As a small business owner/marketer, are you thinking about ramping up your online presence this holiday season? Before you start the same plan you had last year, take a minute to educate yourself on some of the things that have changed since your last holiday push. Social media as well as online search marketing change their rules constantly. With all of this change happening, it can often be hard for business owners, who already wear multiple hats, to keep up with these rules and best practices.
Google AdWords
I want to give you just a hint of some of the important changes of 2014. The The first update is with keywords and the use of “close variants.” Advertisers will lose the ability to simply opt out of what are known as Phrase or Exact match “close variants.” What does that mean for you? It means that optimizing your account for very specific keywords will become more challenging. You will have to invest more time in reviewing search terms and adding negative keywords to fine-tune your keyword strategy. Another important change of 2014 is the introduction of a great tool called “callout extensions.” Callout extensions are a way for you to add additional text to your ads. Most times you cannot fit exactly what you want in those tiny ads. This type of extension allows you to put information like “Free Shipping” or “10 Year Warranty” within the body of your ad without taking up the valuable text limits. Since this extension just came out on September 3, I would highly recommend doing some research prior to using this for any business.
Facebook
Now, let’s get into Facebook. Facebook, as we all know, changes things up more than Mark Zuckerberg probably changes his underwear! I want to touch on a couple of things that make using Facebook difficult for small businesses. The first of which is the ever-dwindling organic reach of your posts. Facebook introduced a new algorithm which shows “trending topics” within followers’ newsfeeds. Facebook officials say that posting about a current “trending topic” will improve a business’s reach by 6%. The second big change that we have seen in recent months is that this new algorithm is favoring posts that receive consistent engagement over their lifespan. For example, if you post a status for your business that receives likes and comments only within the first hour, Facebook sees that and will stop showing your post because it appears to be time sensitive. If that post continues getting likes and comments for a whole day consistently, that post will reach a greater number of people.
Either way, Facebook is moving businesses toward the idea of paid advertising. Paid advertising on Facebook is a good thing for most small businesses. Facebook allows you to target using interests and life events among many other demographics. With the right content, your business can still thrive on Facebook.
As I mentioned before, these are just a few of the important changes this year. Prior to starting your holiday strategies, please educate yourself on the recent changes within each media. If any of this sounds confusing for you, we always suggest consulting with an online advertising expert at Baer Performance Marketing.