Author: Pamela Swift

Categories
Social Marketing

5 Tips For B2B Entrepreneurs To Advertise On Facebook

Unlike Google Adwords, Facebook lets you target advertisements based on demographics. It is possible to target your ads based on factors like the age, location and gender of the user. This makes it an attractive medium for B2C businesses to promote their wares. Things are slightly different for B2B where you do not target consumers by their demographics. In this article, we will take a look at the several parameters to consider while using Facebook as an advertising medium for your B2B product.

Identifying the Target 

In a B2B setup, the age or gender of the target is irrelevant. What however is relevant is the industry that a person works in, and their designation. A business that manufactures ball bearings might want to reach out to the procurement managers at companies that make products like blenders, washing machines, bicycles and pumps. Facebook permits such precise targeting through the ‘Detailed Targeting’ feature. This feature lets advertisers pick their audience based on a multitude of factors such as their education, relationships, job profile, and hobbies. A B2B advertiser may be interested in navigating to Demographics -> Work and targeting the recipient by their employer, job title and industry.

Designing the Landing Page 

Marketers often make the mistake of focusing primarily on the targeting and spending little time tweaking the landing page to fit the medium you are advertising on. A procurement manager searching for ‘ball bearing suppliers’ on Google has an intent. The landing page for your Adwords ad would need to focus on capturing the lead by demonstrating your authority in the ball bearing industry. On Facebook however, marketers do not have the benefit of receiving such ‘pre-warmed’ leads. The landing page here should thus focus on building a relationship for future engagement.

Let us take the example of a ball bearing supplier reaching out to procurement manager at a bicycle manufacturer. A Facebook ad here would focus on rich media content that would focus on bicycles and their reliance on ball bearings. The idea is to make them aware of your brand and what you do for their industry. Capturing a lead at this stage is ideal, but the conversions are going to be typically lower than what you would find on Adwords.

Retargeting 

Retargeting is an extremely crucial part of Facebook advertising. It lets marketers target the audience with more branding down the line. Since Facebook does not have the advantage of getting pre-warmed audiences, retargeting helps tackle this problem through branding. This will get your recipients warm up to your brand and offering. Facebook lets you to set up dynamic ads that render retargeting messages based on what action you previously took. This guide on Shopify provides a detailed tutorial on how to achieve this.

Setting Up Call To Action 

Call-to-Actions (CTA) are a critical component of digital advertising. On Facebook, it is possible to choose from a variety of various options like ‘Apply Now’, ‘Book Now’, ‘Contact Us’, ‘Download’, ‘Learn More’, ‘Request Time’, ‘See Menu’, ‘Shop Now’, ‘Sign Up’ and ‘Watch More’. A lot of these CTAs are targeted at consumer-facing businesses in the ecommerce, travel and food industry and may thus not be relevant to a B2B marketer. The options that work the best for B2B marketers are however ‘Download’, ‘Learn More’ and ‘Watch More’.

‘Watch More’ is used for rich media advertisements that are specifically targeted to spread awareness of your brand using videos. Marketers are more often inclined to build interest through survey reports, whitepapers and by building useful software tools to bait the target. For such campaigns, ‘Download’ and ‘Learn More’ are quite effective.

Measuring Performance 

It may be tempting to measure the performance of your ad campaigns in terms of the number of clicks or leads generated. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of Facebook advertising for B2B is not captured well by either of these metrics. As noted earlier, the objective for a B2B marketer is to build awareness and warm the leads over time.

The performance needs to be thus studied over two steps. In the first step, measure your engagement through metrics like Post Reactions (that includes likes, clicks, shares, etc.) that is offered on your Facebook Reports dashboard. In the second step, measure the performance of your retargeting campaigns through the number of leads generated.

The B2B sales and marketing cycle can often be excruciatingly long and it is very unlikely for a target to respond to a ‘Buy now’ button. Your ad campaign needs to acknowledge this reality and warm up to the target over a period of time instead of working on instant results.

Categories
Branding

How to Make Your Startup into a Brand?

Article Contributed by Dan Razak

Once your business becomes a brand, all your marketing efforts get much simpler. Instead hunting for attention, people start looking for your new products and even begin anticipating their release as soon as it gets announced. However, a new company has a long way to go from making its first branding steps to becoming a full-fledged brand. With this in mind, and without further ado, here are few tips to start making your business into a strong brand.

