Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®

Social Media Marketing Benchmarks: What Works & Where to Focus

Social Media Marketing Benchmarks Report 2018

Social media marketers, how are you feeling? Take a minute to breathe if you need to. The last few months have been a wild ride. Fatigue, vertigo, and even a little nausea are perfectly understandable.

As I said before, social media isn’t dying, but it is changing. Marketers are used to quick changes, naturally, but it’s important to be sure we’re making the right changes. We should approach evolving our social media with the same data-driven, strategic rigor that applies to everything else we do.

The good folks at Rival IQ recently published their 2018 Social Media Benchmarking Report. The data points to some clear directions for the next evolution of social media marketing.

Here are some of the key data points – and, more importantly, what you should do about them.


Social Media Marketing Benchmarks: What Works & Where to Focus

Digital Advertising Tips: 5 Scenarios Perfect for Pay-to-Play Tactics

In today’s competitive and content-saturated digital landscape, it’s no secret that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to connect, engage and inspire action from our audiences using only “free” or organic marketing tactics.

As a result, digital advertising, often dubbed “pay-to-play” by marketers, is steadily on the rise. In fact, last fall, eMarketer forecasted that digital advertising spend would surpass TV ad spending for the first time in history by the end of 2016. And that trend is definitely expected to continue.

However, despite rising ad spend, consumers are actively avoiding our ads, according to a 2016 HubSpot Research report. For example, four out of five consumers reported that they closed a browser or exited a website because of an autoplaying ad or a pop up.


Digital Advertising Tips: 5 Scenarios Perfect for Pay-to-Play Tactics

Boost Your Social Media Advertising Success with These 6 Pro Tips!

Social media has become an important and necessary tactic within the digital marketing strategies of companies large and small—and it’s not hard to see why. Social media is part of the fabric of our daily lives, which gives brands and marketers the opportunity to create important connections with their desired audience.

But with nearly every brand using social media—as well as frequent tweaks to platform algorithms—brands and marketers are finding it increasingly difficult to stand out using organic tactics. As a result, more are paying to play these days by investing in social advertising to drive awareness and engagement, as well as sales and other conversions. In fact, late last year Statista forecasted worldwide social advertising spend to nearly double between 2014 ($16 billion) and 2016 ($31 billion).


Boost Your Social Media Advertising Success with These 6 Pro Tips!

7 Weird Social Media Marketing Habits All Marketers Need to Break NOW

7-weird-social-media-marketing-habits

We all have bad habits. Whether it’s biting our nails, constantly driving like we’re on a racetrack or something you’d rather not admit to, we’ve all got them. Some are easy to break while others quickly find their way back into our lives. The same can be said for social media marketing habits. Once you get in a routine, it can be hard to break habits that are helping, but may possibly be hurting your brand.

Within social media marketing there is a lot of opportunity for brands to create great experiences for their communities, create brand affinity and influence purchasing decisions. A recent study found that 84% of CEOs and VPs say that they use social media to make purchasing decisions.


7 Weird Social Media Marketing Habits All Marketers Need to Break NOW

TopRank Marketing’s Online Advertising Predictions for 2016

2016-Online-Advertising-Predictions

As 2015 draws to a close, it’s time to begin thinking about what is on the digital marketing horizon in the coming year. Marketers with budgets large and small are often unsure of which investments will reap the biggest benefits.

To help inform you of the options available, we’ll be publishing a series of prediction posts for different areas of digital marketing. Starting off the series is this post, stock full of paid advertising predictions for the coming year. Below you’ll find insight into some of the key topics and trends that are building steam at TopRank Marketing and will only continue to increase in 2016.

Social Advertising


TopRank Marketing’s Online Advertising Predictions for 2016

Navigating Online Advertising: 6 Tips on Finding the Right Channels For Your Business

Navigating-the-Realm-of-Paid-Advertising

As the year winds down, most companies are putting the finishing touches on budgets and strategies for 2016. As a digital marketing agency, consulting with clients on matters like this is a huge part of our business. When the fiscal year winds down for most companies, we always see an influx in companies looking for consultation on where to spend their remaining marketing dollars.

“We’ve got X budget, which paid channel should we invest in?”

The answer is – there is no perfect answer. It depends heavily on the target audience and what goal you’re looking to achieve: impressions, clicks, downloads, online sales, etc. To help you determine which paid channels will work best for you business, we’ve created a snapshot of some of the options that are available today.


