What Happens In Vegas Comes Back As Great Social Marketing Tactics

The week before Thanksgiving, I headed out to Las Vegas with our Director of Digital Advertising, Sarah Knoepfler, for Marketing Land's #SocialPro conference. The two day conference, which took place on November 18^th & 19^th, was jam packed with great social media marketing tips. We created a simple breakdown of the top 10 take-a-ways:

1. 'Social is free to use, but not free to do.' Social organic reach does not exist like it used to; therefore, you need paid efforts to build your social platforms. How much money are you willing to spend to educate yourself on how your campaign will work among different platforms? Be sure to give your campaign enough backing to ensure that it has a chance to succeed. You can always reallocate budgets later to put money towards the platforms that work for you. Still hesitant? Try remarketing campaigns first; if that doesn't work, it will be an uphill battle for other campaigns as well.


2. Eliminate the traditional marketing funnel with powerful new social ad formats, like the social direct response formats on Facebook and the lead generation card on Twitter. Why do 'pay per click' marketing when you can do 'pay per lead' marketing instead? Note: You should also try those fancy carousel ads on Facebook, data shows they outperform regular Facebook ad formats.


3. Ad recall on Instagram is 2.8x higher than other online norms. And now, creating Instagram ads is easier than ever within the Facebook ads manager. Something to note --images of your product may not always generate the most sales or engagement - sell the experience of your product with captivating imagery. And remember to use the call-to-action button!


4. 'Promote your unicorns.' - Do not pay to promote content just because; pay to promote your BEST content, your unicorns.


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Be sure to consistently post on your social media platforms and monitor performance, but only pay to promote your best content to maximize results!

5. Utilize custom audiences. Website traffic is the best targeting, so be sure to tag every user. Then, slice your audiences into multiple specific sets so you can understand what is happening and which users are the most beneficial. Then, retarget to those narrow, successful segments. You can also set up look-a-like audiences to be sure you are reaching users similar to your successful audiences.


6. Social remarketing is powerful! Push hard offers, like downloads or sign-ups with remarketing ads.


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To increase actions and sales, you can even try SUPER REMARKETING:

7. Engagement snowballs as you go. Be sure give your social media platforms enough time to prove their success. The funnel is not as direct in social - sometimes a user will need to experience your brand and content multiple times before a desired action is taken. Also, ups and downs are normal in social media marketing, so be sure to analyze data over a longer time frame to see the bigger performance picture.


8. It is what you say and how you say it! Be sure to stress urgency to users, while also using words like 'you' and 'your'. People want a two-sided conversation and do not respond as well to words like 'our' and 'we'.


9. Go mobile! You've heard it a million times, mobile is on the rise. But what you may not know is that mobile CPCs are 3X less than desktop CPCs. Try targeting mobile users initially, and then retarget those users on desktop devices. Your target audience will be more specific, which will be less expensive.


10. Users share feelings, not facts. Individuals are willing to be sold to, but they are not on social media platforms to ONLY be sold to. Users want to engage with interesting content and they will only share what speaks to them. Not all paid content has to be brand related in order to be successful.

Users spend 28% of their time online on social media - so be sure you are there to greet them with the right message and engaging content!