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4 Ways to Integrate Instagram Ads Into Your Marketing

It's official: one of the fastest-growing social media networks worldwide is now offering advertising opportunities for marketers large and small. After months of testing its new ad format to a limited audience, Instagram rolled out the platform to advertisers everywhere on Sept. 30. If you're looking to integrate the ads into your social media marketing strategy, you've come to the right place! Keep reading for an in-depth guide to Instagram ads.

1. Understanding the network

Experienced digital marketers will be familiar with Instagram, the social network that has experienced a meteoric rise since its $1 billion purchase by Facebook three years ago. Today, the network boasts 400 million active users, propelling it to a high ranking behind industry giants like Facebook and its Chinese competitor, QZone.

Compared to its direct competitors, Instagram boasts a relatively young audience with 53 percent of its user base being 29 years or younger. Thanks in part to this young demographic, the network is one of the few which doesn't see college graduates as the top education demographic, though 31 percent of its users do have at least some college experience.

In other words, the network has long offered a premier opportunity for brands to expand their reach to millennials, promoting consumer-based products and services in the sub-30 age range. In fact, 32.5 percent of U.S. companies now use Instagram for marketing purposes, and eMarketer expects that number to rise to over 70 percent by 2017 -- surpassing Twitter.  

If I were a better person, I'd put money on the new ad capabilities for that induction of brands into Instagram.

2. The ad format

If you've been using Instagram since its early stages, you might think of the network as a digital photo album. And in essence, that remains true -- thanks to a layout that emphasizes pictures and the multitude of available filters, Instagram offers the perfect opportunity for brands to visualize their imagine and provide behind-the-scenes photographs of their operations. But now that the network has entered the ad landscape, it can offer so much more than that.

Currently, Instagram offers three types of ads to marketers: Image ads, video ads and carousel ads. Considering that the platform is owned by Facebook, it should come as no surprise that all three are closely related to their Facebook counterparts.

• Image ads are the equivalent of Facebook's Link Ads but with a heavier emphasis on visual. They offer brands the opportunity to add a call-to-action button to their ad, which enables them to drive web visits in addition to raising brand awareness. 
• Carousel ads are similar to image ads but offer additional functionality in the way that Facebook's carousel ads are essentially enhanced (and diversified) link ads. Instead of just one image, you add multiple images within the same ad, which enables you to showcase multiple pictures and calls to action with a single targeting option and ad copy.
• Finally, video ads do little more than drive video views -- you can add up to 30 seconds of moving images, but call-to-action buttons are not yet available for this ad type. 

While Instagram does not currently offer conversion optimization, the network has promised to add that feature in the near future.

3. Facebook integration

Here's without a doubt my favorite part of Instagram ads -- the set-up integrates seamlessly into Facebook's Power Editor, enabling marketers to take advantage of the numerous advanced targeting methods that they've come to love on the world's largest social-media platform. The new Power Editor even lets you create an integrated Instagram / Facebook marketing campaign that ensures you reach your target audience through a variety of channels.

When Facebook purchased Instagram in 2012, many users and marketers worried that it would mean the end of the picture network's independence of its larger brethren. The introduction of widely available, integrated Facebook ads have made that worry a reality -- but early on, it looks like marketers are benefiting rather than suffering from this integration.

Considering that Instagram ads became widely available less than a month ago, we don't yet have compelling statistics that show the network to be more effective than its competitors. But a variety of marketers who were able to take part in earlier tests, from Starwood to Levi's, has claimed to find significant success and favorable return on investment in their paid Instagram efforts. For what it's worth, the network itself is already showcasing a variety of success stories in promoting the new ad features.

4.Integrating Instagram into your social media marketing

Considering the early excitement around new ad features on the world's fastest-growing social media site, predict a large number of advertisers flocking to this shiny new toy. In fact, I encourage it. If only 32 percent of marketers are currently using Instagram for marketing purposes, the amount of competitive noise should be significantly less than some of the more established sites. But when moving to Instagram, it's important to integrate the new capabilities into your existing strategy rather than simply racing ahead.

