An estimated 50 percent of active FACEBOOK users take the time to log into FACEBOOK each day. That’s some 500 million people coming to this site daily. The total amount of time people spend on FACEBOOK means there is an advertising goldmine waiting for you. Just imagine of all the new people you could expose your brand to with very minimal effort. FACEBOOK isn’t a site that people login to and log off right away.

If it’s your plan to market to global customers, FACEBOOK is the right place to turn for assistance. This site has 70 diverse translations available for just about each country on the map. In fact, an estimated 70 percent of the site’s users are living outside of the United States. This means FACEBOOK advertisers can target people living just about anywhere in the world or they can try to reach them all with a broad-based campaign.

FACEBOOK’s overall monthly usage figure makes it one of the largest players on the Internet today. If you’re ready to give up on Adwords, FACEBOOK has the exposure your advertising needs to gain attention, siphon traffic in your path and help you realize your sales goals. Although the numbers evidently address for themselves, there are other factors that make this site eye-catching to online marketers.

The social aspect of the site can work as influential force through the advertisers’ favor. Plus, the targeting potential bores down deeper than a search engine could potentially pull off. You’ve been working hard to establish your business to as many potential target customers as possible – the ones who will discover your products appealing, and willingly spend money.

You’ve done it through SEO, social networking, press releases, article marketing and perhaps even a pay-per-click campaign like Google AdWords. Basically, you’ve tried all the traditional methods that help online business catch on like a gust of wind. But have you thought about FACEBOOK advertising yet? If not, you may not be aware of this relatively latest source of targeted customers – the kind who you may not be able to reach by traditional way.

Just what is FACEBOOK advertising, and why should you consider it? You’ve seen them yourself, most likely… those ads running down the right-hand side of your FACEBOOK pages and most of them about interests you mainly enjoy. You are not seeing the similar ads as everyone else accessing FACEBOOK at that moment.

These ones are specially targeted to data FACEBOOK has gleaned from your preferences and other sources.

FACEBOOK ads are straightforward but powerful. Each one consists of a title, text block and graphic or photo of your choice – all within an 110px X 80px “box”, to fit that vertical, right-hand FACEBOOK sidebar. If you think of them as a mix between a Twitter tweet and a banner ad, you’ve just about getting the right picture in mind!

And yes – they absolutely can be advertised!

• Products

• Services

• Contests

• Cause

• Links

• Photos

• Videos

• Business USP

• Business Events

As well as integrating...

- Your offline promotions with your online
- Real-time information for your “consumers”

FACEBOOK Advertising Helps

SEO vs. Social Trends

FACEBOOK’s main advantage is its most obvious. It operates through social networking and trending rather than pure SEO – the most recent trend of this brand new decade. It allows readers to view your ads on their mobile phones – and mobile devices now outnumber personal computers, 4 to 1!

It is also cheaper than Google AdWords, and while the latter is still a brilliant method to kick-start a campaign, AdWords can be risky for new marketers, as costs per click can skyrocket faster than your sales. Will it substitute AdWords entirely? That shouldn’t be your aim! Plan further down the line to do what the big players do: Kick-start each campaign with well-optimized and researched AdWords.

FACEBOOK vs. Adwords Costs

But whether you utilize Adwords (SEO based) or FACEBOOK ads (social networking based), FACEBOOK ads these days are a “necessity” – mainly with the not-so- delicate switch over to mobile devices! Except it’s great for new marketers because at the moment, it’s considerably less expensive to advertise on FACEBOOK than with PPC!

Graphics Capability

Its other major benefit is that you can bring in a graphic element or photo into what is essentially just a minor text ad! Since FACEBOOK is “tuned” to graphic elements, and curiosity has been shown to hit the highest point when graphics are displayed, it wins hands-down over AdWords worn-out, annoying banner ads (traditionally low converters for over a decade).(You could simplify it like this: Want a text ad only? – Use AdWords. Plan to use a graphic? – Use FACEBOOK Ads.)

Text Capability

You have 75 words to state what you want to say in Google AdWords (that’s less than half a tweet!) FACEBOOK ads not only allocate you a 25-character headline, but 135 words of body text, too. (That’s over double Google AdWords’ capacity – but note; spaces count.)

Does SEO Still Important?

Yes! In fact, it’s absolutely vital to the success of your FACEBOOK Ad!  FACEBOOK Ads are usually catered to your specific hobbies, tastes, preferences and interests appearing down the right-hand side of your FACEBOOK page?

