fbpx

On Demand Webinar: Free Online Marketing Tools Every Business Should Use

In this free, on-demand webinar, we outline several outstanding tools for content marketing. From developing and curating compelling content, to creating strong graphics; scheduling social posts to gauging effectiveness, the tools outlined in this webinar will help make every marketer’s job easier and more effective.

Looking for more free marketing webinars?

Be sure to visit BARQAR’s marketing webinar library. You’ll be able to sign up for future events and see recordings from all of our past events.

Video Transcript:

0:00
good afternoon and thank you so much for joining us for today’s webinar got a
0:08
great event planned today we’re gonna be talking about the top social media and
0:13
online marketing tools that just about every marker out there could find value
0:17
in my name is Brad Smith on the CEO and founder of Parker marketing were a
0:21
full-service marketing agency that really focuses in online marketing in
0:25
the digital space we help companies get the most out of their web presence and
0:29
drive people and drive business through online outlets joining me on today’s
0:34
calls Tony we check our director of marketing here at Parker Tony’s worked
0:39
with both big and small corporations bring some great perspective to today’s
0:44
conversation and also on the line is Brad Reilly one of our social media
0:48
marketing advisors Brad works closely with billion-dollar companies and
0:54
startups outsourcing all of their social media marketing efforts so brad is in
0:59
the trenches and doing all this great great social work each and every day’s
1:04
living breathing using these tools and he’s brought some great insight here on
1:08
what’s most effective for everyone on today’s call
1:12
so let’s jump in and take a look at our agenda for today we’re going to look at
1:18
some top online tools and then there’s no shortage of tools out there there’s a
1:24
lot at our disposal
1:26
some are better than others we could have spent probably a whole day covering
1:31
all of the vast array of tools available out there to you but we narrowed this
1:35
down from hundreds to just several we’ve broken it into sections and first and
1:42
foremost have a great online presence you need great content right you need a
1:46
great message you need to get that message in front of the right people
1:50
so we’re going to spend the first part of today’s webinar on creating content
1:55
what’s most important to your audience how to find out what’s working and what
1:59
isn’t and where you go to kind of source this content where to go for ideas then
2:07
we’re going to talk a little bit about creating graphics graphics as you’ll see
2:12
arcs
2:13
dreamily important at driving engagement and building awareness day what we don’t
2:19
want you to do is go out there on google and in other places in steel graphics
2:23
can get in some hot water there are some tools out there that you can use to
2:27
create them for free or for very limited resources but they turn out stunning and
2:34
they look great and they give your social posts so much more visibility
2:39
then we’re going to talk about tools to help you automate some of your social
2:45
media marketing efforts what we often find is that people are engaged on
2:50
social media and engaged online at off hours outside of business hours unless
2:55
you want to be sitting on your couch at night and working feverishly on getting
3:00
your marketing messages out at certain times of of the night
3:04
there’s a better way to do it so we’re going to walk through how to schedule
3:08
posts or going to introduce some of the tools that we use here internally and
3:12
some tools that our clients use and give you some pros and cons then we’re going
3:17
to wrap up its talking about something called remarketing with all been exposed
3:22
to it whether or not we know it but it’s a very impactful tool and approach to
3:28
reaching your audience online that everyone should be using and last but
3:33
not least we’re going to cover email marketing and this is kind of the the
3:37
forgotten to lure the tool that some people have abandoned on unfortunately
3:42
you’ve abandoned it
3:43
you’ve lost a great way to reach a big audience for little to no time at all
3:49
it’s very very effective there’s research that supports it even effective
3:53
for the Millennial audience and then will also answer your questions so when
4:01
you registered for this webinar we always ask what your biggest marketing
4:05
challenge and we we just love to hear from from audience our audience what
4:10
your biggest challenges are when we’re talking with her clients we’re talking
4:13
with local businesses or always asking that question what is your biggest
4:17
business challenge what are your biggest marketing challenges where the
4:21
roadblocks because we’re big proponents in helping companies over
4:26
come those and do things more efficiently so here are some of the
4:30
questions that we got this time around
4:32
are there any analytics tools out there that we can measure results
4:37
where can I go to get good photos and I think this question went on to say that
4:41
don’t cost an arm and a leg because photos can get really expensive we get
4:46
this question all the time we got it here and in we get it all the time on
4:50
can I just go grab an image off of google and use it
4:53
what’s your favorite scheduling tools
4:57
what’s the best day and time to post my updates of my content that’s a biggie
5:01
that we get all the time and then another question is there a tool that I
5:06
can use to look at my online presence and see if I’m doing the right things
5:09
and we’re going to cover all of these in today’s presentation and more so how
5:15
Tony I want to ask you why should people really care about these social media
5:23
tools what are they going to get out of out of using some of these yeah no
5:28
thanks bread
5:29
I think that’s a great question and there’s obviously a lot of information
5:33
we’re going to go over here and and people are going to be listening and
5:36
think well you know what is it going to do for me what is going to form an
5:40
organization and in a nutshell we kind of outlined some of the main highlight
5:46
of of what some of these tools can do for you and it’s it it’s it’s achieving
5:51
professional results it’s it’s you know maybe not being a digital expert so to
5:57
speak but being able to achieve some of the results of other of other people
6:03
other companies of other posts that you see out there through some of these
6:06
tools the tools were going to go over are going to help you facilitate your
6:10
planning of social media posts and digital marketing they’re going to save
6:14
your organization time and money because of the planning aspects because of the
6:21
ability to take someone who’s maybe not an expert in some of these things and
6:26
and have them use these tools and put a professional results and it’s going to
6:30
automate the activity so again as part of that planning purpose you know what
6:36
these tools will do
6:38
it’d help you schedule ahead of time take the free time that you have a
6:42
schedule some of your marketing you know a week or two weeks in advance and and
