Category: Digital Marketing

If you’ve ever wondered what a landing page is and whether your website needs one, you’re not alone. There are plenty of discussions around the planning, designing and using landing pages online, both in blogs and on social media. Answers vary from a landing page being your site’s home page, right through to a page with a strong call to action. However, the truth is, a landing page is a page on your website you have deliberately created to capture leads.

Understanding How a Landing Page Works

Each landing page has a clear goal: to collect the essential details from your visitors. Rather than trying to sell your visitor your product or service, you are providing them with something so valuable they are happy to share their contact details with you. What you provide is called a lead magnet. A lead magnet can range from an eBook, a cheat’s sheet, a downloadable template or a checklist. It has to be something related to what your business offers and which the visitor sees as being valuable and something they want! You then tell them what they need to do to get the lead magnet, called the call to action.

Let’s take a look at how the lead magnet fits into the workings of a landing page:

  • Your visitor is directed to your landing page, usually from a paid advertisement
  • They are presented with an irresistible offer; your lead magnet and a strong call to action telling them to enter their details into a form on the page
  • Your visitor enters their details, usually name and email address, which converts them from being a visitor or being a lead
  • Their information is stored in your leads database
  • Your lead is directed to a thank you page where they receive the lead You can also include other calls to action here, such as to check out your blog or contact you
  • You contact your leads to build up a solid relationship with them and to market your products or services to them

Why Using Landing Pages is Important

The number one reason why you need a landing page is that it generates leads for your business. It is much easier to sell to someone whom you have already developed a relationship with, demonstrated your competence and who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer. A lead has voluntarily given you their contact details because they were interested in your lead magnet. They are a warm lead and ready and waiting to become your customer or client!

Landing pages will also help you:

  • Collect information about your visitor’s demographics
  • Provide a place for you to present your best offers
  • Show you which offers or lead magnets work best with your target audience
  • Let you test out different aspects, such as your copy, images and keywords

When creating a landing page, all other distractions must be removed to maximise the leads you receive. The copy must also be meticulously written and tested to ensure maximum conversion rates too. We can help you with both of those here at FutureLab. Our web developers will build and design you the ideal landing page, with our copywriting team providing irresistible copy. We’ll take care of the testing and monitoring of the results from your pages, plus establish a high performing digital marketing program for it too.

For further information or to begin the process of custom building your new landing pages, please contact your FutureLab team now!

You’re looking for a new fully customised website, so you head to Google to find someone to build it for you. You’re either going to enter ‘custom web solutions’ or ‘web development.’ After all, they both mean the same thing, don’t they?

Actually, no. While it’s true that people with web design and web development skills share many of the same characteristics, they don’t produce identical results.  Today we’re going to explain the differences between these two terms to help you select the right website solution for your company.

What is Custom Web Design?

Custom web design provides you with a website solution tailor-made specifically for your business. It’s what we do here at Futurelab. We take a holistic view of your business; it’s reasons for needing a website, your services or products, and your branding to customise a 100% unique solution for your digital needs from the ground up.

A customised approach means we start from scratch when building a website. Only adding what you need, we cut through the “normal” clutter a pre-designed template gives, ensuring your visitors use the site exactly how you want them to.

A customised web solution also focuses on the aesthetics and usability of your website. The way it looks regarding graphics, font and colours, to the way a visitor navigates and interacts with the site are the important details for us. A complete outside-the-box solution, we bring dreams to life for our clients, and you’re next in line!

What is Web Development?

Website developers are sometimes called programmers or coders. They’re concerned with all the little parts which make up a website. Using HTML, CCS, Javascript, they write custom scripts for websites, setting up the code needed to show banners, forms and shopping carts.

Web development is focused on adapting a pre-built website platform, such as WordPress. It doesn’t mean that we give you the same solution as everyone else though. Your website is infinitely customisable, fully branded for your business and contains all the content you require it to have. It’s just not built specifically for your business alone.

