We can’t believe that we’re already nearing November and the end of Season 2 of Tower After Hours. In this episode, we sit down with one of our clients, Eric Conner from Strasburg Rail Road! So if you’re a train person or a history buff — this episode is for you. We don’t want to spoil anything so let’s jump right in.
Growing Brand Awareness And Making A Name For Strasburg Rail Road
If you’re a Lancaster County native or have been in the area for a while, you’ve likely heard of Strasburg Rail Road. Since Eric has been with the Rail Road for 11 seasons, we wanted to pick his brain to learn more about how he has increased brand awareness and made Strasburg Rail Road a significant tourist attraction.
Because Strasburg Rail Road is such a big attraction, over-familiarization can actually be a challenge for Eric and his team. If you visited the Rail Road 15-20 years ago, the train ride itself hasn’t changed, so it’s hard to get people to want to come back.
{3:56} In the last 5 years, Eric’s made it a priority to change this perspective and create new experiences to attract a new clientele. So although they are rich with history and are well-known in the community, they’re also looking to rebrand in a sense to bring in more people. At Tower, we’ve emphasized the historic aspect of the Rail Road and that classic train ride but also want to show people there’s more to do at the Rail Road. They host a wide range of events, from Christmas rides and Day Out with Thomas, to Murder Mystery experiences, Wine & Cheese trains, and Whiskey on the Rails.
Finding What Works For You
In a previous episode, Mitch Nugent from Prima Theatre pointed out that his marketing isn’t always sexy, but it’s what works well for them and his targeted audience. We wanted to ask Eric the same question because he has the unique challenge of advertising to and reaching multiple audiences who are interested in visiting the Rail Road.
{6:57} Eric mentioned that tracking the ROI of their advertising was important. So they started to move away from those traditional mediums and they focused on social media, Google, Spotify ads, and even geofencing.
The diversification of marketing for Strasburg Rail Road helps our team at Tower capture users at all levels of the customer journey. Lily mentions that she always has a general brand awareness ad running on social media, supplements that campaign with specific events, and retargets ads to reach users who have shown interest in that special event.
Making History Fun & Relatable
{12:15} The Rail Road just hosted its first Civil War Day, and it was a great success! (We even received confirmation that they plan to host the experience annually!) But we wanted to know how the Rail Road comes up with these new events.
With plans to “rebrand” the Rail Road, these historic experiences are a key part of this process. But they also want to make sure the roots of the railroad are incorporated, but they also want to make the experiences fun.
Because of these pillars, Strasburg created the entertainment team in 2020. Many of the early shows offered included over-the-top performances with stunts and pyrotechnics, which Eric candidly shared seemed to stray a little from the origin of the Railroad. With some new direction, you’ll see the actors and the shows embracing history and storytelling.
One of Eric’s favorite out-of-the-box experiences is the Escape Room. Originally, this was a moving escape room but it wasn’t receiving a great amount of interest. They turned it into a fixed caboose and now it sells out every year.
Partnering With Other Organizations
{20:00} As we’ve learned from a lot of our guests, Lancaster wouldn’t be where it is without collaboration and great partnerships. The Strasburg Rail Road Company is no different, so we asked to learn more about how these partnerships are formed and how Eric works with different members throughout the community.
Fun fact: Strasburg Rail Road is one of the top three attractions in Lancaster County. In Eric’s words, he knows that often makes them the 800-pound gorilla in the room.
Even though Strasburg Rail Road is a large attraction, it’s a fair balance between Eric reaching out to companies and companies reaching out to him for a collaboration.
When we asked Eric about dream partnerships or companies to work with, we mentioned how cool it would be to partner with Airbnb and be able to stay in one of the trains for a night. And he proceeded to give us an exclusive “you heard it here first” that they have plans to transform the President’s Car into a suite for just that reason!
Check Out The Full Episode: Strasburg Rail Road: Historic Tracks, Modern Magic
It’s hard to believe we have reached the end of Season 1! We’ve had such a great time recording with so many different industries and people from the Lancaster community. We thought there was no better choice for our season finale than James Debord and Danielle Sunday from the Schreiber Center for Pediatric Development.
