At ROAR, we’ve seen this mistake countless times. Experienced marketing leaders fall into the same trap, choosing channels simply because:

• Competitors are using them
• They assume they’re effective
• They feel pressured to pick something rather than nothing

But here’s the truth: this approach doesn’t drive sustainable growth.

We’ve helped many businesses refocus, and the results speak for themselves. Clients who shifted from imitation to strategy saw stronger engagement, higher ROI, and faster growth, without wasting their budget on ineffective channels.

If you’re serious about learning how to choose a marketing channel that drives results, this blog is your final nudge towards clarity.

The post How to Choose a Marketing Channel Without Hurting Your Business Growth appeared first on ROAR Digital Marketing.

Are you ready to make 2024 your most successful business year yet? As the New Year approaches, create your 2024 marketing plan and set new business goals. 

ROAR is here to help your business generate a marketing strategy full of ideas to elevate your business in 2024.

SEO

SEO

It would be criminal for a search engine marketing agency to leave SEO off of this list. Search engine optimisation helps your business’s website organically rank for search terms related to your company and used by your audience. A well-curated SEO strategy will be crucial in 2024.

SEO Fact: 53.3% of all website traffic comes from organic search.

Internal Linking

Internal linking is a handy tool most commonly used within an SEO strategy. It involves hyperlinking blog content and webpages on your website together to help search engines better understand your content. By helping search engines find, index and understand your webpages, you can strategically use internal linking to boost page authority and see your organic rankings increase. 

Internal Linking Fact: 24% of businesses spend more time building internal links than external links.

Optimise for Voice Search

Optimising for voice search will aid your business through the rise of vocal searches. Your website and its content should be written with voice search in mind, ensuring all written copy is clear concise and can provide search engines with correct answers. This will increase your chances of appearing for featured snippets on search engines – which 50% of voice search results rely on. 

Voice Search Fact: 77% of adults aged 18 to 34 years use voice search on their smartphones.

Build Backlinks 

Focussing on backlinks in your 2024 marketing plan will help you enhance your organic rankings. Backlinks are links from other websites that point back to your site. Backlinks, if they come from healthy websites with good authority, can affect online rankings. Suppose healthy websites are linking back to your content or website. In that case, it can signal to search engines like Google that your website is valuable and provides helpful content and information, presenting you as an industry thought leader. 

Backlink Fact: Around 67.5% of SEO experts believe backlinks impact search engine rankings.

Paid Advertising

PPC

PPC or pay-per-click advertising involves securing ad space on search results, third-party sites, and the web. It requires a budget, well-researched targeting and knowledge about your audience to ensure your ads bid on the right search terms to secure ad space. 

PPC Fact: Over 50% of ad clicks happen on mobile devices.

Paid Social

Paid social media is similar to PPC but focuses solely on ad appearance on social media channels. Paid social allows you to advertise directly to your audience on social media using infographics, carousels, resources and imagery to secure clicks and information about leads.

Paid Social Fact: By the end of 2022, social media ad impressions volume was more than 30% higher than the previous year.

Social Media

Giveaways

Giveaways are light, fun, yet effective ways to increase engagement, particularly on your social media channels. Giveaway something relevant to what your business offers or sells and some general gifts people will love.

We recently held a giveaway for a free 2-hour digital marketing consultancy session and a free SEO Bomb®. Entrants were required to tag their business in the comments, which received a large amount of engagement, more than usual.

Giveaway Fact: Giveaways have a conversion rate of nearly 34%.

Influencer Marketing

The rise of influencer marketing has been staggering, as over 80% of marketers now have a dedicated influencer marketing budget. Influencer marketing activities use content creators and influencers to speak about and use a product or service and recommend this to their audience to drive engagement.

Influencer Marketing Fact: 17% of marketers plan to invest in influencer marketing for the first time in 2023.

Infographics

Infographics are used primarily on social media to showcase your knowledge and provide insight and education to your audience. They are a great way to drive social media engagement and establish your brand/business as a thought leader. 

Infographic Fact: Infographics are 30 times more likely to be read than a written article.

Find New Social Channels

Social media is ever-evolving, and often there’s a new social media platform or marketing channel out before you can even catch up on current trends. Research the platforms your buyer persona or target market uses the most. This can help you determine the social media channels and platforms that you should be utilising.

Social Media Fact: 84% of marketers recognize multichannel campaigns are more effective than single-channel ones.

Website

Blog Writing

Blog writing is a crucial part of the strategic marketing plan at ROAR; we even offer it as part of our digital marketing services. Blog writing helps businesses showcase their knowledge and expertise through writing informative, helpful content designed to speak directly to your audience’s queries and pain points. By optimising them for SEO, these blog articles can increase your online visibility on SERPs (search engine results pages).

Blog Writing Fact: 77% of Internet users read blogs.

White Papers and Resources

White papers and resources are a great way to provide in-depth insight to your audience while increasing your lead generation in 2024. Resources are long-form, downloadable content generally covering a focus topic. You can make these resources paid for or simply free with the user’s requirement to provide their email address. This can help increase your email marketing contacts list and also showcase your expertise.

Resources Fact: 60% of B2B marketers have used white papers in the last 12 months, and 43% say they’ve produced the best results in the previous 12 months.

Popups

Popups are a great way of keeping website visitors engaged on your site and enticing them with new offers and launches. We use popups to ensure that website visitors are targeted with offers and unique things that would provide value to them. A few examples of this are free website audits and free Google Ads review sessions. 

Popup Fact: Mobile popups convert an average of 6.57% of visitors, while desktop popups convert only 3.77%.

Events

Event Sponsoring

Sponsoring an event can be great marketing for businesses. The key here is to pick specific events relevant to your sector or that your audience is likely to attend. An example is ROAR Digital Marketing sponsoring a ‘National Small Business Awards’. This would put us directly in front of businesses needing support with their search engine marketing.

In most scenarios, sponsoring an event means you feature on the advertisements for such events, on event banners and are invited to the event. 

Event Sponsoring Statistics: 80% recommend brands that sponsor a live music experience to their networks.

Webinars

Webinars are fantastic sessions that allow you to connect with an audience in real-time and build relationships. Webinars are online sessions where you present something valuable to an audience. An example of a webinar would be ROAR hosting a 30-minute session on ‘How to Accurately Track Online Performance Using GA4’. 

