In the social media age, the #hashtag is one of the most important and simplest social media strategy any business owner can use to promote her/his business. The question that arises is: how do you know what #hashtags to use to benefit your business? [Read more…]
[Checklist] Pinterest For Business: How To Get Started
Need help with setting up a Pinterest account for your business, the right way?
Here is a 75 point checklist from power influencer and social media strategist Anna Bennett of White Glove Social Media to help you master Pinterest for business. [Read more…]
Content Marketing Rules: How To Optimize Your Content In 2015
Creating engaging content is a big challenge for many business owners. There are so many rules to follow to get high rankings in Google and to convert visitors to subscribers and then buyers. The landscape of online marketing is changing and so are the search engine optimization rules.There is a lot of talk about social brand humanization, authenticity, transparency, visitor’s experience and so many other interlinking factors that are an absolutely “must” in today’s business landscape and sometimes it may just feel overwhelming. Why not make things simpler? [Read more…]
iPhone User? Here Is What Your iPhone Headphones Can Do For You!
In today’s world of multitasking and short-cutting everything, in an attempt to save time, knowing how to multitask your iPhone may become extremely handy. And, it may save you from some stress too. This video, produced by Will Wei for Business Insider, will show you 14 things you can do with your pre-packaged iPhone headphones to make your life infinitely easier. [Read more…]
How To Grow Your Email List Using Facebook Ads
Do you use Facebook advertising for your business? Building an email list using Facebook it’s easier than ever. I created over 100 Facebook campaigns in the last year (with each campaign with at least 2 ad sets and each ad set with at least 4 ads). I tried different niches, and different countries, split tested, gain lots of experience and in the end, I came up with a system on how to effectively grow my email list using Facebook ads, for various niches and without going broke. Here are some of my results:
Targeting the US:
Targeting France, UK, and Ireland:
Targeting Romania:
Below are the exact steps I follow to get these types of results. Wherever you are in the world, as long as you follow the overall process you should be in a great spot to get tons of leads and make a bunch of sales.
1. Create An Offer Ask your clients “What is the number one problem they’re trying to solve?” The offer you create is going to be THE solution to THAT problem and you are going to give them this solution for FREE on your website. You can deliver this solution in a PDF format (report, cheat sheet, e-book), audio, or video, it’s up to you. What if you don’t have any clients yet? Well, you can always rely on Google to “tell” you what people are looking for. Quite easy, right?
If you want to start using Facebook ads but do not have a product to sell, I recommend you check these two sites: JVZoo and More Niche (for high commissions and fast cash).
2. Create The Landing Page On Your Website Where Your Potential Customers Will Sign Up Your goal is to capture your audience’s email. I like using Lead Pages, they have a variety of high-converting templates that you can actually set up a landing page and have installed on your site in just a few minutes.
3. Create A Post On your Facebook Page With A Link To Direct People To This Landing Page Have an irresistible headline, an image that stands out and captures attention, and also an option to opt-in to get your FREE offer. To create my images I use Canva, Pagemodo (free tools) or Power Point, and occasionally Fiverr (paid options). Use Facebook’s Grid Tool here to make sure you have less than 20% of the text in your image.
4. Turn That Post Into A Facebook Ad For this step, I like to use Facebook’s Power Editor. It is a bit more complicated than Ads Manager but the targeting options are so much better. Go to https://www.facebook.com/ads/manage/powereditor/ (Remember that Power Editor works only on Google Chrome. If you don’t have Google Chrome on your computer, you can download it here. Go to http://www.google.com/chrome/) Create a campaign with “Website Conversions” or “Click To Website” objective (you’ll have to run a couple of tests to see which one works better for you.)
5 Set Your Budget I always start with a $5/ ad set/day (max $10) until I get the ad right and then I scale it. You can test your ads even with smaller dollar amounts/day.
6. Find Your Target Audience On Facebook Now, in my opinion, this is the most important step. Spend as much time as you need here doing research. There are a couple of things you can do to find where your target audience is on Facebook. You can use the Facebook Graph search function to find the pages that your audience members like and engage with. Type in the search box “Pages liked by [your business name or competitor here] fans” – or – “Pages liked by people who like [your biz name here or competitor business name here] – or- “Favorite interests of people who like…”
Target those pages as Interests. To find out even more about my target market I like to go to Alexa and similarweb.com and check their reports on similar sites. You’ll be amazed at how much you can learn about your audience from these free reports.
Once you have a mail list or a customer list, I strongly suggest you create a lookalike audience based on any of these lists and use it (in the custom audience tab). You’ll be so happy you did! Use the “More Demographics” and Behavior drop-down options to define even more accurately your audience.
When you choose interests stay away from the broad interests suggested by default. Think like this: most everybody may like Footwear (general interest) but most passionate people like Rebook, for example, or Footwear News Magazine- WWD.com
7. Choose Where Your Ad Is Being Shown On Facebook What I usually do is: I start running my ads on Mobile News Feed and Desktop News Feed. Once I know the ad has the potential to perform well, I duplicate the ad and create one ad for the Mobile News Feed and one for the Desktop News Feed.
