social media – Tonic Consultancy

An image representing AI - there is a dome consisting of wire/neurone-like connections linking computer parts to look like a cityscape

9th April 20240

AI in Marketing

How Can Artificial Intelligence Help Boost Your Marketing?

Advances in technology mean that the world is changing at a dizzying pace, and it is set to have a tremendous impact on marketing. With tools such as ChatGPT, artificial intelligence (AI) is assuming a much larger role and helping to create a wealth of opportunities for marketers to be able to do even more with what they already do best.

By combining AI technologies with customer and brand data, marketers can gain access to highly precise insights into marketing trends and the customer experience. AI technologies such as natural language processing (NLP), machine learning (ML), and others can help guide marketers’ decision-making, helping to stay ahead of the competition as well as helping to prepare for the challenges faced in a dynamic marketplace.

Let’s have a closer look at how AI can benefit marketers and how it can be leveraged successfully.

AI in marketing

According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, AI-based marketing looks set to drive 45 per cent of the total economy by 2030. This will happen in a variety of ways, including data-driven product enhancements, personalised services, and influencing consumer demand. Let’s look at how this will be achieved.

Social media listening

With AI-powered social media, your efficiency will be significantly increased as social media listening is taken to a new level. AI tools will help to provide a range of suggested terms to include in your social media tracking to help marketers reveal essential audience insights far faster.

AI algorithms will help to identify and extract the relevant details from social media listing data that can span millions of data points in real-time. This will help marketers see the wood for the trees to gain a better understanding of the customer’s thoughts via social media sentiment analysis. Marketers can then anticipate their customers’ next move, and make strategic decisions and actions.

Content generation

AI social management tools can help analyse the voice of customer (VoC) data in social media posts to help inform marketers of the content that is of most interest to the target audience.

The same tools can also help to identify keywords and triggers so that marketers can devise and develop compelling posts, respond better to customer comments, and inspire better and more impactful product descriptions for websites and e-commerce. All of this will add marketing efforts towards brand engagement for an increase in market share and better earnings.

AI can also help generate ideas that can nurture and make campaigns more successful, as well as help create more compelling communications that will reinforce relationships with potential customers at all stages of the sales funnel.

AI prompts can help devise email subject lines that will achieve a better open rate, develop personalised content that can be adapted to buyer personas, and drive conversations based on intent, engaging with each customer/client on an individual basis, ultimately leading to stronger connections and loyalty that will stimulate sales.

Automation

By leveraging AI-driven smart automation, social media managers and customer service teams are empowered to improve operational efficiency via lexical and statistical-based triggers that can help drive intelligent workflows.

This can help marketers achieve their business goals better by removing the guesswork out of tasks such as scheduling posts at the optimal times for improved impact and better engagement, or by categorising incoming messages.

It can also help unify the brand voice in customer communications and reduce response times by half.

Audience segmentation and personalisation

Omnichannel business strategies based on market segmentation can be driven by AI marketing, helping to align campaigns with customers are are more likely to be interested and buy your product or services.

Programmatic advertising can be leveraged to help streamline the process of selecting and setting up digital advertising for the best return on investment (ROI), enabling more personalised marketing strategies and tactics to grow brand loyalty and develop powerful brand awareness campaigns.

Data analysis for customer insights

AI and machine learning can provide critical customer insights on a variety of aspects to help marketers make better informed strategic marketing decisions, with deeper insights into audience sentiments concerning your brand, full audits of customer care team performance, and social media engagement metrics.

This means marketers can quickly adapt to changing marketing trends, prioritise budgets based on what aspects require the most investment, and improve customer relationships.

Reputation management

When considering brand reputation, there will always be certain elements within the control, of marketers, while there will be some aspects that are not. Brands are subject to more scrutiny than ever in the social media age but with AI-based brand reputation management, potential threats can be averted before that can become a much larger issue.

With real-time monitoring of customer sentiments, using the right influencers and brand ambassadors, and providing proactive customer care, this can all be achieved easily.

Competitive intelligence

AI can help marketers identify opportunities that can help improve products and services and help fill in gaps in the market. It can help discern competitors’ share of voice and help find intelligent ways to become more agile in the competitive market. AI can also compare your social media performance to that of competitors via competitive benchmarking, enabling marketers to adjust strategies accordingly.

Multilingual advantage

A global marketplace means marketers need to take into account any cross-cultural aspects, as well as provide prompt and efficient customer care. With AI marketing tools, marketers can extract essential customer insights from multilingual data with ease, providing data that can inform strategies for particular regions.