You’ll notice that:

- Some actually don’t appeal to you
 - A small percentage make you click on them right away and yet a third group appeals to you, but it may take you days of repetitive exposure, seeing the same ad many times, before you at last give up and click through.

You want your ad to be in the latter two categories and you accomplish that through solid, well- researched long-tailed keywords (combined with your enticing, curiosity-arousing 25 character headline and 135 character body texts).
Get a hold those elements right, and you’ll have an ad that bypasses casual searchers (how many right- hand-side Google search page paid ads do you ever click on, compared to FACEBOOK Ads?) and zeros in on a 75% pre-sold, pre-qualified market.

Will This Work For You?

Some people will tell you that FACEBOOK Ads don’t work for business purposes, but that’s simply not so. It should speak volumes and give you a huge, fat clue about its potential when you comprehend that major companies are taking full advantage of FACEBOOK Ads, in innovative ways.

For instance, according to FACEBOOK’s own Marketing Solutions page…

 - Honda recently used FACEBOOK Ads to keep consumers updated (and do serious damage control) after its recent spate of shocking recalls.

- Budweiser encouraged social interactivity with its customers when it invited them to select which commercials to show during televised sports games.
 
- Guitar Hero became the first online video game to reach 1,000,000 fans on FACEBOOK</li>

- Even Coca-Cola jumped on the bandwagon, selling “virtual bottles of coke” and promising to donate $1.00 for every virtual bottle sent to their favorite cause.

These 4 examples alone illustrate you the sort of creativity you can take up (and flexibility you can take advantage of) when creating your FACEBOOK Advertising campaign!

“Likesumers”

If you’ve been thinking what a “likesumer” is, it’s yet another social trend you can utilize to your advantage. According to Forrester Research, a “likesumer” is basically a consumer who has “become a fan” of a brand on FACEBOOK.

This brings us back to FACEBOOK Ads’ third major advantage… interactivity.

It’s a proven maxim: Get people to engage as a participant, rather than as a spectator, and their risk in what they’re engaging in becomes personal and more upbeat. Use an app or a product and click the little “Like” text link on your FACEBOOK page, and you are not only contributing to its statistical popularity, but personally endorsing it!

This can help 2 particular types of “product” in particular…

1. Apps (applications such as Zynga’s “Farmville” game)

2. Brands

Allowing people to become FACEBOOK fans by clicking your “Like” button should be a definite part of your branding campaign. A good rule of thumb is to make sure the niche customer you wish to reach actually does operate via social networking at least as much as – if not more than – through standard PC use and Google searches.

You can also target particular geographic areas, using FACEBOOK Ads (by country, state or province, town or city).
And remember, when someone brands him or herself as your fan (or “likesumer”) when they click your “Like” Button, they are letting you know they are ripe for your offerings.

Your Profile Page is Your Friend!

The main motivation you can target so specifically, in spite of FACEBOOK in itself have a large, general demographic, can be attributed to profile pages.

Think about it: When you filled out your profile page, you were prompted to share your...

- Hobbies and interests
- Career and work information
- School, college or university
- Tastes in music, books and movies
- Personal and contact information (date of birth, marital status, etc.)</li>
- City and state

And as much extra information as you chose to share. Among the things you share you can bet people can discover great long-tailed keywords! These are what you should use when creating your FACEBOOK Ads – targeted specifically to your ideal customer, of course.

Use your keyword in your headline at the very least – and for a second time in the text (always providing it feels totally normal: Remember, FACEBOOK puts “social” before “SEO”).

The Works

In addition to the creative side of your FACEBOOK Ads, there are other actions you can choose to take. You can:

- Pay per click (PPC)… or per impression (CPM)
- Track your Ad’s development in “real time”
- Edit and tweak your ads, for your best results

Best of all, FACEBOOK Ads are simple to set up and with a step-by-step process that guides you clearly through creation and all your options. FACEBOOK is has become the latest trend in online advertising – especially for those on a budget – as of this writing. Even if you don’t think its right for your business, you are to be commended for taking the time to at least learn more about it!

All else being equal in a Google Ads campaign, the marketer with the higher click-through rate (CTR) will get more clicks, get cheaper bids and earn more money in the long run. 

How do you write your copy in such a way that people feel inspired to click on your ads? Here are a few tips.

==> Keyword in Title

Anytime you have your keyword in the title, the keyword is bolded. This brings more attention to your ad.

However, often times the keyword is too long to be included in your title. Or your title can only hold just the keyword. For example, if your keyword is "New York Coupons," you might just use "NY Coupons" and then use the rest of the space to create a compelling title. Only "coupons" will be bolded, but that's good enough.

