SEM & Digital Marketing Advice New Orleans, Louisiana | WSI

We all agree that every ‘like’ we receive on Facebook is appreciated and is often accompanied by a sense of accomplishment.  But what is the actual monetary value of a Facebook like?  It’s hard to say.

Unless your Facebook page is generating substantial leads or traffic to your website, you shouldn’t rejoice just yet. If all that ‘engagement’ you are producing on your Facebook isn’t contributing to your overall goals, than how can you justify the time and investment you have made as part of your marketing budget?

Monetizing your Facebook presence

Turning ‘likes’ into leads, fans into actual paying customers, or generating website visitors to help monetize your marketing can be achieved by following a few simple steps:

1. Build a custom landing page or ‘like’ gate

Custom landing pages, or “Like gates” as they are sometimes called, are a great way to turn likes into leads almost instantly as it encourages visitors to like your page before they are able to view your content. This directs your new fans into a specific marketing funnel, which you can create based on your individual goals and plans.

For instance, let’s say your company sells a product and you offer a discount to new customers.  You could use your custom Facebook landing page to offer this discount to new fans by offering a special code that only appears after you become a fan.  This coupon can be easily tracked in your business to determine how many came from Facebook.

You can activate a custom welcome page by adjusting your Facebook fan page settings as you have a few options under the current settings.  The most popular is to show the custom landing page only to Facebook users who have not yet “Liked” your page.  Once they like the page, they will be directed to the wall as the primary landing page after that, making the next 2 points all the more important.

The harder part is actually creating the page itself and crafting the message.  Many businesses think that they can just put up a pretty looking custom page to get more likes, but the larger challenge is thinking through what you want to do with new fans and what action you would like them to take.

2. Share links to specific content or offers on your wall

Now that they’ve liked your page, now what should you do?  Our recommendation is to give them what they want!

According to research compiled from ExactTarget, a whopping 58% of Facebook users reported they expected exclusive content from business pages. Take advantage of this information and make sure the content you supply is available exclusively to your Facebook fans only, and don’t forget to tell them so!

So don’t just post links to your website’s home page on Facebook.  Helpful ways to offer exclusive content can include:

• Setting up a landing page on your main website for this specific content
• Sharing links exclusively on your Facebook page that are not shared other places
• Require that page viewers must like you to view content

Other great ways to gain interest and connect with potential customers can be to offer:

• eBooks
• Seminars
• Webinars
• Other educational downloads

3. Make use of custom tabs

Customizing your Facebook tabs is another great way to monetize a Facebook page. You can create as many tabs as you like, and we recommend doing this for your most important products or services that drive revenue in your business.

Why not consider creating pages, or tabs for specific purposes such as:

• Highlighting all those great offers you have been compiling
• Downloading all those exclusive content promotions you’ve been generating
• Or a landing page to rotate promotions and offers

Don’t give up just yet

It’s important to find a balance between direct advertising which allows your potential customers to know what services you provide but doesn’t flood them with a long list of obnoxious information all at once!  On the flip side, many businesses make the mistake of thinking they can’t talk about what they sell on Facebook or other social media sites for fear of being seen as a spammer.

Using the tools outlined in this article will allow you to post your sales content in an appropriate place so that when your fans want it, they can get to it.  Follow these instructions and you’ll soon find those likes are turning into leads.

The Google AdWords program is the centerpiece of Google’s internet marketing product line.  Free to use and easy to setup, it affords advertisers anywhere in the world to generate targeted traffic to any web property they designate.

One of the main features that people like about AdWords is that it’s free.  But that’s also one of the pitfalls.  Since anyone can setup an account, and you don’t have to know what you are doing, it is very easy to throw away money with pay per click at an astonishingly fast pace.  So this begs the real question, what is the real value of Google AdWords?

Benefit #1 – Instant Visibility

AdWords offers website owners the chance to establish true validity, along with online awareness and marketability. Let’s say you just launched a new website and wanted to have it show up in front of potential customers immediately, AdWords is the single best tool for accomplishing this.  Advertisers also use pay per click to gain visibility for things like new products, announcements, special sales or offers, and similar items that they may not rank well for in organic listings.

Sample PPC (Pay Per Click) Ad

Benefit #2 – Traffic & Leads

The sexiest benefit of Google AdWords is that is can generate immediate traffic, which can potentially increase the number of leads your business is getting.  It’s not unusual for advertisers to earn good, valid business leads within a few hours of launching a campaign.

Benefit #3 – Benchmarking

Savvy marketers use AdWords to create performance benchmarks for their website.  Because you control your bids, you can monitor the performance of keywords and use that data to create long term SEO strategies that can turn your paid keywords into natural rankings.   As a form of pay-per-click advertising, Google AdWords is a vital component of any search engine-marketing endeavor.

Drawback #1 – Buyer Beware

As stated earlier, Google AdWords can be scary because while it looks simple, being good at it takes time and practice.  After all, why do you think they created a Google AdWords Certified Professional program in the first place?

For instance, the simple act of bidding and placement is more complex that it appears.  If you bid higher than the competition, logic tells you there is a good chance you will earn higher placement for ads and keywords. But this is not always the case, as Google has a “Quality Score” which is generated based on how well your keywords, ad and landing page perform.

Drawback #2 – Long Term Sustainability

The other issue with buying visibility is that once your budget runs out, your ads stop appearing.  So over the long term, it is very important to figure out the key metrics from AdWords to determine your actual ROI so you don’t keep paying for advertising that isn’t producing the results you need.

The secret to determining “real value” – Google Analytics

In order to determine the real cost of Google AdWords, you have to base your decision on the actual results and performance.  And the best way to do this is via Google Analytics.

With any successful online marketing campaign, web analytics plays a pivotal role. These statistics allow you to monitor daily, weekly, monthly, and even yearly web traffic rates. At the same time, it displays the number of hits that were generated via precise keyword and key-phrase searches and links.

If a particular set of keywords is not attracting web visitors that are converting into customers, subscribers or whatever goals you set, it is time to make changes to the campaign settings. You also have to concentrate on the keywords that are working well, while generating several variations and synonyms as well.

You can learn more about Google Analytics in one of our previous posts.

You Determine the Real Value

According to Avinash Kaushik, who wrote the popular book, “Web Analytics”, Google AdWords is a cost-effective solution to online marketing. Along with strategic SEO and advertising techniques, companies can effectively showcase their brands and products to mass audiences.

The real cost of Google AdWords, however, depends on your situation.  If being on the first page of Google for targeted phrases is of value, than you should have no problem coming to your own conclusion!