6:48
make that process simpler more automated and in the end I mean really a nutshell
6:52
you take these four aspects and they’re gonna help you work smarter and not
6:59
harder when it comes to your digital marketing and you know we all have a lot
7:04
on their plates organizations are always trying to get more done with less
7:08
resources some of these tools and some things are going to go over will
7:11
certainly help you achieve those goals
7:15
yeah definitely in digital marketing is a great way to reach a wide audience
7:19
ok this allows you to reach your a your be your senior d prospects all the same
7:24
time you can focus your direct sales efforts in direct marketing efforts on
7:28
those a’s and b’s but these tools will help you get those c’s and d’s further
7:34
into the sales funnel so that you have a higher likelihood of closing those
7:38
people and staying in front of those people with a really professional image
7:42
so first section as i mentioned earlier we’re going to talk about creating
7:46
content for marketing as a whole it’s all about your content it’s all about
7:52
your messaging and does your message resonate with the audience and evoke an
7:56
emotional response so why is creating content so important why is getting that
8:04
message out
8:05
well it’s going to achieve a few things and and i absolutely love this quote and
8:09
starts off with people buy from those that they trust right off the bat
8:16
content if it’s effective and engaging it’s going to help you build trust going
8:22
to give people that warm and fuzzy feeling about you it’s going to make
8:24
them feel like you’re genuine you not just out for their business you’re out
8:28
to make an impact for them great content also builds engagement so the goal of
8:37
marketing isn’t just to get our message in front of people let’s get to get
8:40
people to engage with that content to engage with our brand to take the next
8:45
step in that sales cycle going to make your sales way more effective i
8:49
mentioned earlier it’s a great way to reach the sea
8:51
Andy prospects that you can’t be in front of all the time it’s one too many
8:56
so if you do things correctly if you schedule your activities out if you
9:01
build your network to reach whole wide array of people that you otherwise
9:05
wouldn’t be able to reach with your normal sales outreach efforts and last
9:11
but not least it’s going to help you generate more inbound leads that’s the
9:15
Holy Grail right when it be great if you could just kind of sit back and phone
9:18
ringing off the hook we want to get to that point and we don’t want to abandon
9:24
all other sales marketing efforts but we want to get to a point where those
9:27
inbound leads really supplement everything else that we’re doing and
9:31
keep us moving keep us moving in the right direction
9:34
keep adding revenue to the bottom line keep making things way more profitable
9:38
if you create great content that’s really the core and we’re gonna get that
9:42
out through various marketing channels and mediums but we’re going to position
9:46
ourselves as a vendor that people trust we’re going to build engagement and
9:51
we’re going to drive action and all this can be started with great content in
9:57
order for content to be great
9:59
you have to make sure resonates with your audience so our first few tools are
10:04
really going to help make sure that you’re producing the right kind of
10:07
Content that your message is on track so Brad if you don’t mind walk through some
10:13
of the tools that you use when when you’re going out and you’re developing a
10:17
strategic Content plan or strategy for your clients how do you find out what
10:22
and audiences really interested in and how do you build that that content
10:28
strategy first tool that i really like to look at is into the public and that’s
10:34
available and answer the public comm eventually what it does take the keyword
10:38
string that you put into their search bar you select your country the United
10:42
States and then this gentleman on the screen the seeker goes out shows you all
10:47
of googles related search strings based on your keyword so if your contract in
10:53
the Buffalo area you’re thinking about putting the other blog post like seven
10:57
tips to consider when taking a contractor when finding a contractor
11:02
we’ll find a contractor is a strong keyword you might see on this right-hand
11:06
side where we have some other related searches that were displayed for us
11:10
you might find that finding a framing contractor works better finding up
11:15
finding a bathroom contractor works better you’ll see what other people are
11:18
already searching for on google and then you can prepare content to answer their
11:23
questions you can be a resource for that and audience just because you’re arguing
11:28
what questions are available that that’s great you can just you don’t even have
11:32
to type in a question into this tool you can just type in a keyword whether it’s
11:36
auto cells or whether it’s some radiology or whether it’s whatever
11:40
whatever the term is whatever your business doesn’t in your business offers
11:43
type that term in and see how people are searching for that see what questions
11:48
they’re asking you can answer those questions you’re going to be seen as
11:51
trustworthy you’re gonna be seen as an expert and they’re one of the you’re
11:55
going to be one of the first companies that people reach out to when they’re
11:58
looking to find the answer to those questions
12:04
the second tool that I like to look at what’s already working well for my
12:09
specific audience is google analytics if you don’t have google analytics
12:13
installed on your website it’s a month what you can do with analytics is
12:17
separated by your blog string so whatever your URL to get your blog is
12:23
you can actually see the individual page views on a blog article so you put
12:29
together six-month Content plan and you’re looking at revisiting that after
12:32
six months to see what worked and what didn’t
12:35
the blog post that generated the most traffic you should consider making more
12:39
blog content about those topics the article that didn’t resonate well maybe
12:44
scale back on those in the upcoming six months or maybe rephrase them into
12:49
different a be testing so if it was why not to do something maybe look at why
12:53
you should do something but google analytics is a concrete sign of what
12:59
content was viewed on your website so you can use that to your advantage when
13:03
you go forward and you make common strategies in the future and saying
13:07
spread what were big proponents of continuing testing and looking at data
13:12
and making better more
13:14
coming decisions and really better business decisions so use all the tools
13:19
use all the data is all the resources available to you so you can be more
13:23
strategic in how you market and what content you produce i’m creating content
13:28
takes time and what you don’t want to do is create content that nobody cares
13:33
about you so use these tools like answer the public like Google Analytics to
13:38
first find out what people are interested in
13:41
