Corrie D Marketing

Geo Location Mobile Advertising

2017-07-12T11:44:00.000-07:00

Geo Location Mobile Advertising

We can target your competitors’ customers. We can find your customers anywhere they work, play, buy, relax and anywhere they may go on vacation.

We can get you in front of them at their local Dr's clinic, at their lawyers, in their office, bicycle repair shop or where they get their coffee. Whether they're in a stadium, shopping mall or staying in a hotel.

We can even target them when they are visiting your competitors locations!

Six Tips To Online Success

2016-03-08T09:05:00.001-08:00

Want To Experience Online Success For Your Business?

1. You need to ensure you have a responsive website (that it's compatible on mobile devices and on all modern browsers).

2. How to check if your website is mobile responsive - If/when viewing your website via smartphone ie iPhone or Android etc. If your website is NOT a responsive design you will know. Do you have to pinch or scroll the screen to view your website? if you do, this means that it's not mobile responsive or you can click here and enter your URL (website address) to check this via Google's mobile friendly tool.

3. Ensure it converts well ie that delivers traffic (visitors to your website) and in turn these visitors convert into enquiries about your products and/or services.

4. Website analytics are a must have as this helps us/you to analyse your web traffic and make recommendations for website improvements.

5. We recommend you use Google Analytics which is a FREE online tool that tells you all kinds of important information ie website visits, new visits V returning, demographics of your online visitors, interests, cities, towns, referrals ie from social media networks, devices and browsers.

6. Corrie D Marketing offer Google Analytics reports to help you interpret and understand these important metrics.

We'd love to hear your feedback and find out how you use Google Analytics or any other analytics software to help your business?

It might also be worth noting that any CDM website comes with analytics software installed free of charge which enables us to make recommendations for your new website, once your website has been live for a few months, based on your web traffic.

Corrie D Marketing Are Celebrating - Will You Join US in our celebrations?

2015-08-14T13:11:00.001-07:00

We are absolutely delighted to take this opportunity to announce that WE WON two prestigious Marketing, PR & Communications Awards for 2015.

Best Full Service Creative Agency UK - 2015

Best Social Network Media Management UK - 2015

We are absolutely ecstatic and over the moon to win these awards and thought the following information, might be worth you knowing about…We posted this on our Facebook page to keep up to date with any of our Celebrations or any other Offers - Please ensure you have liked our Facebook page.

www.facebook.com/corriedmarketing/

We send you a follow up email to show you a selection of our award winning campaigns and amazing results we are generating for our clients.

The award was for two excellent and very different campaigns for our clients NHS Dumfries & Galloway "Meet ED" online digital display advertising campaign and Scottish Slimmer’s Facebook ad campaign - These were two hugely successful campaigns that provided astounding results!

We'd like to pay it back and share with you by celebrating our winning these prestigious Marketing, PR & Communications awards with YOU by giving away FREE (to a few Scottish businesses) Marketing Plans, Digital Strategies, Pinterest Pages, Facebook Pinterest Apps some are money saving offers ie 50% OFF and BOGOF's.

If you would like to participate in our “celebration event” please let us know by emailing info@corriedmarketing with the subject Celebrate in the subject field or message us over on our Facebook or our LinkedIn page.

6 Mobile Marketing Facts

2015-03-08T13:34:00.001-07:00

Did you know? Over the last decade, Mobile has driven a shift in consumer behaviour.

Smartphones are -

1. Always switched on.

2. Always with us.

3. Always connected.

4. 39% even use their phone while going to the toilet.*

5. 17% Search for a business after seeing an ad on a mobile device.*

6. 43% Search for your business, after seeing a TV ad.*

Mobile has become the main screen accessed throughout the day and

in turn, Mobile Marketing has developed into -

A sophisticated, personalised advertising channel
To reach people when they are browsing in real time
Via their Mobile on Mobile websites and on Mobile apps.

Via our Online Digital Display Advertising platform, we can insert tracking pixels FREE on your website

so you can re-target any visitors to your site, even if this traffic to your website has come from offline, from Radio, Print or TV Ads we can re-target with online ads, to ensure that your business remain top of mind!

Your ads can appear on any network PLUS ON ANY DEVICE

Your ads appear n desktop, mobile and mobile apps, via our Online Digital Display, Advertising platform.

Delivering your personalised ads, to a specific target audience, targeting demographics ie age/sex/location

Plus we have financial and in the market data too. We can target industries, positions, earnings, financial etc.

We also have B2B data too!!!

This means that when your prospects are reading or searching for your EXACT products and/or services online -

Your adverts will appear on desktop, mobile & on mobile apps,

An online auction takes place and we bid on these eyeballs, often known as real time bidding and YOU only pay 1 penny more.

YES you read that right! ONLY 1p more, than the next highest bidder.

We are in media partners with 22 of the biggest ad exchange platforms in the world, including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL and OpenX to name a few you might have heard of.

If you would like to book any of our services or wish to discuss this further please contact Corrie-Dee Whaite on Tel 01294 559480 or Mob 07411 170758.

You can view the online presentation on our website

http://bit.ly/CDMonlinedigitaldisplay

Watch the video here: Google Mobile Marketing Video - Understanding Consumers

*Source (Google Mobile Ads, Understanding Mobile Consumers)

7 Online Digital Marketing Tips

2014-09-23T03:03:00.000-07:00

Tips To Help Businesses Embrace Online Digital Marketing

1. Online Digital Marketing is the EXACT same as marketing your business offline. So whatever you do offline you should reflect this online. Visitors to your business premises probably receive some form of "marketing collateral" eg Brochure, Flyer, Business Card etc.

Examples

Own a bricks & mortar store selling products? Reflect this online, with a website that also sells these products online ie an eCommerce store.

Home Improvements company selling Conservatories or Kitchens and you have a showroom? Then you could promote this online with a Virtual Tour or Video Tour, Promotional Video on your website, Facebook and YouTube Channel.

If you give out brochures to visitors to your business location you should also be promoting this online.

We can assist you with all of this!

2. Ensure your website (and we hope you have one of these, this is a priority in this day & age every business should have, at the very least a website) but it should be a Mobile Responsive Design Website or Mobile Optimised. This means that if your visitors are viewing via a smartphone (eg i-Phone, Android etc) if visitors have to pinch the screen or scroll horizontally to read your web content, that is not good enough. You need a new website which is a mobile responsive website to view an example visit www.craftsmancladding.co.uk via a smartphone

We can help you by converting your current website, if it is CMS or a brochure site we can convert it to be mobile responsive. So that all the web copy content fits within your screen size to view an example visit www.corriedmarketing.co.uk

3. Ensure you have a branded & customised Social Media Network for your business, we recommend the big 6 - Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest and YouTube. These are great for those all important Social Signals and organic SEO as Google rewards traffic flowing from your website to your Facebook, Twitter to your blog etc. Also think of each one of these networks as your advert within the network so your Twitter page is your ad on Twitter etc. It is not enough to have a social network you must also post to it and often but more importantly be relevant. Use the 3 E's of Social Media Marketing - Educate, Entertain and Engage.

(i) Educate

(ii) Entertain

(iii) Engage

We offer Social Media Management, Social Media Training and Facebook Ads Services. Our clients are achieving penny clicks for their Facebook ads.

4. You need an audience to market to. Use Facebook Ads to drive traffic to your website. Or you can use Facebook to promote your page on Facebook to increase your likes. Facebook offers highly targeted and cost effective advertising when done correctly. Use Facebook Custom Audiences which means you can upload your database (as long as they are opt-in's) to Facebook and deliver your ads directly in front of your list and no-one else.

5. Use our Online Digital Display Advertising - Dial up your targeted audience (with extra layers of targeting).

Because Every business Needs Qualified Leads And Targeted Traffic.

