The internet takes central position in most organisations’ marketing strategy today, however the more active we all are, the more saturated the market it and more suffocating it seems. The upshot of this means that advertisers now have to be a little more creative and work a lot smarter (and be more relevant) in order for their content to stand out from the crowd. So it’s definately time to dig deeper into customisation and personalisation strategies to find the small, yet potentially profitable subsets of your market and niche offerings. Touching these customers will require data parsing to create the kind of one-to-one conversations for successful micro targeting.
Search engines and social media get more competitive all the time, so before creating any online content it is important to consider exactly who your audience is and how you are going to reach them. Fortunately there are now some handy tools that allow you to create and publish your content in a smarter way and successfully micro-target the perfect audience:
1. Facebook Canvas
With 940million people using Facebook on their mobile daily, it came as no surprise when the social media giants launched their mobile-only advertising tool. Canvas – is a handy tool that helps you to easily turn ‘long reads’ into visually engaging features, providing users an immersive, mobile experience through ads. The early statistics are quite remarkable, with users spending an average of between 135 and 174 seconds on the ad, which means the platform is currently outperforming videos when it comes to keeping the attention of users. Creating Canvas ads is incredibly easy — or at least far easier than you’d expect. Facebook provides the tools that help you create them.
2. Facebook Pixel
Multi-device tracking is still a major challenge for marketers, but with the Facebook Pixel it is now possible follow and understand your target audience when they switch between mobile and desktop. Unlike Google’s cookie system, the Facebook Pixel tracks users whatever device they are on as long as they are logged into their Facebook account. With the pixel you are able to measure, optimise and build audiences for your ad campaign, and even follow up with people that visited your site or maybe abandoned their basket during the checkout process.
3. On-demand Geofilters for Snapchat
Snapchat is something many marketers are still getting to grips with, but the platform recently rolled out its own custom on-demand Geofilters in the UK, US and Canada, which offer a smart way to ensure Snapchatters in a very specific area get to see your branded content in their stories. Interestingly, as yet Snapchat’s guidelines don’t restrict targeting competitors, so we could see Android start targeting the Apple conference, for example.
4. Google Posts
Always improving the user experience is part of the company culture at Google, and that has recently meant focusing on quality content over easy ads. The ads have already been removed from the right of the results page, and they are now experimenting with ways to promote paid content without being too intrusive for the user. The latest approach being trialed allows brands, celebrities or businesses to post cards that pop-up in search results, pointing to relevant blogposts, products to buy, or even music and videos, which could become a very useful tool for pull marketing.
5. GoPro Hero4, Twitter Periscope and Facebook Live
Live-streaming events is one of the major new trends in online marketing, but Facebook still restrict it to verified pages and personal profiles. Periscope, on the other hand, is free to use for everyone, including brands, celebs and events. By combining Periscope with a GoPro Hero4 you can create a platform to broadcast high quality live streams your target audience, with the ability to interact with them on Twitter. Using Twitter Curator also allows you to showcase a selection of tweets live at an event, which could have fascinating possibilities for live music or sports events in the near future. On the surface, Facebook Live is a basic feature that offers live-streaming video capabilities to users. By tapping the live stream icon, you can start broadcasting video live from your smartphone, and write an optional description for the event. Any users following you will have the ability to “tune in” to the broadcast. At the end of the video, you can tap “finish” to complete the video, at which point it will be posted as a permanently available feature on your timeline. The maximum time limit for a broadcast is currently 30 minutes, and you can block specific users if you desire. This live-streaming feature is markedly similar to other products on the market, such as Periscope and Meerkat, which uniquely offered live-streaming video for their users. However, there are a few key differences with Facebook Live, most notably being the ability for the video to be retrieved at any time and the association with other features of the mobile app.