We’re so excited to be partnering with Schreiber Pediatrics to host our first annual charity golf tournament this August. In this episode, you’ll get a glimpse of some of the reasoning behind our decision to partner with them, because of their passion and dedication to ensuring every kiddo that comes to Schreiber is positively impacted.
Alright, let’s dive in!
Getting Into The Non-Profit World
{5:45} If you’ve talked to either James or Danielle, you know that they’re passionate about Schreiber and the non-profit world. So to start the episode, we wanted to take a moment for them to share their journeys before Schreiber and how they ultimately ended up there.
Danielle: With active parents in the community, Danielle was surrounded by community events and the importance of surrounding herself with others. In college, she became a Public Relations major and fell in love with non-profit work that she did through an ad agency.
After working in the for-profit industry for a little while, Danielle found herself back at the non-profit company that she initially worked for in college. (A full circle moment!) Her love language is acts of service and describes herself as a helper, so she feels fulfilled to be able to serve others regularly.
James: Always an ambitious thinker, James thought he would save the world in college by becoming the President (not of Schreiber, of the United States.) For years, James worked in politics and wrote campaigns for politicians from various statuses.
A friend then referred him into the non-profit world and he’s been in the industry ever since. After a slue different jobs, he got connected with Schreiber Pediatrics from mutual friends and it just so happened that the previous President was also retiring.
Growing up, James was the recipient of a lot of great community organizations in Lancaster. So for him, he wanted to make a difference because he was directly impacted by the non-profits and got to where he is today because of these organizations.
Getting Funds & Organizing Events
{16:55} Because Schreiber Pediatrics has been growing, financial funding has been a priority for them and has put pressure on staff to make sure there are enough resources to fund new programs, staff, and equipment.
So although Schreiber has grown, reimbursements from Medicare have not. This is where Danielle puts her time and energy as the Director of Fund Development. The main priority for James and Danielle is to create goals that are attainable and realistic so it doesn’t cause staff and volunteer burnout.
In the past, they were hosting and running 12-plus events a year and it was at a point where it wasn’t providing the best bang for their buck.
Charity Event Tip #1: Find a balance between the number of events you host, the amount of staff/volunteers you have, and the goals you’re trying to achieve. Because too much can cause burnout and more loss than gain.
Factors That Decide What Events To Host
{19:15} We asked James and Danielle what factors they use to decide what events will be most beneficial financially and for the good of their clients and staff.
One of the things James talked about was considering how much time is being spent to plan, organize, and host the event versus how much money is being raised. If your staff is spending months planning and then 10-plus hours hosting the event but not receiving enough funds, it may be time to cut that event.
However, Danielle touches on the fact that they’ll never say no to an organization supporting Schreiber at their event. For example, Tower is planning the event but the proceeds will go to Schreiber.
Charity Event Tip #2: The key is to find companies that are looking for beneficiaries so they can do the planning, and your non-profit can reap the benefits.
{21:35} Charity Event Tip #3: Ask yourself, is your event-based fundraising strategy going to provide long-term sustainability for your non-profit?
Danielle mentions that Schreiber has to raise 2.5 million dollars annually so they want to make sure they’re putting their best foot forward when it comes to event-based fundraising.
Remember when James said they used to host over 12 events a year? Danielle has shrunken this number to two. And on average, these two events bring in $400,000 annually. For Danielle, she wanted to focus on events that create the most impact.
{24:34} Schreiber’s Gala and Duckie Race have been two key events for the last 35-plus years, so we asked Danielle what makes these events so successful and what changes have been made to continue their success.
One of the biggest challenges of the Duckie Race was making sure the ducks that were dumped into the river were picked out and weren’t causing more harm to the environment and river water. So, this year, they’re changing things to not only be more sustainable but also more engaging for volunteers and participants.
Commonly, non-profits will be able to tug at emotional appeal to bring in volunteers, donors, and fundraisers. However, as marketers, we have to make sure we aren’t overbearing these messages and forcing only emotional appeal when highlighting a non-profit.
{30:14} James knows that there are emotional stories of kids and families of Schreiber, but he also wants to emphasize the financial domino effect that Schreiber services provide. If an adult grows up with an untreated disability or does not receive pediatric care or therapy, they develop more severe disabilities or health conditions that ultimately cost taxpayers up to 2 million dollars a year in additional services.
