A recent study prepared by MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute surveyed B2B professionals to identify content marketing trends based on insights from the year 2012. Content marketing has become more important recently for SEO purposes due to Google cracking down on black hat and outdated link-building tactics, and it has proven its worth keeping social media engagement high in the form of infographics and podcasts. The study focused on the various tactics B2B marketers employed, methods of content distribution, and the latest overall budgeting decisions made by marketing departments.
Social Media Reigns Supreme
Below is a quick recap of the recent social media updates to hit the news wires.
Facebook Introduces Promoted Page Advertising Product
Last week, Facebook rolled out their Promoted Page Likes advertising globally, giving brands an opportunity to increase their presence on the #1 social media site without using third party services. Facebook has been plagued with third party companies offering severely discounted Facebook likes, almost all of which are fake and do not provide any added value for brands. With the latest Facebook Advertising update, page owners can now target very specific segments, set a daily/lifetime budget, and start generating legitimate fans that will interact with the brand’s viral content. In order to leverage this feature, the Facebook pages must have a physical address as the geo-targeting will by default select a local audience. However, through the ads manager, you can change this location to target a broader geographic area.
Social media is continuously evolving, and as a result, marketing professionals now have access to a wealth of insightful information on the attitudes of a typical user. Additionally, sites such a Facebook continue to roll out sophisticated features to help advertisers better leverage the viral power of social media. Below is a quick summary on the latest trends and technological updates in the online marketing world.
Facebook Introduces CPA Bidding
Possibly the greatest improvement to the ads manager since the advent of promoted posts, Facebook executives recently announced that they will be rolling out CPA bidding for social marketing advertisers. At the moment, advertisers only have the ability to optimize bids based on a CPC or CPM model. The new CPA bidding will allow PPC advertising professionals to bid based on the following actions: offer claims, Facebook page likes, and clicks/link opens (specific click-throughs to an external page rather than general clicks). Managing CPA programs will allow advertisers to better optimize paid campaigns and control the amount they are willing to spend per on new Facebook page likes.
PPC advertising and social media marketing are two main channels of internet advertising that online marketing professionals use to convert traffic for B2C campaigns. However, the B2B market is a whole different environment with users exhibiting different search behaviours across both channels.
PPC Advertising: Paid Search
In a previous blog post, it was shown that B2B marketing professional reported significant success in driving targeted traffic to their respective websites via from organic search. This post will provide an in-depth analysis of Optify’s study to discover just how valuable search engine optimization campaigns proved to be for B2B companies in 2012, and what type of insights can be applied to general online marketing campaigns.
Search Engine Market Share
A recent report by Optify investigated the major online marketing trends among B2B professionals in 2012. The numbers analyzed for the study originated from over 62 million visits and 350,000 leads, providing a wealth of data that can be translated into valuable information relating to the performance of various internet marketing channels.
A recent study prepared by Google and Nielsen investigated the latest trends in mobile marketing, and the results indicate that the majority of users who participated make frequent use of mobile devices to search for products and services. There’s no question companies will need to optimize websites for mobile search, especially with smartphones becoming more advanced, and the popularity of tablets skyrocketing.
77% of All Mobile Searches Done At Work or Home
Users feel more comfortable making mobile marketing searches at home and work rather than using desktop PCs.
An infographic prepared by VerticalMeasures perfectly captures the four pillars of successful social media marketing management for businesses. Incorporating social media marketing can be a difficult task for some small businesses, but it provide enormous potential for brands that want to leverage the viral power of sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
The Foundation of Social Media
1. Customer Service
Twitter and Facebook have been social media sites users have utilized to lodge complaints for quite a while now. Despite the pain this causes businesses, it provides timely resolution and responses for clients, and allows brands to personally connect with users on a regular basis. When preparing customer service guidelines for your social media networks, keep the following expected response rates in mind:
Developing successful online marketing campaigns can be a difficult endeavor for small & medium sized business working with a limited budget. However, it does not take an extensive understanding marketing theories and the intricacies of the internet marketing world to successfully launch an online business. Below are some helpful tips for new professionals getting their first taste of the e-commerce world.
1. Choose the right online advertising tools
Choosing the wrong online marketing tools can lose you a lot of money.
A recent report from CPC strategy compared the performance of the recently revamped Google Shopping platform against Amazon’s Product Ads For small businesses, these forms of product PPC advertising provide new ways to increase exposure among a targeted audience that’s in a “ready to buy now” mode. The results of the study found that after Google Shopping made the transition to a more commercial model last year, it’s performance surged compared to Amazon’s paid advertising products in certain areas.
Round 1: Cost-Per-Click (CPC)
The study found that Google Shopping was able to drive 130% more traffic to advertisers than Amazon’s Product Ads. In fact, the transition for Google proved to be advantageous, as it was able to double the amount of traffic it sent to merchants compared to 2011. Additionally, the average Google Shopping CPC rounded out to $0.31, effectively costing marketing professionals 32.5% less per click in comparison to Amazon’s Product Ads. For merchants, this provides tremendous opportunities to push promotions for specific products via pay-per-click advertising.
By Jonathan Berthold on