==> Mirror Your Competitors

Start by looking through all your competitor's ads. What's working for them?

If all your competitors are using just one ad style, it might make a lot of sense to at least split test copying that style.

==> A Few Effective Headline Strategies

There are a few time-tested Google Ads styles that tend to work pretty well in most markets. If you have trouble coming up with ideas, try one of these proven formulas.

* The Shocking or Controversial Statement

A headline that's highly controversial or shocking can really draw in the eyes and therefore clicks. A headline like "Is SS Stealing Your Pension?" might be a high click-through headline for social security related keywords, for example.

  * The New Discovery or Fact

 Headlines that reveal interesting facts or new discoveries often work very well. For example, the "negative carb" diet worked well because of all its "burn more calories than you eat" types of headlines.

  * The "Read Before You Buy" Headline

 If you're bidding on specific product names, try the "Read This Before You Buy [X]" headline. If you don't mind ticking some people off, the "Is [X] a Scam?" headline also works very well.

  * The Strong Benefit Statement

 Finally, there's the good old benefit statement headline. That's basically where you tell them loud and clear what they'll get by using your product. It's old and used often, but it's popular for a reason: it works.

 

==> The Call to Action

 How you tell people to take action could make a big difference on your CTR.  

Google Ads doesn't allow people to use words like "click here" in their ads. However, you can use words like "visit now" or "see inside." 

Generally, adding one of these calls to action at the end of your ad will increase your CTR noticeably.

 Getting a high CTR will help you get more clicks, a higher ROI and a better Quality Score. Try some of these tips to help increase your overall CTR.

You can already buy voice ads on Google AdWords as of today. If you already use Google AdWords, you may be wondering how to improve your monetization with voice search.

There are many ways to get better at voice search through monetization, and the good news is, it’s not that different from a regular search.

1. Conduct a Search Term Inventory

Some of the content you’ve already created with specific keywords may already be getting voice search results even without you running specific voice search campaigns. If you find anything like that in your inventory, take note of it so that you can make more of it. If not, look at the keywords you have now and figure out how you can improve them by making them more conversational, longer, and natural.

2. Improve Your Search Terms

Now that you have a list of search terms, try to turn them into questions that your audience will ask. It can help to go through the buying cycle to try to create at least one question that the person at that stage asks about your niche or topic. You should eventually have many more questions than one per stage, but this is an excellent place to start.

3. Create a Question-Centered Campaigns

When people are using voice search, they tend to ask questions in complete sentences. The better you can frame those questions, the narrower you can make it, and the tighter you can answer the question, the better. That means your keyword choices will end up four or five words long instead of just one or two words.
 
4. Find Your Top Three Question Keywords

According to your audience, what are the top three questions they tend to ask about your products, services, or industry? When you know what they are, you’ll want to start AdWords campaigns focused on those questions. It also helps to add negative terms that can otherwise stop your question from showing up for specific searches.

5. Use Location Extensions

Voice search is first and foremost focused used locally. It will really turn up things a notch if you select locations when you’re doing your ads. If you have an international company, you may want to narrow your searches locally to the areas where you already know that most of your audience resides.

6. Ensure Ad Copy Answers Your Keyword Questions

When you create the questions, make sure you also fully create the answers. The answers should be given freely in your advertisement copy so that the virtual assistants can return the right answers in full when they ask the questions.

7. Create Relevant Landing Pages

The truth is that even with normal text-based search, the more landing pages you have, the better. You want to narrow down your content down to a micro-level, and the best way to do that is to create very narrow content for each page of your site. That includes creating landing pages not only for each product but also for each place the product is sold and each color the product comes in. The more relevant landing pages, the better.

8. Don’t Forget to Claim Your Google Business Listing

One easy way to get more search results is to claim your Google Business listing. You may also want to consider claiming your Bing listing, and any listing on any well-used directory. If your audience is looking there and you’re not there, they won’t find you.

Monetizing voice search is not that different from any other pay-per-click campaign that you are running. You’re simply going to work on the content you produce and publish to ensure it's keyword question-based, using natural language to answer the questions your audience has throughout their buying journey.

To be honest, you don’t have to get that carried away thinking voice search is all that much different from text search. It is different in that you want the keywords you use and information you share to be more conversational and natural, but you still want to optimize for the right keywords based on your research. Voice SEO is still search engine optimization, and it follows the same rules.