Fortunately, the network has made this integration easy by working flawlessly alongside Facebook ads. But as most marketers know, that doesn't mean you should simply duplicate your efforts. Instead, you should develop ads that fit within your strategy and match the network's audience.

Business models that can provide easy visuals, from multimedia companies to fashion outlets, will find Instagram to be a great fit for their audience. Business-to-business companies, on the other hand, may not easily find footing on this consumer-based network. Put simply, Instagram ads make sense only if the network would have made sense for you even without the paid possibilities. If you haven't seen the need for an Instagram presence in the past, you should not change your mind now.

If, on the other hand, you're looking to enhance your presence on Instagram and spread awareness of your brand beyond your current followers, the new ad capabilities are huge news. They are without a doubt the new, shiny toy in social media marketing -- and I look forward to tracking just how well they perform compared to other networks.

 Source : http://bit.ly/1U0Wcwo

7 Ways You Can Power Your Mobile Marketing Strategy

Companies are investing in mobile and for good reason. The mobile marketing world has expanded rapidly, and it’s not slowing down. In recent years, mobile device usage has taken over desktop—and it’s becoming a preferred marketing platform for many.

Your brand’s marketing strategy needs to be up to date, and it deserves a good amount of planning to stay afloat. Below, we’ve rounded up the biggest, hottest trends sweeping the mobile marketing world. Take a look at them, and compare your current strategy with the industry’s greatest advancements:

Trend One: Smartphone Reliant Shopping

Sure, you might’ve heard of consumers using smartphones to browse the Internet. You might’ve even accommodated for “mobile-only” customers. Until you dedicate a significant portion of your marketing strategy to mobile web, however, your business will be behind. In 2015, 90 percent of smartphone-enabled shoppers compared prices, conducted purchased and left feedback via their devices. Beyond 2016, the smartphone will be a sole buying utility.

Trend Two: Mobile Payments

Mobile payments were slow to start, but they’ve definitely dominated modern shopping. In 2016, mobile pay will experience great adoption. In fact, the United States can expect a volume of $142 billion in mobile payments by 2019. Apple, Google and other providers are streamlining the smartphone’s security to enable in-depth payment options, and brands are generating secure apps to offer customer-centric deals.

Trend Three: SMS Polls

Where feedback is considered, text-based polling promises to be the business world’s newest “social feedback” option. This year has already birthed a plethora of poll-centric response options, and businesses are directly increasing product sales by way of integrative SMS polling. After 2016, leading industry gurus will adopt real-time, long-term polling campaigns to target market shifts before they happen.

Trend Four: Mobile Coupons

Digital offers are booming. Mobile coupons experienced great success in 2015, and they’re expected to achieve new heights in 2016. SMS-delivered coupons, currently, are 10 times as effective as their paper counterparts. Printed coupons are out, and texted coupons are in. Buyers beyond 2016 will only opt for digital turn-ins, reworking the way providers conduct business. 50 percent of consumers make direct purchases after obtaining a text-bound coupon, and, even more, are open to the idea of ongoing digital coupon offers.

Trend Five: In-App Advertisements

Experts agree that mobile apps will be the new frontier of mobile advertisement. In 2015, 79 percent of smartphone users engaged mobile apps daily. If you want to be a top-dog industry professional, you need to secure purchases and retain visitors via a mobile app.

Trend Six: Deep Linking for Mobile Web

SEO has finally hit its stride with smartphones. Google’s App Indexing has made online visibility important, and mobile user experiences have become reliant on contextual search. Emergent markets are reliant on Google App Indexing, and they’re crafting entire strategies around mobile web SEO. One of the best strategies is to outreach to writers in your niche to see if they would allow you to contribute your thought leadership essay on their blog. This strategy will boost ranking and referral traffic.

Both mobile websites and mobile apps are benefiting, as cross-channel accessibility between mobile websites and mobile apps is huge. To achieve maximum visibility in the modern age, companies must double down on indexing options.