Take a Stand

They say that no publicity is bad publicity and although this attitude can be controversial, there is some truth to it. As long as this ‘bad’ publicity is related to some community-relevant topic and not your way of doing business, you are fine. You see, by being always politically correct you are bound to remain unnoticed, but by taking a stand, you are bound to evoke strong emotions in people in your surroundings. Sure, those criticizing will be loud and aggressive, but this can also inspire those who feel the same as you do to stand by your side. Like the great Winston Churchill once said: “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

Coming Up with a Great Name

Another thing you need to think about is the name of your company. Sure, picking something that sounds good and is currently unused is never easy, but it is something you will have to think about sooner or later. The reason why business name ideas carry so much weight is because they come to stand on your logo and every product you produce, therefore also becoming the name of your company. Furthermore, you should look if the same name can be used for your domain, as well. While you are at it (and if your funds allow it) it might also be worth your while to purchase few most common mispronunciations and misspellings of your company, just so you can ensure people looking for you can find you.

Local or Global Campaign

Well, this question in particular is something that mostly depends on your competition. You see, if you decide to start producing and distributing soft drinks, it would be absurd to assume that you can compete with giants like Coca Cola. In this case, it would be best for you to start with a smaller regional campaign and try to build up a loyal customer base founded on local-patriotism. On the other hand, if the industry is fairly new or growing, it’s free-for-all and you can try and make a name for yourself on a global level.

Brand Ambassadors

Finally, you need to find a way to turn your loyal customers into brand ambassadors. This is not as difficult as it sounds. Every person content with your products is bound to make a mention of it to at least some of their friends or relatives. In this way, your business gets a word of the mouth endorsement which is by far the most credible support you can receive. In other words, instead of paying influencers to use your product or service, you should make it so great that ordinary users feel the need to brag about it.

Conclusion

No matter how you do it, a real brand is not something you can just build overnight. It is all about making a strong relationship with your clients and this takes time. The key thing here is trust. When they decide to pay you for your services or product, they trust that your performance/quality will meet their expectations. By meeting these expectations, you have made the first move towards creating this bond. What you need to do next is strengthen it with the aid of some spot-on marketing and there you have it.

Dan Radak is a marketing professional with ten years of experience. He is a coauthor on several websites and regular contributor to BizzMark Blog. Currently, he is working with a number of companies in the field of digital marketing, closely collaborating with a couple of e-commerce companies.

Categories
Entrepreneurs

4 Artistic Skills All Entrepreneurs Should Have

In an age of businesses being introduced to customers almost exclusively via websites, entrepreneurs have been forced to become more than just business people. Entrepreneurs who want to succeed today have to be part businessman, part artist, because it is through multimedia that they will reach and engage with the most customers. Here are the top four artistic skills that all modern entrepreneurs should have at their disposal.

An Ear for Music and Sound

Although often disregarded, audio still plays a huge role in business marketing. Online advertisements frequently use backing music to set the tone and mood for customers, while podcasts have become their own marketing tool. Entrepreneurs who want to capitalize on these elements of business don’t need to train themselves into classical composers, but an ear for tone and musical melody can be a useful asset in the entrepreneur’s toolbox.

Software-Based Image Creation and Editing

When you first encounter a new business, chances are your initial interaction consists of seeing a single image somewhere online. Image-based advertisements, logos and email images will play a huge part in online marketing efforts, so be sure to create striking visuals that will draw customers in. The best way for entrepreneurs to tackle this element of their business activities is to become familiar with one or more forms of graphic design software. Once you know how to manipulate images using modern software, you can create everything from book cover by using tools such as Adobe Spark’s Wattpad cover maker to promotional brochures with ease.

Storytelling Abilities

Today, customers are more interested than ever before in the backgrounds of the brands they are considering making a purchase from. If you want to enhance your ability to sell, you need to have basic storytelling abilities. Your story could be about yourself as an entrepreneur or about the company you have created. Ideally, your story should have a problem-and-solution format, wherein you explain exactly what problem your brand is trying to solve. Adding relatable personal experience to your story is also useful, as it can help potential customers connect to your brand on an emotional level.