ok and then to to make sure that your content is performing well and when you
13:45
do hit on a topic that really performs well as principal build more of those
13:51
types of articles
13:53
why do you want to be doing this why do you want to be blogging why do you want
13:58
to be writing articles
13:59
why do you want to be adding all this content to your website and sharing it
14:03
out through social media and other tools all quite simply it works in this
14:10
example on the left this is a client that were writing content for their
14:15
target audience are speech-language pathologist occupational therapists
14:19
physical therapists school psychologists they’re trying to reach a very educated
14:24
audience they’re trying to reach people who are busy they’re trying to reach
14:31
people who have very specific information that they’re looking for
14:37
we’ve done the research we’ve done the background and we know what that
14:41
audience is interested in because we’ve used some of these tools and constantly
14:45
testing on the right you see this this chart this this is page used to their
14:50
website so in just over a year we’ve been able to create increase overall
14:57
website traffic by three hundred percent more than three hundred percent just by
15:03
generating great content knowing what the target audience is interested in and
15:08
looking at ways to get that message in front of more people . blank this works
15:14
creating content works get in the habit of becoming a Content engine ask your
15:20
clients ask your prospects what they care about what their interests are what
15:24
their biggest challenges are
15:26
build content around solving those problems and you’re going to attract
15:29
them to your site now that the key in content really is original content
15:36
especially if you’re looking to rank well in search engines you need good
15:40
clean
15:41
original content ok but that can be hard to produce time-consuming takes a lot
15:48
now we have a team of 50 writers that write content for our clients so they’ve
15:53
outsourced that but if you’re doing this internally it’s hard to pump out great
15:57
content day after day week after week month after month so what you can also
16:01
do especially in your social media strategy is look at what we call
16:05
curating content as there’s a lot of great content out there you probably run
16:09
across a lot of great articles about your industry or products or services or
16:13
advancements or or even just general business related information that you
16:18
find valuable and your customers and your clients your prospects will
16:22
probably find valuable to the challenges if you’re just going out there looking
16:28
for this stuff and you’re going into google and you’re searching for term it
16:32
can be pretty time-consuming kind of like panning for gold you’re gonna get a
16:36
whole lot of garbage and looking for that one little nugget that’s valuable
16:42
the one little nugget of content information that’s really going to be
16:47
relevant to your audience so don’t go that approach don’t just go to google
16:53
and type in a word and hope that you find something
16:57
there’s better tools that you can use to really source and find that information
17:01
so i’m brad i’m gonna kick it back to you you
17:04
we’ve got to what i think are awesome tools for finding out what’s what’s
17:10
really that good nugget of content that you can share with but you know you can
17:15
be what content is being shared across social media in a very quick efficient
17:20
way to stay on every friday on your Facebook page you want to share some
17:25
localized content you can come into buzz sumo and just search for buffalo new
17:29
york it’s going to show you over the most recent I actually can filter by
17:35
date on the left-hand side there so we filtered by the past year for the
17:38
example
17:38
you can see what content will share the most across Facebook LinkedIn Twitter
17:43
Pinterest Google+ then when you go to repurpose that content you’re sure that
17:48
you’re sharing content that is already working on that specific platform to an
17:52
audience that’s already engaged with that content and like Brad said you’re
17:56
not wasting your time looking for a blog post that people might like you’re a
18:00
part of the conversation you’re sharing good high-quality content that people
18:03
are enjoying their engaging with and they want to continue consuming so
18:09
buzzed suppose an awesome way to look at different locations specific content if
18:14
you want to speak about your specific industry and maybe share some healthcare
18:17
news you can use this tool to really refined what’s working well on social
18:23
and then shared across your own channels great and then you have read a novel
18:27
another one I was just gonna see his feedly start interrupt your fine
18:31
yeah deeply is another great tool and it lets you put an RSS feed
18:37
so every blog has what’s known as an RSS feed you can combine multiple blogs so
18:43
that instead of going to places like from the healthcare industry modern
18:48
healthcare healthcare news or even the healthcare division on forbes instead of
18:52
going to each of those blogs looking for one piece of content that you really
18:55
like you can put them all together into one massive condensed version of those
19:02
blogs you’re looking at one gigantic feet of all that content is a great way
19:07
to put it all into one specific location enough to go out across all those
19:10
channels and look at different content just one really specific place to find
19:15
all the content that matters video
19:17
yeah huge time-saver and internally here for Barker marketing and in for our
19:22
clients we use feedly to put together these just extensive spreadsheets that
19:27
that target specific profiles of customers that were trained a market to
19:33
for our clients so we think about the resources that they look at we look at
19:38
industry trade publications magazine sites news outlets we pull that into one
19:44
central place it makes planning out that content strategy so much easier and so
19:50
much more fat
19:51
give because we’re looking at what articles are already getting the most
19:54
engagement what topics already getting the most engaging what’s resonating so
19:58
too
19:59
awesome tools so thank you read the next tool that we have on the list here is
20:05
Pinterest and before I turn it over to Tony I got to say that I kind of have a
20:09
this this love-hate relationship with Pinterest my wife loves it and I hate it
20:16
the reason i hate those is kind of selfish my on my wife is always out
20:21
there looking for new home decorating tips new fashion new really things that
20:27
she wants to buy a hand she’s tagging those on her pinterest wall so that she
20:31
can remember them later
20:33
it’s actually good for me when when holidays or birthday or anniversary come
20:38
around because on my shopping list is already created for me but it’s an
20:43
interesting way that people are using this tool to really pinpoint what
20:49
they’re interested in and what you should be informed about so Tony sorry
20:56
to interrupt their but walk us through how interest applies here for marketing
21:01
professionals
21:02