Trend Seven: Mobile Video Marketing

A YouTube video, when distributed effectively, is an indispensable marketing resource. Facebook constantly hosts viral videos, engaging brand campaigns and interactive media. After 2016, this paradigm will take place primarily on mobile. Mobile video advertisement revenue is expected to reach 13 billion before the start of 2020.

As your strategy grows, it should be redirected to match the industry’s ever-expanding options. Smartphone technology grows quickly, and it won’t stop for business professionals to catch up. Double check your strategy, prepare for growth and ready your brand for the world’s newest, greatest innovations.

  Source : http://bit.ly/1R3MLGq

The Secret to Predicting Startup Success in 2016

When it comes to investing in startups, one thing is clear ... nobody knows the outcome. This can change that.

What's the best way to measure a startup?

Profit is non-existent for most startups. Even revenue can be elusive at the early stages. And what's the magic number for users or customers? 100? 10,000? 100,000?

In the book Startup Wealth: How the Best Angel Investors Make Money in Startups, Josh Maher interviews many legendary investors including Brad Feld, Mark Suster, Catherine Mott, Christopher Mirabile, Allan May, Joanne Wilson, and more. What heuristics did they use to know whether or not to invest in a startup?

Right now the answer is all over the board. There are no standards. Some people invest purely based on their relationship with the founders and do little to no due diligence. Others spend months or even years tracking a startup before taking the plunge.

I'd argue that Net Promoter Score (NPS) should be a required foundational metric behind measuring startups of every size. If you are a startup founder, it should be used as a KPI. If you are an angel investor, you should request it for due diligence. And if you are a venture capitalist, you should be requesting your entire portfolio to be reporting NPS figures to you.

Here's why:

Universal Applicability

Whether you are running a consulting company or a high tech mobile app... whether you have just one customer or tens of thousands ... whether you have no revenue or millions in profit ... you can still run NPS campaigns.

That's because fundamentally all businesses have customers. Even if you don't have revenue yet (maybe you are still building out your user base) you still have users. And with users you can have an NPS score.

With NPS, you ask just one question: How likely (from 0 to 10) are you to recommend my product or service to a friend or colleague? As long as you have some kind of product or service, you can measure NPS.

This makes NPS an ideal key performance indicator if you are trying to evaluate a startup.

TIP #1: Don't fret about the exact score.

If your potential investment is running an NPS campaign for the first time, the chances are that their score is not going to be that great. Many products find that their first score is not what they expect. That's what makes NPS such a powerful survey technique. It gives you an honest assessment of how well you are turning users into fans.

You might be hoping that they are in the high +70's like Apple. But as long as they are positive (and not net-negative), it should not be raising any big red flags at this point.

(After all, the real power of NPS is in the follow-up process)

The score is just a starting point on a journey.

So if you aren't overly concerned with the NPS score, how do you use NPS as a metric for evaluating a startup? Good question! That brings us to our second point.

Honest Customer Feedback

Most investors ask for customer references as part of the diligence process before investing. But this has always confused me. Whenever you ask for a reference, the people given as references are intrinsically likely to tell you good things, since they are often friends with the person in the first place.

But ideally, you would want a way to get a more critical eye for some honest customer feedback rather than just talking to the one or two best references that a startup can provide you.

If you have an NPS campaign as part of due diligence, spend most of your time evaluating the individual responses rather than obsessing about the overall score. And if you are not given all the individual responses, insist on seeing them.

The second question in a NPS survey is: What was the biggest reason for having given that score?

This open-ended question lets customers praise and vent about what they care about most. Reading through these responses will give you the most independent and honest feedback you can get when evaluating a startup.

Often, these responses will include the best and worst of a startup. People who love the service will tell you why they love it. People who are having trouble with the service will tell you why they are having trouble. Those problem areas can then be used as starting points for further diligence.