Differences Between Custom Web Design & Web Development

The answer lies in the word ‘custom.’ A custom web solution means the entire website is built specifically for your business and your business alone. Our dedicated creative director and the team of programmers use their skills to completely customise you a website from the ground up. This option is the costlier of the two.

Web development does include making changes to an existing web platform but using something which is already built and which thousands of other websites are using too. However, the price point is lower than a custom web solution.

To find out more about our customised web design and development services, please contact our creative team today.

Wading into the world of AdWords advertising may be an overwhelming but necessary job for a small business owner. You don’t need a full-time marketing person (yet) but you’ve still got to bring in your customers. And these days of course, advertising online is widespread, with internet advertising revenue surpassing television revenue some years back now. So what usually happens in a small business is the boss or the receptionist rolls up their sleeves and tries to get to grips with a whole new method and style of advertising, plus learning all the best-practice rules and regulations along the way.

Clearly, neither the boss nor the receptionist is the best person for the job. While they may muddle through well enough, both already have full-time roles and skills suited to those roles, not necessarily to the world of online advertising.

To help you out, we’ve put together a small starter guide for getting your online adverts up and running. It’s really only a tiny glimpse into all the cool things you can do with online advertising, but it should help you get going. We use Google AdWords to run our online ads as they are responsible for a full 30% of all online advertising revenue, increasing to 40% when you look at mobile-only advertising revenue. (In case you didn’t know, every time you do a search on Google and see a couple of adverts at the top of your search results – those ads come from AdWords. So it’s kind of a big deal.)

Step 1 – create your Google AdWords account.

Now like all Google products, you will need to have a Google account in order to open up an AdWords account. Nothing like boosting your own products I guess Google!

Here’s where you need to go to create your AdWords account: https://adwords.google.com

Step 2 – mapping out your first campaign

Before diving straight in to creating a new campaign, you’ll need to think carefully about your products or services and how you want to organise your account. One common mistake we see is clients who have mixed together lots of different products and services into one. Each type of product or service should be separated out in your account.

There are a few new terms and phrases to familiarise yourself with too:

  • Campaign – the top level. You set your budget and where you want your adverts to show at this level
  • Ad group – different products and services will be sorted into different Ad groups. For example, we separate out ‘web design’, ‘custom web development’ and ‘SEO services’ as three distinct services. For an eCommerce store, you might choose to have ‘shoes’, ‘bags’, ‘scarfs’ as three Ad groups, or separate each out into their own campaign – this is especially helpful if you want to manage the budget for each group individually.
  • Ad – your advert – self-explanatory! You’ll include some catchy text, a reason to click on the ad (eg, free shipping, best value etc), and you’ll direct each advert to a page on your website. You can create several adverts for the same ad group.
  • Keyword – the most important part of your AdWords account! Your keywords are the words and phrases you think people will use to find your products and services. You want to include all the variations and various ways people might search for your product or service. Each Ad group can have many keywords – it’s good to start off with around 20 and add or remove keywords as time goes on.

Use the above information to:

  • work out how to divide up your key products or services
  • think of good things to highlight about your own company – is it price, service, quality, something for free?
  • brainstorm some of the keywords to use for each Ad group
  • think about which page on your website you will direct people to from each ad – is it the homepage, the specific product page, a new page you have created just for advertising (“landing page”)?

Step 3 – Setting up a new campaign

Once you’ve done some groundwork thinking about your company and how you want to advertise, it’s time to set up your first campaign. To keep things really simple, choose the ‘Search network’ option for your campaign. The search network is Google search. Every time somebody searches in Google for something matching your own keywords, you’ll have a chance of your advert appearing.

Location location location – remember to choose the right part of the world to advertise to! Select NZ or get more specific and choose regions of NZ. Google recommends to choose the option ‘searching for or in my targeted location’ but if you are really a local service, it might be best to just choose ‘in my targeted location’ instead.

Budget – set a daily budget. You can alter this at any time. Try starting off with $5 or $10 per day and adjust as you add more Ad groups and expand your knowledge of AdWords.