yeah I know and that’s a great example in a way to share about your wife I mean
21:07
people on there all the time posting content particularly things that they
21:13
find appealing or I catch and very visual platform and I my guess would be
21:20
you know even if the people on this call have not used pinterest for business
21:26
purposes that they’re all somewhat familiar with the layout or at least
21:30
familiar with interest itself the name itself and i would definitely recommend
21:34
checking it out from a business standpoint and curating content because
21:39
if you look at some of the numbers you know pinterest 276 million registered
21:45
users there’s a there are a billion boards divided among those users and
21:52
there are 50 billion pinterest pins such means a conic content you know we did a
21:58
quick search just for this example here on desserts and you get all kinds of
22:03
amazing images and amazing articles and things that if desserts would apply to
22:09
your business you could certainly you know borrow some of the photos and use
22:14
those as part of your content and you know every day there’s 14 million
22:18
articles pin so you can keep that keep checking back every single day and
22:22
you’re just going to come up with more content and photos that are out there to
22:27
use yes use Pinterest almost always kind of like a search engine so go out there
22:31
and type in what you’re interested in
22:33
see what people what the public is posting it go out and connect with your
22:39
customers if they have a Pinterest account see what they’re posting see
22:43
what they’re interested in is going to give you some real keen insight into
22:46
what their emotional drivers are and then you can use that for your messaging
22:51
for your posting for your content even on sales calls right so instead of just
22:57
picking up and and and you know the cold calling
23:01
ok have some have some nice little banter back and forth about what they’re
23:07
interested in great great tool and another one Tony if you don’t mind
23:11
simply yes simply uh you know the great thing about simply that really allow you
23:19
to share some of that content that you’ve gathered but you’re still able to
23:23
promote yourself your business get links back to your website you know with a
23:29
call to action you know you can see kind of a generic example here on the side
23:33
but call to action that will bring people back to your site which is really
23:37
one of the keys you want to bring them back to the hub of your digital
23:40
marketing which which is your website you do this by overlaying your own logo
23:46
or information or call the action onto a piece of content that you shared and you
23:51
know it’s not anything that you’re saying you own as far as the content but
23:55
you’re able to attach your name to that content and if you’re posting something
24:01
you know obviously the goal post something that your audience wants to
24:05
see and it’s interested in
24:07
well then they are going to associate your brand and your name with that
24:12
content and again hopefully come back
24:15
check out your site see what you have to
24:17
for an associate that with what you’ve posted so there’s a lot of value there
24:21
for your organization that wouldn’t necessarily be there if you were just
24:27
simply sharing links are taking articles from from outside vendors and posting
24:33
them this
24:34
this allows you to attach your name in yourself to that content
24:37
yeah one of the biggest mistakes that we see in social media marketing in an
24:41
online marketing is people sharing other companies content if all I mentioned
24:49
earlier original content is is key but if you’re not producing that original
24:53
content sharing other people’s content without this tool all you’re doing is
24:57
driving traffic somebody else’s website are they ever going to come back and
25:01
find you probably not
25:03
ok so if you are sharing other people’s content you simply as a way to keep your
25:07
brand on top of that content of the call to action on that piece of content is to
25:12
come back to your website not stay at their website so really really cool tool
25:17
tool and bread
25:19
we’ve just started kind of implementing this for a lot of our clients it’s a
25:21
newer tool that we’ve come across there are using so far what’s the experience
25:25
and the experiences is pretty positive we’re seeing that people are coming back
25:30
to the original website to follow that call that at called action displayed at
25:36
the bottom and really if you want to think about an example if you’re an
25:40
independent contractor and you’re sharing information from another blog
25:44
and that’s driving me back to another contractors website
25:48
why would they ever pick up the phone and call you they now have a contact
25:51
form right there they might forget even where they got that content from while
25:56
you’re sharing a great resource and you’re being helpful to people they
25:59
might not remember where they initially found that piece of content so adding in
26:03
something like simply at the bottom where they can now get driven back to
26:06
your homeland is an excellent tool a great way to continue engaging your
26:10
audience but also keeping your branding in the forefront
26:13
awesome thank you alright its content
26:19
key key key to your social media marketing efforts to try to create as
26:24
much original content as possible
26:25
fill in the gaps with some curated content
26:29
now let’s take a step over to graphics and pictures worth a thousand words rate
26:35
so what we find in social and online marketing is that pictures are really
26:42
really important if you want to get your message across
26:46
you want your message to show up in front of more people’s eyes and if you
26:49
want people to engage with your content you need strong compelling images strong
26:54
compelling graphics go along with it Tony you found these statistics and I’ve
26:59
seen hundreds similar to it so walkthrough why images are so important
27:04
yeah and you know generally speaking to some great graphic make your content
27:10
more attractive and more memorable and your audience’s definitely more likely
27:15
to engage with visual content versus non visual and just looking at a couple
27:20
quick statistics here you know anytime you see percentages in the nineties you
27:25
know it’s something that you probably need to pay attention to and the graphic
27:30
on the Left states and ninety percent of information transmitted to the brain is
27:35
visual so when someone comes across when you come across just a stunning photo or
27:41
studying graphic that you can include within your social post that’s going to
27:45
make an impact on somebody when they see that and they’re going to be more likely
27:48
to remember that and to know who it came from and to go back to that site and to
27:54
just engage with that post and then the the statistic on the right
27:59
ninety-four percent content with relevant images get 94 person more views
28:04
than content without and you know people pay attention people see a beautiful
28:09
photo again a great graphic they’re gonna pay more attention they’re going
28:13