It can also help ensure that target audiences are easily able to find social media posts, responses, and advertisements that they find relatable and adhere to their cultural standards.

Which AI technologies enable marketing?

Intelligent social media platforms will combine powerful AI technologies to provide marketers with the insights they need to succeed. With capabilities such as semantic classification, named entity recognition and aspect-based sentiment analysis, marketers can gain specific insights into their niche, while social media content can be optimised and customer engagement can be improved with the help of natural language processing, which all leads to a greater competitive edge.

Build impactful business strategies with AI

Marketing insights provided by AI are helping to empower brands to build a stronger foundation for growth and success by exploring new marketing, product and customer engagement opportunities.

AI tech such as sentiment analysis, NLP, virtual agents, chatbots and more are helping to determine how efficiently business goals can be achieved, in everything from revenue optimisation to navigating unpredictable market scenarios.

With access to targeted AI-driven insights, marketers can develop more proactive social media marketing tactics to help drive customer engagement, loyalty and retention, and ultimately market growth.

If you’re looking for help with AI marketing, brand growth, and social media marketing, come and talk to us at Tonic today.

Blogs, Digital

14th August 20230

Trying To Get Your Head Around Facebook Ads?

It might appear to smaller brands that Facebook Ads are the preserve of the larger, international brands with the massive marketing budgets needed for that kind of advertising. However, that is not the case, as Facebook Ads can be a huge benefit to any business looking to increase sales and grow its profitability.

We wanted to have a look at the lessons, tips, and tricks of the trade we’ve gained over the years, and tell you just what Facebook Ads might just be the thing your marketing efforts could be lacking.

The Importance Of Facebooks Ads

Simply put, Facebook Ads can transform your sales pipeline and boost your profits, if implemented properly. The global reach, power, and intelligence of the behemoth that is Facebook and Meta means that the Facebook Ads tool could be the most important asset in your marketing toolbox.

Consider this: The average Facebook user spends around 20 per cent of their Facebook screen time looking at various Facebook Ads, and regardless of whether your business is B2B or B2C, they will be an overwhelming success for the majority of businesses.
But this is dependent on one thing, and that is ensuring that Facebook Ads is set up correctly and optimised so that your brand can achieve the best possible ROI.

A lot of businesses claim that Facebook Ads is not appropriate because they don’t believe their target audience will see their posts, but this isn’t the case.

Let’s have a look at a few Facebook user demographics

In the UK, there are 44.8 million Facebook users, and 44 per cent of the population use Facebook on a daily basis with the average user spending 23 minutes a day browsing Facebook. The most active is the 25 to 34 age group, with 11.2 million users and 52 per cent of all users in the UK are women.

Globally, 18.1 per cent of Facebook users are aged between 18 to 24, 25.7 per cent between 25 to 34, 18.1 per cent between 35 to 44, 13.6 per cent between 45-54, and 11 per cent between 55-64.

For B2B brands and businesses, Facebook Ads can be very successful, and data has demonstrated that running Facebook Ads for B2B businesses can result in an ROI of three times the investment. This is because the key decision-makers for the majority of businesses are also consumers, and also use Facebook in their free time.

How Can You Make Facebook Ads Successful?

It might seem daunting initially, as initial costs may appear steep, and there is no guarantee of an instant ROI, but as with all marketing, it should be viewed as an investment and something that will take time to find traction and generate leads.

One common mistake made frequently by businesses when looking to boost their Facebook presence is to use the ‘Boost Post’ button to increase the visibility of their organic content, but this is largely an inefficient choice as it almost always only amplifies your content to people who have already seen it. Facebook Ads allows you to target your audience for a greater reach.

Sometimes, a negative experience with Facebook Ads can deter businesses from spending more money with Facebook Ads, but when done properly, an ad should consistently deliver a great ROI. But the key to achieving this is knowing how to get it done correctly, and what to consider when building a Facebook Ad.

Determine What You Want To Achieve With Facebook Ads

You will be presented with a range of campaign objectives when creating a Facebook Ad: Awareness, Consideration, and Conversation, each of which has its own options.

Knowing what you want to get out of Facebook Ads will help you determine which campaign is best suited for you, and how to best spend your money.

If you are a smaller business looking to establish your brand and find an audience that will be more receptive to your organic content, then you should look at the Awareness campaign options. Larger businesses that are already established might be better off skipping this step.