Webinar Fact: 46% is the average conversion rate of all types of webinars as of 2023.

Seminars

Seminars are very similar to webinars – but they’re held in person. The plus side to hosting an in-person webinar is that you are in the room with those interested in what you have to say – and your business. This can open the door to more conversation post-webinar and allow attendees to get a feel for you and your business. 

Seminar facts: Corporate events and seminars hold the majority share of 27.7% of the events industry.

Expos

We strongly recommend fitting some expos and conferences into your 2024 marketing plan! Expos and conferences are new for ROAR in 2023, but we’ve found them to be a great hit. Expos are essentially large buildings filled with businesses, and attendees are encouraged to visit stands to learn more about what each business does. These allow you to present your brand to potential customers in person and will allow you to begin conversations that you may not have had over a DM.

Expo Fact: An eye-catching stand is the most effective method for attracting attendees, according to 48% of exhibitors surveyed.

Networking

No networking is not just heading out to an event for a mooch and a cappuccino. Effective networking means getting out, getting involved and opening conversations with potential customers and clients. You can use Eventbrite to find networking events occurring in your local area. 

A tip from ROAR would be to head into these events with a tagline-style description of what exactly your business does and what value you offer to customers. 

Networking Fact: Around 40% of people network more online than in person.

Media

Podcasts

Podcasts are usually sit-down talks between you, a member of your team and a guest where you discuss ongoings related to your industry or business. They are fantastic ways of connecting with your audience as they are often unscripted and raw, providing your listeners with real insight into your values, opinions and behind-the-scenes content.

Podcast Fact: Podcast listenership in the United Kingdom (UK) has increased yearly, reaching an estimated 21.2 million listeners in 2022.

Video Content

Videos are a great way of engaging your audience and allowing them to absorb information more easily. Some content can be turned into video content, including blogs, infographics and news. Piece-to-camera videos featuring your marketing team can also increase recognisability and engagement.

Video Content Fact: 86% of businesses use video as a marketing tool.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is a new marketing tactic we are adopting at ROAR in 2024. We have been working on a strategy to provide our subscribers with educational and informational value while building our relationships and encouraging them to be confident in ROAR and our services to support them. 

Email Marketing Fact: In 2022 alone, 333.2 billion emails were expected to be sent and received daily. 

Other

Google Trends

Google Trends is a great way to find out what is trending right now online, and use this to your advantage by creating a strategy including the trends. For example, if a weather warning is released ongoing within January, use this to talk about and relate to your business and industry or products. This is an opportunity to jump on content creation and target current pain points or topics of interest for your audience. 

Community Engagement 

Community engagement and local initiatives are great ways to support your 2024 marketing plan and boost your presence locally. For example, ROAR has recently sponsored Gateshead FC for the 2023.24 season to support a local football team and project our business to a new audience. 

Community Engagement Fact: 80% of FSB (Federation of Small Business) members stated they have volunteered and/or contributed to a local community organisation or charitable cause in the last three years.

OOH Marketing

OOH marketing isn’t just us being wowed by marketing. It stands for ‘out of home marketing’, consisting of traditional marketing methods such as buses, billboards and telephone boxes – everything outside a consumer’s home. 

OOH Marketing Fact: 26% of people visited a store as a result of seeing an OOH ad.

Ready to maximise your 2024 marketing plan? Contact ROAR and discover how our team of specialists can help you uncover hidden opportunities and drive growth for your business.

The post 24 Ideas for A Successful 2024 Marketing Plan appeared first on ROAR Digital Marketing.

What is viral content?

Viral content is any content (photo, video, article) that gains a lot of attention and spreads rapidly across the internet. 

Viral content is designed to be shareable, making social platforms its ideal home. It starts with just one share and before you know it, its gained thousands of shares and tonnes of engagement.

Viral Platforms

Viral platforms are common in this day and age, with Twitter and TikTok taking the virality crown. The type of content on these platforms vary, although images and videos are the most common kinds to go viral. However, text-based content like articles has the ability to do so also.

TikTok

People have seen up to a million views overnight on TikTok. The general consensus is that TikTok is a little bit of a wild card. This algorithm means one video could get 5 million views, and the next one you post can review a couple hundred…. No one knows. 

TikTok also offers the opportunity for sounds to go viral via trending videos. Whether it’s the renegade dance sound, or the Wes Anderson and Fantastic Mr Fox trend.

Twitter 

The retweet button on Twitter is easily my most used… and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

Twitter is the home of shareable one-liners. The character limit has always meant you need to state your point and make it short. 

And when there is a man on a mission for free nuggets (as us all), the internet really rallies together. He’s secured almost 4 million combined retweets and quote tweets.

HELP ME PLEASE. A MAN NEEDS HIS NUGGS pic.twitter.com/4SrfHmEMo3

— Carter Wilkerson (@carterjwm) April 6, 2017

If you’re looking to boost your search marketing strategy, speak to one of our specialists today to understand how we can help you

The viral content strategy for your business

Now we’ve established what viral content is and how people have been using it. Let’s refocus on how that can affect the content strategy for your business. 

I understand that a lovely beautiful content strategy is ideal because deep down we all want a simple life. Unfortunately, this is a pretty unrealistic way to look at content. 

Before you dispose of your old content strategy, let’s divulge into creating viral content.

I’ll be honest that B2C businesses have it a little easier regarding viral marketing. But don’t worry B2B businesses I got you covered in this one too. 😉

Video

Video content has skyrocketed in the last few years with the rise of TikTok, Reels and a surplus of podcasts hitting the social feeds. At the start of 2023, more than nine out of 10 people report wanting to see more videos from brands.

Original Content – Keep it short, snappy, and to the point, dropping in a catchy statement or two. 

Trending Content – Following the trending content, by all means, is beneficial. It can often give your business a massive push in terms of visibility and awareness. But ensure you understand the context of trends and, where possible link them back to what your business does. 

When it comes to video content, short-form isn’t all that’s out there. We can’t forget the medium to long-form YouTube video content we see on a daily basis. YouTube opens the door to a whole new level of optimisation for video content as YouTube content has repeatedly appeared in SERPs when the search is right. Find out the YouTube SEO secrets to improve optimisation with our blog post.