to take a look at what you’re trying to say you know a lot of times in and most
28:17
people on this call can probably relate
28:19
maybe you’re looking at your facebook feed or different social media platforms
28:24
and you see something without a graphic it just kind of blend in and you’re more
28:28
likely to skip over and not even really pay attention
28:31
it’s the graphics that catch your eye so we definitely encourage you to to look
28:36
to create and include graphics in your in your post in your marketing you had a
28:41
lot of people when they think about
28:42
graphics think that they have to have a full-time designer on staff they get
28:46
scared away cuz they don’t have photoshop or photoshop skills weren’t
28:50
walk through some tools that anyone can use to create really nice looking
28:55
graphics now will they be a hundred percent as good as somebody that is
29:00
great with photoshop maybe maybe not
29:04
ok but they’re they’re good enough to have make sure that you have a very
29:07
professional look and feel and drive more results from your content so the
29:13
first one Tony one splash yeah splash is great its online photo database that’s
29:20
something that you can join for free and there’s thousands of photos and there
29:24
you can search for based on different subjects whatever you might be looking
29:28
for for your post very high quality and you can use all the photos for free
29:33
without any kind of credit you don’t have to source it or credit it and then
29:38
splash your prides himself on continually adding photos every week or
29:44
so so they they promise at least 10 more high-quality photos every 10 days but
29:48
there’s a there’s quite a lot of nice imagery available on this website and I
29:55
and again you look at these photos that we’ve taken here and these are things
29:58
that aren’t capture your audience’s eye versus just posting a headline with some
30:03
tax you know these are the things that are going to get their attention and
30:07
engage them a little bit more with your brand and I want to scare everybody on
30:11
this call but we get this question or see this all the time or company so i
30:16
just found an image on google and put it up there
30:18
well that’s gonna get into some legal trouble and it’s going to catch up with
30:23
you at one point two big players in the image arena shutterstock and getty
30:31
images are very aggressive at going after companies that are using images
30:36
illegally by going after companies that just pull an image off of google and use
30:42
it for commercial purposes
30:44
we’ve had several companies that we’ve worked with that ran into these issues
30:49
and we’re talking thousands of dollars in
30:52
legal fees fines copyright issues
30:56
don’t do it use a tool like this
30:59
yeah you might be using more limited you might have a more limited access to
31:05
different types of photos but use tools like this where you have rights to use
31:09
the image and you’re not stealing it to keep yourself out of that hot water
31:13
another one another tool that we like is Pablo and Brad you use this one pretty
31:21
frequently Pablo is very similar to on flash in the event that the images that
31:27
are within their database can be used for your social sharing images with read
31:32
the part that you can also add your branding and packaging to that image so
31:37
if you are creating some sort of social sharing image and you want to add a nice
31:41
message to it I think that you should do that you also should add your branding
31:46
every image so that when it is shared your branding is front center Pablo is a
31:50
great tool that’s offered by butter which we’ll get into a little bit and
31:54
it’s completely free and it lets you create a really stunning image with that
31:58
back then branding great thanks
32:01
another one that we like is one called spark post time
32:05
this is actually part of the adobe suite so feud if you do have an adobe creative
32:09
license
32:10
this is part of that there’s also a scaled-back free version and most of the
32:15
tools that we mention here today have both completely free version in a paid
32:20
version and for the purposes on this column get your feet wet the free
32:24
version of all these tools works works just fine for the time being but what
32:28
this does is lets you put text very easily over top of some really really
32:34
nice images so look at that image in the middle 20 cocktail recipes that photo in
32:39
and of itself would be fined post on social just adding that little bit of
32:44
text creates a really professional feel makes it look really good really
32:49
polished so spark post is a really nice tool you can use both on mobile and
32:53
desktop which is nice if you’re doing things from your phone you can you can
32:57
adjust images right there so so really nice tool and then another one Brad for
33:03
Instagram specifically as layout
33:06
with layout i like the fact that you combine multiple photos into one sharing
33:11
image so you have a team builder you have a team event maybe some community
33:15
outreach or maybe your contractor and you put together a before and after
33:20
picture you can combine those into one image that we share on a plate like
33:25
Facebook or Twitter to share both the images but you have one really
33:29
great-looking visual side by side with layout you can combine a bunch of photos
33:34
together as simple as to or you can get up to as menus you want i want to eight
33:38
to ten but the great part about it is it all condenses into one image so when you
33:43
share it’s all one location great and bread we just had a someone comment on a
33:48
tool that they use called pixabay i haven’t used to personally but another
33:53
interesting tool out there to help you create some some really nice graphics
33:57
and do it easily without a creative or designer degree so get a lot of great
34:02
great tools out there
34:05
alright now we’re going to transition a little bit to scheduling so we’ve talked
34:09
about creating great content we’ve talked about tying a really strong great
34:14
image to that and branding that image to your company now we need to look at
34:18
scheduling and when and where it makes sense in and really why do it i mean
34:24
there are literally hundreds of places that you can post this content
34:29
ok by using a scheduling tool you’re going to be able to kind of organize all
34:34
of this and in Tony we use this for a lot of our clients first kind of explain
34:41
why and and talk about some of the advantages of using a scheduling tool as
34:45
opposed to just doing this all manually in real time
34:50
well you know too the key that we stress far social media marketing are frequent
34:57
and consistent posting but I’m what that is your full focus of your job it’s hard
35:05
to always find the time to do and it’s hard to stay regular and and keep it as
35:09
its top priority it deserves to be so the scheduling software what it really
35:15
does is it allows you to take those windows of time that you may have over
35:19
the course
35:19
to the week you know 12 to three times per week you can sit down and schedule
35:24
posts for a few days in advance
35:26
I you know it’s perfect for weekend post so you know even if this is socially