Corrie D Marketing (CDM), have invested heavily to bring you (our clients) our Online Digital Display, Real Time Bidding, Demand Side Platform. We can target your demographic target audience who have been reading about and/or searching for your EXACT Products and Services online in real time. Your ads are then delivered to this audience anywhere they go on the internet. On any website on any network. This happens within 1/50th of a milli-second. We are media partners with 22+ of the biggest ad exchange platforms in the world. You can view our online presentation http://bit.ly/CDMonlinedigitaldisplay

6. Use Programmatic Guaranteed To Purchase Impressions

We can use our Online Digital Display Advertising platform buy in advance your impressions to your targeted audience using programmatic guaranteed. Basically you pay a contract price at an agreed CPM in advance.
Known as “programmatic guaranteed” or “programmatic reserved” for the ability to secure upfront commitments to both price and amount of inventory, this branch of programmatic direct is gaining significant traction among publishers and media buyers looking to automate the often lengthy insertion order (IO) process and bring greater audience insight to their premium ad buys.

Read more: http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Why-Publishers-Media-Buyers-Excited-About-Programmatic-Guaranteed/1010862/2#sthash.muuA8jlR.dpuf

7. Every business needs a Blog

Which ALSO needs to be updated it regularly with your own generated content. Blogs are great for giving your company or organisation credibility within your industry. They are also good for organic SEO and creating internal back links (if your blog is linked to your website).

We hope the above advice helps & would love to hear your feedback below.

If you would like to book any of our services or if you wish to discuss this further we can help you with any of the above. Please contact Corrie-Dee Whaite, Corrie D Marketing on Tel 01294 559480 or Mob 07411 170758 or visit our website www.corriedmarketing.co.uk or join us over on Facebook www.facebook.com/corriedmarketing

We're NOT Here To Argue, Debate OR Deliberate On Whether Your Offline Ads Work OR Not..We're Here To Help!

2014-03-21T05:42:00.003-07:00

Struggling to keep up with all the recent changes to Facebook, Google and the whole advertising and marketing landscape in general.

We can help with both your online & offline, and we know where we'd recommend you spend your ad budget to get YOU more bang for your buck!

Biz owners have more choices than ever before, now with digital ads taking over print and soon TV - The whole digital landscape has changed massively in recent years. Numerous ad platforms give advertisers and biz owners more choice than ever before. Recent changes to Facebook and Google means most biz owners are left #Baffled. But WE CAN HELP !!!

It's a full time job to keep up with this fast paced landscape of online digital marketing & advertising.

OFFLINE Ads are expensive and Digital Ads is where it is at. These offer highly targeted & cost effective advertising. Which is why if you need help, you should commission our services and outsource to us, as we have an amazing team of industry experts, with over 100 years' experience in our chosen fields including our MBA consultant, a team of programmers & developers, plus our "Award Winning" Graphic Designer. Corrie-Dee Whaite has 25 years experience in Advertising, PR, Sales & Marketing working for national press, directories and exhibitions throughout the UK. We can help you with our expertise & knowledge that generate our clients proven RESULTS! It's like having your own highly skilled and capable marketing department but we take away the stress and the hassle!

It beggars belief that a biz owner would rather struggle to keep up and would rather throw their money at advertising offline for example in a low circulating magazine, with an expensive gunshot ad campaign, hoping that somebody, somewhere, who is interested in his very "niche" target market see's their ad. Which let's face it is very highly unlikely to happen. Therefore offering little ROI (if any). Which is why the biz owner claims "advertising & marketing doesn't work."

If you don't advertise or market your business? How will anyone know you have something to sell...?

It's about ensuring your marketing and advertising DOES work, that you are projecting the right image and message to your target audience & when it comes to advertising, the more targeted your ads are, the more likely they are to convert and generate ROI. SIMPLES !!!

We deliver qualified leads and targeted traffic to your business, with proven results & testimonials which is guaranteed proof we deliver results. Every business needs qualified leads and traffic. We offer this, plus much more.

We deliver your ads ALL OVER THE INTERNET. PLUS we can target your website traffic with tracking pixels and retarget them with specific ads exactly tailored to your products and services they are interested in.

From biz owners saying "tracking pixels" sounds dodge and unethical, to another who claimed our ad platform cannot possibly be bigger than Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo (incidentally, we are in partnership with Facebook Ad Xchange, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, OpenX, our platform includes 27 of the other major ad exchange platforms in the world). Well - IT IS. Why is this? Because we use all of these!

We're not here to argue or debate about whether your offline ads work or not. While you deliberate, we'll be helping the other companies and organisations who realise they need help!

If you would like to know more about our services, please contact Corrie-Dee Whaite on Tel 01294 559480 or Mob 07411 170758 or to view our CDM services brochure visit CDM eBrochures (you need to be signed into Facebook to view these).

Please let us know what your thoughts, we love to hear your feedback.

Special Introductory Offer - New Advertising Service We Have Brought To The UK Previously ONLY Available To The Fortune 500

2014-01-25T05:53:00.001-08:00

We have invested heavily to bring our clients an advertising platform which connects us directly, to over 22 of the biggest Ad exchanges in the world, including Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft Open X and a host of others.

This system is a Real Time Bidding, Demand Side Platform which allows us bid for advertising slots to a very detailed audience profile tailored to your business target market.

This gives YOUR business access to 50 BILLION impressions per day, yes you read that right!

Each person browsing the net has a user profile with millions of data touch points that can be used to target your audience, with 3rd party data from Experian, Nielsen, Mastercard, many others, and sites which monitor and track online behaviour.

We can target any demographic & display your adverts to them all across the internet. This can be "search" or "content" based - what they are looking for and actually reading, right now - and ads can be shown to them on similar content pages - the very next time they read an article.

So, perfect for finding people who are looking for your products & services - even B2B - yes we have company data too!

It gets even more in interesting though, because when you have driven your targeted traffic to your site you can tag and track them with a pixel and segment your audience further, and then re-target only those individuals with more adverts - with a more focused offer - anywhere online.

Your prospective customers literally cannot escape seeing you, which keeps you and your brand firmly in focus.

So, once they have visited, you essentially own their eyeballs. You will have seen this happening to you already no doubt, and Google themselves offer re-targeting on their Ad program. However, this is much bigger and covers their network and all those others too.

Every campaign needs an audience, an objective and goals, an offer landing page and a conversion funnel - i.e. get their name on a list or get them to buy something if they are ready to buy now, otherwise simply retarget them wherever they are in your conversion funnel - wherever they have gone in your site. We basically set-up a set of tripwires and segment your traffic that way and can build a new campaign to only that segment.

So, for instance - target the people who visited a certain product page but have not enquired or bought yet. Target people in an auto-responder email sequence, by sending them to specific pages for more info and then track only those people and retarget them again with a very focused offer.

We trust you can see how powerful this would be for your business? We’re running an introductory, “trial, tester offer” on this to try this amazing service risk FREE! Available on a first come first served basis. We are only looking for one business from within each sector at this special price. To find out more please contact Corrie-Dee Whaite on Tel 01294 559480 or Mob 07411 170758 or visit our website

http://bit.ly/CDMonlinedigitaldisplay

Kindest Regards

Corrie

Corrie-Dee Whaite

Corrie D Marketing

Tel: 01294 559480 or Mob 07411 170758

Website: www.corriedmarketing.co.uk

Facebook: www.facebook.com/corriedmarketing

Email: corrie@corriedmarketing.co.uk

2013-11-06T03:10:00.002-08:00

Why Your Business Needs A Blog

A Blog is hugely important to your business & most business owners often neglect the importance of a Blog.

The main priority is that you have control of your #Blog. IT is yours. Unlike a Facebook page or Twitter account (which you do have degree of control over, but please always bear in mind, it's not yours). Your Facebook page could be closed down or even worse look at what happened to Bebo.. ? Anyone remember it ? Everyone left Bebo in droves to join Facebook.

Your blog is YOURS. You have complete control, unless you don't pay your hosting provider of course! You can utilise your blog to inform your target market (and people who are interested in hearing about your products/services) about any company news i.e. Staff Recruitment/Situations Vacant, Offers, Corporate Days Out, Contracts Won etc.

Google rewards organisations who publish their own content on their blog, as it gives Google these all important "Social Signals" we talk about in our Corrie D Marketing social media training sessions. Google can see the traffic flowing from your blog to your Facebook Page or e.g. Blog to your organisations Twitter account or any other social media networks to your blog etc. By using "Key Words" it also helps with your organic #SEO.

