How to promote your business during the holiday season 2015?
October is one month of the year where promoting certain products becomes more important than at any other time of the year. There are special sales days and of course the winter holiday season. If you have followed our series “Promoting your business online” you may have found some useful tips and tricks. If you may have misses an article let us provide you with an overview. In our series we have published the following article:
Promoting your business online: Website
Promoting your business online: Online Marketing
Promoting your business online: Website Structure
Promoting your business online: Online Advertisement
Promoting your business online: Social Media
Promoting your business online: SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Promoting your business online: Blogging
Promoting your business online: Facebook
Promoting your business online: Twitter
Promoting your business online: LinkedIn
Promoting your business online: Social Media Advertisement
In the following weeks we would like to follow up our series with additional posts starting with “Social Media Management” followed by “Social Media Management Tools”
If you are located in Vancouver and like to learn more about promoting your business online, we offer our Online Advertisement Seminar again and would be happy to welcome you in our consultation location. More information about our seminars can be found via the event list link or simply by clicking here https://teccrab.wordpress.com/event-list/
But unfortunately the upcoming holiday season also attracts those how like to find ways to trick you into providing your money to them. Those who will try to steal your identity and credit card information. Just like last year we have also for this year planed to host some events regarding Internet Security. We offered last year two different seminars with overlapping topics and combined the two into one seminar we like to call Internet Safety Seminar. You can find the seminar details at our event list or by clicking this link: https://teccrab.wordpress.com/event-list/
To learn more about us please feel free to follow the links below.
http://teccrab.com – Web
http://blog.teccrab.com – Blog
http://twitter.com/teccrab – Twitter
http://facebook.com/teccrab – Facebook
http://plus.google.com/+teccrab – Google Plus
http://www.youtube.com/user/teccrab – YouTube
Promoting your business online: Social Media Advertisement
After introducing you to some of the main Social Media Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn we would like to talk about Adverting on Social Media. As you know from our previous article about Social Media in general, the strength of Social Media is the fact that you can build an audience and interact with them. If done right it will add a layer of transparency to your organization and can even help you to collect information before introducing a new product. But today we would like to talk about advertising on social media and to make it a bit easier we will concentrate on Facebook and LinkedIn for now, since both of them are very similar.
Why advertising on Social Media in the first place?
If you are using Facebook and LinkedIn you will have noticed that you are adding a lot of information about yourself to your profile. Almost all of those information can be used when you as advertiser want to target a specific audience. This is a huge advantage compare to other advertisement options such as Newspaper or TV for example.
What is the right platform for your business?
If you are following our series Promoting your business online you know that Facebook is certainly more consumer and fun oriented while LinkedIn is more serious business and networking. This can lead to the misconception that B2C oriented businesses should only advertise on Facebook while B2B oriented organizations should stick with LinkedIn, but this isn’t necessarily true. You should keep in mind that many business owners are probably also on Facebook and targeting them there might be useful to introduce your product to them.
You may have noticed that we haven’t included or even talked about Google Plus and YouTube. The reason is simple, both are Google Products and since they are somehow connected we will talk about Google Adwords, Google Adsense, Google Plus and YouTube in separate posts.
We now would like to give you some tips to create your first ad yourself. But before we get started we would like to remind you that you will be much more successful when you advertise not only on one platform. A combination of several advertisement options will always work in your favour.
Target Group
As mentioned before you have a lot of option to target the right audience. You can select a specific location, gender, age group and there are many more options. Picking the right target group is very important and you as business owner should know best who is your clientele. However, you should keep in mind narrowing down your target group to much won’t be beneficial either.
Example: If you are selling a product that usually 23 year olds are buying, do not just target the 23 year old, have a age range that is a bit more flexible such as between 20 and 25 for example.
Budget
The first thing you have to be aware of is that there is a high possibility that you won’t get any new customers in your first month. You may see an increase in traffic, but usually a campaign needs 3 month or sometimes even longer to get you to the point where your investment sees a return. We therefore recommend calculating with a 3 month budget and will explain further how to split it.
Example: If you wish to invest $1,000 per month, calculate with $3,000 for 3 month instead.