Acting, Presentation and Video Creation

In 2015, a survey conducted by Vidyard found that 70 percent of marketers saw better conversion rates with video marketing than from other types of content. Video is more important now than ever, and entrepreneurs must develop video creation skills in order to succeed in the modern marketing environment. These skills include both technical abilities, such as lighting and video editing, and more artistic abilities, such as acting and presenting information in a compelling manner. Entrepreneurs who master the process of video creation will be positioning themselves for success in the most important marketing medium of our time.

Though entrepreneurship and artistic skills are intimately linked, these four skills are the most important for entrepreneurs to learn and master. In modern business, artistic creations are used first and foremost to engage potential customers and increase their interest in your brand. If your creations are better than those of your competition, you can expect success and sales.

Categories
Technology

Business Can Flourish By Making The Right Uses Of Databases

Article Contributed by Sujain Thomas

Businesses have become intensely competitive and there is need to make proper use of technological tools to streamline operations and increase efficiencies. This is the only way that business can grow. Most businesses are now inclined to extensive use of computer based databases that forms the backbone of business.  The database provides the platform for dealing with huge data and using it according to business needs.  Nowadays, it is unthinkable for businesses to exist without database support.  The speed of business is enhanced by using databases and it offers a powerful tool for marketing products and services to a wider range of customers – both existing and prospective.

The enhanced quality of products and services that businesses can offer to its customers and clients is a direct result of database applications.  The automated teller machine is a vivid example of how database can be used effectively to offer superlative service to customers. Similarly, the flight reservation systems of railways and airlines are built on the foundation of a robust database system. The abundance of data in the database has to be craftily managed and administered by using computer programs that help in storing data and modify it as per requirement to extract information that is useful for business.

Database Management Systems

Database Management Systems or DBMS as it is popularly known is system software that is deployed for managing databases. The system provides programmers and users with the opportunity of creating data in a systematic manner and manages its retrieval and update.  In order to ensure that company data is properly used and deployed, a group of professionals trained in Database Administration is entrusted with the job. As data accumulation keeps on acquiring phenomenal proportions, the task of organizing data effectively so that it can add value to business gains critical importance.

Creating and managing database environment

Oracle systems are well known for database administration and management and are widely used across all kinds of businesses. Oracle DBA consultingservices are available to support the needs of business in database management and administration. The services are essential to ensure that the database is always up and running with minimum downtime. This is achieved through close monitoring and by using the skills of troubleshooting. Certified professionals of database management companies are best placed to provide the technological support  for adding more value to business by making it grow at a fast pace.

More focus on marketing

With an eye on improved business performance, the role of database in lending more focus to marketing is what businesses can make most use of.  It is only common knowledge that efficient marketing holds the key to the success for any business and databases can be of great help in realizing the goals of marketing in a focused way.  Among different categories of databases, customer database is the most common across all types of business. The information about customers and their buying patterns are captured in the database and can be analyzed to identify the core group of customers that contribute the maximum sales value. By focusing on this group of customers it is possible to make the sales grow very fast and add substantial value to business.

Plan for incentives

Once the group of customers has been identified, marketing plans have to be revamped to attract them.  The target customers can be offered special privileges and discounts over certain value of purchase and even loyalty programs can be developed to boost sales. Customers can also be invited for special access to selected items before it is presented to the general public. It creates a feeling of exclusiveness that can encourage customers to engage in more buying.

Identify customer preferences

Suppose you have a music shop and you use the customer database to know about what kinds of music they prefer. This helps to focus on different customer groups according to their choice of music.  Databases can be effectively used for identifying what most of the customers prefer. This would help to know about the products or services that are in most demand and re-position the sales pitch for these items in order to attract more customers. It gives a direction to the marketing plan and drives it towards a fruitful completion.

Benefits of database

What has been cited above is just an illustration of one of many benefits that can be derived from databases. There are many more benefits besides marketing gains that can be derived from proper use of database.

  • Database allows free flow of information across the organization if it is made accessible to all. It removes a lot of complexity in business as it is possible for all to know the status about most of the things that matter in business. The database is the only place where all information is made available without having to search for it here and there.
  • Duplicate information is weeded out through the use of database and this leads to streamlining of work that eventually increases productivity. It can help to identify wasteful and duplicate work and also help in automating many processes that can speed up work.
  • Quick access to critical information speeds up the process of decision making that actually helps to drive the business to the next level. Databases give more clarity to business that enables visualization of the growth of business in more definite terms.