All of the websites we design & develop come with a FREE Blog as standard. Remember the 3 E's of #SocialMediaMarketing -

1 #Educate
2 #Entertain
3 #Engage

We also have professional journalists on our team who can ghost write your copy content for your blog (if you don't have the time and would prefer us to do this for you). OR if perhaps you have a subject you feel is a little bit boring...? You'd be surprised how many businesses owners we speak to on a daily basis who think their business isn't sexy enough to warrant having a Blog they believe that no-one would be interested in reading their company news etc. In fact very recently we heard feedback which ranges from an example of recent conversations :- e.g. "We supply stationery to businesses but we think this subject is boring and no-one is interested eg when Biro release a new pen they don't write a blog about it! Plus we don't really know what to write."

Sound like you? Our team of journalists can help!

Social Signals

If you have ever taken our social media training workshops or attended any of our courses you will already be aware of those all important "Social Signals" as Google rewards traffic flowing from your Blog to your Facebook page and your Twitter to your Blog etc. You will also know which social networks have THE BEST Social Signals on the web. If you would like to attend any of our training sessions we offer group training or we also offer a more intensive 121 personalised training sessions tailored and structured to suit your individual business.

Remember the 3 E's of social media marketing - Educate, Entertain & Engage!

Social Media Training

CDM (Corrie D Marketing) offer a number of social media training workshops each lasting four hours (morning or afternoon sessions). OR two can be delivered within one day (eight hours). These can be tailored to suit your individual business needs (if required) and can be delivered within your premises to multiple employees. If venue hire is needed we have many venues we have delivered sessions in, which we can hire if requested.

Workshops Overview

Introduction To Social Media Workshop
Advanced Social Media Workshop
Facebook Marketing Masterclass 1 (hand on classroom based)
Facebook Marketing Masterclass 2 (hands on classroom based)

We will be running a number of these in various venues in 2014 throughout Ayrshire and Glasgow. We also deliver these within your premises throughout the whole of Scotland.

Facebook Groups

We're always banging on about the importance of Facebook Ads however if you don't have a Facebook Groups we recommend you should create at least one of these. Target your family, friends, work colleagues etc. Within your "niche" who have a joint beliefs/values/interests.

Once you've created the group add your friends (it's important to remember that only people can create and post to groups). However you can post links to your business pages. You can post information, polls and chat to everyone at once.

Facebook Ads

FacebookAds is a highly targeted and cost effective advertising platform and is one of the best social networks for social signals on the web. People divulge to Facebook all sorts of information you can target with your Facebook Ad Campaigns i.e. When they got engaged. Expecting a baby, Age, Geographical Location, Books they've read, Films/Movies they've watched, Brands & Celebrities they like. What do you think this means for your business ... If you don't know call us and we can help create and manage your ad campaigns or we offer training. Everything we do is DIY (Do It Yourself) or DFY (Done For You) Fully Managed Service.

With over 1.15 billion users worldwide. 33 million of these are in the UK who check in monthly. 22 million who check in Daily. 70% of these people are visiting via Facebooks Mobile App. What do you think this means to your business if your website is not mobile responsive design? Meaning your copy content does not fit within the size of the browser or device eg Safari and IPhone or Ipad. Windows or Android or any other type of smartphone.

Smartphone Sales (Mobile Revolution)

2011-2012 was a record breaking year for the sale of #smartphones (basically a hand held computing device).
Accounted for 85% of all mobile phone sales.
96% of people research a "bricks and mortar" store during the research stage of the buying process.
62% will leave your website if they have to scroll horizontally or have to pinch the screen to view your website/copy content.
Ensure your website is user friendly. We can help!

WE can help! All of the websites we design & develop are fully mobile responsive design. Or if you are happy with your current website and you don't want to go the expense of a new one - We can convert your current website into a fully mobile optimised version.

To find out how we can help your business grow, please contact Corrie-Dee Whaite on Tel 01294 559480 or Mob 07411 170758. Visit our website www.corriedmarketing.co.uk or email info@corriedmarketing.co.uk

How do "Social Signals" help with your organisations search engine rankings on Google for organic SEO purposes?

2013-08-20T13:29:00.003-07:00

Social Signals will help with your organisations organic search engine rankings.

Social Signals are made up of your social media network, blog, links, user experience & SEO. Each one of these is as important as the other.

Your website should have a blog, as Google rewards this if you are publishing your own content. A video player (Google loves websites with video) as visitors spend more time on your website engaging with video which in turn helps decrease your bounce rate. You could also create a customised and branded YouTube channel if you have video.

A CDM (Corrie D Marketing) website is designed and developed with our truly mobile responsive designs. Which means your website content fits perfectly within whichever screen size or device you are viewing with i.e. Computer, Laptop, IPad, IPhone, Android, Tablet or any type of smartphone. All our websites have social media integration, Interactive Page Flip E-Brochures, Video Player, Opt-In Forms (for list building purposes). The money is in the list. All which come as standard. Our SEO means that search engines are crawling all over your website. You can view our clients craftsman claddings website to view an example of this.

You could also commission a "competitor benchmark" report to determine what key words your competitors are using to come to the top of search and what search queries people are searching for in real time, we can then use our findings to help with your website search engine rankings.

We can help you will all of this! If we can be of assistance please contact Corrie-Dee Whaite on Tel 01294 559480 or Mob 07411 170758 or visit our website www.corriedmarketing.co.uk or like us on Facebook for more information.

FREE Social Media Training Workshops to businesses in East Ayrshire

2013-07-22T04:52:00.004-07:00

We are pleased to announce we've won the contract to deliver our Social Media Training Workshops to East Ayrshire Council.

Induction - Wednesday 31st July 2013
Advanced - Thursday 1st August 2013

Time - 9am - 1pm (both days, same delegates on both).
Venue - Rothesay House, 1 Greenhholm Road, Cumnock. KA18 1LH.

Training is FREE to businesses located within East Ayrshire.

Approximately 4-6 weeks later (depending on demand) we will concentrate on 2 further (1/2 day workshops). Purely concentrating on Facebook to the same delegates.

Call NOW - Please contact Carol Andrew (Business Development Advisor, East Ayrshire Council) on Tel 01563 503231 or Mob 07818 511529 as spaces are limited.

Please share this post - Help us get the message out there to business owners in East Ayrshire. Cheers, Corrie & CDM Team :)

Why should you run a Facebook Competition..?

2013-06-15T10:33:00.001-07:00

As we all know very well, everyone loves to win something, and running a Facebook Competition on your Facebook page is a fantastic way to gain more ‘likes’ for your page and ultimately new customers for your business !!!!

Here are our Top Tips to ensure your competition’s success.

Ensure the prize is industry relevant

You would be surprised how many businesses give away a free iPad/Iphone or Kindle. This is a great prize to win, everyone wants one and this might lead to huge take up rates, however this is not targeting your “target market”.

An Ipad is a highy attractive prize and entrants friends & colleagues who are perhaps not local to your business may enter. If you are a local restaurant for example, you could perhaps have contacts on your list that live thousands of miles away and are not likely to ever pay you a visit.

Give away a lunch or dinner for 2 as your prize. This might attract less people (i.e. only the entrants who are close enough to redeem the prize), but at least this is your target market. Also people who enter your competition will be more likely to visit your restaurant in future, especially if you send them a special offer via email and/or SMS Text once the competition has closed – assuming you have collected their information and got them to opt-in.

If you can, think up remarketing strategies you could use as a follow-up

In our restaurant example, you could tag some photos of your winners when they redeem their prize & post to your Facebook page and inside your establishment for their friends & family to see, and also to generate more publicity. Remember to get your winner’s testimonial and use it.

Publicity – let people know about your contest, via multiple channels

You could run both an Online & Offline Press Release with a feature within the local press or you could link your website to your Facebook competition. Anything that assists directing your offline or online traffic to your competition will assist with this. Also don’t forget to use your wider social network if you have one (highly recommended) i.e. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook Groups etc…

4. Use Facebook ads

Direct traffic to your competition with Facebook ads – again ensuring correct targeting. You can also use a promoted post from as little as £10 or less (depending on the fan size of your page) to promote a post and ensure all your fans see it. This can be enough to kick-start your competition during the initial stages and by making your competition viral and requiring entrants to share with friends you can ensure maximum exposure.

5. Give your competition an expiry date

Create a level of urgency and expectation, and ensure you pick a winner at the end of the competition. Tell them how and when the winner will be chosen and how they will be notified.