• Create Content Focused on Answering Questions

When people use voice to search for things, they usually phrase their query as a question. Because of this fact, the more content you can create surrounding questions that your audience answers, the more likely they are to find you when the voice search engines pick up on it.

• Focus on Optimizing Your Content for Mobile First

Most people are using mobile devices to traverse the internet today, including when they use voice search because it’s so convenient. However, due to that, it’s crucial that your website and your content is usable and readable via any mobile device regardless of screen size.

• Create an FAQ and Keep It Going

One way to create good voice search content is to focus on creating an FAQ. Every question in every way that you think it can be asked and should be listed in your FAQ, even if it’s the same question phrased differently.

• Understand Your Users’ Intent

An important component of voice search is user intent. An important element of content creation for content marketing is also user intent. If you know what a user is intending to do and wants to do, you can put the right content in front of them in the right place and at the right time.

• Use Technology That Helps Customers Find You

Use the right technology such as self-hosted WordPress, which is very flexible when it comes to using plugins that help you create rich snippets and other structured data easily.

• Use "Conversational" Long-Tail Keywords

Think of the content that you are creating for your audience as a conversation that is ongoing. Today you may answer the question about "Ways to Use Bananas You Didn’t Know About," and tomorrow you might need to answer the question of what to use to replace that banana. It can help to create a mind map about any one topic you need to talk about to your audience so that you can cover it from all angles.

• Provide Value to Your Audience

The main thing to focus on with any type of content is to remember that the content you publish is for your audience, not the search engines. So, first create the content that they need and want, then adjust it to fit the parameters set by the search engine so that you can maximize your reach.

• Be Thorough about SEO and Accessibility

One thing that is sometimes forgotten about SEO is that it’s also about accessibility. There are both blind and deaf consumers that use the internet just like you do to find what they need. If you don't do SEO for yourself, such as including "alt" tag information that make sense in images, then do it so that your site is more accessible.

Remember that voice search SEO is not really that different than for various other kinds of search, so just use every method you can to increase your traffic and appear on more search results - whether voice or not.

AI is something that we tend to associate with science fiction. In fact though, it is a big part of our reality right now and drives many of the mundane services we take for granted. That depth-effect on your camera? That’s achieved by a form of AI called machine learning!

If you’re an internet marketer, then you should know that your specialty is not safe from the march of this new technology. AI is already affecting internet marketing in a number of powerful ways, and its effects are only likely to be felt more greatly as we move forward.

In this post, we’ll look at some of the biggest ways AI is affecting internet marketing, and the biggest ways it will!

1.  Smarter Search

Google has already adopted an AI-heavy approach to search. In fact, it has described itself lately as an “AI first company.” What this means, is that Google no longer simply tries to match keywords with text in an article, and instead aims to properly understand what the user is asking, in order to provide a more relevant answer from a piece of text.

Google is doing this to improve Google Assistant, another piece of AI technology that it hopes more and more of us will use to get information from the web and even to make bookings!

Marketers have had to adapt to this new algorithm called RankBrain, and that’s only likely to become a more prominent going forward.

Oh and we can also expect computer vision to enhance Google’s ability to search through images, too.

2. Chatbots

Apparently 80% of businesses hope to have a chatbot by 2020. We can very well expect this to be something that is prominent going forward, and especially as weak AIs like these become closer to passing the Turing Test.

What benefit is there for marketers? A chatbot can provide instant guidance and assistance as soon as someone lands on a webpage, significantly improving conversion rates and convincing more people to buy. Some fast food stores now allow you to make orders by simply messaging their chatbots. Moreover, they can even initiate conversations with people in order to encourage them to buy!

3.  Big Data and Tracking

We are tracked all the time by cookies stored on our browsers, by our user accounts, and more. This information is then used to serve us up ads that advertisers think will be relevant to us. While this is an effective strategy, it could stand to be far more effective once you start using machine learning and big data.

In other words, as we collect more and more data about the behavior of users, smart learning algorithms can then assess that behavior and look for patterns. This will then allow them to predict items and links that the user might be interested in – even before they demonstrate an interest in it.

In other words, you don’t show them something they’ve looked at before, but rather introduce them to entirely new products that countless other interactions suggest they might be interested in.

SEO or PPC - Which Is Better? 

In order to grow your business online, you may be wondering whether you should invest your time and money into Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC).  Both have their positives and negatives, but is one better than the other?  Let’s look at both.

 SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the process whereby you optimize a website to appear as high in the search engine results as possible. A massive part of this process is figuring out what the search engines want and then optimizing your web pages accordingly.