Next you’ll set up your first Ad group, write your first advert and select your first list of keywords. Exciting stuff. You can follow the AdWords recommendations you’ll see along the way here. However here are a few tips based on mistakes we’ve seen in the past:

-The URL you show to your customers. Just because there’s space to write a long URL doesn’t mean you should! We’ve often found that the most effective URL to show on your ad is simply the main domain – “domain.co.nz” not “domain.co.nz/service/sub-service”. It doesn’t need to get complicated – and it can start to look unprofessional too.

-Make sure your advert and your keywords are closely related. You want Google to give you a good quality score (yes.. they really do mark you) and that means your advert, keywords, and the web page you direct people to should all be closely related. Use your chosen keywords in your adverts and make sure you direct people to the most relevant pages of your website.

-Use general and specific keywords. Start off with a mix of broad and specific keywords. Over the days and weeks of your campaign, make sure to check the search terms that people are using to trigger your ad. You will probably find some searches that are not relevant to your business and are costing you money. You can exclude these keywords to make sure your money is going exactly where you want it to.

Step 4 – running your campaign

Once you’ve got things up and running, it’s not quite a case of ‘set and forget’. Rather you need to keep an eye on how the campaign is going – how much you’re spending, how well each keyword is scoring, how it’s affecting your sales or enquiries. Check the keyword searches, as outlined above, frequently. See how well your adverts are performing, and pause or remove keywords, ads and even Ad groups that don’t get you the results you want.

Step 5 – getting a little help from the professionals

It’s okay to ask for help! As a small business owner, you can’t juggle all the things, all the time. Getting a Google-certified AdWords specialist to look over your work can really help tidy up and streamline your results. Depending on your budget, you could set up your account yourself and then ask a professional for some advice on improvements and next steps. Or, work in conjunction with an AdWords specialist to get your adverts hitting maximum impact from the get-go.

As Google Partners and AdWords-certified specialists, we can help with advice, recommendations and management of your AdWords campaigns. If you’d like to discuss AdWords services with us, please get in touch.

Outsourcing – the word that businesses love and customers hate. Outsourcing is the hidden reality for many industries today, but the last thing a customer wants to hear is that their call is important to you, and by the way, we’ve outsourced our call centre to Indonesia.

So while businesses need to keep costs down, clients expect to be dealing with native English speakers who understand the issues they need resolved.

What to do in this situation? We’d like to introduce our solution to this problem for Australian corporations.

Outsource to New Zealand.

Cue the sheep-shagger and “poor little neighbour” jokes.

But think about it. Cheaper than Australian going rates. Only 3 hours away from Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne if you need to conduct business in person. English-speaking. And in the IT and tech industry, this outsource system works especially well. Below, we’ve outlined 5 brilliant reasons to outsource your work to New Zealand.

 

1.Same timezone, same culture, same language.

Ok, make that near enough the same timezone. In fact, the time difference can often work in your favour. When you straggle into the office at 9am, clutching your morning coffee, we’ve been working for 2 hours and made it onto our third caffeinated beverage already. That mean you’ll get work completed earlier in the day with plenty of time to check back with your clients – and then pass on feedback to your NZ team ready for the next day.

…same language, same culture (come on – you know the entire Northern Hemisphere can’t even tell us apart).

Shrimp on the barbie aside, Aussies and Kiwis don’t have the cultural or linguistic issues that can sometimes make collaborating on a project so frustrating. We’ll get what you’re talking about, first time around. It’s outsourcing but more like having an extension of your team working outside the office.

 

2.Up to date in Tech

New Zealand tech companies are working at the same level as Australia (ie, we’re not the budget overseas service that gives outsourcing its bad name). Just because we’re at the arse-end of the world, doesn’t mean we’re not keeping up with the latest technology in our given industry. As a tech company, our job is to keep up to date with what’s going on in the digital world, and develop accordingly. New Zealand has many start-ups and young, growing companies – that’s one of the benefits of being a relatively young society. A small and agile team who know what they’re doing can often be a boon to a larger corporation which needs deadlines met urgently.