However, larger businesses and brands might want to take a look at the Lead Generation option included in the Consideration campaign objective. This would be a beneficial option as it can help develop the sales pipeline and boost the flow of incoming leads from Facebook.

Selecting the Conversion option within the Conversion campaign objective can achieve the same results, but this is a little more of a risk because of the lack of pre-existing data that helps inform the Facebook Ad.

Getting The Most Out Of Facebook Ads

It is not overly difficult to get Facebook Ads up and running, but it does need time and patience to make it a success by optimising it. The key is choosing your audience and making sure you have the targeting done correctly. No matter how beautifully crafted your Facebook Ad is, if the targeting is off, it will result in a very poor ROI as it will not reach the right audience.

When Meta users are scrolling through their apps, the algorithm constantly makes notes of what the user is doing and the content that they engage with the most. This means you can optimise your Facebook Ad to target users that fall into three categories: Demographics, Interests, and Behaviour.

Using all three categories in your targeting means that you ensure your Facebook Ad is reaching the users who are more likely to care about your advertised product or service.

For example, if you are selling a video game then you would want to target men aged between 18 to 24, who have demonstrated an interest in video gaming, as well as a pattern of previously clicking on a Facebook Ad and making a purchase, combining all three targeting options. The options for targeting are advanced and very in-depth, and if you wanted, you could target users based on their birth year, or even if they have a child of a certain age. The sheer amount of data that users willingly share online means that there is the potential for businesses to target very specific users who are likely to engage with your Facebook Ad.

Facebook also offers a more advanced feature for businesses where they can upload customer email addresses so that it can make a search for any connected accounts and generate a recommended Facebook Ad tailored to target the common Demographic, Interest, and Behavioural patterns – called a ‘Lookalike Audience’.

Formatting The Perfect Facebook Ad

Knowing what your Facebook Ad will look like once posted is the key to developing an ad that will encourage users to engage with it. All Facebook Ads contain:

Primary Text – Attention-grabbing copy with an intriguing hook
Creative – A scroll-stopping image or video
Headline – Copy that highlights your USP and encourages action
Description – Extra content that helps reinforce your headline
Call To Action – A button to drive clicks and conversions with a strong CTA

Fine-tune the copy

The primary text is the core body of text that users will first read, and typically contains the key message and value proposition, demonstrating to the user why they will benefit from clicking on the Facebook Ad and their next action. This advertising copy needs to be snappy and concise.

Selecting the perfect creative

Without a doubt, the image or video used is the most important part of the Facebook Ad, being what the user sees first. Getting this right is important, and you should choose an image that isn’t generic and doesn’t immediately look like just another Facebook Ad. Take time to choose an image that looks natural and organic.

Snappy headline

This is likely the last thing the user sees before clicking on the CTA. It needs to be crafted to grab the attention of the user and appeal to the audience the ad has been targeted towards.

Resources

Your greatest resource is your own Facebook Ad history. Once you have run several Facebook Ads you will be able to analyse what has worked and what hasn’t so you can fine-tune and optimise your Facebook Ads moving forward. Even ads that did not perform well at all should be taken as a learning opportunity.

There will be Facebook Ads that do work well and some that won’t perform as intended, which is why you need to include testing as part of your Facebook Ad strategy. Testing might not provide the result you expect, and it does sometimes return results that do not always make sense!

If you’re looking for help and advice with getting started with your marketing, growing your brand, and advertising, come and talk to the experts at Tonic, where we have years of experience with clients large and small.

Blogs, Digital

7th June 20230

Why You Should Consider Advertising On TikTok

It might be more well-known as the procrastination tool of teens, taking up viral dancing and lip-synching challenges, but if you’re considering leveraging the exceptionally popular video creation and sharing app TikTok for your business or organisation, you’re certainly not alone!

Since the launch of TikTok in 2016, the app has been downloaded 3.5 billion times worldwide, and was the most downloaded app of 2021, beating rivals Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat.

We have a look at why you should be taking a closer look at the TikTok revolution, which has made a profound impact on culture in the modern world, and why savvy businesses are looking to get a piece of the action! But first…

What is TikTok Marketing?

TikTok marketing is a form of social media marketing that uses the popular app to promote your brand, product or service, incorporating a variety of tactics, for example, influencer marketing, TikTok advertising, and creating organic viral content.

TikTok marketing can help build brand awareness, develop and build engaged communities, advertise and sell your products and/or services to targeted audiences, and generate feedback from audiences and customers.

Let’s have a closer look at the three main types of marketing used by brands on TikTok.