 Pros of SEO:

  Organic traffic has staying power. Once you’re able to get your website to rank highly in the search engines, chances are good that you’ll be able to generate consistent traffic.  

1. SEO is often a less expensive option than PPC. When you compare the two traffic sources, SEO comes out the winner of the two when looking at traffic generated, as long as you’re looking at the traffic that comes once you’ve attained high rankings in the search engines. 

Negatives of SEO:  

1. SEO takes time. It can take many months for your hard work to show any rewards. If you don’t have the time to wait for your website and content to rank, then SEO may not be the best option for you. 
2. You need unique and quality content. When it comes to content, people want to read the best content available. This can be a lot of work and will require research and a creative mind. If you don’t have these skills yourself, then it will benefit you to hire an expert.

  Is PPC Better?  

PPC, or Pay-Per-Click Advertising, is a technique that allows you to advertise in search engines, bringing immediate, targeted traffic to your website.

  Pros of PPC:  

1. Quick results. Unlike SEO, where you may have to wait months to see results, it is possible to start getting substantial traffic to your website within a few hours using an effective PPC campaign.

 

1. You can accurately target different demographics. When you use PPC, you will be able to target different types of people. For example, if you want to target a woman in her 30s who lives in the UK and is interested in cooking, you can target her with your ads. SEO does not give you this option.

 

1. You can experiment quickly and easily. With PPC, you can set up a campaign and run A/B tests so that you can monitor what works and what doesn’t very quickly. SEO is a slower process, so it will take time to come to any conclusion regarding the success of an SEO technique.

  Negatives of PPC:

  It can be expensive. If you are in a competitive niche, PPC can be expensive and your return on investment (ROI) may be low while you are figuring out which ads work and which don’t. 

1. Ads can become less effective. Using the same ads with every campaign will result in them becoming stale and less effective. To combat this, mix up the copy and images and refresh the ads to keep them working long-term.

 Which is Better for You? 

When it comes to determining whether SEO or PPC is better for your business, the answer would be that it depends. 

Both are legitimate sources of traffic.  

If you want quicker results, then PPC will be the better option, because SEO will take time to work. For those with a smaller budget, SEO will be the better option, as paid ads can be expensive, especially if you don’t have experience with them. 

You may want to use both SEO and PPC in tandem. When using them together, you can seriously ramp up the amount of traffic that you can get to your website!

Most of us use Google every single day, and still it finds ways to surprise us. 

Have you ever gone to search for something in Google, only to find that it does something almost creepily intelligent?

For example, you might have noticed lately how Google will suggest search terms for you and often get them right. If I search “Ninja Turtles history” and then later start typing “Names of…”, there is a good chance that Google will suggest I finish that query with “…the Ninja Turtles.” 

Google is now smart enough to recognize that we tend to search more than once around the same topic, and it can help us to save time typing out questions as a result. 

At the same time, this also provides some encouragement as to what to search, thereby keeping users on Google for longer and benefiting the search giant too.

But take a moment to reflect on just how impressive this is really. Not only has Google understood that you are likely to be looking for more things related to your first search, but it has also understood that the Ninja Turtles have names – that they are a group of fictional characters.

How can it do this? Partly it comes down to a very powerful new feature of the algorithm called rankbrain.

• Introducing Rankbrain

Essentially, RankBrain is an algorithm designed to better understand what people mean when they search for something.

Previously, Google worked by looking for exact keyword matches. If someone searched for a phrase such as “buy hats online,” then Google would look for a website that featured that exact phrase somewhere in the text. This was a simple method, but unfortunately it was also flawed. Apart from anything else, it was very easy for website owners to try and “trick” Google.

RankBrain changes this by splitting search phrases up into “word vectors” that categorize search terms by their meaning and their context. This way, RankBrain can then attempt to understand the question and then find an actual answer online.

This also allows Google to avoid making mistakes when looking at words with more than one meaning. For example, if you were to search for “decision trees,” then Google might once have gotten confused between the flow chart, and decisions about trees. The old Google might have brought up an article telling you how to “make decisions about trees.”

The new Google however will look for related terms and phrases in the text, which could include such things as “flow chart” or “choices.”

By recognizing these terms are also in the text, Google will know that the user was asking about decision trees (flow charts) and not tree decisions!

Google is getting smarter all the time, and is becoming increasingly adept at second guessing users and knowing how to provide them with useful answers. This changes the game for internet marketers too though, who now need to think in terms of synonyms and related terms, instead of just repeating the same phrase over and over!

A smarter Google requires smarter marketing!