buy from you at that point of time. The bell curve shows that only about 5% of users are actually there on your website to make an immediate purchase. These are very very significant numbers and something that every marketer must consider at the time of developing his inbound marketing strategy.

Of course, these numbers are not always 100% accurate. there is a minor deviation on a case by case basis depending on the industry, but overall this graph applies to every marketing campaign.

Marketers now need to nurture the users who have just visited their website to research more about the product or service and convert their interest into a purchase through regular and efficient inbound marketing, holding their hand from one stage of the marketing funnel to the next.

70% of people on your website will buy either from you or from your competitor- Marketo

3. Personalization Is Possible At Scale-

In today’s day and age, technology has increased at such a stupendous pace that there is now an availability of tools and techniques which has enabled personalization at scale. This was something that was not possible earlier.

This custom tailored Happy Birthday email mentioning the name of the viewer and wishing him on his birthday along with a discount coupon is a perfect example of Personalization. Instead of simply handing over a coupon, to a customer, the brand gifted it, and that’s what makes all the difference. What this does is that it builds a relationship between a user and the brand, thus increasing relatability and credibility.

With today’s technology, it hardly takes any super-coding skills in order to actually create such detailed personalization.

4. Cost of Inbound Marketing Strategies-

Studies show that Inbound Marketing costs 62% less per lead than outbound marketing.

Inbound marketing tactics don’t generate leads, they generate revenue.-Hubspot

The average PPC on any popular website will support that statistic.

5. It’s Organic and Natural –

Take this scenario: someone searches online for a specific service at 3:00 am on a Saturday; your listing appears in the search engine’s results; your rich content provides them with fundamental value and inside knowledge that will improve their understanding and prompts them to contact you – they become a profitable lead. Inbound marketing is natural, targeted and truly resonates with a primed audience.

6. Attract More Website Visitors-

Inbound marketing is about getting the most out of your website. Creating great content that will attract customers is part of the process. A blog becomes an asset that drives traffic to your website. You can identify “keywords” that your customers are searching and leverage it to your advantage. Therefore, SEO is of utmost importance. If you commit to the process you can drive more visitors to your website. This can increase your chances of converting visitors to leads.

Conclusion

Inbound Marketing is no longer a secondary marketing tactic within our overall digital marketing strategy. In 2018 it will be a must for every marketer to implement and only those businesses that are able to leverage Inbound Marketing effectively will be able to survive in this fast-moving digital marketing world, the rest will inevitably perish.

Wondering how to organically increase your level of engagement on Facebook? Check out ‘8 Types of Facebook Content to Drive Engagement’.

Image Source- Google, Digital Vidya

LinkedIn VS Facebook- From A Marketer’s Perspective

With the increasing number of social media platforms, as a marketer, we need to make a crucial choice of focusing our social media efforts on a limited number of platforms. This decision is vital to the existence of a brand and can make or break it as well.

In this blog post, we will discuss the difference between LinkedIn and Facebook and which platform will best help you achieve your goals and objectives.

A brief introduction of our two contestants for today:-

Facebook– People tend to spend more time on Facebook than on LinkedIn for the simple reason that it is perceived as a more ‘fun’ platform where friends are able to get together and share their thoughts and opinions over a casual post like a meme or joke. Facebook is clearly in the quantity win with over 2.07 billion monthly active users.

LinkedIn– LinkedIn, however, is a more serious platform where users log in for a specific purpose, be it recruitment, job hunting, connecting with colleagues or sharing their professional expertise on specific industry related topics. LinkedIn is far behind Facebook when it comes to the numbers game, with around 467 million members.

1. Audience Profile

Facebook– General consumers. Facebook is primarily a platform where friends and family get together to de-stress or connect with known persons. Marketers on Facebook need to keep their audience interests in mind, keeping the tone light and friendly. Create content which your audience would like to consume.

LinkedIn– Companies/organizations/businesses. LinkedIn allows users to create a professional, job-oriented profile, offering a variety of ways for a marketer to target based on seniority, job function, industry and more. Marketers on LinkedIn should keep the tone serious and professional, industry-specific and to the point. LinkedIn is primarily used by B2B businesses to connect with users in the same industry segment.

2. Analytics-

Facebook- Facebook provides real-time, built-in reports consisting data of the type of audience, their country of origin, and others ranging from likes, reach, visits, posts, people, events, videos, messages to a lot more. This data is very useful to a marketer as their job hardly ends after an advertising campaign is created. They constantly need to optimize it to achieve the best results at the lowest cost.