 

3.Bright new business hub

Not only is NZ a hub for growing, tech-savvy businesses, we’ve also premiered bright young companies with world-changing ideas in the past few years. Xero accounting software, and Vend POS software immediately spring to mind. We’ve proved that NZ brains are at the forefront of industry progress – so if you’re looking for expert help, you’ve come to the right place.

 

4.Just a short plane ride away

At the end of the day, when all’s said and done – it’s not that hard to meet up in person, if you really rely on good ole’ fashioned face-time to do business. As a tech company, we often rely on phone, email, Skype calls, and Team Viewer when we are working remotely. While it’s true that tech workers DO prefer to work hidden away from other human beings and direct sunlight, we also have some regulars on the team who would be more than happy to hop across the ditch to help speed along a project.

 

5.And lastly… it’s cheeaper!

We left this point ‘till last because it’s not, in itself, a good enough reason to outsource. But when you’re looking to get the same services, at the same level of quality, without over-complicating the process… then it’s a great reason. Without selling ourselves short, the truth is that the same expert-level services cost less to hire in New Zealand compared to Australia. That’s a fact. And it’s just because companies in NZ tend to be a) smaller b) younger c) operating in a smaller market/economy. So take advantage while this great opportunity exists.

 

6.Bonus point: it’s already happening!

New Zealand and Australia often do business together (including our company). We’ve already completed work for several Australian companies and agencies. The longer you wait, the more you miss out on all the advantages of outsourcing to NZ.

So dip a toe in the Tasman – check out how much your next digital project would cost if you outsourced to an expert NZ tech company. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Here at FutureLab we’re always updating our portfolio with recent websites completed, yet we don’t often re-visit projects to see how a new website is benefiting its business.

Well, we’ve collected feedback and statistics from a number of the small Auckland businesses we’ve had the pleasure of providing with web design, and thought we’d share some of those success stories with you today.

 

Orewa Private Kindergarten

 

Orewa Private Kindergarten (OPK) had no existing website at all, so we were starting from scratch with this project. The kindergarten wanted to set up their online presence and get their website to feature when people searched for kindergartens in the Orewa and Hibiscus Coast area.

FutureLab set up the website for Orewa Private Kindergarten and also set up a Google+ page for the kindergarten, complete with the Orewa location of the kindergarten added to Google Maps. The website package for OPK included SEO. We provided meta titles and descriptions for all pages, wrote some new content for OPK, and linked the pages internally using keywords.

The result? Orewa Private Kindergarten’s new website, www.opk.co.nz, now ranks on the first page for the following keywords: “Orewa kindergarten” and “Childcare Orewa”

This means that we got OPK to the front page for their most important keywords, beating out competition from older and more established websites! That’s a success story and a half.

 

Childcare Orewa - Google
Childcare Orewa – Google Search

Kiwibaby.co.nz

 

Julia from Kiwibaby came to us looking to totally revamp her online shop selling baby products. Previously, Julia was receiving one or two online orders a week, and her site wasn’t ranking particularly highly for her keywords. Now, Julia tells us she received a couple of orders every day thanks to the revamped site. She’s also moved up the rankings for the keywords “baby car seats Auckland”, “prams Auckland” and more – and is ranking 4th currently for “baby products Auckland”, and 1st for “baby products online Auckland”! Julia is stoked about the increased business that her new website has brought to her business. (You can read more about her feedback on our testimonials page.)

 

Baby products online Auckland - Google Search
Baby products online Auckland – Google Search

Xtreme Nutrition

 

Xtreme Nutrition were another online store looking to help boost their online sales. These guys are a large business whose website was already experiencing a lot of online traffic and sales. FutureLab’s job was creating a new website that would provide a better user experience for their customers and help boost sales further. We added some new functions, like a rewards program and a better search function to help customers enjoy the site and use it more frequently.

Since launching the new website in December 2014, Xtreme Nutrition’s sales have increased 20%. That’s what we call a win!