Images

I’m all for repurposing a meme or two across the socials. The latest favourite was anything Barbie-related and the Kourtney Kardashian pregnancy reveal that went viral across Twitter and Instagram in June. 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by ROAR Digital Marketing (@roardigitalmarketing_)

If you’re trying to make your images go viral, make them scroll-stopping. I’m talking colours, big images, text, maybe something a little bit strange. You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do to hit the feeds these days!

But it’s not all about social, including visuals; whether you go for an infographic, a gif, or a related photo, can increase the readability of your piece. By breaking up the content a little more can keep users engaged by giving them different things to focus on.  

Text

Text is hands down the most challenging method of viral content unless on Twitter. 

There are some categorically crucial best practices when it comes to text content going viral:

Trends 

With the helping hand of Google Trends, you can see what topics are gaining traction online. Use the explore feature, to see how well your chosen theme is trending right now. 

Copy 

Again ignoring Twitter… Headlines and Intro sections are the two things that attract and retain most readers that land on your article. 

Headlines – Make them special, and draw the reader in from the offset. Plain old articles and headlines aren’t going to cut it in this digital space anymore. 

Intro – So you’ve hooked them with the headline and they want to read more. Don’t lose them at this stage! Keep it flowing and interesting straight off the back of that gripping headline you chose. 

Sometime content doesn’t perform how we would like. This is where zero-click searches come in. You may ask what are zero click searches and how do they affect SEO? Read the blog!

By considering these factors your can add ‘The viral factor’ to the content strategy for your business. You are leaving room for some more free-hand content that engages users and is shareable across platforms. 

ROAR specialises in strategic, results-driven search engine marketing strategy! See our suite of specialist services for more.

The post Content Strategy For Your Business: The Viral Factor appeared first on ROAR Digital Marketing.

In this blog, we’ll break down some of the questions we get asked most often!

What is Search Engine Marketing? 

Search engine marketing is the method of online promotion of a business through strategic online advertising to improve a website’s online ranking and visibility. It focuses on PPC and SEO.

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is similar to search engine marketing, but it encompasses a wide range of other services. These include SEO, PPC, Content Writing and Optimisation, Analytics and Tracking, HubSpot – all of which ROAR specialises in.

Why are Search Engine Marketing and Digital Marketing Important? 

Search engine marketing and digital marketing efforts are crucial to businesses. It allows your audience to find your business online, increasing traffic, conversions and brand awareness.

What services do ROAR offer?

ROAR specialise in:

• SEO
• PPC
• Content Writing and Optimisation
• HubSpot Management
• Website Analytics and Tracking
• Digital Marketing Consultancy
• DIY SEO Platform

How Much Are Your Services? 

Our service prices differ for various factors, including; project size, website size, number of products to market, type of service, locations to market into, and any add-ons such as click fraud protection etc.

You can find more information about our services in our service brochure here.

What Does a Digital Marketing Agency Do?

A digital marketing agency supports businesses with their online marketing strategy. Depending on your chosen service, they can help you increase your rank position, website traffic, conversion rate, and MQLs (marketing qualified leads) and strengthen your online presence overall.

What is Search Engine Optimisation?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) consists of three types of SEO, On-page, Off-page and Technical SEO. It involves improving a website and its supporting network to increase its online visibility.

What is PPC?

PPC (pay-per-click) is a type of digital advertising where the advertiser can bid for their ads to appear and be clicked on via SERPs (search engine results pages) and in various spaces across the web. Advertisers can bid on keywords or target specific audiences by interest and online behaviour.

Where Do PPC Ads Appear?

PPC ads can appear on search engine results pages (SERPs) alongside organic search results, on user/audience-related websites via display ads, on Youtube videos, and on Shopping ads, which you will often see take the very top location across the SERP.

What is Quality Score in PPC?

A quality score is a metric used by search engines like Google to accurately evaluate the quality and relevance of your ads, keywords and landing pages. The higher your quality score, the more favourable Google will be with your ads being shown and the cost per click you’ll need to pay.

What’s the Difference Between PPC and SEO?

PPC is paid advertising which requires a budget but is fairly instantaneous in terms of getting you in front of your audience on search engines like Google and Bing. SEO is organic, which means it is technically free (you don’t pay Google) but it is a far longer-term and slower process with more to consider than PPC.

Does PPC Work For Small Businesses?

Yes, PPC can work for small businesses. It can help smaller businesses quickly reach their target audience but requires an allocated budget and potentially smaller, more local audiences.

Does Content Writing do Anything?

Contrary to popular belief, content writing is crucial for ranking organically online. In line with the Google Helpful Content Upodate, written content that is helpful, relevant, optimised well and provides value to users has a higher chance of ranking on search engines.

Is SEO Just Adding Keywords to my Web Pages?

No. SEO doesn’t just mean adding keywords to your web pages. It involves various other tasks, including link-building, optimising meta descriptions, fixing website errors, and improving website speed and user experience, and that’s just the onsite stuff!

Why Should we Work With an SEO Agency Over Freelancers or An In-House TEAM?

Although freelancers and in-house teams are incredibly talented, an agency provides a different relationship; not only do they specialise entirely in the area, but boundaries are set, meaning the agency will focus on developing your SEO strategy, not other projects. This allows for a more focused approach allowing your in-house team to prioritise other projects. An agency also consists of full-time, experienced SEO specialists who can assist you almost always.

Why Should We Work With a PPC Agency Over a Freelancer or In-House Team?

Like agency SEO-ers, freelancers and in-house marketing teams will be incredibly talented and driven. However, an agency will have specialist knowledge in PPC and focus on this for your business instead of managing multiple projects. An agency consists of full-time PPC specialist employees who can assist you when required to do so.

Does an Agency Replace Our In-House Marketing Function?

Not necessarily. An agency could be your marketing function or could also be an extension of your in-house marketing function, offering support, advice and educating your team while striving to reach your goals with you.

Why is Analytics Important?

Analytics are crucial to any business that functions online. They provide insight into data from your campaigns and online efforts. They help you accurately identify weaknesses in your online marketing strategy to improve upon going forward.

Can you Guarantee the #1 Spot on Google?

No. Nobody can, and any agency that promises you this you should run from! We know all of the best practices to help get you there, but if this were possible every time, every business would be #1 on Google once.