The Money is in the list

This is where a lot of companies make a big mistake in their Facebook contests by asking entrants to like and share on their page [not to mention it is actually breaking Facebook rules].

Ensure you collect entrants e-mail address & mobile number when they enter the competition. You will need this to contact the winner(s), as it is also against Facebook rules to notify the winner directly on your Facebook wall.

More importantly, with a list you can begin further marketing initiatives after your contest is over and continue the dialogue with your contestants - re-marketing to regular & prospective clients by e.g. SMS Text Marketing or Email Marketing campaigns.

Inform previous contestants about your latest contest

When you create your next competition, send an email mailshot to your previous contest list and also send an SMS text which offers high immediate open rates of 97% plus.

Run regular competitions

Running one-off Facebook competitions can make you go viral fast, however to keep your fans engaged & for lasting impact you should run regular competitions - perhaps one per month or every two months. This is a proven strategy for turning Facebook users into customers.

Adhere to Facebook rules

Facebook’s promotional guidelines. These include ensuring your Facebook competition is run via an app/tab on your Facebook page. Entrants to your competition must not be conditioned to have to “like” a Wall post, Comment or enter by uploading a photo to a Wall. Running regular competitions is a fab way to gain more ‘likes’ for your Facebook page. It also helps to re-market to your new fans via your Facebook page. The 3 E’s of Social Media Marketing “Educate, Entertain & Engage”. This helps to increase fan engagement, increase brand awareness, promote your business, generate leads, collect email addresses and mobile numbers but most importantly … gain YOU more customers!

We hope this information has been useful and if you think a Facebook competition might be right for your business but maybe aren't sure where to start, why not get in touch and we will help you to decide the best type of competition and give you some advice on what to do next.

Please contact Corrie-Dee Whaite on Tel 01294 559480 or Mob 07411 170758.

Which is better for Google juice and SEO Facebook V Twitter?

2013-05-13T07:03:00.001-07:00

Last Thursdays Q & A Session on Facebook ended up creating quite a debate.

The question was this - "Which is better for Google juice and SEO Facebook V Twitter?"

It became such a hot topic we ran it over 2 weeks, but we thought we'd convert it into an Interactive Presentation/eBrochure for you and tab it into a Facebook App to allow it to be there forever as a point of reference for our fans as a Facebook post only has a shelf life of 2-3 hours and there was a lot of fantastic information.

Did you know...? YOU could also have a nifty tab presentation/Ebrochure the same as this, which can also include video & SEO links to landing pages on your website etc...

You can read the full Facebook V Twitter document by clicking the following link. Which Is Better for Google juice and SEO Facebook V Twitter

Who would like one of these Interactive Ebrochures to promote your business ? If you would like to book any of our services from SEO, Interactive Ebrochure or even a Multi-Tab App as per the Camden Group Facebook Multi-Tab App contact Corrie-Dee Whaite on 01294 559480 or Mob 07411 170758.

Is your Facebook Competition Legal?

2013-03-22T11:16:00.002-07:00

Is your Facebook Competition Compliant?

Did you know that any competition run through your Facebook wall or timeline is ILLEGAL and might get your page shut down for not being compliant - meaning you need to start from scratch again building a new fan base.

Facebook competition rules clearly state: "The only way you can create this type of functionality is by using a third party application.”

e.g. A Facebook developer can create a separate Facebook app and add it to your page.

“Your application must be registered with Facebook and include a disclosure adjacent to any promotion entry field: 'This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administrated by, or associated with, Facebook.”

Does your Facebook competition comply..?

If not, the only solution is to create a Facebook Competition Application which is registered with Facebook as detailed above, or get someone to do it for you.

Here at CDM, we ensure that all our clients are in full compliance with Facebook guidelines, and our view is simple - rules are rules, and must be followed.

We can build a custom Facebook competition app which ensures you keep within the rules and have maximum impact in your social marketing.

Our competitions are “custom 3rd party apps”, registered as such with Facebook, and we ensure we have a link on each page to terms & conditions – something else which few companies seem to do, without these you could be breaking Advertising Standards.

You might ask, why are all these other companies ignoring the rules and getting away with it, or my competitor does that so why shouldn’t I..?

Facebook has shut down pages without any notice, so is it really worth the risk…?

We researched this further with other Social Media & Ad Agencies and received the following replies;

“We understand it is frustrating when we/you see other companies or individuals flaunt Facebook guidelines unchecked. There has been a huge increase in the "like and share this page to win a prize" and "when we reach 5,000 likes - everyone goes into a draw" style of promotion which is completely against Facebook promotion rules.”

“I can confirm though that we have been approached by 5 businesses recently who have run promotions contravening Facebook rules and have been shut down, page removed without recourse. They have come to us in a panic looking for help and are surprised when we tell them that there is nothing that we can do except write an appeal letter / email to Facebook to apologise and plead for their page back (This sometimes works but it's becoming more rare that Facebook even respond).”

“Without naming individual companies - I can confirm that a large retailer in Blanchardstown with 9k+ fans had their page pulled, a bicycle shop in Naas, and numerous restaurants & pubs in various County Dublin locations all got the following from Facebook and had their pages removed/shut down.”

"Facebook’s security systems determined that you were repeatedly using the same feature or engaging in the same behaviors in a short period of time. Because you continued this behavior after receiving multiple warnings, your account was disabled. Facebook cannot provide any specifics on the rate limits that are enforced.”

Despite emailing Facebook daily none of them have received a response.
We've spoken to a few business owners/managers in Ireland this year that have had their pages pulled for flaunting Facebook's competition guidelines.

There didn't seem to be any recourse and the pages are still down after several months. One of the companies, well known but who shall remain nameless, had around 15,000 fans one day and the next, their page was gone. They were getting people to 'like' and 'share' their competition wall posts in obvious contravention of Facebook's guidelines. Fair enough.

There are a few other examples including a well-known Dublin Radio Station which had their page pulled for repeatedly flaunting the guidelines.

So, there you have it, real world examples of what can happen if you continue to ignore or flaunt the Facebook competition rules.

The bottom line is clear for all

Don’t ignore it simply because your competitors all do, be the first to do it properly and be assured you will not incur the wrath of Facebook and wake up one day minus your hard earned fan base.

You need to do this, or we can do it for you!

Call us today, to arrange a consultation and ensure your next Facebook competition is legal. Contact Corrie-Dee Whaite on Tel 01294 559480 or Mob 07411 170758.

Facebook Announces Changes To News Feed from Menlo Park, California HQ

2013-03-08T00:46:00.001-08:00

Facebook announced news feed changes on Thursday 8th March 2013, here's a breakdown of some our favourite soundbites from what is happening at Facebook.

Zuckerberg said the Facebook news feed aimed to create a "personalised newspaper" for the site.

Facebook reported in January that 1.06 billion people were using its service at least once a month.

It also revealed that its profit for the last three months of 2012 was 79% down on the same period the previous year despite a rise in sales because of increased spending on research and development.

The new design brings a more visual look to Facebook, reflecting the fact that photographs now account for 50% of all content on news feed, up from 25% since November 2011.

"The design of your news feed needs to reflect this evolving face of who you're sharing with," Zuckerberg said.

Experts said the overhaul is the most significant in years for Facebook, which has been under pressure to increase revenue growth while keeping users on side since Zuckerberg made the company public on 17 May last year.

Facebook only began showing ads in users' news feeds in 2012, but it quickly proved a vitally important part of the business.

"The news feed advertising is where Facebook is having the success, both on mobile and on the desktop," said Ian Maude, an internet analyst at Enders Analysis.

"The trick is going to be managing the volume of ads people see in the news feed and getting the balance right between maximising revenue but also keeping users happy."

The Guardian says "Maude said the reception from users to the changes would depend on how many ads appear in their news feed.

"It's not surprising that Facebook is doing a refresh as ads are now an integral part of news feed whether users like it or not," he said.

"But I think Facebook are quite sensitive to overloading people with too many ads. The site has been overdue a shave and a haircut."

The changes will allow marketers to develop more striking ads that will sit alongside videos, photographs and other updates in users' news feeds. Marketers believe the news feed is the most affective way to reach potential customers, attracting a higher click-through rate than sponsored ads on the right-hand side of the site.

