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4 Ways to Leverage Social Media Platforms to Support B2B Marketing Initiatives

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4 Ways to Leverage Social Media Platforms to Support B2B Marketing Initiatives

It’s not always easy to know how to use social media for your business.

After all, it takes more than growing your following or posting randomly to drive engagement and ultimately convert your passive social media audiences into paying and loyal customers.

You need to be strategic, explore the right avenues, and uncover bright ideas to ensure social media success.

You’ll be better equipped to make the most of social media platforms for your customer relationship-building, marketing, and audience engagement efforts.  

While there are many ways to leverage social media platforms to amplify your Business-to-Business (B2B) marketing efforts, jumpstart your initiatives with these five tips.  

1. Share valuable TikTok content to connect with viewers

TikTok is an excellent platform for engaging audiences. Plus, TikTok’s algorithm makes it great for boosting your reach organically, especially when your posts go viral.

Leverage TikTok for your B2B business with the following tips.

  • Post content on TikTok that help you build authentic connections with your audiences. Share original, simple content that provides value to your followers in fun, engaging, and relatable ways. It can help you connect with potential clients better.
  • Create shared experiences with your audiences and build emotional connections by encouraging User-Generated Content (UGC). For instance, you can post TikTok videos enticing your followers to share their experiences with your mobile app.

When used strategically, UGC can one of the best ways to promote your mobile app, software, and other products while encouraging constant interactions between your followers and brand for higher engagement.    

  • Educate your audience on how to use your product. Post educational yet entertaining TikTok videos that serve as product guides for your current and potential customers.

For instance, you can share TikTok videos showcasing your product’s functionalities and feature releases and share quick product demos.  

Use advanced Social Media Marketing (SMM) platforms to streamline creating, managing, and posting TikTok content for your B2B marketing efforts.

For instance, Vista Social offers post scheduling, content management, engagement tracking, and analytics and reporting features.

You can simplify and streamline your SMM initiatives on TikTok and other social media platforms.

Besides robust TikTok marketing tools, Vista Social offers other useful SMM features.

You can schedule your content in bulk to make auto-publishing multiple posts in one go quick and easy. You can also capture mentions of your brand across your network via a social listening functionality.    

4 Ways to Leverage Social Media Platforms to Support B2B

2. Post captivating visuals to engage Instagram users

Instagram is a visual-based platform, making it an excellent channel to engage your audiences through stunning images, videos, and other visual content.

Post Instagram Stories and Reels that entertain, educate, and inform your social media audiences.

Include high-quality photos or videos and funny memes, GIFs, and other compelling visual content to help draw more eyeballs to your content, brand, products, and services.

Gather your client’s comments and responses using reliable user feedback software and include eye-catchy, on-brand visual elements. Then, share the visual content on your Instagram feed, Reels, or Stories.

For instance, post client success stories and feedback that share positive customer experiences with your brand in your Stories.

The customer testimonial for Slack is a classic example.    

1649159073 201 4 Ways to Leverage Social Media Platforms to Support B2B

Sharing visually appealing client success stories and testimonials via IG Reels and Stories is an excellent way to capture your audience’s attention and share social proof.

It can help you draw more attention to your content and brand, build trust with your potential clients, drive engagement, and increase sales on Instagram.    

3. Promote your company on LinkedIn

Promoting your company on social media can be tricky since you don’t want to be overly promotional.

After all, aggressively selling or promoting on channels where people come mainly to be entertained or learn new information and ideas can turn off your prospects. It can ruin your chances of engaging them.

You’re better off building connections and fostering trust while presenting your brand as an excellent solution to your social media audiences’ problems to drive engagement and sales.

The solution? Run employee advocacy programs on LinkedIn.

Through employee advocacy programs, your employees can serve as in-house brand ambassadors who help raise awareness about your company and boost and grow your brand on LinkedIn.  

Develop an effective employee advocacy program on LinkedIn with these quick tips.

  • Ensure employees involved in your advocacy program regularly update their profiles to show they are associated with your company.

It can help draw more people to your LinkedIn company profile and help show your business as a company consisting of real people—humanizing your brand.

  • Provide templates for your employees to simplify creating content and keep everything consistent and on-brand.
  • Train your employees on how to talk about your company to help optimize your efforts and drive meaningful results.

You can also get insights from data collected by handy Artificial Intelligence or AI customer service software to determine the best way to frame your messaging without being overly promotional.

  • Show your employees’ projects, work, and achievements. It’s a great way to display the quality service your prospects can get working with your company while showcasing your employees’ excellent attainments, boosting their morale.

4. Build communities on Facebook

Creating and joining online communities is an excellent way to expand your company’s network. It can also open opportunities for future partnerships with other businesses in your industry or niche.

Join Facebook groups, start conversations, share opinions, and bring value to your online community.

For instance, if you’re a company selling Software-as-a-Service, join Facebook groups such as SAAS Growth Hacks.