LinkedIn- LinkedIn does not provide extensive insights on page performance limiting to updates, interactions, clicks, impressions, reach, followers and visitors. This makes it difficult for a marketer to analyze and extract data on the performance of a LinkedIn campaign. 

3. Cost-

Facebook- Facebook gives the option to adjust how much you’re willing to pay per day (starting at Rs.40 per day), which corresponds to the number of users you reach out to. Overall, Facebook is a much cheaper option, with the average CPC of Rs. 5, being the lowest across all social media platforms. As a marketer, a lower cost is of vital importance in determining the success of an advertising campaign  

LinkedIn- LinkedIn offers a specific way to reach an audience but the cost is higher than Facebook’s. LinkedIn is said to be one of the most expensive advertising platforms in terms of average CPC of Rs.150. The minimum amount that LinkedIn will generally require you to allot for your CPC and CPM bids is Rs.100 (for either). And the minimum budget generally allotted by LinkedIn for your daily budget is Rs.500. The huge difference in cost from that of Facebook, shy away many marketers, making LinkedIn a secondary consideration. That being said, there a number of successfully launched campaigns on LinkedIn as well,  like the Volkswagen Campaign, where the results were far greater than the initial cost.

4. Branding-

Facebook- On Facebook there is a strong distinction between a user’s personal profile and a brand’s page. The content posted on a personal profile and a company’s page is completely different and unrelated. A marketer must build his company’s brand and his personal brand separately and simultaneously.

LinkedIn- On LinkedIn there is no distinction between personal and professional branding as it seamlessly integrates with each other in the form of a common profile. Through a user’s profile, it enables the audience to connect with the brand. Vice-versa if a brand posts valuable content then the employees of the brand are known as well. A marketer needs to be able to sell himself as well as his company through the use of one single profile.

5. Thought Leadership-

Facebook- Facebook is not a platform where users generally express their professional opinion but rather a light and casual conversation amongst friends. Marketers cannot hope to get their audience to pour out their expertise and insights into their industry or job.

LinkedIn- LinkedIn is the primary platform where users come together to influence others through their professional opinions. The most common place of thought leaders is LinkedIn groups where experts speak about their opinions with respect to a specific industry.

6. Marketing Objectives-

Facebook- As a marketer, Facebook provides a number of opportunities to achieve objectives such as Awareness, Consideration and Conversion but is more suitable for Direct Sales and Traffic. The level and detail of targeting on Facebook is world’s apart that of all other social media platforms, making it ideal for marketers to grow their brand.

LinkedIn- As a marketer, LinkedIn cannot be used to directly sell to your industrial buyers as users on LinkedIn login for their own personal and professional development rather than to outright buy a product or service. It will lead to a very low conversion rate and more often than not, a poor brand image.

Conclusion-

The controversy of which platform is better for marketing has been chewed over and over in the last years by marketers, entrepreneurs and bloggers.

Lately, Facebook is focusing on improving their paid marketing campaigns and continue to develop new and innovative features appealing to B2B companies and marketers alike, in a strive to reach above LinkedIn in the B2B space.

Having a deep understanding of who you are marketing to (your buyer personas) and how they use these platforms at each stage of the buyer’s journey, will enable you to become more customer-centric in your marketing.

Instead of focusing on which platform is better for your marketing strategy, simply being aware of how and when to use each on the potential journey your prospects go through before they decide to buy from you can make a dramatic shift in your marketing strategy.

 

Image Source- Hootsuite, Pear Analytics, Pinterest, Social Media Examiner.

8 Types Of Facebook Content To Drive Engagement

If You’re Not Putting Out Relevant Content In Relevant Places,

You Don’t Exist.

Gary Vaynerchuck, CEO, VAYNERMEDIA

Users only engage in content that adds VALUE to their lives.

Value doesn’t only mean improving the quality of their lives. Making users think, have fun, learn something, making them connect to people, relate to something, feel something- all this is VALUE.

8 Ways to Provide Value Content on Facebook to Drive Engagement are:-

1. The Entertaining Content:

Brands should produce content which is entertaining but also true to their core.

It need not be the most intellectual content that could ever be consumed, but we can pretty much all agree that, on occasion, looking at some adorable pictures of kittens can serve as a great intermission from our daily cerebral posts. 