According to research firm eMarketer, Facebook earned more US mobile display revenue than any other publisher last year, with an 18.4% share of the entire market, thanks to ads in the news feed. The move helped overall ad revenues rise 36% year-on-year to $4.27bn in 2012, according to the company's most recent full-year results. Says The Guardian.

In addition to the standard news feed, users can select their own unique "alternative" news feed layouts. These include one which shows all updates posted by friends as the ones selected by Facebook's algorithms; One dedicated to organisations & people the user "follows"; A page featuring only posted photos; A music-themed feed containing updates from artists the user likes, concert announcements & details of songs their friends are listening to through Music Apps e.g. Spotify.

The "facebook" logo has been replaced with the iconic "f". A change already seen by selected group of users given early access to the Graph Search facility.

The social network already knows that engagement with ads in its main news feed is greater than with those that appear on the right-hand side of its web browser. This column of adverts is absent from its mobile apps altogether.

Enlarging the news feed now allows a sponsored post to become by far the biggest element on the screen, taking up roughly a third of the page when viewed on a 13in (33cm) laptop display.

Another business-friendly change is that if a user "likes" an organisation a horizontal banner photo is added to posts reporting the news in addition to the brand's logo, making the update more eye-catching.

The refresh also introduces topic-specific alternatives to its news feed. Adverts will now take up more screen space, making them harder to ignore.

Chris Struhar told the BBC the ahead of the official announcement the "focus had been on stripping back the amount of information being shown on the news feed to make each post more "engaging".

"But I think Facebook are quite sensitive to overloading people with too many ads. The site has been overdue a shave and a haircut."

The refresh also introduces topic-specific alternatives to its news feed. Adverts will now take up more screen space, making them harder to ignore.

Chris Struhar told the BBC the ahead of the official announcement the "focus had been on stripping back the amount of information being shown on the news feed to make each post more "engaging".

"We aren't changing where adverts show up or what ads you see. We're just trying to take all the content that you do see and make that bigger and more immersive and more engaging."

He added that further amendments might be made once users had had a chance to provide feedback.

I think the design, which is a lot less cluttered, actually cleans up the whole thing quite a lot," he told the BBC.

"It's really a case of making sure you have high quality advertising content. Facebook will have to make that work because they have to make money. I suspect in the weeks to come they will unveil additional flexibility for advertisers.Hopefully that will bring a lot of new opportunities." Reports the BBC Technology Reporter Leo Kelion.

Facebook said the revamp means the social network now looks the same on smartphones, tablet computers and on the web.

The new design gradually be rolled out and made available to everyone, however users can sign up to a waiting list for early access here

We think it will be interesting to see how the alternative news feeds will affect marketers and businesses. What happens when users adopt there own "alternative news feeds" once its been rolled out? We'll split test a number of pages using various news feed themes and ad campaigns and report our findings on these.

If you would like to discuss this further please contact Corrie-Dee Whaite on Tel 01294 559480 or Mob 07411 170758.

Facebook Launches Beta Version of Graph Search

2013-01-29T10:33:00.005-08:00

Exciting times ahead for marketers & page owners as Facebook launches the new Beta version of Graph Search.

Until now, the search bar you saw when you logged in to your Facebook page wasn't very powerful. You could only search for Timelines, your friends' pages, other peoples' public pages and business or product pages.
But now, after close to a year and a half of development, the new "Graph Search" will allow you to search and discover more about your friends and other information that's been put on the world's largest social site. Users will now be allowed to navigate the Internet through the data Facebook owns. For example, users will be able to search across different friends' Timelines without having to visit each individual profile to figure out if they like a specific place.

Find people who share your interests.

Want to start a book club or find a gym buddy? Connect with friends who like the same activities—and meet new people, too.

Now you can find more of what you're looking for through your friends, discover fun connections between people, places and things.

Graph Search is rolling out slowly. Users can sign up for the wait list here: Facebook Graph Search Beta Sign Up.

We've already signed up to the Beta version & using it now & we've got to say, we think it is fab! We only got it yesterday, we're still playing around with it, but didn't want to blog about it until we had tried & tested it! We've been mentioning this a lot recently on our Corrie D Marketing Facebook Page. Hence the blog article with further information on it (for anyone who's interested in more information on the topic).

Facebook wants each journey on the web to begin and end on its site. Its first significant move into search is designed to provide all the answers to users' questions: Which of my friends like Rihanna? How many of my friends speak German? Which TV shows are my colleagues watching?

Graph Search is designed for the the social web, where internet users spend more time on Facebook than they do searching the outside web.
How does it work? Users can search their friends, based on the information they have given Facebook permission to publish. For example, users will be able to quickly find "photos of my friends taken in Paris, France" or "Restaurants liked by friends in London".

Zuckerberg described Graph Search, in typical start-up fashion, as the "beta of version one". But he also described it as the "third pillar" of Facebook, after the news feed and timeline. He later said Graph Search could be a business in its own right – a remark that will prompt anxiety among Google executives.

Nate Elliot, a social-media analyst at Forrester Research, said the graph search announcement was part of Facebook's ambition to keep users coming back to its site.

"Facebook's worst nightmare is a static social graph," he said. "If users aren't adding very many new friends or connections, then their personal network becomes less and less active over time. Terrifyingly for Facebook, that threat is very real. We haven't seen significant growth in the average number of friends per user recently.

"Graph Search seems designed to encourage users to add more friends more quickly. If it means users' personal networks change more frequently, and become more active, then that keeps them coming back to the site – which is vital to Facebook's success. If Facebook and Bing can bring elements of Graph Search to Facebook's web search tool, then that's great. But it's not the point; the point is to keep Facebook users more active within the site."

Graph Search, which essentially helps to surface photographs or other data which before may have been buried. It does not make public any information that was not previously public, so users need not rush to change their privacy settings. But some users may be surprised to be presented with photos that they did not know they had been tagged in.

Getting graph search right first time is hugely important: search makes up the largest portion of digital advertising spending in the US, up from $15.1bn in 2011 to $17.58bn in 2012. And which company commands 74.5% of that $17.58bn ad spend? Google.

Should dating sites be worried about Facebooks Graph Search?

Forbes magazine says "Facebooks Graph Search will find you the perfect date". Although Facebook was never set out to be a dating site, the new graph search makes it the most powerful way of locating singles within your area who e.g. "Like" Radiohead.

Are you ready to sign up for the Beta version yet? You can sign up here. http://www.facebook.com/about/graphsearch We wish you "Good Luck" on those dates, let us know how you get on ;)?

Let us know what you think if you've also got Graph Search? What do you think this means to marketers? How will this affect businesses?

Our Top 5 Christmas Advertising & Marketing Tips.

2012-10-16T11:02:00.000-07:00

1. Facebook turns traditional Christmas advertising rules on its head. Usually at Christmas, most businesses (unless a retailer with Boxing Day or New Years Day sales to promote, a bar or club, travel agent or have a business within the Travel/Leisure industry). Most types of businesses i.e. Motors, Property, Business, Recruitment etc. Opt out of advertising over the Festive period. Mainly due to most people being off on annual leave or visiting family members and being away during the festive break.

However, Facebook advertising turns the normal rules of advertising at Christmas on it's head. Mainly due to the fact that when people are off work at Christmas - what do you think they are doing? Correct! They are being active on Facebook. We trialled this during Christmas last year and found our Facebook page to receive double if not triple the number of Facebook "likes" we would normally receive within a day. This obviously had a dip on the morning of the 1st of January and again when the country returned to work after the new year break.

If you are in the hotel or leisure industry with Festive Events/Festive Menus to promote - We have a fantastic way to promote these on Facebook.

https://www.facebook.com/corriedmarketing/app_379922265412301

2. Think about your Christmas & New Year advertising well in advance as you don't want to cancel or have cancellation fee's for leaving it too late if you don't want to advertise over Christmas. If however, you are looking to advertise over Christmas, most businesses start organising these campaigns after the summer. Make sure you book your ads early to guarantee a position well in advance, especially within local and national press as the newspapers drop in pagination - if you leave it too late to book they might not have space available to accommodate your needs.

3. Identify your target market and place yourself in their shoes. What will they be doing at Christmas? Target your advertising and marketing campaigns and budgets accordingly.