How Much Will Each Click Cost on Google Ads?

We don’t know. This depends on your industry and the competitiveness of the keywords/search terms you aim to appear for online – as an agency, we aim to keep ad spending realistic and results-driven. But don’t worry, before any ads go live, we’ll have carried out keyword research, and you’ll then know how much each keyword will roughly cost per click.

Should I Optimise Old Content?

Yes. If you ignored SEO when creating old content, it is worth revisiting, updating, and optimising it for search engines.

What Is A Google Penalty?

A Google penalty is sometimes known as a ‘manual action’. It is the negative effect on a website’s online rankings based on any updates made to Google’s search algorithms.

Does Social Media Help To Increase My Website’s Rank?

Not directly, no. Social media has no direct effect on organic and paid rankings. It can, however, increase relevant traffic to your site, which is an SEO factor. Social can drive direct leads and sales through to your site, and form part of a well-rounded digital marketing strategy.

What Is The Difference Between On-Page SEO, Off-Page SEO, and Technical SEO?

On-page SEO includes anything on your website, including but not limited to blogs, product copy, website copy, HTML, tags, and images.

Off-page SEO can happen away from your website; examples include backlink strategy, guest posting, citations, social media and offsite content marketing.

Lastly, technical SEO is anything technical in relation to your website, like site indexing, speed, structure, accessibility and allowing bots to crawl your website easily.

What is HubSpot and How Do You Help?

HubSpot is a marketing platform that allows you to bring your complete marketing strategy under one application. At ROAR, we can help you optimise this and amplify your inbound marketing efforts.

How Long Should a Page of Content Be?

The general rule of thumb for content should be 300+ words per webpage. This is dependent on the topic and complexity of a webpage.

Is It True That I Can Buy Backlinks?

Yes! You can purchase backlinks from trustworthy websites with a good domain score. It’s important to note that many backlinks from lower domain authority sites can reflect poorly on your organic rankings, so be cautious and choose wisely.

How Long Will It Take To Rank Organically on Google If I Do SEO?

Ah, the typical how long is a piece of string question. At ROAR, we are committed to doing SEO for our clients correctly to avoid any drops in performance or blackhat, dodgy techniques. To rank organically on Google will take time and effort. If you want a quick fix, check out our PPC services.

Improving your organic ranking can take 2-3 months of SEO actions to start seeing real, sustainable results.

How Much Does ROAR Charge for Managed Services?

Our SEO-managed services start from around £900 a month. Shall you want to explore each service individually, set up an exploratory call to discuss your options.

If I Cannot Afford Managed SEO, is There Another Option?

We know that our managed SEO services are only financially viable for some! That is why we created the DIY SEO Platform, a cost-effective platform for small businesses who want to take hold of their SEO and learn along the way. Check it out here.

If our ROAR Digital Marketing FAQs haven’t answered a burning question of yours, feel free to get in touch with our team at info@roardigitalmarketing.co.uk or 0191 280 4140

The post The ROAR Digital Marketing FAQs appeared first on ROAR Digital Marketing.

Here is what it said:

While ChatGPT is a powerful language model capable of understanding and generating text, there are several reasons why it may not be able to replace a social team fully:

• Human Interaction and Empathy: Social teams are composed of real people who can provide a level of human interaction and empathy that an AI language model cannot replicate. Building relationships, understanding complex emotions, and responding appropriately to various social cues are areas where human social teams excel.

• Contextual Understanding: Although ChatGPT has been trained on a vast amount of data, it still has limitations in understanding context, especially in nuanced or ambiguous situations. Human social teams can interpret and adapt to subtle nuances in language and context, allowing for more accurate and relevant responses.

• Creativity and Adaptability: While ChatGPT can generate text based on existing patterns and information, it may struggle with generating truly creative or novel ideas. Social teams often rely on their creativity and adaptability to come up with unique solutions, strategies, and campaigns tailored to specific social contexts and audiences.

• Brand Voice and Consistency: Social teams play a crucial role in developing and maintaining a brand’s voice and tone across different social platforms. They understand the brand’s values, messaging, and audience preferences, and can tailor their communication accordingly. This level of brand consistency may be challenging for an AI model to achieve without constant supervision and guidance.

• Crisis Management and Complex Situations: In situations requiring crisis management or dealing with sensitive or complex issues, human social teams are better equipped to navigate and respond appropriately. They can exercise judgment, apply ethical considerations, and make decisions based on their experience and expertise.

While ChatGPT can provide support, generate ideas, and assist with certain aspects of social media management, it is not yet advanced enough to fully replace the capabilities and qualities offered by a dedicated human social team.

There you have it, a list of reasons why ChatGPT can;t replace your social media team – from the app itself. At least all of those social media jobs are safe!

The post Ask ChatGPT: Why Can’t You Replace my Social Team appeared first on ROAR Digital Marketing.

This blog will cover the simple steps to build a personal brand on social media.

Why build a personal brand on social media

Social Media has come a long way since the early days of social media. Social media’s evolution stems from how the users are digesting the content. It has taken us this far, but how much further will it go?

Having a personal brand can help you build stronger connections, boost your relatability and authenticity with your audience and help you stand out in the crowded social space.

Personal branding becomes increasingly important when you reach senior management or even if you become an entrepreneur. Social Media activity builds trust between customers, yourself and then the business. When 82% of customers trust a company when their senior management members are active on social media, why miss out?

What is personal branding?

In a nutshell, personal branding links your online persona to the “real you”. In the same way that building a business brand represents the business at its core values and beyond. Your brand is a manifestation of “you” as an individual.

If your personal brand is up to scratch, but you think it’s time to boost your Search Engine Marketing, see how ROAR can help you here

How to Build a Personal Brand on Social Media

Once you build a personal brand on social media, you have to start pulling together your plan and deciding what it truly is that you’re trying to achieve. With these 4 top tips, you can easily identify what you need to do to build your personal brand.

• Find your platforms and niche. 

With endless streams of social media platforms and each one of them offering different content to different audiences finding out where you fit is essential.

On top of finding your platforms, you also need to consider your niche. You can’t be everything to everyone.

Don’t just be a “marketing expert”; be an SEO specialist. Make it clear what your focus is and, in doing so, make your target audience narrow but highly concentrated with the right people.