35:32
your full-time job and and you’re going away for the weekend we just don’t have
35:37
time saturday and sunday you can sit down on friday and schedule some posts
35:41
to your company they go out over the course of the weekend so that you stay
35:44
in front of your target audience you know and on that same thinking it’s
35:49
great for holiday post it’s great for late-night posts so depending on when
35:54
your audience is out there and engaging with your brand you can sit down during
35:59
the course your day when you have time and schedule the post to make sure that
36:03
they are in front of your audience at the best time and if you had the the
36:08
chance to listen to our last webinar on social media we talked a lot about
36:14
scheduling and what the best time and day and everything else is and really
36:17
how to find that off your business but what we found is that for most
36:20
businesses the best time of day to post on Facebook is usually between eight and
36:25
ten at night so much you want to be sitting on your couch posting things
36:29
manually choose one of these scheduling tools it’s going to make your life so
36:33
much better it’s really going to allow you to optimize your social posts to hit
36:38
when your audience is most active so very important and Tony the two that we
36:43
we generally run across our buffer and sweet talk about you know what what you
36:48
prefer
36:49
yeah I you know it’s far the tool use them both and it really depends i would
36:56
say you know as far as which one someone my tooth you to really depends on the
37:00
purposes behind wider using that buffer is great as more of a simple content
37:07
publisher and schedule scheduler if you’re looking to put things out you
37:11
know a few days in advance you got some good content you want to keep it flowing
37:15
offers great
37:16
whose suite is a little more in-depth it’s more of a kind of an overall social
37:21
management tool where you can do a little bit more with with your profile
37:25
you can get more involved in and followers and likes and doing all the
37:28
things that are you know that take place within your social media management
37:33
so it kind of depends on what your main purpose for it is and what you expect to
37:38
you before but there are two great tools that are worth checking out if you’re
37:43
looking to start getting into scheduling some your post great and again with both
37:48
of these is free version there’s paid version paid version of opens up more
37:52
opportunity but the free version is as great as well so i’m personally I like
37:57
buffer just because it’s in if interface is just so clean and easy and simple to
38:03
use HootSuite is great too but again I like the simplicity of buffer
38:07
alright so those are those are some of the scheduling tools that we like now I
38:12
want to focus on some some other tools or tactics that really drive home
38:18
results almost immediately and the first I want to discuss is called remarketing
38:24
or retargeting and basically it’s a way to be way more strategic with how you
38:31
spend your online advertising dollars so the way that this works and i mentioned
38:37
earlier that we’ve probably all been a victim or been involved in in
38:41
remarketing by a company without necessarily knowing how or why
38:45
so the way it works is a visitor comes to your website comes to your business
38:50
may be flips through a few pages on your website doesn’t complete a complete in
38:56
order doesn’t get your contact page to reach out to doesn’t convert what that
39:02
visitor leaves ok if you did nothing else and they didn’t actively come back
39:07
to your website a lost opportunity you’re not staying in front of those
39:11
people because you have no way to stay in front of them you don’t know exactly
39:14
who it was with remarketing that visitor comes your website they land on your
39:19
website a little cookie or a tracking token is placed on their machine now we
39:25
know who they are now we can begin marketing to them and we do this through
39:30
google’s ad network and also through facebook so using Google’s ad network
39:35
there are publishers all across the internet that serve up google ads to
39:39
make money
39:40
these are newspaper sites like Buffalo News New York Times they’re very
39:45
reputable sites like
39:46
forbes magazine they’re very niche sites so websites all across the internet
39:52
serve up google ads you can begin making sure that your brand stays in front of
39:59
your prospects so you spend all these time and resources and energy driving
40:04
people to your website they don’t convert the first time you use
40:07
remarketing to consistently stay in front of them we do this internally here
40:12
for ourselves for Parker marketing so as you’re out on the internet if you’ve
40:16
come to our website before and and most of you probably have you’ll begin seeing
40:21
our brand in front of people and we use it as is purely a branding tool
40:26
ok we’re not using this as a direct sales tool we just want to remind you
40:30
that we’re here or partner if you need anything if you need some marketing
40:34
support we’re happy to help but we’re keeping our brand and our message in
40:38
front of an audience that already expressed an interest in us this is a
40:43
great great great way to stay in front of those C&D prospects and get them into
40:49
that a and B category it’s great way to get those amb prospects to pull the
40:53
trigger and convert and do business with you
40:56
so really effective have companies that are spending maybe two hundred dollars a
41:00
month and they’re reaching 20 or 30,000 people each and every month that have
41:05
already expressed an interest in their business and here’s an example of where
41:08
some something show up
41:10
ok so in the back their facebook advertising you see some ads on the
41:14
left-hand column this is showing up Tony pulled these screenshots for us this is
41:18
showing up because he was on amazon and he was looking at ladders in this
41:23
specific ladder to so now this is showing up in his facebook advertising
41:29
on the left on the right it’s showing up directly in his facebook feed its
41:33
showing up on other websites all around the internet and it’s increasing
41:36
likelihood that he’s going to purchase that ladder because it’s in front of him
41:40
all the time
41:42
the other thing that we’re doing is remarketing directly in people’s news
41:47
feeds so let’s say you have a customer database list or you had you you
41:54
purchased required an email database from some lists company you can actually
41:58
upload that in
41:59
to facebook and begin targeting just those people on that list a facebook
42:05
will cross-reference their internal database scrape those email addresses
42:09
and then you can begin marketing to people at home when their defenses are
42:14
down and stay in front of them all the time
42:16
the key is to not be too salesy but if you look on the right here we did this
42:21
for our own webinar here
42:23
ok we have a great list of business professionals that we want to do
42:27
business with upload that into facebook and we just stay top-of-mind with people
42:31
and increase the likelihood that they’re going to reach out to us my adhered