4. Use themes i.e. Christmas or New Years Day across your Social Media Network, Marketing & Advertising campaigns. Be seen as a fun place to be and work.

5. Send a Christmas Card or even better, a Corporate Gift - as a token of your appreciation i.e. bottle of wine or box of chocolates to clients. (Even if these are to a small minority of your clients). E.g. Top 10 Spending Clients. Let them know that you value and appreciate their business.

What are your top tips for Christmas?

FacebookTimeline Apps/Tabs how to use them to maximise ROI

2012-05-13T08:51:00.000-07:00

Facebook Timeline Tips & Tricks from Corrie D Marketing

How to use the tabs/apps on Timeline to promote and showcase your portfolio of products and services!

We absolutely adore the new changes to Timeline Facebook which came into effect for every business page owner on 30th March 2012.

Facebook now gives you a fantastic opportunity to create customised tabs/apps (running directly along the top of your page under your cover image).

If you think of these tabs/apps as prime advertising positions running along the top of your page (premium position) you have two standard tabs "photos & likes." Each page receives these two tabs on the Facebook Timeline layout.

We trust you will see you have 4 tabs running along the top and a further 8 tabs running below, when you click the arrow total = 12 tabs. You can look at our example Facebook Apps/Tabs you will see our 12 visible tabs however we have 24 tabs in total the remaining 12 are invisible to visitors unless we move them into the top 12.

You can move these tabs. If you don't know how to move your tabs around, you need to click on the drop down arrow to the right to expand your tabs and then right click on the top right hand corner of the tab - a pencil icon should come up on the top right hand corner, click it and a drop down menu of your other tabs/apps should be showing. Click the name of the tab from the drop down menu you want to swap with. Taaa-Daaaa! You should now have successfully switched your tabs around!

Tabs/apps can be used to as a portfolio of your services. The first tab on every page is the "photos" tab (you cannot switch this tab postition) but you can move your "likes". Our first two tabs are points of reference for our target audience (page owners/page admins) as we want to ensure that our target market to use our page is a useful reference point to keep coming back and paying return visits. WE create customised tabs/apps for companies (please click on the highlighted links) to view our own Facebook page as an example Facebook Timeline Guide and a Facebook Marketing Live Stream

Example - we carry out 360 Degree Panoramic Virtual Tours ideally suited to the Travel, Tourism and Leisure Industry. We then embed these into customised tabs/apps we create for our clients Facebook and we also embed these into your website.

Customised tabs allow you to showcase your portfolio of services, we call this your marketing collateral, which we create for our clients. We have used our own page to showcase these, as an example of how you can market your company/brand online.

Marketing Collateral

360 Degree Panoramic Virtual Tours - perfectly suited to the Travel, Tourism and Leisure industries eg. Marinas, Hotels, Property Developers and Holiday Park Owners. We can then embed the VT's within your website & within a customised Facebook App/Tab within your Facebook page. Virtual Tours offer a truly world wide platform once embedded within your Facebook and website. We can even insert speaker icons to make it a virtual guided tour (which is effectively open 24/7. You can see an example in our Marina VT (Portavadie Marina Virtual Tour)

3D Gallery walls is another of our services we carried out for a number of our clients i.e. Magna Carte Barge and Portavadie Apartments. By using the slider along the bottom you can move the 3D Gallery wall to click on images you want to highlight. We trust you will see the image opens into a larger image on it's own and can then be made full screen size. An ideal way to show 250 images which saves users having to scroll through endless photos'/images which can become tedious and boring.

e-Brochures are a perfect way to get your offline brochure online. You may already have e-Brochures embedded within your website as a Downloadable PDF however we do not recommend this as the more steps/actions you ask visitors to take to your website, the less likely they are to carry it out - due to the distractive nature of internet browsing (incoming emails/Facebook etc). Therefore it's much easier for visitors to view your brochure online as a 3D interactive page flip e-brochure as opposed to a downloadable PDF. We can even embed your YouTube videos into these. If you see click the link to our Jeuneusse Example https://www.facebook.com/corriedmarketing/app_194234897346125

We also recommend you post to your page with industry relevant content and post often, using the 80/20 rule. 80% sharing content, 20% selling your own product/service. Facebook advise posting approximately 3-4 times per week. You can analyse using your Facebook Insights the best times to post by trying various times to post as we believe the best times to post will be different based on the type of business ie B2B or B2C.

Facebook recommends the best times to post are at weekends when engagement with Facebook is high as Mon-Fri most people are in work however if you're a B2B and targeting owners this might not necessarily be the same result.

You can be as creative as you want to be with the apps/tabs we custom design. If you have an idea of a customised tab/app for your business let us know what it is and we will create one for you as we can do almost ANYTHING on Facebook Apps within your new Facebook Timeline Fan Page and we mean literally anything !!! From single promotion apps to a fully fledged website or store (YES you heard that right - a full website !!! ) or any part thereof, and like gate, invite gate, share gate it, and make your promotion, contest, new product launch, new service or whatever you are marketing or promoting, GO VIRAL and sell on Facebook.

If you would like to book any of our services please call Corrie-Dee Whaite, Corrie D Marketing on Tel 01294 559480 or Mob 07411 170758.

Corrie D Marketing February Review

2012-03-02T14:28:00.005-08:00

Who has the Passion For Fashion? Roll on next week when two of our favourite magazines get published.

The fabulous Scottish bi-monthly "Scottish Woman" magazine is one of our all time favourites. It's only been running in Scotland for approximately seven years but its full of fascinating articles, a travel section with unbiased travel advice and a fantastic homes interiors section, not to mention there passion for fashion! We were pleased to help out with the B2B advertising sales in the March/April edition by carrying out personal sales on there behalf.
http://www.scottishwomanmagazine.com/

After a few hours of selling, we successfully sold two pages! An amazing achievement as one of them was to one of the world’s most exclusive resorts based in Ayrshire. Turnberry, A Luxury Collection Resort, Scotland. http://www.turnberryresort.co.uk/

The second page was sold to Chairs & Beds, who is advertising within the Homes & Interiors section. They offer demonstrations within the comfort of your own home for reclining chairs and beds to the mobility market. However they have recently moved into the bespoke custom built sofas and settees market (previously known as Scottish Mobility) and is currently re-branding to the new name. T 0800 056 1886.

Bavaria Scotland Charters used our consultancy advice back in November/December regards promoting there summer tours in the Spring issues targeting newspapers & magazines in the UK but finally decided to target the female Scottish market. They booked two full pages in colour, running in the same March/April edition of the magazine. They organise bareboat charters, skippered charters and corporate events on their stunning Bavaria Yachts. Whisky Distillery Tours and & Island Tours throughout the Scottish Isles and further afield, throughout Summer. As we were booking the space advertising space for them for there ad and editorial to appear in Scottish Woman Magazine, we got chatting to the owner of the magazine and acquired Scottish Woman as our newest client! http://www.bavariascotlandcharters.co.uk/

Are you thinking of buying a Franchise? Looking for impartial advice? Then London based Bi-monthly "Franchise World magazine" is for you and is available by subsription. They have a fantastic range of Franchise Advisors, Finance & Business Consultants that specialise in Franchising but most importantly Franchisors looking to recruit Franchisees. The March/April issue is running a eature on the NEC Birmingham Franchise Exhibition. We are running our own advertising campaign within this title as we are aiming to target the franchising industry. http://www.franchiseworld.co.uk/

We would like to take this opportunity to wish to our clients and media partners all the best success for the future. Already we know March is looking to be an amazing month due to all the developments with the new Facebook Timeline for pages recently being announced. We would like to wish our good friend Barry Pontin Concepts all the best of luck with his new business venture and hope he is settling in okay down South. We would also like to wish Maria a speedy recovery and we're all hoping you get better soon.

Whats been happening with your business in February? Did you have any good news and success stories you can share with us... It's all doom and gloom in the newspapers therefore we thought we'd like to hear about any inspirational good business stories or contracts you have secured lateley? Please feel free to share with us we'd be happy to hear how things are going especially the success stories - We "like" those :)

6 Reasons why it’s important have a “like” page and banner ad on a business profile!

2012-02-09T09:19:00.000-08:00

It's time to GET SOCIAL!