Many people underestimate how powerful NPS is, especially because it is so simple to implement with just two quick questions. But done correctly, these two questions really are the only two questions that need to be asked.

Implicit Accountability

Although I've already said that the first NPS score doesn't matter, I don't want you to come away with the impression that none of the NPS scores matter.

In fact, tracking NPS scores over time is a fantastic way to audit that progress is being made to improve the product or service.

After the first NPS campaign, you will know the top three biggest problem areas. The next time an NPS campaign is sent, if the same problems come up again in the same frequency (or worse), then it is a sign that something is deeply wrong.

Ideally, as an investor in startups, you should be able to keep track of all your portfolio's NPS scores over time. Comparing them to each other is a possible way to keep an eye on the investments that might need more of your attention. However, a better indicator is to make sure that all of your portfolio's NPS scores are steadily improving over time.

No other score that I know of can provide this kind of warning system no matter the underlying business model or source of revenue. NPS gives you a tool that uniquely can predict breakout success or imminent failure for venture capitalists.

 

Implementing NPS as a key performance indicator can easily be done whether you are a startup founder, an angel investor or a venture capitalist. And done properly, the results can be amazing. For example, after we implemented just one sales technique into our NPS process at Promoter.io, we were able to increase MRR by 32%. You can even use NPS to drive a marketing campaign. So add this tool to your diligence worksheet and ensure that all the startups you work with start tracking it today.

Source : http://bit.ly/1OCrAt6

How To Win The Attention Of Potential Investors

If your goal is to build a world-changing product (or to create one of those unicorns everyone is talking about), at some point you’re probably going to need the help and resources of outside investors. But pitching investors can be a painful process.

So how do you make sure your startup is one of the few companies that pique  interest? What can you do to capture the attention of top-tier investors?

To address this problem, I’ve compiled a list of things you should and should not do in order to get the attention of investors. This list is based on my psychological research in attention, my personal experience as an investor, and the experience of other great venture capitalists and angels.

Here are a few tips if you’re looking to get on the radar of investors:

What To Do

Establish your credibility up front. Journalists are taught to never bury the lede; smart entrepreneurs follow the same advice. Investor time and attention is limited, so lead your emails and sit-down meetings with the best aspects of your pitch. This gives you the best shot of getting an investment.

“Tell me the sexy stuff up front,” says Boost VC founder Adam Draper. “Do you have an all-star team? Do you have traction that makes a hockey stick? Did you cure cancer? Get the attention of the investor early, and you should be able to keep it for the rest of the meeting.”

Get an introduction through someone trustworthy.

 You’ve probably heard this one before, but there’s a reason this is the golden rule for approaching investors. 
The best investors simply have way more inbound emails and pitches than they know what to do with. Because their attention is so scarce, they build filters to protect their time and attention.

One key filter investors use is their network of trusted friends and experts. If a person has already vetted the entrepreneur and/or the idea, it’s much more likely to result in a quality meeting.

“Always, always always get an intro through a trusted source,” says Jon Soberg, co-founder and managing partner of Expansive Ventures. “Never ever send a cold email or LinkedIn request.”

Show you can sell. Josh Felser of Freestyle VC has a simple piece of advice: “Send me a personalized, thoughtful request to connect that shows that you understand how sales actually works.”

I receive hundreds of impersonal pitches daily. Some entrepreneurs send mass e-mails; others clearly haven’t done their research on my firm; I even get some entrepreneurs who address my firm or me by the wrong names.

The problem is that great entrepreneurs have to be great at sales. You’re going to have to sell a product to users, customers or advertisers at some point. If you can’t show us that you can sell, it’s a major red flag that will threaten the future of your company. Put in some real effort.

What Not To Do

Don’t go after the best-known partner of a fund. The big-name partners of a VC firm – you know, the ones with their last names in the firm’s name – are the ones who are pitched the most. They also have the least amount of time, due to their countless commitments and existing investments. It’s harder to get the attention of these investors.