42:36
reached almost 1,200 people wanna say spent maybe five dollars if that very
42:42
very very effective and now Tony mentioned earlier email marketing its
42:48
kind of that the Forgotten child but one that is extremely effective
42:55
yeah and in fact if you know anyone on this and the comments and check out the
43:00
Barkers that we have a lot of blog articles regarding email marketing and
43:05
there’s really a simple reading for that it it’s very effect is no not dead
43:11
despite what some of you may have heard and and really the staff and some of the
43:16
items here on this graphic definitely back that up and some of the things that
43:20
we see here you seventy-four percent of adults that are online prefer email as
43:26
their main method of communication so over you know over facebook Messenger
43:32
and over Twitter they prefer to get their communication via their email
43:37
seventy-two percent of of adults check their email six or more times per day so
43:44
people are on their people are still anxious or i should say eager and
43:49
excited when when new messages come into their inbox and if you are an
43:55
organization that sending out emails then you can have that excitement on
43:59
there and when you send something to them as well now i hear you know a lot
44:03
of people at what Millennials Millennials are young adults
44:08
we’ve also seen studies one study by a destra particular so that’s
44:13
seventy-three percent of monomials choose email at their preferred
44:17
communication when hearing from a business so email is far from dead and
44:23
with the popularity of it with the Millennial group it’s going to continue
44:27
being effective tool going forward so it’s something that we definitely
44:30
recommend you take a look at for your marching couple of the tools that are
44:36
out there
44:36
mailchimp and then we offer one called Barker mail so just like the other areas
44:45
that we’ve got these are great tools that can help automate your email
44:51
marketing programs they really make it easy for you you know in the case of
44:55
barking male we provide the content we manage the articles we can track all the
45:00
results for you and then we can change the way we’re doing things obviously
45:05
based on the results in the analytics mailchimp you know it’s great self
45:10
service standpoint you can go and use the templates to create your emails
45:14
upload your list schedule your send and again you can track some of the
45:19
statistics there as far as opens clicks unsubscribed it’s cetera so again what
45:24
email marketing as well there are tools out there is make your life easier and
45:27
make your digital marketing you know more automated and like we said before
45:32
help you work smarter not harder
45:34
yeah what’s great about email marketing is everything is tracked so somebody’s
45:38
clicking on an article for clicking on an offer to clicking on a product you
45:43
know exactly who clicked on it and you can be way more targeted here follow-up
45:47
cell’s activities so really really great tool we use it internally here our
45:52
clients that use it
45:54
find great success in using it in reaching engaging with your audience so
46:00
today we outlined a bunch of tools that you can use many of them free most of
46:05
them free that you can use internally there to have a great marketing plan
46:12
great marketing strategy great marketing tactics the challenge that many of our
46:18
clients run into though is that they’re limited on time they’re limited on
46:22
resources they know that they can do this but they just don’t have time to
46:26
get everything done or distracts from other activities that are more core to
46:32
their to their job function so while we love sharing information on how to do it
46:37
yourself we also want to remind you that we’re here to help we can do everything
46:43
that we’ve just covered for you
46:45
we offer several different programs in which will write and generate content
46:50
mentioned earlier working with though we have 50 different writers who work with
46:54
our clients on coming up with the right messaging with the right articles with
46:58
the right content that original content we have some clients that we create and
47:04
maintain all of their social profiles from building their audience to actually
47:09
engaging with their audience and sharing content so we offer services as hole or
47:15
a la carte to really pitch in and help where you need it and as you saw that
47:22
chart that I showed earlier we get great results we track all this report on key
47:28
conversions and we stay on top of all of this so that we adjust your strategy and
47:33
your plan to get the best results
47:35
alright that’s that’s my big sales pitch there i do want to invite you to join us
47:41
on our next webinar and we’re going to open it up for questions here in a
47:45
minute we had a lot of questions come in but my our next webinar is going to
47:49
offer 25 innovative sales and marketing ideas for your business and these are 25
47:54
things that either
47:55
we’ve run across that other businesses are doing or we’re doing for our clients
47:59
that we don’t see a lot of people doing in the market that are really really
48:03
effective at generating visibility generating engagement and driving
48:09
results driving sales so be sure to join in there you can sign up at mark.com
48:15
forward slash webinars we also have recordings of all of our past webinars
48:19
there so if you missed one in the past or gonna go check out that social media
48:23
webinar that i mentioned earlier you can find that recording there in the
48:28
recording of today’s webinar will be posted there in just a few days as well
48:32
now with that said I wanted to jump over dance
48:36
some questions both the came in before the presentation and the came in during
48:39
the presentation if you if you have questions feel free to enter those in
48:44
the question box to the right or reach out to us individually and be happy to
48:48
answer those but let’s dig into some of these so the first one what analytics
48:53
tool do you prefer
48:54
Brad I’m going to pitch this one over to you you mentioned in the presentation
48:58
already i think google analytics is essential if you’re posting content on
49:03
your blog and featuring different types of articles and resources across your
49:07
website you need to have analytic on your site to not only understand how
49:10
people are getting to that content but also understand what they’re doing after
49:14
they consume that content so hands now Google Analytics is the best tool to
49:19
measure results
49:21
terrific thanks and I’m going to combine these next two so can i use photos that
49:25
i find by a google nope don’t do it don’t put yourself in for the potential
49:32
to get sued or have a legal litigation we mentioned some of those tools out
49:37
there to get those online photos go out and get them to go you can use google
49:43
search and if you adjust in only search for Creative Commons and photos that are
49:49
licensed for commercial reuse you can find those through google and and those
49:54
are our free to use internally here we do pay for photo subscriptions we pay