1) A “LIKE” page is sometimes known as "LIKE Gaiting!" Also known as a welcome, landing page for non fans. It gives visitors a reason to “like” your page. Once they have liked your page they can access your wall etc and engage in the conversation and interact with your brand. It's quite difficult to get visitors to "like" your page, if you're eg an accountants or car repairs. A pub/club or restaurant is much easier to "LIKE".

2) A personal profile is easier to engage and interact as you can actively make friends requests however it is against Facebook rules to use a personal profile page to promote a business. If you have the new timeline layout it also flags a warning that businesses should not use timeline to promote brands with logos etc. We wouldn't recommend doing this as they are both different and have various restrictions ie you can't add friends to a business page, but you can't advertise a personal page on Facebook Ads. You have to rely on visitors opting in to "like" your page and follow your posts. Hence why we advise having the "Like" page. It looks professional and can be customised with your branding, logo's etc.

3) A banner ad appears down the side of your Facebook business profile page,which will replace your profile pic (If this is your logo, please change this to ad ad and make this space work for you). Think of your Facebook business page as real estate and this is a prime location to promote and advertise your company services. Again this should be branded. A picture of your logo is doing nothing for you. It doesn’t tell visitors to your site anything. It’s a logo! Having an ad is very important as its FREE! Facebook DO NOT charge you for your banner ad to appear up there. It should ideally, list the services you offer, it will have good copy content (remember AIDA the basic advertising rules when writing ad copy) Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. A call to action will be your web address and telephone number. This ad appears on all your pages ie welcome page, photos, wall etc.

4) Once you have a great looking page you can start advertising on Facebook Ads relatively cheaply as opposed to traditional forms of media ie local and national press. We recommend approx 100 likes and ensure you have a vanity URL, banner ad and like page, to get as much value as possible from your Facebook advertising and business profile. Facebook advertising is 11% cheaper in the UK than any other country, there are also ways you can keep your advertising costs down by upto 45% by remaining within Facebook ie using the Facebook Ad campaign to link to your Facebook business profile page as opposed to an external URL to a website. Again another reason why it's so important to have a GREAT looking page. It's even better than a website as IT'S LIVE AND IT'S RIGHT NOW...!!!

5) Use insights to enable you to monitor and analyse what posts your tribe (fans) react to most, best times for posting etc. You can also monitor your ad spend using Facebook ads, as these are live you can pause and stop. You can create multiple ad campaigns (remember to name them all differently to stop any confustion when analysing the success rate of each campaign). You can measure your ROI by asking every enquiry you receive how did you hear about us. Most Facebook enquiries will message on Facebook however we have had calls and visits to our website but they originally found out about us through Facebook. By using Google Analytics in conjunction with Facebook Insights you can monitor the traffic Facebook directs to your website from your advertising campaigns by analysing the data over the same time period or you can compare it by doing a control test when the website relied purely on organic traffic without facebook ads.

6) It's always best if you have an idea in mind of an end goal or target ie to achieve e.g. target is to get from 112 to 500 likes, or it could be to generate £X amount of sales on your website (if you have an e- commerce site) or if you don't have an e-commerce site it could purely be to drive traffic to your website. As this way you have a benchmark that you can use to monitor and analyse your advertising.

If you require any help or assistance with any of the above you can visit our website www.corriedmarketing.co.uk or www.facebook.com/corriedmarketing/

How Can Social Media Help Franchisor and Franchisees alike?

2012-02-04T06:07:00.000-08:00

How Can Social Media Help Franchisors and Franchisees alike?

Are you too busy selling your franchises and promoting your own products & services,
that you take your eye off the ball when it comes to your marketing and advertising?

What are the 2 major concerns keeping you awake at night?

1. Is it lack of franchisees? Or is your competition gaining an edge?
2. Or it could be that you don’t have the time or technical understanding or knowledge of the wide range of marketing & advertising techniques that are available to you?

You know you need it and want it. You understand that you’re franchise will be left behind your competition if you don’t do it. WE ARE HERE TO HELP! By offering you high quality, yet cost effective social media & marketing solutions.

We understand franchising has the 3 sides to the business - the franchisor, the franchisee and the product/service! Our services help you sell your franchises to franchisees, we can also assist each individual franchise and finally we can help you both in promoting the brand, product/service.

Now businesses have more media choices than ever before and making the right decision is crucial to your business. We are a Social Network Media Management & Marketing Consultancy, specialising in Franchising and the Retail sector with twenty year’s marketing experience. Eight years within the Franchise industry and twelve within Retail.

Social Media is not a fad and it’s not going away any time soon. Theworld's largest social networking site “Facebook” is currently the second most visited site after Google and recently surpassed a record 800 million active users in one day. Users now devote more time to Facebook than any other website, with their favourite pass time being uploading pictures, spending a total of 53.5 billion minutes a month on the world's largest social, networking site. This is far ahead of sites like Twitter & Blogger etc. Users cumulatively devote 723 million minutes a month. Twitter, receives 565 million minutes of users time per month and LinkedIn, which claims 325 million minutes per month. Yahoo, the second
most popular web brand overall, receives just half as much of users' time as followed by Google (12.5 billion minutes, which does not include the 9.1 billion minutes people spent on
YouTube).

If your company wants to embrace social media we would recommend setting up a business page on
the 3 main social media sites. These are Facebook, Twitter & Linked In. However some industry experts predictnot for long. Google+ is a new contender in the social media landscape. With Google’s new search results changing which now include Google+ Search plus Your World, means that search results are now being heavily influenced by Google+. With over 3 billion searches per day on Google, it’s poised to explodethis year. Newfigures recently released show Google+ growth accelerating. It
recently Passed 62 million users. Adding 625, 000 new users per day. Predicting that by the end of 2012 that this figure will jump to 400 million. Google+ could now be a serious contender. Previously we believed that companies did not have the time to do all of these social media sites properly due to time restraints, but with the addition of another new social media site, time spent on these sites has now been reduced even more.

Why Facebook? Facebook is the second most used site after Google. Currently hit a record 800 million active users in one day. We set up customised and branded Facebook Business Fan Pages, for your company with a Welcome/Landing Page for non- fans to land on which is also known as “like gaiting”. This gives visitors to your page a reason to “like” your page and engage with your brand. Facebook pages are a more intimate and direct marketing channel. They are instant and up to date. It can even be more up to date than a website as it’s RIGHT NOW!

Our award winning graphic designer will really make your company fan page stand out by
creating a banner advertisement which will appear on all of your franchise pages as well as your own, these can all be designed in the exact same style, font, type, colours etc. Protecting the brand and corporate identity by adhering to your brand guidelines. The banner advert replaces your
business profile picture but with minor changes to the copy content eg each franchisee would have different contact details, we can insert the Geographical area or postcode area they cover or we
can change the address, email, telephone number, website etc. The banner ad appears within all of your Facebook pages on your profile e.g.welcome page, wall, photos etc. We can also brand your “like” page designs sothat they are all the exact same or can be individually designed to suit each franchisee because it’s all the one company designing for everyone’s business/brand/product or service they can all be in keeping with one another. We can also create pages and skins using your corporate branding within all the other social media sites eg Twitter, You Tube etc.

We understand the different social media sites there audiences and there media consumption.
We can assist you to set up whichever social sites you prefer, whether its “You Tube” to post videos for your business or perhaps if you’re in the music industry Flowd or Soundcloud are better suited to your needs, to get your music heard! We follow your prospect’sonline journey, using Google Analytics and Facebook Insights our comprehensive understanding and knowledge of analytics and the power of knowing when to post (the best times) and what content your fans/tribe react to HELPING YOU GENERATE RESULTS. We are a target-led results driven company and would advise at the outset before embarking on a social media campaign to have a goal or target in
mind of what you want to achieve ie 100 likes in 3 months, to drive traffic to your website, or to increase sales. If you would like a chat regarding the options available to you please call Corrie
Now for details! Tel: 012924 559480 or Mob: 07411 170758

10 Reasons Why Your Company Should Be Using Facebook

2011-10-27T13:30:00.000-07:00

1 The world's largest social networking site “Facebook” is currently the second most visited site after Google and recently surpassed a record of 750 million active users in one day. Users now devote more time to Facebook than any other website, spending a total of 53.5 billion minutes a month on the world's largest social networking site. This is far ahead of sites like Twitter & Blogger etc. Users cumultatively devote 723 million minutes a month. Twitter, receives 565 million minutes of users time per month and LinkedIn, which claims 325 million minutes per month. Yahoo, the second most popular web brand overall, receives just half as much time of users' time as followed by Google (12.5 billion minutes, which does not include the 9.1 billion minutes people spent on YouTube).