Navigating Online Advertising: 6 Tips on Finding the Right Channels For Your Business

Best Practices for Incorporating Sponsored Posts & Ads In Your LinkedIn Marketing Strategy

POT-OF-GOLD

For many B2B marketers, LinkedIn can prove to be a figurative and literal pot of gold. While there’s no majestic rainbow to show you the way, I can show you how to incorporate social media advertising as part of your LinkedIn Marketing strategy.

A few years ago, HubSpot surveyed B2B organizations and found that 65% of them reported that they have acquired a customer by using LinkedIn and its paid advertising features.

Many organizations have found LinkedIn users to be incredibly receptive to seeing ads and sponsored updates within their feeds. Because LinkedIn is professionally focused by nature, users expect to be having conversations about business.

The best practices below provide some helpful insights into LinkedIn paid advertising basics and can help drive the performance of your campaigns.


Best Practices for Incorporating Sponsored Posts & Ads In Your LinkedIn Marketing Strategy

Social Media Advertising: Don’t Be Tardy for the Party

Social Media Advertising

Social media advertising presents many exciting opportunities for marketers regarding media, targeting and general flexibility for reaching customers where they hang out.

However, having seemingly unlimited options can make paid social a daunting channel to tackle. Just like you may feel after a long week, it’s sometimes easier to just stay home on a Friday night. But in today’s social media driven world, having a quiet evening at home just isn’t an option.

According to a recent report from Salesforce, 70% of marketers plan to increase their social media ad spend in 2015. Over the last couple of years, social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have made numerous updates to their algorithms. These updates have made it even more difficult to engage with your current followers, let alone attract new audiences.


Social Media Advertising: Don’t Be Tardy for the Party

Social Media Advertising for Content Marketers: Insight from Salesforce’s ‘2015 State of Marketing’ report

Social Media Advertising

Salesforce recently released its annual “State of Marketing” report, in which the company surveyed 5,000 marketers worldwide. Results of the survey point toward a significant investment in social media advertising in 2015.

According to the CRM company’s report (gated download), 70% of marketers will spend more budget on social media advertising this year. As numbers of customers on social channels increases, it is increasingly imperative, as the survey results show, to have a social media marketing strategy in place.

It is clear that digital marketers are increasingly valuing social media advertising to help promote their content marketing efforts. In 2014, 25% of marketers saw social as a critical enabler of products and services. The number leaps to 64% in 2015.


Social Media Advertising for Content Marketers: Insight from Salesforce’s ‘2015 State of Marketing’ report

Social Media Smarts Interview: Charlie Kautz of TaylorMade Golf

Charles Kautz

Social Media at a major brand – I think many people in the social media marketing industry would consider such a position a dream job. Or in the case of Charlie Kautz from TaylorMade Golf, the best job in social media (according to Jay Baer).

While Charlie provided a very useful tip for the recent Social Media Marketing eBook we created for SMMW14, I reached out to him after the conference to get more of a deep dive into his role at TaylorMade Golf, lessons he’s learned, how marketing and PR work together, the importance of SEO and what he really thinks about Facebook.

What makes your job at TaylorMade-adidas “The Best Job in Social Media”? 


Social Media Smarts Interview: Charlie Kautz of TaylorMade Golf

4 Tips For Using Twitter Ads & Promoted Tweets

Promoted Tweets Twitter BirdImplementing a successful social media advertising program is an art form.  There are many opportunities for success and failure, which is why it’s imperative that you follow a set of best practices to increase your chances for success.

Defining what you want to achieve with your Twitter advertising program is a key piece to the puzzle and should not be skipped.  Do you want to attract new customers to your company through education, engage current followers with exciting content, or convert fans into customers?  This post shares 4 basic tips for using Twitter advertising as part of your ongoing social strategy.

Tip 1: Pin To the Top of Your Timeline


4 Tips For Using Twitter Ads & Promoted Tweets

Social Media Advertising on Twitter

twitter advertisingAdvertising is Dead. SEO is Dead.

The list of provocative linkbait goes on and on but savvy practitioners realize that few things just die out. They change. Like advertising.

Traditional ad dollars are most certainly moving to digital and as companies look for more ways to take advantage of technology to better connect with customers, social media is becoming the new internet.

Advertising as part of the social experience vs. being interruptive combined with the ability to measure brings many opportunities for businesses to grow their reach, brand influence and ability to engage.

Our post about social media advertising yesterday was well placed with Twitter’s move to make buying ads there easier. Below is a roundup of tips and resources for learning more about advertising on Twitter.

Twitter Advertising


Social Media Advertising on Twitter