At its core, Schreiber is working to ensure every child can fulfill their best life – whatever that looks like.
Charity Event Tip #4. Combine the facts and the stories to create a powerful message that engages the audience with your organization and events.
The Future Of Schreiber Pediatrics
To round out the episode, we asked James and Danielle what the future of Schreiber Pediatrics looks like.
{37:40} When James first started, it was a two-year waiting list to get into Schreiber and use services. And the reality is, if a child had to wait two years for something like a speech evaluation service, they likely wouldn’t be able to overcome this speech delay.
So, as an initial goal when he stepped into the role of President, James wanted to make sure that families wouldn’t be waiting for Schreiber services and could be proactive about their child’s developmental health.
James is happy to say that since the addition of the new therapy spaces, they can accommodate more services and get families in faster. In this next era, he hopes to provide staff financial support and nurture the bigger donors.
Similar to James, Danielle is hoping to create a more sustainable financial model for Schreiber. Also, she wants to be on top of medical trends and be proactive when therapists are coming to the executive team and talking about common problems they are seeing with their patients.
Check out the full episode:How Schreiber Transforms Lives Through Non-Profit Initiatives
Hello content kings and queens, welcome back to another episode of Tower After Hours. We’re officially over halfway through season 1, and we’ve interviewed some pretty incredible guests so far.
Today’s guest is no different as we welcome Sandy Gambone, the Senior Business Ambassador for Water Street Mission. With over 30 years of experience in the marketing industry, we were super excited to sit down with her.
Getting to Know Sandy Gambone
{1:10} Sandy started in a very traditional marketing role, and we wanted to start at the root to get an understanding of how she got to where she is today. She started in direct mail marketing and publishing, then moved to video production, then went on to help produce a TV show, and finally landed at a digital agency here in Lancaster County.
As you can already tell, Sandy has incredible experience in the marketing field, and when she was at the Lancaster agency, she really felt connected to the non-profit sector that she worked with. This led her to work at Water Street Mission.
Although it wasn’t exactly where she thought she’d end up, Sandy has thrived as a Business Ambassador because of her diverse background, experiences, and personable nature.
How Sandy Empowers Women Around Her
{9:00} Unsurprisingly, Sandy was one of the nominees this year for Lancaster Chamber’s ATHENA award, which recognizes individuals who support women in realizing their full leadership potential. They are someone who devotes time and energy to their community in a meaningful way and strives towards the highest level of professionalism.
Four women made it to the interview phase, and though she didn’t win, she felt honored to be in the room with previous winners and others who have been nominated.
Sandy has recognized that her passion is to empower young women in both the business world and the guests of Water Street Mission. Women are put into a lot of different situations, and the way we handle them highlights our professionalism, calmness, and maturity.
{14:00} She quotes Michelle Obama saying, “They go low, we go high” and that’s a mentality she has embraced and passed to young women professionals. To come off as a “winner” she emphasizes the importance of showing respect to those that don’t respect you.
Mentoring Through the Lancaster Chamber
{15:38} Although Sandy has only been a mentor for two years, she’s really enjoying the opportunity to mentor young women. The motivation behind her becoming a mentor is being able to empower women to talk about the uncomfortable and hard work conversations.
She says that she didn’t get the confidence she has now until a certain age and she wants to take what she knows and support women in finding their own confidence.
{19:44} A truly great mentorship pair is one where both the mentee and the mentor learn something. So some of Sandy’s favorite programs are when she learns just as much from her peers as they learn from her.
What we took away from this conversation was that you never know when these connections will become a bigger part of your story. Sandy talks about her connections helping her find new careers and supporting her throughout her life.
Surprise SECOND Guest: Lauren Radcliff
Surprise! We were so excited to also welcome Lauren Radcliff to Tower After Hours. She works with Sandy as a Business Ambassador.
{25:41} These two clicked instantly when Lauren started 3 months ago at Water Street Mission. And they’ve both already learned so much from each other as the Business Ambassador team grew from just Sandy to both Sandy and Lauren.
Lauren has become the networking queen, as she’s not only new to Water Street Mission but also Lancaster County. She also has taken time to make the Business Ambassador team more efficient and has been able to fulfill a need before Sandy even recognizes the need exists.