• Test your content 

All of your content should be providing value to your audience in some way or another. Whether you’re giving top tips, do’s and don’ts or overall insights, you should always consider if this reaches your ideal audience member. Does it offer them value, and can they take anything away from it?

With so many platforms, you have many content types, and some audiences will respond differently to others. So, test them. There may be content that you don’t feel will be received well, but until you test it, how can you know for certain?

Test what engages your audience. Is there a style of hook that always works well? Or questions you should ask that see higher engagement from your audience? Trial various methods and use what sticks.

Social media can require a lot of trial and error to hone in on what your audience wants to see. Mixed in with any changes to the algorithms of social media platforms can make it difficult, but with time you start to see trends.

• Build Contacts 

Whether you’re starting from scratch with 0 followers or are trying to harness your existing following, know where you’re starting and have a plan for where you want to be.

Contact building top tips:

1. Get industry friends or co-workers to share your content to increase your reach
2. Get networking – no matter where you are, there will be a networking event in your local area. Get involved and meet some familiar faces and build some new business connections.
3. Like, comment and share. Whilst you are building a personal brand on social media, so many others will be, too, so don’t forget about them.

Make your comments valuable and conversation-starting, or share content while including your views and adding the value of your own for your followers.

• Schedule 

As much as ad hoc social media posts can often be shot out of the dark and do surprisingly well, a social media schedule can help you stay on top of posting content when everything else gets busy.

Whether you post daily, weekly or bi-weekly, you may have figured out when the best times to post for your audience. Before work, lunchtime or after work, weekends? Whatever those times are, schedule them into your calendar and stick to them. After building your brand, people may expect content from you at those times, so be consistent, and in the long run, it will pay off.

Classic Errors

When you build a personal brand on social media, you can’t get it right every time. At some point, something won’t perform as well as you want, and you’ll have to regroup and shift focus. But let’s avoid some issues before they arise with these classic mistakes that most people will make.

• Plan! 

If you don’t know who “YOU” are, then building a personal brand is exceptionally difficult. So prepare yourself and plan what it is you’re trying to build. How do you want to be known?

The market leader in search marketing? Fashion blogging? Hair transplants? Whatever it may be, you have to know what you’re aiming for.

• Changing too quickly

When you start trialling a new content type or content, feel you need to allow people to get used to it before you change it. It’s easy to see dips in analytics and want to return to what you know, but it’s not straightforward – give it time.

• Sell, sell, sell!

You do not have to be selling all of the time. Especially on social media, if you’re selling more than 20%, you’re doing too much. Users are smart regarding sales, and as soon as they realise, they’ll tune out and likely not return.

• Give a little, get a little

You can’t expect to go from zero to 10,000 followers overnight (organically, anyway). To build up your followers and engagement, follow and engage with others. Pick some top content creators in your industry and, where relevant, engage.

• Too Personal 

Admittedly, the line is fine and blurred regarding how personal you get on social media with your brand. But you have to have value in mind at all times.

Does this anecdote about you making peanut butter instead of buying it add any value or context to the audience in your niche? If you’re a food blogger – it makes sense. If you’re a marketer specialising in SEO, probably not.

Suppose your personal brand is pristine and you now want to take your digital marketing efforts to the next level and increase your website’s visibility and traffic. In that case, it’s time to partner with ROAR’s search engine marketing consultancy services. 

The post How to Build a Personal Brand on Social Media appeared first on ROAR Digital Marketing.

Opportunities like these to promote your products and services to new audiences cannot be ignored. 

Fact: In 2022, social media accounted for 33% of all digital ad spend. 

What Are Paid Social Ads? 

By definition, paid social is displaying advertisements across third-party social media platforms. This is done to target specific audiences or customer profiles. A paid social media strategy is often implemented to support an existing marketing strategy. Regularly, it is implemented to increase efficiency whilst gathering new subsets of customers. 

Most social media platforms in this digital age can support paid social advertisements. Some key social media platforms for businesses include LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook. All of these platforms allow businesses to run paid ads through LinkedIn Business and Meta Suite. According to reports, an ad on LinkedIn can reach 14.6% of the global population over eighteen-year-olds. 

On platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, there is an opportunity to ‘boost’ social media posts. Boosting posts is slightly different compared to running a full social media ad campaign. It means you can choose to post from your account and boost it with a small budget across a time. Then point them towards your website or landing page. 

Before you even think about Paid Social Ads you need to make sure that your business pages are up to scratch or if you haven’t already get them set up, we cover getting started with LinkedIn business pages in our blogs.

Should My Business Be Running Paid Social Ads?

The short answer is yes. Paid social strategies can captivate audiences and help achieve business goals by creating a loyal following and increasing brand authority. Through engaging, informative content tailored to your specific products and services whilst targeting audience specifics like job titles, location, and experience. Paid social gives you complete control to streamline your targeting process.

Here’s why you should consider running paid social ads: 

• Increase brand awareness

Seeing is believing, right? Your dream customers and clients won’t suddenly become aware of your business, its team, services or products with a finger click. 

Even so, keeping up with content writing and optimising your website and online presence to develop your organic presence is far from instant. In most cases, it can take up to 3 months to see small results. That is a key factor when considering your organic vs paid social media strategy.

Paid social media advertisement can increase your brand awareness almost instantly. With clever targeting, ads can become visible to your audience across their social networks with just a simple button click. And, in some cases, depending on your campaign set-up, your ads will only cease to appear when the budget has been fully utilised across your chosen period. 

• Targeting

Organic search traffic comes from SEO (search engine optimisation) which is a process of optimising your website using keywords, helpful and informative content and website performance. Although it is possible to target your audience based on keywords and terms, they search online. Paid social strategies further nail down targeting, allowing marketers and business owners to hone in on who their audience is.

Think of location, job title, experience, and company size as a few examples. The beauty of this is that your ads will only be shown to those fitting the lengthy list of criteria you choose. More so, paid social advertising campaigns allow for the exclusion of certain job titles, companies and locations.

This is something to consider by excluding existing clients, competitors and partners. Do this to save your ads on people who 100% do not need to see them. 

• In-depth reporting and analytics

The beauty of creating advertising on social media is the opportunity to track the results in the same place. Your social media platform will provide access to in-depth campaign statistics. Such as engagement rate, CTR (click-through rate), average spend (if not capped) and segments of your audience who took the most interest in your ads.