 

FutureLab

 

Last, but not least, is our own website, www.futurelab.co.nz. Over the past year, we’ve been working on SEO and boosting our own traffic as we’ve continued to grow. It’s not just our clients who expect increased web traffic and sales from their new or updated websites; it’s us too.

Well, the results have been pretty good – coming from very modest rankings last year, we can now proudly say that we’re on the first page for ‘web design Takapuna’, ‘web development Takapuna’ custom web developers’, ‘Joomla developer Auckland’ and ‘Magento development Auckland’.

 

If you’d like to discuss getting a website for your business, or perhaps improving the SEO of your current website to drive more web traffic, talk to FutureLab. We can arrange a free, no-obligation consultation to discuss your needs and requirements.

The Christmas holiday season is fast approaching! We wanted to help out with a handy checklist to make sure your company is ready for Christmas. Read on for our 6 tips to prepare for the holiday closure.

Put your closing hours on your website

If your company is shutting down at any time over Christmas (and we hope that you’ve scheduled some time off!) make sure you’ve let your customers know in advance. Send out a newsletter and post your holiday opening hours on your website. If your company provides customer support or deals with product shipping, make sure your customers know your availability will be reduced.

Speaking of which…

Remember the Christmas post dates

If you’re posting products out to customers, remember to check the NZ Post dates for the holiday season and get products out well in advance for Christmas. Don’t be that company that ruins Christmas with badly timed shipping!

Run a sales promotion

Now’s a great time to take advantage of holiday shoppers and boost your revenue. Run a sale, special offer or promotion on your website. If you’re not selling products, you can still take part – announce a summer referral scheme, group discounts, or a free consultation. Use your imagination and remember that everyone loves a special offer.

Post on social media

Once you’ve decided on your Christmas special, remember to tell everyone about it! That means not just on your website or over email, but on social media too. That way, you stand more chance of your promotion being shared around the web, and boosting your company standing online too.

Set up your email out of office reply

One of those little things you plan to get around to but often forget in the Christmas rush. It’s important to keep up communication with your customers. Include your holiday dates, the date and day you are returning to work, and the timeframe in which you expect to respond to them. Include any emergency contact details or other important information.

Send out a virtual Christmas card

Make your customers feel valued with an email Christmas card sent out before the holiday closure. This is also a good place to inform them of your holiday opening hours. Your customers will appreciate that you’ve taken the time to contact them in advance of the holiday closure period. Plus, it’s a simple way to market your brand to your client base. If you would like to speak to FutureLab about designing and sending a custom Christmas card for your company, please get in touch for a quote.
If you prepare your company in advance for the Christmas season, you’ll allow yourself a relaxing, work-free Christmas break!

As a proudly New Zealand company, we love supporting other innovative Australasian endeavours in the technical field, especially ones that make ours and our client’s lives that much easier. One such company shaking things up in the field of digital marketing is Campaign Monitor, an Australian-run company that in the last 10 years has rocketed onto the email marketing scene.

Campaign Monitor started because the founders, web designers themselves, couldn’t find a well-designed yet functional email marketing system to help their clients send out email marketing campaigns. So, they designed one of their own, and Campaign Monitor was born. Today, they have 100,000 customers and help send out more than 1 billion emails every month!

FutureLab are proud to now be partners of Campaign Monitor. As partners, we get access to the latest Campaign Monitor developments and we can easily manage every aspect of our clients’ email campaigns from one account.

We design, write content and deliver email marketing campaigns for our clients. That usually means sending out a newsletter every so often to a list of customers or subscribers. And with Campaign Monitor, these email campaigns can be set up efficiently and elegantly, saving us time, which then saves time and money for our clients. A winning situation for everyone!

If you’d like to discuss the production and delivery of your next email marketing campaign, why not get in touch? You can also check out the full range of our digital marketing services.

Christmas is fast approaching and in the business world, warm fuzzy feelings and merry Xmas spirit translate into prime opportunity for increasing sales and harnessing rampant consumerism. Yay for the Western world and the spirit of Christmas!