The first month
After you know your budget and target group it is now time to build your advertisement on the platform of your choice. As mentioned earlier be a bit flexible with your target group and regarding your budget take a small amount of it to get started. Keeping our example of an overall budget of $3,000 in mind you should now invest maybe $500 for the first month. This will allow you to collect data which you can use to optimize your ad.
Optimization and second month
With the data collected in the first month it is now time to make some changes. Maybe you have noticed that you gain more traffic from a specific location and almost none from another one. Remove target groups that don’t give you the traffic you have wished for and therefore give more money to the audience that will most likely click on your ad. It is now also a good idea to increase the budget a little bit for the second month of your advertisement campaign.
Third month
After increasing the budget a little and gaining even more information you will have a much better idea to get more clients and can now create an ad optimized to your target audience. The third month is where you should invest the rest of your budget and hopefully your hard work is now paying off. Traffic to your site should increase and your sales should go up.
We would like to mention that the “1 month/1 month/1 month” rule we described in our post usually works for a lot of products and services. However there are so many other options how you can divide your budget, which might be better for your goals. Asking an expert can save you money, especially if you have a larger budget. Many experts including ourselves offer free consultations and we can only encourage you to take advantage of those opportunities. We also host seminars and can even setup one just for your team. Of course we would be happy to take care of your entire online marketing needs, but can also understand if you wish to do it yourself, especially if you are just getting started.
To learn more about us please feel free to follow the links below.
http://teccrab.com – Web
http://blog.teccrab.com – Blog
http://twitter.com/teccrab – Twitter
http://facebook.com/teccrab – Facebook
http://plus.google.com/+teccrab – Google Plus
http://www.youtube.com/user/teccrab – YouTube
Promoting your business online: Facebook
In one of our previous posts about Promoting your business online we talked about Social Media in general. Today we would like to take a closer look on Facebook and why you should consider having a Facebook Page even if you are a B2B focused business. Let us start with some basics first.
Profile vs Page vs Group
Many are suing Facebook without knowing that there are some differences depending on how you want to use Facebook. We often saw business owners starting with a Facebook Profile instead of a Page. We therefore would like to explain the differences real quick.
A Facebook Profile is basically the account you need in order to use Facebook. A profile is just you, not your organization, just you. Facebook Profiles have a different protection when it come to updates and your privacy in general. You also need to have a Profile to login to Facebook.
A Facebook Page is your organization. You can give rights to others so they can publish updates, create events and answer comments or messages for you in the name of your organization. A Page is the right way to promote your business on Facebook. Updates published on a Facebook Page can also be seen even if a user is not logged into Facebook.
A Facebook Group is a space you can create on Facebook where you can exchange ideas. You can create a closed Group and invite others to join or have an open one. You could use it to build workgroups to exchange ideas with others while working on a project.
Why using Facebook?
It is the biggest social media platform at the moment. Having a page on Facebook can be very beneficial. You can easily connect your Blog with Facebook so updates from your Blog get published there as soon as you publish them on your Blog. You can also build trust and ask customers for reviews which will encourage others to trust your service more easily when finding your business the first time.
Advertisement benefits
Beside building trust you can also use Facebook for something else. Online Advertisement. Since so many millions are sharing various details about themselves you can have a variety on filter in place to aim for the right target group. If used carefully you can even, to a certain degree, see who would be interested if you plan to introduce a new product to a certain market.
Even if your business is more B2B focused you still can find new customers on Facebook. It is very likely that some decision-maker are also having a Facebook profile and running an ad on Facebook might finds its way to the right person. But everything does of course depend on your entire marketing strategy. If you like to learn more how Facebook can fit into your online marketing strategy we offer free consultations where we analyze your current online situation and advise you accordantly. We also have seminars available and will of course continue publishing more articles on our Blog.
If you like to learn more about us please feel free to follow the links below:
http://teccrab.com – Web
http://blog.teccrab.com – Blog
http://twitter.com/teccrab – Twitter
http://facebook.com/teccrab – Facebook
http://plus.google.com/+teccrab – Google Plus
http://www.youtube.com/user/teccrab – YouTube
Promoting your business online: Social Media
Social Media became in the last couple years more and more important also in regards of promoting your business online. With so many platforms to choose from it is understandable that especially newcomers can feel a little overwhelmed. Today we would like to post a few general questions business owners often have and answer them.
Why should I use Social Media to promote my business?