2 Facebook pages are a more effective and intimate direct marketing channel

3 It is instant and up to date. Printed and traditional media is usually out of date quite often before it even hits the streets. Facebook is even more up to date than a website. Facebook is in real time its RIGHT NOW!

4 It can be used as a real time research tool (SUPRE receive hundreds of individual answers within 2 hours of the questions being asked).

5 You create a long-term relationship between the consumers and the brand that creates a digital asset with longevity.

6 You create a highly leveraged channel that distributes your brand and message by its viral nature as updates to the Facebook “Page” spread through friends updates and news feeds. This is an incredibly fast and effective organic brand distribution vehicle.

7 Facebook Users are “happy” users and you want your brand to be associated with these feel good feelings. Average user has 130 friends spend on average 24mins each day, uploading pictures is there favourite pastime, average user comments on average one comment per day.

8 Viral Nature – easy to promote/spread the word/comment/share/like/grow

9 Growing Demographic - growth in the silver surfers (50 +) biggest growth age range

10 Customized Pages - Look & Feel (helps raise awareness and build brands). Gives a reason for Non Fans to “like” and engage in the conversation with your brand. Although you do not need to use logos, branding etc. If you’re on a tight budget I would recommend at least having a page and having some sort or representation as opposed to having nothing at all. It’s so easy to do but lots of people don’t use it and its FREE!!

Do you own your own business?

2011-09-25T01:37:00.001-07:00

Are you marketing it properly?

Let me put it to you like this. I will use this purely as an example .. you own a B&B but you dont market it properly. If you don't market it properly what are people going to think about your business? They won't be aware you have a B&B or that you have rooms available. Your prospects would think it is just an ordinary house. What does this entail for your business?

What does "marketing" mean?

Marketing can be both an organisation or customer orientated philosophy. It can also be a functioning department that handles activities concerned with understanding and satisfying customers needs.

Marketing is the action of promoting or selling your product or business, getting your message accross. Marketing plan activities are designed to increase your customers understanding and knowledge of existing products and services. Studies have shown a direct link between the success of an organisation and the extent of its market orientation. These marketing concepts are applicable to both profit and non-profit organisations.

Marketing plan activities are designed to increase your customer's understanding and knowledge of existing products and services. If a company has its own Marketing Department, Marketing is seen as ‘what the marketing department does’.

Marketing is the "key" element and fundamental rule of any business. I have spoken to thousands of business owners over the years who say they cannot afford to spend money on marketing....I will give you some free inside information. If you are a business owner you cannot afford NOT to spend money on your marketing activities.

You don't need to have a full operational Marketing Department you can outsource this side of the buisness to a Marketing Consultant. They can find out more about your business by doing market research which will enable you to find out who your target market is (if you don't know that already). As Jeff Bullhas said "Everyone" is not your target market. Where are you now? Where would you like to be? How are you going to get there? What are your brands core values? How would you like to be perceived? How are you currently being perceived in the marketplace? Who are your competitors? What are they doing? Market Research can also help to identify gaps in the market or market niches. You can do Market Research if your a new business about to launch to find out if there is a demand/gap/niche in the market for your service or you can tailor it accordingly prior to launcing. It also helps if your an existing business to do Market Research to find out your position within the marketplace, help your business to find out what your customers think, to identify your customers needs and to help you fulfill those needs. A SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) is also be beneficial at this stage.

Making sure you have a recognisable brand, using the services of a good Marketing Consultant to do a Brand Wheel. The Graphic Designer can then take the brand wheel and use it to come up with the corporate colours/image/font/size/type. By using the Brand Wheel it can help take difficult and often complex organisations into the simplest of words. Simplicity is the holy grail of communication, it offers straightforward clarity for those unfamiliar with the message and attempts to uncover the simple words through a systematic process. This works best with a mixed group of people who are familiar with the product/brand.

Using the Brand Wheel you work from the outside in, firstly going around the outer wheel and listing single words the first words that come into mind for each of four questions usually works best (ie what it does, how I would describe it, how it makes me feel, how it makes me look). Second, go into the middle wheel and again work through the four questions, distilling your original words from the outer wheel into fewer (ideally 3-5 per quadrant). This provides the basis for the inner wheel, where you summarise and prioritise the words from the middle wheel in fewer words. These words form the basis of your brand proposition.

The brand proposition is the building blocks for your communications, whether verbal, written or graphical. Everything you do can reflect these core words, and in turn provide a very focussed, very simple and very effective message to the consumer with your brands design, image, coporate colours and identity.

Marketing can also be described as managing the exchange of relationships as described in the following extract:

Marketing consists of individual and organisational activities that facilitate and expedite satisfying exchange relationships in a dynamic environment through the creation, distribution, promotion and pricing of goods, services and ideas. Market led Approach or Pan Company Marketing. Spending money on a worthwhile cause. Examples of other exchange relationships are shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1 Exchange relationships

Piercy (1997) describes this approach to marketing as a market-led approach – others refer to it as pan-company marketing. The distinguishing feature of both these approaches is that they emphasise that every department in the organisation is involved with the customer – not just the marketing department. I shall use the terms market-led, market orientation and pan-company marketing throughout the text to describe this organisations customer-led approach.

Marketing is too important to leave to the marketing department.

(Bill Packard, Hewlett Packard, in Piercy, 1997)

There are 5 P's not 4 P's in Marketing. Price, Promotion, Product, Place & The 5th P is People. (Guy Zitter, MD, The Daily Mail)

The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) suggests that: Marketing is the management process for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customers needs at a profit.

Can you see how the CIM has incorporated market-led concepts in there definition of marketing?
All organisations (commercial and non-profit) must be market oriented and must focus their attention on adding value to their products and services to satisfy their customers needs.
Leaving aside the word profit from the CIM's definition of marketing, at a conceptual level the process of becoming market orientated is concerned with identifying, anticipating and satisfying customers needs. Kotler (Drucker, 1992) believes that changes in funding and the introduction of competitive tendering have forced some organisations to use these customer-focused approaches to help them compete in their marketplace. Kotler explains:

Marketing really is spurred on by the presence and the increase in competition that the institution faces in a way that it never faced before. Most organizations don't get interested in marketing when they are comfortable. Suddenly they find that they don't understand their customers very well, and their customers are leaving that church, or they're not signing up for the college, or coming to that hospital. And these institutions become aware of a competitive situation.
How do you deal with a competitive situation? Well, one way some early hospitals dealt with it was to pray that the world hadn't changed and that they would just survive. Now, prayer may have a role to play, but it is not the answer. The normal answer is that may be there's something in this thing called marketing that will help us to understand why customers chose to be with us in the first place and why they're not choosing to be with us anymore.
(Drucker, 1992, p. 80)

He believes that marketing techniques could be used to facilitate ‘mutually satisfying exchanges’ between the organisation and its publics (a ‘public’ is any group that has an actual or potential interest in or impact on an organisation's ability to achieve its objectives). This concept of ‘exchanges’ is important. As you have seen, marketing is denned as facilitating the exchange process. In the commercial sector, this means products and services are exchanged for money. In the non-profit sector, this means products and services are exchanged for ideas, values and beliefs.

To run a non-profit organisation effectively, the marketing must be built into the design of the service. This is very much a top management job, although, as in every other area, you need a lot of input from your people, from the market and from research.
(Drucker, 1992)

Value Proposition
What Does Value Proposition Mean?
A business or marketing statement that summarizes why a consumer should buy a product or use a service. This statement should convince a potential consumer that one particular product or service will add more value or better solve a problem than other similar offerings.
Investopedia explains Value Proposition
Companies use this statement to target customers who will benefit most from using the company's products, and this helps maintain an economic moat. The ideal value proposition is concise and appeals to the customer's strongest decision-making drivers. Companies pay a high price when customers lose sight of the company's value proposition.

I hope this helps you to understand the importance of marketing for your business and how to implement a marketing strategy.

Corrie D Marketing

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