In all seriousness though, with the aftereffects of the 2007 recession still lingering on, Christmas shopping and the holiday sales season have become ever more important dates in the business year. That’s to say, they were always important, but in recent years (and looking to the US in particular, where spending is down), retailers have increasingly relied on the holiday feel-good factor to make sales.

Retailers also seem to have decided that more of a good thing might help their cause. We’re talking of course, about the humble sale. Back in the good old days, sales used to happen once or twice a year – perhaps once a season, max. Some institutions still continue to only hold their sale once a year – Harrod’s immediately springs to mind as an example. The rationale here is that their aura of exclusivity is intrinsic to their value as a brand – and if they started having sales every week, the cost to their brand value would outweigh any extra revenue gained from attracting the masses to their shelves.

Not so with the high street retailers. Dignity is thrown out of the window, in its place giant neon letters permanently – desperately – advertising S-A-L-E-! to passersby. Well, it probably works. I love sale shopping, the irrational satisfaction of having ‘saved’ money by spending on what you probably never needed in the first place. Such is the consumerist society we inhabit, and the nation’s credit card debt ($6.15 billion at May 2014) prove that these habits are hard to break.

So how does this all relate to websites you might ask?

Well, the answer is simple. The holiday season spending habits of the average consumer have been well-established, and do not look likely to alter any time soon. Except in one, crucial way. Consumers in New Zealand are choosing to shop online in greater and greater numbers. We’ve talked about this trend a few times in the past. The 2014 Nielsen Online Retail report has some revealing statistics – there’s a good summary at eCommerce.org with most of the key facts and figures if you want some bedtime reading. Here are a few little nuggets:

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  • 1.9 million Kiwis now shopping online
  • number of online purchases made per person increasing at a rapid rate
  • travel, clothing, books, and entertainment tickets most popular categories
  • $1.3 billion bought online on overseas websites

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Take a good, hard look at that last statistic. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that if Kiwi companies weren’t so slow to wake up to the online shopping explosion, we could have kept some of that revenue from being shipped offshore! Add to this BNZ’s March 2014 finding that online spending on Kiwi websites was only up 5% compared to March 2013, whereas online spending on overseas websites was up 15%. It’s long overdue now for New Zealand business to get a little bit smart. And we’re not talking about the big companies either, who have been onto this whole online shopping thing for a while now – The Warehouse, in particular, successfully increasing its online sales by a whopping 30% in 2014. It’s the small businesses (those with 19 or fewer employees) – who incidentally make up 97% of all businesses in New Zealand – who need to evolve. The same small businesses who produce 30% of the country’s GDP. The small businesses of which only half in 2013 even had a website at all.

As a side note, and perhaps surprisingly, it’s not ‘rural’ New Zealand who are necessarily lagging behind. The same 2013 survey found that only 40% of Auckland businesses were using any social media tools, compared to say, 65% in Southland. For a city believing itself switched on, it seems that the lightbulb hasn’t quite dinged! for Auckland business yet.

Maximise your sales this season

Looking ahead to the coming holiday season, what can Kiwi businesses do to help maximise their sales potential? The Google Analytics blog recommends checking out last year’s data to help forecast for the next few months. They found that in 2013, the biggest online transactions were occurring on the Mondays and Tuesday before Christmas (aside from the wildly successful Cyber Monday and Black Friday online shopping frenzies). They also noted that sales season shopping now starts earlier and finishes later than ever before – with heightened sales continuing into January – all good news for retailers. So, careful preparation of your online advertising campaigns will help take advantage of both the biggest retail days statistically, and your historical biggest sales days too.

That’s all well and good for businesses who are ticking all the digital marketing boxes currently. For those who aren’t?

It’s not too late for an early Christmas present

We’re talking, of course, about maximising your revenue potential with a website. If you don’t have a website at all… we need to talk. If you’ve got an old website that isn’t mobile-responsive… we still need to talk.

If you’ve ticked those boxes, well done! You’re keeping up with the game. If you’re a retailer, what about turning your website into a shop to net those online shoppers?