There are many reasons to use social media to promote your organization. One very important is transparency. This may sound wired but this is actually one of the most important reasons especially for new businesses. Just imagine you find a product on a website you have never heard of, provided by a company you don’t know. Would you give them your address and credit card details without hesitation? Now imagine you find the same company on Facebook and see that they have a lot of fans plus a lot of great reviews. It is now so much easier to trust them. If the same company has not only Facebook, but also Twitter, YouTube and some other accounts were they are actively post and interact with their audience you will feel much more comfortable to use their website.
Another reason for using Social Media is feedback. As soon as you have build an audience you can ask them for feedback. For example: You have a bakery and your blueberry muffins are the best. Now you feel it is time to introduce muffins with a different flavour, but before you go and buy the ingredients you can ask your customers if they would like to buy them. And later you can even ask them how they liked them.
Last but not least you can use various social media platforms to advertise. Depending on the platform you may be able to place a banner, text or even video ad. We compared text, banner and video ads in our post Promoting your business online: Online Advertisement
Should I use every single platform?
Well, it doesn’t hurt if you secure an account with the mayor platforms, just in case you want to use them later. However, if you don’t use a platform frequently you shouldn’t mention it on your website nor encouraging people to follow you when you know you won’t use it.
Which platforms are best for my business?
General speaking you may want to have a Blog and a Facebook Page, even if you are a B2B business, a LinkedIn Page might also be a good idea. We know some business owners who really like using Twitter, while others don’t know how. Google Plus and YouTube are also great platforms and there are of course various location based services such as Foursquare and Yelp you want to check out, especially if you are a restaurant or pub owner. Depending on the nature of your business you may want to plan which platform to concentrate on and which you can keep for later. In our free consultations we help you to figure out which one might be best for you.
Social Media Expert vs Do It Yourself…
This is not easy to answer. Some business owners love to use social media and to update their audience while others prefer to leave it to an expert. In our consultation we often bring up the example of using an accountant or doing accounting on your own. Some may find it easy and do not want to use an accountant while others prefer to have one. It is up to you what you feel is best.
How much does it cost to have an agency managing my social media needs?
It largely depends on the kind of platforms you want to use, the amount of updates you would like to provide to your audience and also how many platforms the agency has to manage for you. Another factor is if you need someone for setting up the account as well as your goals. Many of our clients like to combine related services such as Social Media Management and Social Media Advertisement.
All our packages are tailor made, this is why we offer free consultations to get to know you, your goals, your needs as well as budget. We also offer flexible packages so you can increase, decrease or even pause our services depending on your current situation. To learn more about us feel free to follow the links below.
http://teccrab.com – Web
http://blog.teccrab.com – Blog
http://twitter.com/teccrab – Twitter
http://facebook.com/teccrab – Facebook
http://plus.google.com/+teccrab – Google Plus
http://www.youtube.com/user/teccrab – YouTube
Introducing “The Off Switch V2.15” by teccrab
We live in an age where technology is an important part of our lives. But by staying connected via Computers, Cell Phones, Smart Phones and other Gizmos we often disconnect ourselves from our real lives and sometimes turn into Technology Zombies.
As an Online Marketing Agency we use technology ourselves and understand how important it is to step away once in a while. This is why we would like to invite you to join us for an opportunity to turn off your devices and to talk about better ways to stay connected without disconnecting ourselves from family and friends.
The first thing we will do is to turn off our cell phones, laptops, tablets and other devices. We will even put them away and sit down with pen and paper while talking about our experiences.
To secure that everyone gets the most out of the event we would like to keep groups small. Included in the small $10.00 fee are snacks and drinks available to you during the event.
The first event is planed for Wednesday the 28th January 2015. Upcoming events can be found on our Event List.
We are looking forward to welcomeing you to “The Off Switch V2.15”
Your teccrab team
Social Media – Possible Game Changers in 2014
Before we all go into our well deserved Holiday Mode we would like to encourage you to take a moment to read this post with our opinion on the topic Social Media in 2014. If you follow the changes some platforms made or announced in 2013 you can maybe already guess what will become important for your business in 2014. But for those who are not following every single announcement or like to hear what we think, please read on to see our prediction for 2014.