Quality information like this can lead to improved paid social campaigns and targeting with a more specific audience. Say you noticed that a business manager was taking an interest in your social ads more than, say, a sales manager. You can tailor your audience to exclude those not interacting with your ads. This can increase the amount of genuine CTR and increase traffic and conversions. 

• Cost-effective advertising

Paid social offers you complete control. However, it’s a regular occurrence that the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. Although, advertising platforms will require a minimum amount of ad spend.

For example, based on a 30-day single image ad paid social campaign, LinkedIn requires a minimum of £240, equal to the £8 a day minimum spend. But this is normal due to paid social requiring a budget to spend on clicks. 

• Drive leads and increase conversion rates.

This one is pretty obvious, I hope. What is the whole point of running paid social ads? It is merely to, in a way, put your business on the big screen. This is by putting it in front of the people who matter most – your target audience.

By doing this, it staggeringly increases the amount of leads a business receives. And an average of 28% of people who use the internet and view social media ads discovered new products.

What do we mean by a ‘lead’? A lead is when action is taken to contact a business through form fill-outs, phone calls and emails. A click-through on a paid social ad means some interest has been created between the customer and yourself. Now, it’s time to nurture that.  

ROAR Tip: Put effort into the web page you intend to send your ad clickers to. Whether this is a service page on your website or a new landing page. Where your ad clickers end up needs to be designed to convert them and become a lead.

It should be designed to sell; why should they get in touch? Why are your products or services the right ones for them? Don’t be pushy, but cover all bases.

How to Run a Paid Social Campaign

Objective

When setting up an ad campaign via LinkedIn Ads Manager or Facebook Ad Manager, you must choose an objective. Facebook has various ad objective choices, including; awareness, traffic, engagement, leads, app promotion, and sales. LinkedIn, however, your choices are awareness, consideration and conversion with subcategories. 

These objectives represent the stages of the sales funnel a customer will typically find themselves in. From awareness (top), consideration (middle), conversion (bottom) and nurturing (after). 

Top of the funnel (awareness) requires setting objectives that target reach, impressions, and views.  This aims solely to generate interest or awareness in something your business offers. 

Middle of the funnel (consideration), these objectives typically focus on driving engagement or interaction, which will lead to potential customers hunting down more information about your offerings. 

Bottom of the funnel (conversion), these objectives focus on completing a sale, purchase or sign-up.   CTAs (call to action) that are commonly used are ‘Buy Now’ or ‘Get in Touch’. 

After the funnel (remarketing), this is where your objectives change from creation, to sustaining the leads and conversions you have acquired. This is done via things like remarketing, display ads and email marketing to continue to nurture your audience. 

Know your audience

As discussed earlier, the magical thing about paid social ads is the ability to target a specific audience. This is where audience research comes in. Every product or service matches an all-around customer or client. Many marketers build audience personas to fully break down their ideal customer. 

Consider who your audience is.

Job role, name, background, their responsibilities. 

What do they hope to achieve? 

Their goals, and what problems they are aiming to combat. 

Consider their current challenges.

Resources, budget and time. 

Choose the right placement for your ads.

Not every social media platform will be right for your audience. Once you have established your audience persona, it’s important to work hard to determine the right platform for this person. Consider the age demographics on each platform, the number of users, mobile usage, and targeting etc.

Choose your ad format, budget and create the content.

Ads can be created in various formats, including single-image ads, carousel ads, video ads, and PDF resource ads. For example, a PDF Resource ad could be a great way of securing information about interested potential customers. By advertising a downloadable resource that can educate users, you can host it behind a form. Then use their information (email, phone number etc.) to add them to any newsletters or reach out to offer your services. 

After establishing your ad format, it’s time to determine a budget. Remember, the platforms will likely have a minimum daily spend for ad clicks. Social media advertising is essentially an auction.

Your budget is used to bid on the best advertising spots on social platform feeds, pages and stories. If you win, your ad campaign will pay for securing a click, impression, app install, view etc.

Commonly, most campaign managers choose a lifetime budget which means setting an amount, say £300, to use across the campaign length.

Lastly, create your assets! Use whoever design tool you feel most comfortable with, or even outsource a graphic designer. For each campaign, create a minimum of 5 different ad variants for the campaign to switch between regularly. This is for variety and the opportunity to use different language and imagery to increase interest. 

Check out our previous blog to find out more about creating social media assets.

Build your ad campaign.

After your assets are complete, it’s time to fully jump into your ad campaign. Ensure that the objectives, targeting, asset,s language and copy are all correct based on the ad campaign. It’s a great time to make sure you are getting the required ‘conversion’ from this campaign.

Are you sending them to a website? Landing page? Or instructing them to fill out a form for a download or call back enquiry. Make sure this is correct so you can achieve the desired results from your ad campaign. 

Post-campaign launch optimisation.

Yes, your ad campaign is now live and is hopefully reaping the rewards of paid social. But it doesn’t stop there; reflect on your ad campaigns regularly to optimise them and increase the results.

Consider removing or adding job titles or audience segments to better tailor the campaigns. Perform social media audits and consider external events or seasonal changes. These can affect your advertisements and rectify your ads to expect and adapt to those.

Continue to evaluate, adapt and implement change to maximise the results of paid social on your business.

ROAR creates captivating PPC campaigns for businesses to shine on search engines and maximise online traffic. Speak to ROAR today about how we can make your business unmissable online.

The post Should My Business Be Running Paid Social Ads? appeared first on ROAR Digital Marketing.

In this blog, you will learn powerful YouTube SEO secrets and strategies to increase your channels’ overall performance this year.

What comes to your mind when hearing SEO? Google? Search engines? Content? That sweet #1 spot? 

Anything that comes to mind is excellent, but did YouTube SEO cross your mind?

What is YouTube SEO? 

To fully understand what YouTube SEO is, you need a bit of knowledge of regular SEO also. SEO is optimising things like website, content and visuals to rank higher on the search engine for specific and relevant keywords.

All social media platforms have a search engine, YouTube is no different. 

The video platform offers a search feature where users can find content and channels to view. 

YouTube is owned by Google, so many optimisation factors are based on Google’s algorithm determining factors – we’ll talk a little bit more about this later. 