1649159073 508 4 Ways to Leverage Social Media Platforms to Support B2B

Encourage interactions by looking at previous posts, the formats used by members, and the popular posts.

Doing so can help you create or share discussions or topics the members are likely interested in, enticing them to respond and share their two cents.

Also, you can position yourself as a thought-leader and expert in your field when you share relevant, actionable information on Facebook groups. It can help build your company’s credibility, allowing you to foster trust with potential clients within the group.

Joining Facebook groups can also help you learn from other experts and leaders in your industry.

You’ll gain valuable learnings and tried and tested tactics you can apply to your existing approaches or integrate into your B2B marketing and sales strategies.

Make the most of social media for your B2B marketing

How you leverage social media platforms to amplify your B2B marketing efforts depends on your goals, strategies, and even your existing approaches.

Know the best ways to use social media channels for your business from the tips in this guide. Try them out and build on them to see which ones help bring your expected results.  


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YouTube Ad Specs, Sizes, and Examples [2024 Update]

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YouTube Ad Specs, Sizes, and Examples

Introduction

With billions of users each month, YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine and top website for video content. This makes it a great place for advertising. To succeed, advertisers need to follow the correct YouTube ad specifications. These rules help your ad reach more viewers, increasing the chance of gaining new customers and boosting brand awareness.

Types of YouTube Ads

Video Ads

  • Description: These play before, during, or after a YouTube video on computers or mobile devices.
  • Types:
    • In-stream ads: Can be skippable or non-skippable.
    • Bumper ads: Non-skippable, short ads that play before, during, or after a video.

Display Ads

  • Description: These appear in different spots on YouTube and usually use text or static images.
  • Note: YouTube does not support display image ads directly on its app, but these can be targeted to YouTube.com through Google Display Network (GDN).

Companion Banners

  • Description: Appears to the right of the YouTube player on desktop.
  • Requirement: Must be purchased alongside In-stream ads, Bumper ads, or In-feed ads.

In-feed Ads

  • Description: Resemble videos with images, headlines, and text. They link to a public or unlisted YouTube video.

Outstream Ads

  • Description: Mobile-only video ads that play outside of YouTube, on websites and apps within the Google video partner network.

Masthead Ads

  • Description: Premium, high-visibility banner ads displayed at the top of the YouTube homepage for both desktop and mobile users.

YouTube Ad Specs by Type

Skippable In-stream Video Ads

  • Placement: Before, during, or after a YouTube video.
  • Resolution:
    • Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
    • Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
    • Square: 1080 x 1080px
  • Aspect Ratio:
    • Horizontal: 16:9
    • Vertical: 9:16
    • Square: 1:1
  • Length:
    • Awareness: 15-20 seconds
    • Consideration: 2-3 minutes
    • Action: 15-20 seconds

Non-skippable In-stream Video Ads

  • Description: Must be watched completely before the main video.
  • Length: 15 seconds (or 20 seconds in certain markets).
  • Resolution:
    • Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
    • Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
    • Square: 1080 x 1080px
  • Aspect Ratio:
    • Horizontal: 16:9
    • Vertical: 9:16
    • Square: 1:1

Bumper Ads

  • Length: Maximum 6 seconds.
  • File Format: MP4, Quicktime, AVI, ASF, Windows Media, or MPEG.
  • Resolution:
    • Horizontal: 640 x 360px
    • Vertical: 480 x 360px

In-feed Ads

  • Description: Show alongside YouTube content, like search results or the Home feed.
  • Resolution:
    • Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
    • Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
    • Square: 1080 x 1080px
  • Aspect Ratio:
    • Horizontal: 16:9
    • Square: 1:1
  • Length:
    • Awareness: 15-20 seconds
    • Consideration: 2-3 minutes
  • Headline/Description:
    • Headline: Up to 2 lines, 40 characters per line
    • Description: Up to 2 lines, 35 characters per line

Display Ads

  • Description: Static images or animated media that appear on YouTube next to video suggestions, in search results, or on the homepage.
  • Image Size: 300×60 pixels.
  • File Type: GIF, JPG, PNG.
  • File Size: Max 150KB.
  • Max Animation Length: 30 seconds.

Outstream Ads

  • Description: Mobile-only video ads that appear on websites and apps within the Google video partner network, not on YouTube itself.
  • Logo Specs:
    • Square: 1:1 (200 x 200px).
    • File Type: JPG, GIF, PNG.
    • Max Size: 200KB.

Masthead Ads

  • Description: High-visibility ads at the top of the YouTube homepage.
  • Resolution: 1920 x 1080 or higher.
  • File Type: JPG or PNG (without transparency).

Conclusion

YouTube offers a variety of ad formats to reach audiences effectively in 2024. Whether you want to build brand awareness, drive conversions, or target specific demographics, YouTube provides a dynamic platform for your advertising needs. Always follow Google’s advertising policies and the technical ad specs to ensure your ads perform their best. Ready to start using YouTube ads? Contact us today to get started!