Let us start with online videos. We think this will play a much more important role in 2014. Some social media experts pointed already last year out that 2013 is the year where you need to start a YouTube Channel and we think everyone who did will have an advantage in 2014. Not necessarily because of subscribers but because they already know what works for their business and what not. How much they need to invest in 2014 and how often they need to produce videos to keep their audience entertained and informed.
When talking about videos we need to talk about video advertisement too. Video ads will also become more important in 2014. But we think you should be careful because video ads can also become an annoying factor in 2014. You may have seen the announcement from Facebook regarding video ads in their newsfeed. We are sceptical and would like you to imagine the following to understand why we are not sure that this is a good idea. Imagine you login to your Facebook account and suddenly hundreds of video ads play their message at the same time. Well, even one or two at the same time will be annoying don’t you think? Now imagine your target group will get your video message on Facebook and the reaction might be that they are annoyed by it and do not buy your product or ask for your service just because of an automatically played video ad on Facebook.
Since we are on the topic. Did you noticed that the Rating System on your company Facebook Page is now much more visible? The rating system was implemented a while ago and is around for some time now, but was never really a big part of a company Facebook Page until recently. Now the problem is, and we know that as a fact, if you have only a few followers and even fewer rate your site just one bad rating and you end up with a low overall score. Bigger companies with many ratings may not need to concern themselves with this, but small business owner should. Because one bad rating and you suddenly have to deal with a two star overall rating and this can become a problem to encourage new customers to try your product and services.
We are sure you have noticed that videos are the main thing that will become more important in 2014, but we also would like to mention copyright issues on YouTube. If you create a video, upload this to YouTube and include any kind of footage, sound effect or music that is not 100% yours, it can happen that suddenly an ad, even if you are not monetizing your videos, is playing in front of your video. This is because of the Copyright ID system from YouTube which became an important debate in the YouTube Gamer Community. We posted about this in one of our previous posts which you can find here: “Google / YouTube Copyright controversy“
We hope that our post gave you a few ideas what to do in 2014 with your Social Media and Online Marketing Strategy and Budget. What do you think will become important and to watch out for in 2014? Leave a comment below and we wish everyone a Great Holliday Season.
Your teccrab Team
Introducing tangledthoughts.ca
One of our fantastic clients is Craig, who is updating his Blog tangledthoughts.ca frequently. Craig is a first class hairstylists located in Vancouver Downtown and his Blog is not just about Hair.
Since April 2013 we are working together with Craig and our goal was to establish a Blog that would be informative and fun. Thanks to Craig’s excellent writing skills and his fantastic sense of humour his Blog became step by step more successful and popular.
The first steps for a new Blog as well as new Facebook Page are always a bit difficult. You start with a blank page, nobody is following your updates and we often get the question if it is worse putting so much time and effort into it. We always answer that question by referring to other clients who had the same problems when they started using social media.
In our experience the first 100 fans are always the hardest.
Craig is at the moment at 87 fans, only 13 more to go and he has his 100 fans on Facebook. Important to mention is that we managed to reach this goal with a very low budget in just a few month. Craig is using one of our smallest packages, which includes frequent meetings and tips to improve his overall online visibility.
Check out his his Facebook Page at http://www.facebook.com/tangledthoughts.ca and feel free to become a fan. Please also visit his Blog at tangledthoughts.ca and leave a comment if you like.
Craig is in our opinion an excellent example for a small business owner who is successfully using Social Media to improve his online visibility without spending a lot of money and we are very happy to support Craig and have him as a client.
If you like to learn more about Online Marketing and Social Media Management join us in our seminar which we offer at the moment for a very low price. Or fill out our Online Information Request Form to get in touch with us. We would be happy to have you as our next success story.
The teccrab 2013 Online Marketing and Social Media Management Seminar
Promoting your product and services can be challenging. For many small businesses and startups the internet seems to be a good and cheap way to do advertising. But before investing a lot of money in the wrong platform, you should know a bit more about the many different ways to promote your business, product and services online. Often a combination of more than one platform leads to a higher success than just putting everything into one online advertisement campaign.
Our weekend seminar is designed to help you to find out which platform is the best for your business. We will talk about Online Marketing in general and also talk about Social Media integration into your Online Marketing campaign. To secure that you will get the most out of our seminar we keep our groups small, only a max of 10 participant per weekend. We also decided to offer this amazing two day seminar for a very discounted price. Only $129.00 for two full days.
