As we approach the start date (May 5, 2016) of our upcoming Online Customer Acquisition Series, we talked with our presenter Maisha Walker, and asked her to share with us a preview of what we will learn in Part 1: Social Media Advertising Overview. The 5-part series will run in the Spring and conclude in the Fall. All parts are geared to helping  small businesses expand their online customer base.

Maisha is the Founder and President of Message Medium, a digital marketing agency that helps successful brands harness the power of digital to achieve aggressive growth. Her column, “The Internet Strategist,” is the highest trafficked blog on Inc. Magazine.  She has been quoted and featured by such diverse brands as Business Week, Guy Kawasaki, the former editor of Entrepreneur magazine, the American Marketing Association and even Perez Hilton. She has toured the country with companies like Microsoft Bing, JP Morgan Chase, Deluxe, Capital One, and has been featured in Forbes Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine, Black Enterprise, on Fox News, and on NBC news for her insights on Internet Marketing.

Online Customer Acquisition Series

Part 1: Social Media Advertising Overview

Social media advertising is a powerful and (comparatively) inexpensive ally when targeting customers, but we’ve heard that it’s better to create organic traffic than to advertise, is this right? Doesn’t it take much longer to build organic traffic?

Yes and yes! It’s always great to build organic traffic but it takes a lot longer and a lot more effort. Because of this on some platforms like Facebook, it can actually be more expensive to build organic traffic because of the time needed to create, curate and post content as well as encourage engagement. The reason it has become so difficult is that there are just so many people creating social media content. Sites like Facebook have changed their algorithm to control and prioritize what visitors see and posts from corporate Facebook pages have fallen very low on the priority list of what to show on each person’s news feed. Because of that, it’s very difficult to be visible using organic content alone. With advertised posts you have the ability to reach a definite number of your existing Facebook fans as well as a targeted group of Facebook users you can introduce to your business. Managing these campaigns can be time consuming and there are many layers of details in how to build the campaign for the best results, but for many businesses it’s well worth it.

Which online platforms are best?

Determining which platforms will give your business the best results is a critical early step in launching an effective digital marketing strategy. A general rule of thumb is that Facebook and Twitter are more effective for consumer, entertainment and retail products like clothing, while LinkedIn is more effective for business-to-business and career oriented products or services.  Pinterest requires having strong visuals that are related to your products. YouTube can help you expand your reach to a younger audience and can include both text ads and full video ads if you have the resources to create them. Snapchat targets a younger audience almost exclusively and is generally cost prohibitive for most small businesses with minimums currently starting around $50,000. To help guide your decision, consider how you use each platform and what you personally respond to. Then think about your target audience. Are they like you? Different from you? If so, how? Don’t be afraid to hire a consultant to help you figure out where to invest your resources.  The time and resources wasted on a platform that won’t deliver results for you is easily avoidable by working with an expert who can quickly assess the right strategy for you.

What is considered a good online conversion rate?

I think you want to first think about your click through rate—this is the percentage of people who clicked on your ad and arrived at your web site. Around 0.50% and 1.5% is a typical click through rate for online advertising. When someone reaches your web site and then takes an action you define as important—filling out an inquiry or contact form, subscribing to your email newsletter, calling your business, downloading an e-book or whitepaper—these are called conversions. Conversion rates vary widely depending on your industry. What are your conversion rates offline? If your ads are able to be well targeted, your online conversion rates should be comparable to or a little lower than your offline conversion rates. Calculating your click through and conversion rates is an important step toward understanding how profitable your web site and digital marketing are likely to be for you.

How much time should one expect to go by before seeing results?

This is a great question and is part of the reason online advertising can be so exciting. Depending on what you’re offering, how well your audience is targeted and how good your ad is, you can see results the day you launch your campaign! After twenty years in this industry it’s still thrilling when I see the traffic start rolling in for a client after we launch a new campaign for them. 

However if this is your first campaign, even with a digital marketing consultant you’ll need some time to work out the quirks. With an expert I would give the campaign one to three months before seeing good results. If you’re on your own and just trying this for the first time I would give it four to seven months since you’ll need more time to understand the nuances of whichever platform you’re using, how to read your results, how to set up the peripheral content to support your campaign, and how to change and tweak your campaigns to achieve the results you’re looking for. You can spend a year or more tweaking it to achieve optimal results.