8. Pricing My advice here is to let Facebook optimize your ads. After running more than 200 winning Facebook ads, I can totally say that Facebook is doing a great job when optimizing for an objective. Just remember: your campaign was set up per objective so choose to optimize your ads for the same objective. I got the best results in this type of setting.
9. Use Pixels To Track Conversions From Facebook Ads Use Pixels to track conversions that happen on your website as a result of your Facebook Adverts.
You can create a conversion-tracking pixel and add it to the pages of your website where conversions happen (for example, checkouts or leads).
10. Optimize Your Facebook Ads For Best Performance This step is, by far, my most favorite step. To optimize your ads go to the Ad Manager and click the View Report Tab.
In the next window click the Edit Columns tab.
And voila!
Use this info to optimize your ads by age, gender, placement, country, different actions, etc.
11. Retargeting- Selling Did you know you can import your email list into Facebook and promote to just those people with paid Facebook targeting? It’s a way to engage on multiple platforms and turn leads into sales. People rarely buy from you the first time they visit your site or see an offer. Use the Custom Audiences to show your Facebook ads to people who have already visited your website or to your email subscribers, for example, to close sales. You can create these audiences in both Power Editor and Ads Manager.
If you do not have an email list or enough people on your list and therefore you cannot create a custom audience yet, try the Fb Retargeter tool created by my friend Robert Mercado. I have been using this tool for a few months now and the results are amazing. Click here to check it out.
12. ACCELERATE (LIMITED TIME OFFER) Wanna accelerate this process? This is your chance to get my new course: “How To Use Facebook For Business & Make Sales” for just $10 (79%OFF). Have a look here and then come back and click the ACCELERATE link below.
ACCELERATE
How To Use Color Psychology To Increase Online Sales
Color psychology can have a positive or negative effect on every single visitor that reaches your site, and you can make the most of your branding strategy by using special colors that evoke specific feelings.
When colors are used correctly can send the right message to a reader. At the same time if misused can lead to confusion and readers can leave your website very quickly.
Colors can stir a variety of emotions and memories.To know which colors attract readers, you must know your audience very well.
Market research is very important. If you are serious about maximizing your profits, research your target market’s colors and use color psychology.
This will help you build a Web site to respond your market ‘s demands. By understanding the psychology of color, you can easily improve your web design, you can create a memorable brand and you can increase the number of visits to your website.
Color psychology, the effect of colors
The following colors are generally associated with different emotions, feelings, and reactions in both positive and negative ways:
Yellow: confident, creative, strong, and friendly in the positive; depressing, irrational,and even fearful in the negative. On color psychology, yellow is a very stimulating and energizing color, but overusing it or using the wrong tone can work against you.Often used to grab attention of window shoppers.
Red: excitement, warmth, energy, and stimulating in the positive, but aggression and excessive visual impact in the negative. Red is a strong and powerful color, and can be used properly in subtle ways. It demands attraction and recognition, but can also be perceived as overly aggressive. On color psychology creates urgency and increases heart rate. Often seen in clearance sales.
Blue: intelligent, cool, efficient, and trustworthy in the positive, but unfriendly and aloof in the negative. Blue is essentially soothing, and the different hues can create a peaceful and serene feeling. However, it can also be perceived as cold and unemotional so you will need to pick the right tone to deliver the appropriate message (see bank’s color psychology-many banks use it in their logos or marketing).It is one of the most popular colors, especially in business.
Green: balance, rest, peace, environmentally friendly in the positive, but bored,bland, and stagnant in the negative. Green can be used in very positive ways for a refreshing and energizing color palette, but too many dark tonescan be perceived negatively.On color psychology,gives the impression of wealth. The easiest color for the eyes to process. Used in stores to relax.
Orange:warmth, security, fun, and abundance in the positive, but frivolity and disorder in the negative. Orange is a very energizing color, and can also attract immediate attention; however, too much of it can indicate foolishnessor not being taken seriously enough. On color psychology,creates a call to action :subscribe, buy or sell.
Pink: On color psychology,pink reflects femininity, love, tranquility in the positive, but weakness and inhibition in the negative. Pink can be soothing and attractive, but can be draining and overdone very easily. Avoid using it unless it clearly matches and represents your brand. Used to market to women and girls and traditional buyers.
Black: can be serious and conventional or sexy and rebellious ,powerful and sleek and also mournful and unimaginative.On color psychology, black reflects authority and power but it could also represent an evil notion for some people.Use it to market luxury products.
Purple: Being the combination of red and blue, the warmest and coolest colors, purple is believed to be the ideal color and represents meanings of wealth, extravagance, creativity, wisdom, dignity, grandeur, devotion, peace, pride, mystery, independence, and magic.On the negative side : gloom, sadness, and frustration.It is often used to market anti-aging products.
To learn more about color psychology and how it influences purchases check THIS infographic below, offered by Kissmetrics.
Keep this in mind and use color psychology when designing a website. You must ask yourself what you want your visitors to react to your site.
Psychologists suggest that the impression the colors leave contributes over 60% to acceptance or rejection of the product or service and for a web-master using color psychology and its emotional effects could mean the difference between selling or losing customers.
Question: How did you choose the colors for your website? Share your thoughts in the comments!
Image courtesy of Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net