TikTok Influencer Marketing

TikTok influencer marketing has become a major part of the app, with mega-stars such as former competitive dancer Charli D’Amelio and her viral dance videos, actress and social media personality Addison Rae , and Zach King with his videos of magic tricks, all making a huge impact on the success of businesses with their tens of millions of viewers.

However, you don’t need a high-profile and highly-paid influencer for a successful marketing campaign. There are always rising stars and influencers who better fit your niche.

Some of the biggest viral successes have been accidental, such as when TikTok user Nathan Apodaca aka @420doggface208 posted a video of himself riding his longboard, sipping Ocean Spray cran-raspberry juice to a soundtrack of Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams, kick-starting the #Dreamschallenge hashtag, and significantly boosting sales of Ocean Spray and streams of Fleetwood Mac.

Creating Your Own TikToks

Creating your own TikTok videos can give you the most freedom. Simply create your own Business TikTok account and profile, and start creating and posting your own organic content, whether it’s demonstrating your products, day-to-day life in the office, or taking up the many dance challenges.

You can always find a wealth of inspiration on the app by browsing the For You section. Just remember you’re supposed to be working and looking for inspiration, not getting lost in procrastination! Well, maybe a little, for research!

TikTok Advertising

TikTok advertising is typically promoted, full-screen video content that a brand pays to show to a targeted audience. TikTok ads are another form of social media marketing used to help increase awareness about the advertiser, or to help sell a product or service.
TikTok advertising can potentially put your brand, service, or product in front of almost 900 million people over the age of 18, a whopping 18 per cent of all adult internet users.

The average TikTok user spends around 20 hours per month browsing the app, opening it an average of 19 times per day, and 64.4 per cent of users are aged between 20 and 49, according to the latest TikTok user demographics and statistics.

It can be an incredibly lucrative platform to leverage, particularly if you are marketing to females, who make up 57 per cent of all users.

TikTok for Business

The app launched its TikTok for Business hub in 2020, and business users can add more information to their profiles and access real-time metrics and audience insights.

Once you have created an account, it can be switched to a business account in the settings (Settings and Privacy > Manage Account > Account Control > Switch To Business Account), then choose the category that best describes your business, and then add your website and business email address to your profile.

Advertising on TikTok

Paying for advertising on TikTok is a great way to get your brand, product or service in front of a growing audience, without taking any risks with an influencer that may or may not provide a good ROI.

There are various types of ads available on the app:
In-feed ads: Adverts created by the user, including image ads, video ads, and spark ads, which boost the content you already have. There are also pangle ads and carousel ads, which are only available through the app’s Audience Network and News Feed Apps respectively.
Ads for managed brands: similar to in-feed ads, but with additional formatting after consulting with a TikTok sales representative.
Top View ads: unskippable ads that appear when the app is opened, similar to YouTube.
Branded Hashtag Challenges: actionable hashtags connected to your brand.
Branded effects: stickers and filters connected to your brand.

If you plan on advertising on TikTok, you will need an ad account for TikTok Ads Manager by visiting ads.tiktok.com and clicking Create Now and filling in the necessary information.

Top Tips for TikTok Marketing

Trends on TikTok can often appear random, with some never taking off at all, while others seem to run and run. Sadly, there’s no guaranteed marketing strategy to aim for, but there are some legitimate tips that can help your brand make an impact on the app.

Familiarise yourself with TikTok

TikTok is a different social network with unique trends, behaviours and features than Instagram or Facebook, so it would be wrong to approach marking on the platform as you would with others.

Do allow yourself to fall down the rabbit hole of TikTok videos to help explore all the different features available, make note of the currently trending filters, effects, and songs, and keep an eye out for the Branded hashtag Challenges, usually involving a song, a dance, or a task that users are challenged to recreate.

Study up on the TikTok algorithm, as understanding how the app ranks and displays videos can help inform your content, hashtag, and engagement strategies. You can learn all about this and more at the TikTok Business Learning Center.

Define your target audience

Before you begin creating and posting content, you need to determine who you are hoping to reach. Take some time to research the TikTok demographics to help to identify who would be interested in learning more about your brand.

The app is very popular with teens, but it’s far from a teens-only app, as they only make up a quarter of all users. The 20-29 age group are not far behind them, and the 30-39 and 40-49 age groups make up a significant percentage of users too.

Once you have found your potential audience, it’s time to research what content they are more likely to engage with and start developing content ideas for your brand.