It’s not too late to upgrade your website in time for the silly season, if you act fast. We offer free consultations to discuss your website, your online strategy, and how to maximise your business results online. Contact us to arrange a phone call or appointment.

If you’re still unwilling to make that investment…

Get on social media

Even if you’ve decided that now isn’t the best time to start your online shop or simple business website, at least start the ball rolling with social media! Create your company page up and invite customers to check out special deals only available online. Post about Christmas specials and discounts. Advertise giveaways and competitions. The world is really your oyster on this one. Plus, while a website is pretty tricky to do in-house, creating a Facebook, LinkedIn or Google+ page could well be managed by a staff member (although if you want this set up professionally and hassle-free, we also offer this service).

You don’t have to miss out on a slice of the Christmas pud this year. Start now and give yourself the best opportunity to reach those frenzied Christmas and sales shoppers. It’ll be the best present you ever give your business.

 

 

 

 

Want to check our figures? Sources:

BloombergBusinessweek

BNZ

eCommerce.org

Google Analytics

Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment

NZ Herald

Stuff

FutureLab recently gave a presentation in Takapuna at the monthly BNZ Connect event (first Tuesday of every month, see you there!). Our presentation was about – what else? – effective marketing strategies for small business. Number one on the list, of course, is get a website for your business! Whether you sell products, services, or advertise events – if you’re not online yet, you certainly should be.

When we talk to potential clients, we often find surprising resistance among company owners who do not yet have a website. We think that’s because business owners who have never had a website just have no idea how effective a marketing tool it can be. When we speak to businesses that are looking to upgrade an existing website, the company owners are far more enthusiastic about investing in their online presence. They’ve already seen the difference a website makes to their business and they are keen to further this potential with an upgrade.

We provided some facts and figures to our BNZ audience – for example, the majority of Kiwis are looking online for products and services, yet only half of small and medium Kiwi companies have a website! It’s hard to overemphasise what a difference having a business website will make in netting more potential customers each month.[vc_separator type=”transparent” position=”center” up=”20″ down=”20″][vc_column_text]

Choose your social media platform

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Social Media
Social Media

We also talked about social media and choosing the right platform for your brand. As our lead developer Ralf put it, a digger for hire probably doesn’t need its own Facebook page! There’s not a lot that you can update or post about for this small company. However, an online booking system and a listing on Google Plus to show the location of the business would both be great ideas. Although we’re fans of the Facebook page, it might not be the right platform for you. Towards the more formal end of the social media spectrum is LinkedIn; for frequent updates and event promotion Twitter is a great place to start. Companies promoting a particular image or look could use Instagram, and there’s even YouTube if you want to get really interactive. However, once you choose a medium, stick with it! Keep active – keeping your audience interested and make sure to update regularly. Write about what’s going on with the company, comment on current events, post interesting articles from around the web. Writing or choosing something to post doesn’t have to be a tortuous process. To get started with social media, you could:

  • Run a Facebook competition
  • Connect with other businesses via LinkedIn
  • Upload a video to YouTube showcasing your product or service
  • Instagram pics of users interacting with your product or service
  • Tweet about life in the office
  • Advertise promotions using Facebook or LinkedIn advertising

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The most effective marketing doesn’t look like marketing

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Now you’ve got the basics of social media set up – using whichever platform/s are relevant and appropriate for your business – it’s time to consider how to best use these tools. Consumers use social media for a variety of reasons – for fun, to connect with friends, because they are bored, to promote themselves. Rarely is someone using social media to check out company advertising and unsubtle marketing campaigns aimed at getting consumers to make a purchase or sign-up.

Try and blend promotion of your brand, latest work, and special offers with other interesting, thought-provoking or amusing content to actually engage a user’s interest in your brand voice, not just your products or services. Just like your website, if you provide quality content, you’ll attract a fanbase first – and a database of sales leads second.