50:01
quite handsomely for that but the benefit is that our clients get access
50:05
to those photo library so and by access i mean if we’re posting content on your
50:10
behalf we can use all those photos and it’s not costing you anything more
50:15
so we go through and we use a variety of images from from getty images from
50:23
istock photos.com so there’s a lot of great great images we do like I stock it
50:30
has some really nice images and there’s some other resources out there to adobe
50:35
has a photo library where many of the images are a dollar
50:39
there’s a website out there called canva canv a design tool and a photo library
50:47
many of those images are a dollar
50:49
some great resources out there friend Tony if you can think of any others you
50:54
know shelters out
50:55
Fotolia is another example give them good imagery there for a pre price and
51:02
that’s Fotolia that’s fot OU l io right I a perfect
51:08
okay thanks you got you get the F at the beginning was closed in it and I was
51:14
going to reiterate and printers because I think that’s a great tool for getting
51:19
getting content getting from graphic then you mentioned canvas on that is one
51:23
that I use quite a bit and yeah i do think that that’s a great place to go
51:28
perfect we mentioned earlier what’s your favorite scheduling tool think the
51:32
consensus across the board here is buffer we we really like it easy simple
51:37
to use
51:38
just great tools got this great plugin that you can attach to your internet
51:43
browser Chrome browser where when you want to share a piece of content sharing
51:47
page just click that button it automatically opens up your buffer
51:50
account feeds it in just just really really nice tool the next question here
51:57
is what uh what is the best and this actually came in during our presentation
52:00
here too
52:01
what’s the best day and time to post to social outlets and the answer is it
52:07
depends there isn’t a specific one time it’s all for every platform out there
52:14
that’s going to work for it
52:15
what we suggest doing is looking at each of your social platforms so look at
52:21
facebook and twitter look at LinkedIn Facebook in particular has a great
52:26
feature called insights
52:28
so if you have a facebook page click on insights and then from there you can
52:32
find out when your audience people to follow you are most active it’ll give it
52:37
will show you by day and it will show you buy time if I was to give you a
52:41
blanket time on on facebook like i mentioned earlier during the week from
52:45
that eight to ten p.m. . is usually we usually see the highest activity
52:51
ok so use those scheduling tools like buffer to make sure that your posts
52:55
publish at those T times
52:57
twitter is a little bit different i would suggest doing there is publishing
53:01
at several times
53:02
throughout the day today and on different days seeing what resonates see
53:06
if you can find anything with linkedin what we have found is that most people
53:12
are active on Linkedin more during business hours especially in the
53:16
mornings so even even 7229 i would get in the habit of of posting them can test
53:22
tried tried different times but that seems to work really well and also we
53:27
found on linkedin you’re doing b2b sales perfect
53:30
what you don’t want to do is post too often to linkedin because what happens
53:35
is the more that you post your kind of superseding your previous post so we
53:41
were in the habit of posting few times a day or several times a week once day
53:45
what we’re finding is that we’re getting less overall impressions for each post
53:49
because we’re stealing impressions from our last post so generally what we do on
53:53
linkedin is post at the most every other day
53:57
mom’s there’s just a real quick tip for it
54:01
another question that we got and something that kinda came in throughout
54:05
the presentation similar question is now how do i go about finding whether or not
54:10
my website is performing well somebody asks how do i go about finding it if my
54:15
SEO is up to speed and then another question came in about the setup of
54:21
their facebook page now all of these kind of fall into evaluating and
54:28
analyzing and looking at your overall online marketing strategy job so I’m
54:34
going to throw tool tool tools out there for you
54:37
one is called website greater . com
54:41
it’s a tool analysis tool that hubspot on a web platform company marketing
54:48
automation platform company put out its really nice at getting a holistic look
54:54
at how things are going
54:56
the drawback to it is that you’re going to get a lot of information that you’re
55:00
not going to know what to do with and the other thing is a lot of times these
55:06
tools will use scare tactics so we’ll go out and we’ll find any tiny little
55:11
detail that’s wrong or could be improved with your strategy and make it look like
55:15
the big issue don’t get scared off by these ok there’s no website out there
55:20
that’s going to score a hundred in fact most of them score 50 or lower so if you
55:27
use these tools you see that score don’t let it be a scare tactic don’t get too
55:30
scared but sit down with somebody that knows and look at it and then see what
55:37
really is an issue what really does need to get fixed and in the other tool that
55:44
i wanted to mention is marker marketing and not some self-serving but we do this
55:49
constantly for our clients and constantly for our prospects and we have
55:53
a free standing offer out there were happy to sit down with you and run a
55:58
report using a variety of different tools we have here and give you feedback
56:03
on what’s working and what isn’t working
56:07
share ideas and things that you could be doing on your own things that we could
56:10
help supplement with and give you the cost and then you can decide what you
56:14
want to do with it but I think running those reports at least twice a year
56:19
makes a ton of sense it’s going to highlight areas where you can improve
56:22
its going to highlight areas and what you’re doing good and you should be
56:26
doing more of its going to give you a real nice look at how your business is
56:30
performing online so if you’re interested in that free analysis free
56:35
estimate three child and let us know you can send an email through to info at
56:42
Parker com parq air and we’ll be sure to run one of those reports and and
56:49
honestly will probably be myself Tony or brand that’s going to run that report
56:53
and we’ll even if you want on schedule time to kind of walk you through it to
56:58
show you what makes sense
57:00
addressing and what doesn’t to make sure that your marketing dollars in time and
57:05
your internal resources are spent appropriately so again thank you thank
57:11
you so much for joining us for today we hope that you can join us next month for
57:16
25 great ideas for your business and don’t be shy
57:20
there’s anything that we can help with such support your internal efforts there
57:25
please please let us know thanks again and we’ll talk to you soon!

Share it

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Email

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Posts