Have you heard the news? India’s biggest sale – The Big Billion Days are back! Watch now! #AbMehengaaiGiregiKnow more: http://fkrt.it/6K3Gh0NN

Posted by Flipkart on 7 ಸೆಪ್ಟೆಂಬರ್ 2017

Flipkart is one of the brands that has been able to master the art of promotion through entertaining videos. In the above short video, Flipkart is seen promoting its ‘Big Billion Day’ sale through a humorous video where children behave like adults.

2. The Educative Content:

Brands often cater to a particular theme and the content of that brand revolves around that theme. Educative content is anything that provides knowledge or information about something to the reader or viewer. By providing interesting information to a customer, he or she eventually gets engaged and attempts to seek out more of such information or share it with his or her friends.

In this Facebook post, a provider of consumer-direct travel services in India, Yatra.com through its post, ‘7 Unbeatable Reasons To Honeymoon in Melbourne’ provides travel related information for those newly wed couples seeking a destination for their honeymoon.

3. The Content People Can Relate To:

The rule of thumb proves time and again that people are more likely to like, comment on and subscribe to a post to which they can relate to. It serves as a feeling of nostalgia which emotionally connects with an audience. The keyword here is Relatability, where one tends to cease everything midway and contemplate the unforeseen familiarity of the post.

All India Backchod (AIB) is a comedian group that is notorious for its sarcastic and hilarious posts which contradict and expose society and its customs. In the above image, the Panda represents a relaxed and procrastinate student who finds it almost impossible to gather the strength and fortitude of spirit to complete an assignment due the next day. The Bat represents an extrovert, gregarious party-animal who livens up the place. I’m sure most of us can relate to this.

4. The Emotional Content

It can be rightly said that a post has emotional content when it deeply connects you with itself and gives you a warm fuzzy feeling.

Happy Mother's Day from Practo!

While smiling or crying. While falling or hurting. You always remembered her. To the first doctor you ever called. Happy Mother’s Day. Watch our tribute to her and #CallMomNow.

Posted by Practo on 8 ಮೇ 2015

In the above video, Practo, a website that allows patients to search for the best doctors, released a video on Mothers Day which thanks all mothers for their continuous love and affection towards their children, calling a mother a child’s first doctor. Surely every child and every mother would be emotionally touched after seeing this video.

5. The Trending Content:

Trends are the most talked about topics at a particular point of time. Posts that are trending would get more traction than they would otherwise get, which in turn leads to engagement. Companies should make the most use of trneds and leverage it to their advantage.

Amul is said to be one of the pioneers of Trending Content. Amul has successfully created its entire marketing strategy revolving around trending topics.

In the above image, Amul has created a pun over the recent winner of Miss World 2017, Manushi Chhillar, where Amul’s mascot is seen handing over a slab of Amul butter to ‘Mahakhushi’ who is elated to receive the prestigious ‘Butter Award’.

6. The Humanizing Content:

Humanizing Content has a far larger impact in comparison to simply advertising the bare product. As people online are not able to physically view the product, humanizing it would enable them to perceive the product and position it in their minds.

Police Sunglasses is a consumer fashion brand that has posted a picture of a man wearing the sunglasses in a fashionable and stylish manner, communicating to users that they too could look the same if they were to be proud owners of these sunglasses.

7. The Inviting Content:

Inviting Content is a popular form of content whereby instead of simply posting a description of a product or service, companies provide a platform for people to interact with themselves and amongst each other. The users are happy to take a break from the usual lackluster article and share their views, thereby driving engagement.

For instance, Kotak Life Insurance, through this gif post, asks users to view it and comment in the comment section below with a screenshot right before the car and truck collide. Making users aware of the inherent threat of loss of life due to an accident, #LifeCanFlipAnytime, Kotak persuades users to consider Life Insurance.

8. The User Generated Content:

User Generated Content, also known as UGC, is one of the most interesting forms of content wherein the company shares a users post. Rather than hiring expensive actors and graphic design artists, the company leverages the content created by the user, making the user the advocate; which mind you, is more engaging, trustworthy and credible than scores of well placed advertisements.

In the image above, Lay’s, the famous potato chip brand, shares an image of a girl with a packet of Lay’s chips in her hand and encourages users to share their own ‘Lay’s moment’ in order to be featured on the official Lay’s page.

Conclusion

We are long past that phase where merely ‘selling’ on Facebook will generate and increase sale figures and units. Only when the content adds value to a user, will they like, comment on or subscribe to it; in other words, only then will the user engage with the content. And since engagement is the ultimate goal of every business, one should really consider providing this said value to their followers.