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Why We Are Always ‘Clicking to Buy’, According to Psychologists

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Why We Are Always 'Clicking to Buy', According to Psychologists

Amazon pillows.

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A deeper dive into data, personalization and Copilots

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A deeper dive into data, personalization and Copilots

Salesforce launched a collection of new, generative AI-related products at Connections in Chicago this week. They included new Einstein Copilots for marketers and merchants and Einstein Personalization.

To better understand, not only the potential impact of the new products, but the evolving Salesforce architecture, we sat down with Bobby Jania, CMO, Marketing Cloud.

Dig deeper: Salesforce piles on the Einstein Copilots

Salesforce’s evolving architecture

It’s hard to deny that Salesforce likes coming up with new names for platforms and products (what happened to Customer 360?) and this can sometimes make the observer wonder if something is brand new, or old but with a brand new name. In particular, what exactly is Einstein 1 and how is it related to Salesforce Data Cloud?

“Data Cloud is built on the Einstein 1 platform,” Jania explained. “The Einstein 1 platform is our entire Salesforce platform and that includes products like Sales Cloud, Service Cloud — that it includes the original idea of Salesforce not just being in the cloud, but being multi-tenancy.”

Data Cloud — not an acquisition, of course — was built natively on that platform. It was the first product built on Hyperforce, Salesforce’s new cloud infrastructure architecture. “Since Data Cloud was on what we now call the Einstein 1 platform from Day One, it has always natively connected to, and been able to read anything in Sales Cloud, Service Cloud [and so on]. On top of that, we can now bring in, not only structured but unstructured data.”

That’s a significant progression from the position, several years ago, when Salesforce had stitched together a platform around various acquisitions (ExactTarget, for example) that didn’t necessarily talk to each other.

“At times, what we would do is have a kind of behind-the-scenes flow where data from one product could be moved into another product,” said Jania, “but in many of those cases the data would then be in both, whereas now the data is in Data Cloud. Tableau will run natively off Data Cloud; Commerce Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud — they’re all going to the same operational customer profile.” They’re not copying the data from Data Cloud, Jania confirmed.

Another thing to know is tit’s possible for Salesforce customers to import their own datasets into Data Cloud. “We wanted to create a federated data model,” said Jania. “If you’re using Snowflake, for example, we more or less virtually sit on your data lake. The value we add is that we will look at all your data and help you form these operational customer profiles.”

Let’s learn more about Einstein Copilot

“Copilot means that I have an assistant with me in the tool where I need to be working that contextually knows what I am trying to do and helps me at every step of the process,” Jania said.

For marketers, this might begin with a campaign brief developed with Copilot’s assistance, the identification of an audience based on the brief, and then the development of email or other content. “What’s really cool is the idea of Einstein Studio where our customers will create actions [for Copilot] that we hadn’t even thought about.”

Here’s a key insight (back to nomenclature). We reported on Copilot for markets, Copilot for merchants, Copilot for shoppers. It turns out, however, that there is just one Copilot, Einstein Copilot, and these are use cases. “There’s just one Copilot, we just add these for a little clarity; we’re going to talk about marketing use cases, about shoppers’ use cases. These are actions for the marketing use cases we built out of the box; you can build your own.”

It’s surely going to take a little time for marketers to learn to work easily with Copilot. “There’s always time for adoption,” Jania agreed. “What is directly connected with this is, this is my ninth Connections and this one has the most hands-on training that I’ve seen since 2014 — and a lot of that is getting people using Data Cloud, using these tools rather than just being given a demo.”

What’s new about Einstein Personalization

Salesforce Einstein has been around since 2016 and many of the use cases seem to have involved personalization in various forms. What’s new?

“Einstein Personalization is a real-time decision engine and it’s going to choose next-best-action, next-best-offer. What is new is that it’s a service now that runs natively on top of Data Cloud.” A lot of real-time decision engines need their own set of data that might actually be a subset of data. “Einstein Personalization is going to look holistically at a customer and recommend a next-best-action that could be natively surfaced in Service Cloud, Sales Cloud or Marketing Cloud.”

Finally, trust

One feature of the presentations at Connections was the reassurance that, although public LLMs like ChatGPT could be selected for application to customer data, none of that data would be retained by the LLMs. Is this just a matter of written agreements? No, not just that, said Jania.

“In the Einstein Trust Layer, all of the data, when it connects to an LLM, runs through our gateway. If there was a prompt that had personally identifiable information — a credit card number, an email address — at a mimum, all that is stripped out. The LLMs do not store the output; we store the output for auditing back in Salesforce. Any output that comes back through our gateway is logged in our system; it runs through a toxicity model; and only at the end do we put PII data back into the answer. There are real pieces beyond a handshake that this data is safe.”

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