“Seek out the up-and-coming partner or the one who isn’t in the limelight as much,” says Christine Tsai of 500 Startups.

Stop going after the famous investor of each firm and talk to the other partners of a venture capital firm. In the same vein, don’t ignore principals, associates and assistants in favor of partners. It’s rude, inconsiderate and short-sighted. That’s the kind of behavior that always gets discussed at weekly investment meetings.

Don’t insult your competition. When an entrepreneur trash talks successful tech giants like Uber, Facebook or Airbnb, my attention immediately turns off. Entrepreneurs should have a healthy respect for their competition.

“Facebook and Google are Facebook and Google for a reason,” Adam Draper adds. “It only shows that you don’t know your market as well as you think you do.”

Don’t send a long-winded email. Novice entrepreneurs love to send 10-paragraph emails explaining every aspect of their startups. But what sane investor has the time to read 10, 100 or 500 multi-paragraph emails every day? Unfortunately, investors don’t have enough time to read all the emails that come to them, so help us by keeping your first email short and sweet.

Lead with you and your team, the core of the idea, why you think the investor you’re pitching is a fit, and ask him or her whether he or she is interested in learning more. Sending a pitch deck is great – if the email intrigues the investor, then he or she will dig deeper. If it doesn’t excite them, then you’ve saved yourself hours and hours of time that can be spent pitching other investors.

Source : http://tcrn.ch/1i3fCzn

Unlocking Social Media Success: It’s a Long Way to the Top

Building a strong presence for your brand takes a while. Here are a few tips to get you started.

It is no cliché to think that first impressions are everything, and time is even more precious in the digital arena. People are constantly being bombarded with ads and suggestions for dozens of new websites and social media pages every day, further strengthening the need for your page to stand out. This starts with a strong design and aggressive copy; with both of these aspects complemented by attractive content which encourages the viewer to further explore your page and what your brand offers.

Building a significant online community obviously takes a while to accomplish but once you have achieved that, the rewards are invaluable. Not only does it allow you to promote your brand through more channels, but engaging with your existing and potential customers on a daily basis builds a certain level of trust that money just can’t buy. You have a front-row seat to real-time views on your brand, which consequently allows you to focus on what you may need to change in order to satisfy your customers, or what your overall positives are.

Helping give your brand a personality allows you to differentiate yourself from others. If your set of tools and services are equal to your competitors, your one chance of standing out is to take a personal approach and build a lasting relationship with your audience.

Positively interacting with users who in turn have a large number of followers could easily work in your favour if they decide to share/retweet your posts, which are then distributed to a large untapped audience who will come to know about your brand through these users.

Not only can you widen your overall audience reach with a strong online presence, but those new followers could eventually turn into leads.

Know the tools

The top three social networking websites – Facebook (1.49 billion active users / month), Twitter (316 million active users / month) and Linkedin(100 million active users / month)- have repeatedly been identified by companies (brokers included) as the most effective networks to promote their products and interact with their users. I certainly hope, for the sake of your company, that you know how to use these websites and all the great tools they have to offer. If not, let’s go through a quick rundown of these perks.

For instance, Facebook’s Page Promotion tool allows you to create an in-site promotional campaign with a few clicks. You can target your audience by location, interests, age, gender, their ability to balance a bowl on their head, and how much slower they inevitably are than Usain Bolt.

Crazy, I know.

You can upload your creatives and advert text, and of course tailor the campaign’s price and duration according to your company’s budget. Once you set your daily budget and the campaign’s duration, Facebook will inform you of the estimated likes per day. Assuming your sales team achieves a 10% conversion rate, a minimum of 28 leads for a €5/day campaign gives you good value for your money. Add a ‘refer-a-friend’ bonus incentive to newcomers, and you can maybe boost your sales a bit more.

Twitter also allows you to set your budget for objective-based campaigns including acquiring followers, website clicks/conversions, tweet engagements, or getting leads through Twitter. As well as promoting your account, your tweets and your trend (#yourbrandisawesome), you only pay when a user takes action (signs up, follows you, etc).