Included are the following topics:
Online Marketing
We will talk about Online Marketing in general. Mention the most popular platforms to promote your business, products, services or events online. Plus talk about possible combinations.
SEO and SEM
You may have heard a lot about those two. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and SEM for Search Engine Marketing, but what does it mean? We hope we can help to get a bit more light on this subject for you in our seminar.
Blogging
In our experience Blogging is especially for small businesses a great way to inform customers about your business, products, services, special offers and events. A Blog can be a very powerful tool to help you reaching your goals, even with a very low budget.
Keywords / Tags
To help your customers finding your Blog or website you will need to add keywords so that your site pops up when someone uses a search engine. Let us guide you a little by explaining how important Keywords and Tags are.
Social Media – Overview
Our second day is all about Social Media. We will start with a little introduction and we will also combine things we learned the day before into this topic.
Facebook
What is the difference between a Facebook Profile, a Facebook Page and a Facebook Group? How can you integrate them into your Online Marketing Strategy and more important should you?
Twitter
Telling a storey with only 140 characters is not easy. Is Twitter really the right platform for you? Or is it just a waste of time? Let us help you to find out.
LinkedIn
We like to call it the professional Social Media Platform. You can find here professionals from around the world, but can also use it to introduce not just yourself, but your business, products and services.
Google Plus
The Social Media Platform from Google. Some love it, some like it, some think it is not worse spending time and money on it. We would like to introduce it to you and maybe you will be surprised that you can find your audience here.
YouTube
Videos are a great way to introduce your products and services to your audience. Let us show you how you can use YouTube as a fantastic advertising platform.
We will close each day with an hour for your questions. We believe, because our groups are small, you can be sure that your questions will be answered. We are offering this seminar for this amazing price only until the end of December 2013. If you are interested check out our Event Calendar to find which weekend is best for you. The location of the seminar will be our consultation location in Downtown Vancouver.
We are looking forward to see you soon.
teccrab presents INTERNeX HiGHLiGHTS of the week Ep. 7/2013
We started in May a new video project with INTERNeX. A show for their candidates to inform about upcoming trips, events and pub nights. We as well included in each video a short INTERNeX EXPLOReR where we introduce different locations in Vancouver.
Usually each episode is about 3 minutes long, but for episode 7 we went to see another of our clients, Craig from tangledthoughts.ca, where one of INTERNeX PR interns received a special treat. Craig is one of the best Hairdresser in Vancouver and you can usually find him in THE salon beauty bar on 505 Thurlow Street.
We needed for the production and postproduction of that video about 3 days. Little fun fact, while filming in THE salon beauty bar, another film crew closed the Thurlow Street in front of the salon to shoot a scene for the upcoming Godzilla movie. I admit it was very cool to produce a video right next to the big boys.
We also would like to mention that we had to change the format in episode 7 a little. The reason is because Clara, one of INTERNeX PR interns, is usually editing the videos. But for episode 7 we had to do the entire postproduction ourselves. Unfortunately we forgot to copy the intro and music Clara used for her videos and had therefore to improvise.
We hope you will enjoy the video and look forward to your comments.
For more information about…
teccrab inc.
http://teccrab.com – our website
http://www.facebook.com/teccrab – follow us on Facebook
INTERNeX International Exchange Ltd.
http://www.internexworld.com – website
http://www.facebook.com/INTERNeX – Facebook Page
Craig
http://tangledthoughts.ca – Blog
http://www.facebook.com/tangledthoughts.ca – Facebook Page
THE salon beauty bar
http://www.thesalonbeautybar.com – website
http://www.facebook.com/salonbeautybar – Facebook Page
Happy Canada Day – 2013
We wish all our employees, interns, clients, partners and friends a very Happy Canada Day. Many of you know that July 2013 is for teccrab inc. a very special month. Not only have we partnered with a hosing company located in the Netherlands, we also work on a new concept for our website and will soon move into a fantastic office located in Downtown Vancouver. A strong relationship with a Vancouver based web developer will allow us to concentrate more on our online marketing packages without loosing the ability to offer high class websites to our clients. More about this will be revealed this month.
To celebrate Canada Day we have uploaded a new timeline picture, which you can find below. We hope everyone has a great day. Happy Canada Day 🙂
teccrab inc. | Blog 