YouTube is the second most popular search engine after Google boasting more than 3 billion monthly searches, making it bigger than Bing and Yahoo!

YouTube SEO Secrets and Strategies

• Optimising your video

Optimising your video correctly is the key to boosting your views and YouTube rankings. 

What do you need to optimise? Some of the critical foundations to successfully optimising your YouTube content include Video titles, Tags, Thumbnails and Descriptions.

Let’s break them down together.

Video title

Your video title is the first impression a YouTube user will get from your video. Amongst the thumbnail, it is one of the first things someone sees when searching for content this means it can contribute significantly to your CTR. 

Video title tips: 5+ words, use keywords and make it easy to understand for users.

Video description 

Have you ever wondered how Google and YouTube understand what your video is about? Well, they take into account your video description.

This means you need to ensure it is optimised correctly, you can do this by including your keyword in the first 25 words, keeping the meta description short and sweet under 250 words and including your keyword around 2-4 times (think smart about where you place it).

Video tags

Video tags are an additional insight into what your content is about. Use around 10-12 tags, including your keyword, to show Google and YouTube what your content contains for them to rank it correctly. 

Video thumbnail

Your thumbnail can’t necessarily be optimised with words, but it can significantly increase CTR and your ranking. To do this, create a fun, eye-catching and colourful thumbnail that includes your title. It needs to be bright and visible and give users an idea of what content they want to watch. Try incorporating thumbnails with faces.

A report found that thumbnails for popular YouTube videos were often colourful, featured real human faces or featured colour. 72% of the 740 popular videos that were investigated featured a human face.

Keyword research

Keyword research isn’t just for the written content you hope to rank on search engines, it is just as crucial in YouTube SEO. Through keywords, YouTube can assess your video’s subject, indexes and content whilst they associate it with a YouTube users search. 

Research keywords with valuable search volume and intent.

Your keywords should be added to specific fields, including the title, tags and video description –  you can do all of this when uploading content. 

Let’s break down your first steps when conducting YouTube keyword research.

First, you can use the YouTube search engine and initiate the autocomplete feature. 

When you enter a search term or word in YouTube’s search bar, it will present you with suggestions related to your search term. 

Here is an example below:

Say you wanted to create a video on pay per click, type this into the search bar and see which results pop up. These are key terms regularly used on YouTube that you can incorporate into your titles, descriptions and tags.

Alternatively, you can use keyword research tools, including KeywordTool.io, where you can search a keyword or topic, select the platform you wish to find keywords for and filter the keyword lists according to your preferences and needs. 

You should consider the keywords within your niche and area of speciality, not just those that rank the highest. 

YouTube SEO guidelines

As mentioned earlier, YouTube and Google follow similar guidelines and best practices for SEO. This means the techniques you already use to support your SEO will be transferable here. 

You should consider the guidelines you use to create your written content, like blog posts or website copy and transfer these techniques into your YouTube content. 

You can study SEO guidelines for online content and apply the same techniques to your video creation.

Create a checklist that will help you stay on track, has your video got a title? Does it flow in an easy-to-understand way for viewers? Have you added links to similar content on your channel? Filled in all details during upload with keywords? 

Not only will this contribute to the quality of your content, but it will also benefit your SEO efforts.

Transcriptions and videos

YouTube cannot read images or video – so that’s where text and code come in.

An SEO secret you can incorporate so YouTube can better understand your content is to create transcriptions and captions.

What’s the difference between transcription and caption?

Transcription: this is a complete transformation into the text of what the video covers. You can do this yourself or use YouTubes tool.

Caption: these are pieces of text that appear on the screen and translate what the video is saying. Although they do not contribute to SEO, captions can increase the accessibility of your content for those who are hard of hearing. 

Longer content

One of our YouTube SEO tips is to create longer content.

Simply put, longer content can produce significantly higher search engine rankings, and even a lengthy title can be beneficial. Try to aim for 5+ words, including your keyword. The benefits of longer titles include more descriptions, which can increase CTR. YouTube also categorises channels that create longer content as ‘top channels’, which can contribute to your ranking factors. 

Analytics

YouTube has analytics built straight into the platform, which is handy for fully getting to know your audience. 

YouTube analytics offers a variety of key metrics you can use to understand better your audience lie: audience retention, watch time, demographics, traffic sources, CTR, unique viewers and more. 

Access to these analytics will provide you with figures to truly understand how your content is performing – this can inform future content and build successful YouTube search engine optimisation tactics going forward. Use the information provided to better cater content to them. 

Did you know all of these YouTube SEO Secrets? 

Are you looking for creative ways to refresh your digital marketing strategy? Why not speak to one of our specialists today!

The post YouTube SEO Secrets (Improve Optimisation in 2023) appeared first on ROAR Digital Marketing.

To build on your social media marketing strategy and increase presence and authority, you need to start with social media content that will reach and engage your target audience.

Audit your social media assets

Auditing all of your visual assets from across the year can be a daunting thought. But, once you know what you’re looking for, it’ll be a walk in the park for your social media team.

Ensure you look at all channels

Pull together a list of all of the social media channels you’re using. With so many platforms out there, you don’t want to lose any of your content so keep track of the channels you use and the content that goes on them.

Do you have a consistent brand?

Consistent doesn’t mean identical but, generally speaking, using the same overall style, shapes and colours. This boosts your social media presence as your content can be recognised immediately online. Identify any styles used previously that may work again in the future and rule out content that doesn’t fit the business’s direction of growth over the next period. This could help you inform a set of rules regarding practical social media brand guidelines.

Identify top content

It’s all well and good that, as marketers, we love every piece of content we push out, but what matters is what your audience thinks and engages with. Once you can identify what your audience likes to see, you can create content of the same format more frequently.

Evaluate channel performance

This covers all of your base metrics; follower growth, views, shares, likes, comments, and reach. Have these metrics improved from your last audit, or have they decreased?

Once you’ve audited your social media assets, you’ll be able to view your top-performing channel, top-performing content, and where you can improve. All ready for the next calendar year to start.

Understand the platforms

Gone are the days when a Facebook status would suffice. Social media’s evolution has centred both users and platforms but moving your focus to content keep you ahead of both changes.