Linkedin allows you to create similar banner placement and objective-based campaigns with some more interesting filters including the user’s profession (useful if you’re running a B2B campaign), and the industry in which they work.

Is one of them better than the others? Probably. Am I going to tell you which one yields the best results? Nope. To each their own, I say. Some companies have a more significant Twitter presence than others, while the rest find more success in Facebook and Linkedin campaigns. Trial and error, my friends.

So, are paid campaigns the only way to boost my social media presence?

Thankfully, no. I’ve seen a hundred-and-one companies start off with a minimal marketing budget which just couldn’t accommodate these types of campaigns, no matter how beneficial they could prove to be.

What they did was place their social media buttons on their website, and created promotions which involved interacting on those pages. For example, you can tell new or existing clients that in order to get a $200 bonus, all they have to do is Like your Facebook page, or follow you on Twitter, follow your company on Linkedin, and in extreme (matter of national security) cases, like your page on Google +.

What was that joke about Google + users only being Google employees? That was it actually; punchline ruined. Sorry.

So, as mentioned above, using social media pages as incentives for bonuses, or even channels on which to host certain competitions (quiz winner gets a FREE Pez dispenser – but no Pez sweets) can do wonders for your social media pages. People always want free stuff, that’s no secret. Sure, you can do a few giveaways, so long as the user does something in return. Want that $200 bonus? RT to your 50,000 followers (and say how much you love us).

It’s a two way street, folks. Give your new or existing followers something to stay and interact for, and you’ll get those crispy-fresh leads who’ll call you every 5 minutes because they still can’t figure out how to place a trade. Happy days.

As much as I wish there was a secret to getting 50,000 followers in a week, there isn’t. I mean sure, you can buy fake followers from those absolutely dodgy websites, but a little hard work never killed anybody, which is what my absolutely-real grandpa from Mississippi used to say. Scout’s honour and all that.

I believe it’s just a matter of combining a few different strategies and finding that sweet spot of getting to the point where the likes and followers arrive by themselves. It’s all about putting the hard work in and enjoying the fruits. There are countless books on social marketing techniques out there, which will be able to tell you much more than a blog post could. I sincerely hope, however, that I planted the right ideas and pointed you in the right direction.

Source : http://bit.ly/1LJqhNL

LinkedIn just fixed one of its most annoying problems

"Finaly LinkedIn  fixed one of its most annoying problems"

 I'm a big LinkedIn user, but for a long time there's one feature that caused me angst because it worked so poorly:

Messaging.

The one-to-one communication tool on LinkedIn was completely broken.

I felt like I was constantly losing track of messages because the Inbox section of the site and app didn't allow me to read entire threads at once.

For a long time, you couldn't even tell from the Inbox whether or not you had responded to someone's message (the site recently added a "responded" tag, but you still only see the last received message when you click a thread). I often didn't get notifications for new messages.

The entire experience felt clunky and led to me leaving my email address in almost every note so that I could move the conversation to a more reliable platform.

But, rejoice, because LinkedIn has finally fixed messaging!

The company is rolling out an "easier and more lightweight" way to have conversations, the company writes.

"The wait is over," product manager Mark Hull writes, acknowledging that users had long been asking for new messaging capabilities. Communicating on LinkedIn will now look a lot more like it does on texting or Facebook Messenger; you can even use stickers and GIFs or attach photos or documents.

LinkedIn says that it has improved its push notifications for messages too, so no more accidentally waiting half a week to respond to an important professional connection.

Here's a peek at what the new experience will look like.

For the first time, you can also create group messages, in case you want to start a dialog with several colleagues at once.

Now that it's finally left the tired old method behind, the company says it plans to keep improving the messaging platform.

"We're excited about concepts like intelligent messaging assistants that can help suggest people you should message or provide you with relevant information about that person before you start a conversation," Hull writes. "Or the possibilities with voice and video to make conversations more compelling."

Source : http://bit.ly/1N3hQek