A good example of marketing via consumer engagement are the Red Bull-sponsored extreme sports videos that can frequently be found on YouTube. In line with their brand identity – think high energy, daring exploits, rave festivals, adrenaline-fuelled sports – Red Bull sponsor athletes or stunt artists to attempt video-worthy exploits that will garner views online. All that you can see of Red Bull might be a branded backpack or piece of equipment, and there’s no overt message given at any point. The latest such video comes from biker Danny MacAskill who has produced videos in collaboration with Red Bull for the last few years – many of which have gone viral.

In this video, we see Danny riding (sometimes hopping) his mountain bike up impossibly rocky and steep ridges in the Isle of Skye. Red Bull aren’t trying to sell product through these collaborations, but they cement their brand identity as cool, exciting, daring and fun – making their brand ever more popular and ultimately selling more products. Nice.

But let’s bring it back down to small business. You don’t need to scale the mountain ridges of the Isle of Skye to showcase your brand identity. You just need to take the first step. Get a business website. Post some company photos on your page. Start a Facebook or LinkedIn page for your business and put it on your business cards.

At the end of our BNZ Connect presentation, we took another first step and demonstrated social media marketing in action to our willing audience. Remember that there are always opportunities to promote your company on social media – you’ve just got to be willing to use them.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_text_separator title=”Takapuna BNZ Connect audience” title_align=”separator_align_center” border=”no”][vc_single_image image=”17904″ border_color=”grey” img_link_target=”_self” img_size=”full”][/vc_column][/vc_row]

A Facebook advert can be a great way to gain popularity for your page or attract new customers to your business. The great thing about Facebook ads is that they allow you to target specific audiences according to age, interest, location and many more. From our experience, the best tactic is to be a little weird. Be bright, be funny, be different! People respond when something strikes their attention, not to images that blend in with everything else on their feed. Use our guide below to get the most out of your investment.

1. Create a new campaign

Facebook advert

You may need to create a separate advertising account before you can start setting up campaigns. See the Facebook website for how to do this.

2. Specify what kinds of results you want

Results for your ads

Do you want people to like your page? Engage with your app? Get in contact with you? It’s entirely up to you and each option has a slightly different process. In this case we chose page likes.

3. Select the images you want to use for your ads

Page likes

As we already mentioned, sometimes the weirder image the better. Choose 3-5 different images you think will attract the attention of potential customers. Of course, they still need to be appropriate to your target audience. It’s no use having pictures of beautiful women if you want to sell your landscaping services.

Here we selected two bright, interesting images. Ideally use more than 4 images, as this will give you a better idea of what people respond well to.

4. Reposition Images

Find the button to reposition the images and adjust the positioning to suit your image. Do this for all images.

5. Add text to create appeal

Headline text

Here you can see the default text. This doesn’t really create interest which is a problem. It doesn’t show our point of difference or give the viewer a reason to go any further.

Headline

This new headline is assertive, while also telling the audience about the benefits of our services. The subtext reiterates this fact, while expanding on the means by which we can ‘get your business moving’ (innovative web design and development).

6. Select where you want your ad to appear

Ads that appear in the right hand column are usually less effective, as it is less likely for someone to take their eye off their newsfeed.

FutureLab news feed

7. Define your audience

Here you can select your audience according to their location, age, gender, languages, interests, behaviours and connections. Choose wisely according to your own needs. Ideally you want to create an audience of around 200,000 people.

8. Name your ad, set your budget and schedule

Name your ad so you know who you targeted for future reference. Set a daily budget and time frame that works for you. Don’t let your ad run for too long without checking its efficacy!

9. Select bidding

Select your bidding according to your ad type- in this case, the more likes you get, the more of your daily budget will be spent. No likes, no fee!

10. Place your order!

Review your orderCampaigns

From the campaigns page you can review your ad, check the results, make changes to details and control when it’s running. If progress seems slow at first don’t be discouraged – try new audience targeting, new images or text in your next campaign. This will help you to find out more about the people that like you!

If you need an assistance with creating your own Facebook Ad, take a look at how we can help or email us at contact@futurelab.co.nz.