Check out the competition

Whether or not you have competitors on TikTok, seek out four or five similar brands to see what they are up to. Learn from what works and what doesn’t work for them, and it might be helpful to use the SWOT framework to determine their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

Keep in mind that TikTok is first and foremost a creator-led platform, so don’t forget to include the app’s stars and influencers in this exercise, especially any who fit your niche.

Set goals

It’s perfectly fine to create content for TikTok that’s purely for fun, but it would be beneficial to set goals that can be aligned with your overall business objectives. This could include reaching a new audience, boosting brand or product awareness, and developing stronger bonds with customers.

It may be helpful to use the SMART goal framework, and set goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. You can access the analytics on TikTok via the Creator Tools to find the metrics to help measure your goals and track your progress.

Post regularly

Develop a content posting calendar and stick to it for a successful social media marketing strategy.

Feel free to experiment

There’s no magic formula for creating content that will go viral, but make sure you have space to have fun, go with the flow and be experimental with your creativity.

If something doesn’t work, learn from it and move on to the next, but if something goes viral by accident, whether you’re riding a skateboard, singing, and enjoying a refreshing beverage or not, roll with it, get in on the joke, and make the most of it.

TikTok is not a platform to take yourself seriously, so have fun!

Looking for help with TikTok marketing?

If you’re looking for help with your social media marketing, content creation, or strategy, then reach out to Tonic today for help, advice, and tips!

Blogs, Digital

21st March 20230

What is Content Marketing?

In recent years, you may have heard more and more people talking about Content Marketing, and how it has become a game-changer for marketing for businesses.

But what exactly is content marketing, and how is it different from other tried and tested marketing methods? Let’s have a look at both what content marketing is, and what it isn’t, and how you can leverage it for your business.

What are the benefits of content marketing?

First, let’s have a look at how content marketing can benefit your business.

Attract a new audience and grow your website traffic – helping potential customers find your brand can be a big challenge, but content marketing can help you become more discoverable to search engines, and help attract attention on social media

Create value for your audience – Content provided to your audience is not only useful, it can provide a message to the right people at a time when they need it most, which will make you an authority on that subject and create value for your audience.

Engage with your audience – Content that your audience finds relevant and useful will likely be shared with their friends and followers, and help develop further interactions such as comments and reactions.

Generate positive brand perception – Increased engagement with your content will help boost the awareness and perception of your brand, and people are more likely to make business with a brand they know than one they don’t.

Educate the market about your products and services – People are likely unaware they have a problem that can be solved by your product or service, and content marketing can help show them that such a solution exists and how it works.

Generate new leads – Visitors to your blog may be encouraged to leave some information about themselves, such as an email address, which can be a potential lead. The more you invest in content marketing, the more likely you will generate potential leads, and increase the chances to sell.

Increase the customer’s lifetime value – The lifetime value is the total value spent by your customer on your business. The more they buy and the longer they remain a customer, the bigger their lifetime value. By providing relevant and useful content, you can encourage a customer to remain a loyal customer for longer.

Content marketing is not a strategy

There are two main aspects of content marketing: To provide valuable content, and to persuade your audience to take a certain course of action, determined in advance by the marketer. Of course, there are various ways of measuring whether the content is ‘valuable’, and actions could range from signing up for an email subscription to buying a product or service, or much more.

But content marketing is not in itself a viable strategy. It would impossible to produce effective content marketing without first having a marketing strategy in place. You should only be producing content that is relevant to your business, that will interest your audience, and that you can write about from a position of experience and authority.

This means you need to know what your brand is, its values, who your audience is and what they want. Content marketing is used to further your marketing and business objectives, and is not a strategy.

How does content marketing fit in?

Content marketing is an essential component of any business’s marketing efforts, as it is key to maintaining contact with the target audience and generating the right results.

It is typically a set of multi-platform techniques that encompasses blogs, email, social media, and video, and is a key component of digital marketing.

How content marketing is used will vary from business to business. If your company has a focus on B2B, then some social media, for example, Facebook or Instagram, may not be suitable. But for other businesses, it might be where they can find their audience.

There will always be some platforms and channels that are right, and some that are not.

You will also need to consider your objectives. Are you trying to grow your audience, or use your existing audience better? In either case, content marketing can provide the solution, but how it is applied will differ.

Content marketing can make it possible to create an immersive environment in which potential customers can learn all about your brand, its values, your products, your services and how they will help solve their problems.

It can also create a similar environment where you can build your reputation and engage with your existing audience.

While it might not always be the case, content marketing is best suited to the ‘inbound’ approach.