Over 84% of TikTok users are on Facebook, and Twitter is linked to Instagram by 88% of its users. It’s not just users that social media platforms seem to have in common, with Instagram Reels mimicking TikTok and TikTok Now following the success of BeReal. Social Media channels are beginning to look more similar by the day.

53% of organisations reuse the same social media posts across many platforms. This is leaving audiences disengaged and bored with the content on their feeds.

Switch up your content based on the platform while keeping it linked and relevant to your business. Redesign your social media assets to fit the content that audiences want to consume based on the platforms you’re using.

As we see TikToks beginning to rank in SERPs, there is a clear connection between your social media and SEO activity. Harnessing the relationship between social media and SEO can help you start to see some benefits tot your rankings and social profiles.

Design for your intentions

Knowing what you want from a social media asset is key to its success. Whether you’re trying to sell your product/services, drive more engagement from your audience or expand your reach; your content should show this.

Driving sales

Content should be direct – “This is our product, you should buy it.” Consumers are savvy, if you try and disguise your sales point as something else, they’ll figure it out and automatically shut off from content. Some may go as far as unfollowing your page if they feel the content doesn’t resonate with them at all.

Drive engagement

Make your content stand out within the feed. Once a user stops scrolling to read or watch your content, you have 8 seconds to engage them before they move on. Users that are interested in your content will want to engage, so ask them to. Add questions to your content and ask for answers from your audience.

Expand reach

Shareability is the name of the game when it comes to expanding the reach of your content. The more likes, shares and comments you get on a post, the more people will see it and recognise your content within your given industry.

Get your digital marketing off the ground! At ROAR, we offer Digital Marketing consultancy.

Some consultancy and an outside perspective may be all your business needs to excel in your digital marketing in 2023

The post Creating Quality Social Media Assets (Grow in 2023) appeared first on ROAR Digital Marketing.

In this blog, you will learn our top tips for getting started with LinkedIn in 2023. Read on to take your business’s LinkedIn presence to new heights this year.

Getting started with LinkedIn – What’s the point?

LinkedIn is the top social media platform for professionals and has over 875 million members worldwide. Making LinkedIn the place to go to build your professional network as an employee or business owner. 

Make your page setup seamless

Getting started with LinkedIn is a quick process. However, it must be done right to see the benefit of your LinkedIn page. Ensuring you don’t miss any critical setup steps will save you both time and effort.

Creating a page

From your feed, you can create a page by selecting the work dropdown and clicking on the ‘Create a Company page’. From here, you will be given three options, a company, showcase page or educational institution.

For business owners or employees, select a company page.

Adding information

Fill out the fields to give your LinkedIn page some information about the company. At this stage, all the information fields are relatively basic, so this shouldn’t take very long.

Pay attention to the recommended image sizes as you start adding information. Logos are recommended to be 400 x 400 px.

Admin dashboard

Once you’ve hit create the page, you will be up and running, but the setup isn’t finished.

When building a page from scratch the admin dashboard will provide steps to get your account fully set up.

There are four key tasks for you to complete at this stage:

1. Description: This is an about us section that describes your company. Your description can be up to 2,000 words. We would recommend including relevant keywords and phrases that would help users discover your page through search.
2. Location: You can add multiple locations for your company, but you should have at least one key location.
3. Cover photo: You may add your latest marketing campaign graphics to the cover or another orientation of your logo. Whatever you choose should attract visitors to your page. Whichever image style you choose, it should be sized at 1,128 x 191 px.
4. Hashtags: This provides a unique way for followers to connect and engage with your brand. Add up to three hashtags related to your audience, company or industry. These will be added as community hashtags, and your page will link to searches for those hashtags.

Utilise the variety of post types you have on offer

So your account’s all set up, and you’re ready to post. Head to your homepage and click the top bar on your feed to start a post.

Across the bottom of your create a post tab, there is a selection of features you can add to your post. You can add photos, videos, and documents, celebrate an occasion, hire, create a poll, offer help and create an event. 

For some users, the carousel post feature will be readily available, but the rollout of this feature will continue this year. 

Having a variety of different content types will help you see what your audience engages with. From here, you can identify content types and styles to use again to retain and attract more followers. 

Analytics breakdown

LinkedIn analytics are broken down into five sections: Visitors, followers, leads, content, competitors

Visitors and followers

Both of these tabs include highlights, metrics and demographics.

Highlights give the statistics for the key performance indicators at a glance.

For a more in-depth look into your page, metrics offer you a graph for the time period and the category. 

Visitor metrics offer a graph of either page views or unique visitors across all or selected pages. The graph will also determine whether the visitor is from a mobile or desktop device. 

Follower metrics include a graph of whether followers were acquired from organic content or paid ads within the platform. So you can see which efforts drive the most quality to your page.

Demographics can be broken down by job function, company size, industry, location, and seniority. It will tell you the exact number alongside what percentage of your visitors fall into each. 

Leads

Leads analytics shows the status of your lead generation forms from home and product pages. 

Leads are available for 90 days after submission with the analytics tab. You can add lead gen forms from the analytics tab if you need one. 

Content

Content analytics are broken down into highlights, metrics and content engagement.

Highlights include reactions, comments and reposts over the selected length of time.

Metrics provide graphs for various metrics: impressions, unique impressions, clicks, reactions, comments, reposts and engagement rate.

Content engagement is different. Breaking each post into engagement metrics allows you to see how posts in a specific time frame perform. 

Competitors

Competitor analytics rank your page compared to companies you have previously selected as your key competitors. It ranks follower metrics and organic content metrics. This can help you see your growth compared to your closest competitors.

Ads and campaign manager

When getting started with LinkedIn you likely won’t want to jump straight into ads straight away. Awareness and knowledge of the platform’s ad builder will help if and when you add paid media to your strategy. 

When setting up a campaign you have to set your objective first. Selecting the right objective for what you want to achieve is essential. The objective you choose determines how LinkedIn optimises your ads. 

You can select your audience and narrow it down to however granular you need it to be. You can narrow audiences down based on attributes within the company, demographics, education, job experience and interests and traits.

Then you can select your ad type from the seven formats that LinkedIn offers and select your budgets. 

LinkedIn recommends that for a single image ad, you use four or five variations of the image. LinkedIn can then test the visuals to see which ones are the most effective for your campaign.

Hit the ground running this year with your business by checking out our Digital Marketing services.

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