Take help from consultants

Creating and maintaining databases require the services of trained professionals who are experts in administering database management systems. Select a consultant and brief them about your business needs to help them design the database and create its architecture. They will then install and implement the system that will be optimally configured for your business only. However, it can be scaled up as your business grows. They also help in database upgrades and analytics that are essential for keeping in tune with the growing business needs.

The better you are in managing data, better are the prospects of making your business grow faster as you gain more business intelligence for effective decision making.

About the author– Sujain Thomas helps businesses do analytics. She also helps businesses develop analytics strategy. She has years of experience in analytics, DB management, and big data. For more information about Oracle DBA consulting, visit this website.

Categories
Business Ideas

Why Success Doesn’t Come From Ideas

Article Contributed by Julius Pankoke

College dorm rooms, garages and co-working spaces. If you read the startup news these days, that is where billion dollar businesses are created. An inspired individual is hit with the idea for Uber or Facebook and just like that they are on the unicorn track. But is it really a ground-breaking idea that makes these people as successful? Do you need a unique idea to become a success yourself? No. And here’s why.

Startup Bias

The problem is the definition of the startup itself. Even though it’s usually used for innovative companies in an emerging field of business, there is no set of characteristics to define what is and what isn’t a startup. Is the new coffee shop a startup just because they offer a special kind of coffee and are partly crowdfunded? Maybe it is. But will that affect its success? Unlikely. The quality of the coffee and the service are more likely to attract customers than the status as a startup. So no general innovation is required for this business to be a success. Companies like this make up the vast majority. So to give the people a better chance to become an entrepreneur, we will need to separate being an entrepreneur from creating a startup.

10% Idea vs 90% Execution

That’s a figure you probably have seen around when reading about entrepreneurship. Although it’s quite impressive, it’s also made up. It just serves to emphasize a point that a lot of veteran entrepreneurs like to stress to no end. To be successful you need to work hard. Starting a company and making it a success is a process that will likely take years. These years will be filled with hard work. An idea alone does not make money. You will need to create the company, develop processes, find customers, find partners, hire employees, lead employees, develop strategies and keep innovating the product. That is just a small part of things you will need to do in order to become successful. Or you are smart and find people who do these things for you. Nether the less, an idea is nothing without execution and as such not worth a lot. Some of the biggest companies took years to become successful. Some even faced possible failure more than once, while growing. Just take a look at Apple and Amazon. Nether become a success overnight and both are celebrated as being extremely innovative.

Waiting for the ball to drop

A lot of people, who are interested in starting a business are caught in a kind of entrepreneurial purgatory. Having an innovative, disruptive idea becomes a must have before starting up. In a world where a lot of things are already invented and a lot of problems have already been solved, really innovative ideas are rare. A good portion of these people would be better served to just start a business in an already existing field. Chances are, if they have a knack for entrepreneurship, they will make their business a success.

Innovation instead of Invention

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to become successful. Instead, you should try to improve it. Find a problem that has been solved, but still has some room for improvement. Develop something or make a process easier, so that you solve the problem better than the competition. This will generate an added benefit for the customers and is a good base for a successful company. Quite a few greatly successful companies are based on this principle. Amazon didn’t invent online shopping, but they made it fast and easy. Uber didn’t invent motorized transportation of customers, but they made it cheap and fast by recruiting people with time to spare.

Conclusion

Having an idea for a disruptive new kind of business is a cool thing. It drives us to reach further and try harder. But there are just not enough completely new concepts to go around for everyone. So instead improve on what has already been thought of and make it just that bit better. That bit easier. That bit more fun. If you stick with it and invest your time and energy into it, you can become a success as well. We can’t all be Mark Zuckerberg and we don’t need to be.

Author Bio

Julius Pankoke is content contributor and start-up enthusiast. His areas of expertise are entrepreneurship, business development, and digital marketing. He enjoys both writing and reading good blog articles. With SmartBusinessPlan he currently helps entrepreneurs write excellent business plans.