What is content marketing for?

Content marketing is for more than increasing your SEO rankings, attracting new customers, or boosting your conversion rates, it’s also about developing a lasting relationship with an audience who will consume and look forward to your content.

It can be used for a variety of purposes, depending on what would be best for your company and your business objectives, such as building initial awareness and augmenting your brand’s reputation, or for more specific objectives such as driving and growing traffic to your website. What sets content marketing apart from other forms of communication is that it is generally longer- term, multi-channel, and involves two-way communication. It can encourage the reader to submit their contact details, sign up for something, or become more engaged with your brand regularly.

What is it not for?

Content marketing should not be used for sales messages, and it’s important to avoid blogging about special offers and such, as this can destroy the trust you have been fostering with your audience.

It isn’t necessarily about selling content. Most content will be free, while some may be for subscribers only, and some might be paid for. It’s important to know when to utilise each type and how to monetise it if you decide to do so, which will depend on your business model and your current situation in terms of brand awareness and engagement.

It’s not really about SEO and keywords. There is a lot of value in having SEO-friendly digital content, but it’s important to avoid pushing the boundaries. One of the key parts of content marketing is building trust, and you cannot write for robots and expect humans to be excited about it.

Never underestimate your audience, they will know when an article or web page is there simply to game the system.

It’s not for converting every single lead. It might be debated that each sign-up you achieve through your content is a potential lead, and while it is true that they have shown they are interested in your content, it does not necessarily mean they are interested in your other services or products.

If you start trying to close each contact immediately, then your inbound marketing approach becomes outbound, and once again, can erode the trust you have been developing.

Where to start with content marketing?

If you’re looking to develop a well-planned and considered content marketing programme for your business, then talk to the team at Tonic today!

Audience research, Blogs, Digital, Marketing Plan

4th January 20230

Why You Should Use LinkedIn As A B2B Marketer

When marketers are considering which social media platforms to use for their businesses, many will automatically head for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. But when it comes to generating B2B leads, then the most powerful social media platform has to be LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is possibly the most important social network for marketers to be able to reach business buyers and connect with professionals and has become one of the major social media platforms for B2B media and content marketing.

When looking at the Monthly Active Users (MAU) of the popular social networks, LinkedIn, with 310 million MAU may not be the biggest platform available, compared to 330 million MAU on Twitter, one billion MAU on Instagram, or a massive 2.7 billion on Facebook.

But the LinkedIn audience is one of the most lucrative ones for B2B marketing.

Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram can become noisy and crowded, and while LinkedIn was once much quieter, it has become busier. However, unlike Facebook, where people go to connect with friends and family, watch funny videos, or post irreverent content, LinkedIn is the place where people go to network with like-minded people within their industry.
If you are looking to drive qualitative B2B traffic to your website or blog, then LinkedIn is the platform for you. The social network allows users to build relationships, establish thought leadership, generate B2B leads, gain insights, improve a brand’s reputation, conduct market research and help to build online communities.

LinkedIn now has over 875 million members, from 200 countries all around the world, and members can interact with each other, share their views, and boost their professional profiles.

It is a powerful social media platform that allows professionals and businesses to easily connect, boost brand identity, and engage in B2B marketing, and it should be part of any comprehensive social media strategy.

Using LinkedIn for marketing can be an effective way of raising for brand or business’s profile, if it’s done right. Overly ‘salesy’ marketing methods are typically not well received, and businesses that achieve success on the platform tend to leverage their industry expertise and knowledge to set themselves up as thought leaders in their field.

What is LinkedIn marketing?

LinkedIn Marketing is the process of using the social media platform to promote businesses or individuals and draw attention to their profiles. Not only can individuals create their own profiles, but business can also establish their own company pages, and subpages for specific departments or products, on the platform, which they can use to:
Build brand awareness
Drive traffic to websites or blogs by sharing content
Create new connections or continue to develop existing business relationships.

Let’s have a look at six reasons why you should be using LinkedIn in your marketing efforts.

Create awareness and improve reputation

It has been estimated that more than two professionals sign up to LinkedIn every second, meaning that businesses have an increased opportunity to be able to network with an increasing number of diverse interesting contacts. It means that LinkedIn is the ideal platform to help boost your online presence.
By making use of the different personal and group features on the platform, businesses and the people representing them can improve their visibility and credibility.

The status update functionality is an underutilised feature that should not be forgotten about, however, the latest design means that updates are more prominent on the homepage.

Thought leadership and influencer marketing

Several features on LinkedIn allow users to position themselves as thought leaders. As well as providing high-quality content, you can improve your personal profile and participate in LinkedIn communities to answer questions.

The platform is ripe for thought leaders and can lead to businesses and individuals becoming trusted advisors. Leadership and reputation go hand in hand with influence, and with the main purpose of the platform being networking, it can help you to identify and engage with other influencers.

Generating leads

Of all the social networking platforms, LinkedIn is probably the best for lead generation. As well as traditional marketing techniques such as providing content that potential customers can download or driving traffic to blogs and websites, LinkedIn offers personal ways of helping to identify leads, engaging with them, and converting them into customers.

This can be achieved through a combination of listening, analysing, participation, sharing information and content, networking, and responding. Finding potential customers on the platform and networking and marketing to them indirectly through LinkedIn will boost the opportunity to make sales and increase revenue.

Potential and existing customers are likely to post questions and needs. Group-related posts and questions allow B2B marketers to identify new leads, while shared and liked content will give marketers insight into what LinkedIn users find interesting.

By providing answers to questions on the platform, it is possible to demonstrate your expertise and knowledge. If your answer to a question is what a potential customer is looking for, then they will likely initiate contact.

Social CRM

In a CRM (customer relations management) context, LinkedIn is ideal; it allows for a better view of prospective customers and other contacts and can be done by using Social CRM applications and other connectors such as Outlook.

While most Social CRM applications provide integration with LinkedIn, you can also set up a basic integration of your contacts as LinkedIn has support for Google Contacts.

The main benefit of using a social CRM tool is that you are then able to see what your contacts are doing on LinkedIn in real-time, which provides valuable insights and information on their behaviour and preferences.

Traffic building

One of LinkedIn’s strengths, which can often be forgotten about, is its power in link building and traffic driving.

Just as with most of the other social networks, LinkedIn has a social sharing button so you are able to share content in your status updates, which are visible on the homepage, and in LinkedIn Groups – the communities of which you are a member.

This can prove particularly useful for business-related content and can lead to viral content status. Business-related content is far more likely to be shared on LinkedIn than on Facebook, for example.

Listening and gaining insights

LinkedIn is the ideal place to listen, ask questions, and gain insights, which is the case for all social media marketing. Take time to engage with your contacts, ask questions as well as answer them, and pay attention to what people are saying, posting, and asking.

Need help with your LinkedIn B2B marketing?

Here at Tonic, we know the ins and outs of marketing on LinkedIn, from helping set up your business profiles to developing engaging and interesting content to helping identify leads and new customers.

If you’d like to know more about how we can help grow your business, then get in touch today.

Blogs, Digital, Technology

6th September 20220

10 Types Of Digital Marketing For Your Business

Marketing has always been key to achieving success in your business, and in this day and age, developing a digital marketing strategy is more important than ever. But you must understand what this means, how to use it, and the different types of digital marketing that you can use.

We wanted to have a look at different types of digital marketing to help you gain an understanding of how they can help boost traffic to your website, grow your customer base and brand awareness, and engage with your audience.

Content Marketing

Consumers are hungry for information, whether it’s to increase their knowledge base, fulfil their desires, or save a problem. By providing your customers with high-quality and useful content, you will gain their trust and confidence.

Quality content will place your business in a position of authority in your market, and help cement your brand at the front of their mind when they are making purchasing decisions.

Content marketing is about providing your audience with answers to questions by publishing useful content, whether that’s in blogs, on social media, emails, or other channels, such as in apps or push notifications for mobile devices.

Content can take on many different formats, depending on the channel it is optimised for, and there are many different types of content, for instance, blog posts, infographics, videos, data sheets and more.

Content marketing can be orientated by a ‘funnel’, influencing the type of content used. At the top of this funnel, content is more general, for example, evergreen posts like relevant industry news or guides, and then will get more specific as the funnel narrows, such as testimonials, demonstrations, product news or releases.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

If you want your business to be a success, then consumers must be able to find it. SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, will help your website and content to rank highly in search engine searches, meaning that your website can be easily found by consumers actively searching for what you provide.

To leverage SEO, you need to know the keywords that the consumers you want to reach are searching for, and then develop your content around these.

According to statistics from the Search Engine Journal, 91.5 per cent of web traffic is shared by the websites listed on the first page of results on Google, the first Google organic search accounts for 32.5 per cent of traffic, and 51 per cent of all website traffic comes from organic searches.

Organic traffic can be leveraged by producing high-quality content that is found in searches on Google or other search engines, demonstrating that SEO simply cannot be ignored.

Social Media Marketing

As the name suggests, Social Media Marketing is a method of promoting your brand, products, or content through social media. It can be done organically, by paying for ads and posts on social media, or by using both simultaneously.

You can publish your content on social media for your followers and audience, or pay for ads to be placed in front of a specific social media audience or demographic. Either way, it is vital that you choose the right social network for your brand, product, or content. For example, Tik Tok is better for the younger generations, while Facebook may be more appropriate for older ones.

The advantages of social media marketing are that it is possible to get closer to your desired audience and improve your engagement and interaction with them. There is also the benefit of gaining extra validation of your brand, if or when your audience shares your content.

Social media also provides your brand with means of direct communication with your audience, which is why it is important to continually and consistently update and monitor your social media channels.

Email marketing

Many people may claim that email marketing is dead or dying, due to the sheer number of email messages sent every day. But it is actually one of the more effective types of digital marketing and, used strategically, can provide significant results.

The way to accomplish this is to ensure that email subscribers are provided with useful, informative, and engaging content or interesting product or service promotions, but it is important that you always respect your audience’s privacy and refrain from sending spam. Email also provides a means of direct communication with your customers.

Instant Message Marketing

Worldwide, the use of instant messaging has significantly increased, and almost all social media platforms have integrated direct messaging systems, while more and more brands are using platforms such as WhatsApp, providing a great opportunity for your marketing strategies.

If your customers need support, they can use these channels to get a quick reply, which in turn leads to positive associations with your brand, building on the relationships forged between brand and customer.

According to Statista, WhatsApp has 2 billion users in 2022, easily demonstrating the power and reach of this specific messaging channel and showing that this type of digital marketing cannot be neglected.

Influencer Marketing

An influencer is a specialist in a specific subject with a considerable audience who is interested in their opinions and voice. A digital influencer may be enticed to produce specific content for your business if it fits well with their tone of voice.

For example, they can produce content such as product tests for their audience, reviews, or make affiliate content. However, there are risks, as influencers may also post about any negative experiences, which could be detrimental to your brand.

Despite these risks, more and more brands are using influencer marketing in their strategies and getting very good results, spreading the word to their loyal followers, and helping your brand find a new audience.

Mobile Marketing

To reach your audience in this day and age, mobile marketing is almost mandatory. We all rely on our smartphones 24/7, for everything from communication, social media, health, shopping, and much more.

Mobile marketing is not just a trend, it now needs to be a reality for brands so they can ensure they are immediately available for their customers whenever they are needed.

This can be achieved by creating an app that allows for push notifications and instant messaging for direct marketing and communications with your customers, as well as exclusive mobile content such as engaging videos that they can consume anywhere.

Video Marketing

Over 2 billion people per month look for videos on YouTube, according to Google, whether it’s for entertainment, the latest news, study content, or more. It is a huge opportunity for brands to reach new customers.

By integrating video marketing into your digital marketing strategy, you will be able to drive results through your marketing funnel.

People tend to search for videos for a variety of reasons, such as product reviews, or to find out more about specific products or services, and how others have used them. Over half of consumers will search for these videos before making a purchasing decision.

Developing engaging, informative videos as part of your marketing is an opportunity to boost sales and find new customers.

Audio Marketing

Audio marketing has taken a different turn from the days of radio advertising with the prominence of podcasts, as more and more people listen while undertaking everyday tasks.

It may be an opportunity to develop audio marketing that targets the habits and podcast preferences of consumers, by inserting your product or service contextually into podcast advertising opportunities and making audio marketing a huge sales opportunity.

Virtual/Augmented Reality Marketing

VR (Virtual Reality) and AR (Augmented Reality) are becoming more commonplace in our lives and can be leveraged by marketers to provide your audience with a more immersive experience with your brand product or service.

It is a rather unique marketing experience that will be almost unforgettable for consumers who try it out and will help differentiate your brand from the competition.

VR and AR are innovative and can help associate you with more modern concepts, helping to position your brand as an innovator and ahead of your time.

Are you making good use of digital marketing?

Digital marketing is simply marketing but leverages modern technology, such as smartphones, email, and the devices and online services we all use every day.

To get ahead and build your brand, you must make the best use of the opportunities available. Digital will only continue to grow, and who knows what innovation in technology and marketing we will all be using in the future!

If you want to know more about how digital marketing can help your business become and success, then come and talk to us at Tonic today!

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