As a new Lancaster local, Lauren realizes she has to put herself out of her comfort zone in order to make these connections, both professionally and personally. And it’s very normal to be anxious and scared but at the end of the day, we’re all humans just trying to build relationships and support each other.
Not Every Move Has To Be a “Money Move”
{35:00} Something we found really interesting about Lauren’s LinkedIn profile was the description on one of her jobs said “While this job may seem pretty random, and might not seem to be a big career move…” and we wanted to learn more about her perspective on taking these unexpected paths and coming out better than before.
Soft skills like communicating well, time management, and growing your self-confidence are essential skills to have, even if they don’t provide you with a huge pay bump or promotion.
Relational versus Transactional
{40:52} At the bones of their work, Water Street Mission is looking for fundraising or donations to help their guests and overall mission. But throughout this entire episode, we learned that making those sales is all about creating a relationship with another human being.
So, at the core of non-profit marketing strategies, they’re looking to grow a relationship with the community around them and ultimately raise awareness for Water Street Mission.
Check out the full episode: How Relationships Can Nurture Your Marketing
In the first episode of Season 1 of Tower After Hours, our podcast team welcomes Brianna Titi, from the Economic Development Company of Lancaster County. As their first Business Development Specialist, she works with over 146 member companies to create lasting first impressions and provide support to these businesses.
Also known as someone very active on social media, she gave us great insight on how to network on LinkedIn and her tips to grow your connections.
Alright, let’s dive in!
The Economic Development Company of Lancaster County
[1:16] This not-for-profit organization works with a wide spectrum of Lancaster County businesses to provide leading insights on economic trends. They help build connections to business and community leaders while providing access to funding programs tailored to help businesses wanting to expand and grow.
As the Business Development Specialist, Brianna meets with all existing and potential members of the EDC to nurture relationships and understand the ins and outs of the Lancaster business community.
It Only Takes One Connection
[8:19] It’s rare to find someone who’s authentic both on and off social media. But Brianna emphasizes the fact that showing up as your authentic self will be what makes that great first impression. And who knows where that connection might lead you.
Brianna shouts out multiple mentors who have created a positive impact on her career journey, and she’s honored to be surrounded by so many innovative and supportive colleagues. As a young professional, she feels led to mentor others starting their professional careers.
[14:40] She also emphasizes the importance of not only creating opportunities for your mentee but also being relatable and a support system for them. A lot of times, the line between professional and personal is blurred, and hardships can be difficult to navigate in both settings.
Brianna has been involved in the NxtGen Mentoring Program with the Young Professionals Network at the Lancaster Chamber. She’s met several mentors and positively impacted mentees, and her best piece of advice is to be invested in the mentorship, no matter what side you’re on.
Networking on LinkedIn
[17:40] Alex and Lily deemed Brianna the Lancaster LinkedIn Queen, with over 10,000 connections. And although this is a perfect opportunity for her to brag about her accomplishments, she’s just happy to have a platform to continue to spread the greatness of Lancaster businesses and EDC members.
With such success, we asked her some of her best practices when it comes to posting on LinkedIn and networking in general.
Do Your Research. Before any networking event, use LinkedIn as a tool to get to know the person you’re meeting with. (This piece of advice isn’t new to us, as we’ve discussed this concept on a previous episode of Tower After Hours!)
Post at the Right Times. From her experience, posting in the mornings and earlier in the week shows the best engagement and interaction from her connections. She also recommends posting once a week as you’re starting to get comfortable with networking on LinkedIn.
Follow Businesses You’re Interested In. Especially if you’re in the business development world, following businesses is a great way to keep up with their latest posts and events.
Add Notes to Your Invitations. Have a quick introduction sent with every connection invitation. Brianna suggests adding your job title, a bit of background about yourself, and any “ask” you have for this connection. This could be following your business page, setting up a meeting, or just mentioning you’re interested in expanding your connections.
Ask for Professional Recommendations. Add to your credibility by asking your connections to add recommendations to your profile. These blurbs don’t have to be extensive but will show up on your main profile for interested connections to view.
As you become more comfortable with networking on LinkedIn, feel free to post more often, interact with your connections, provide new perspectives, and expand your personal brand.
Check out the full episode: How One Connection Can Change the Trajectory of Your Career
The big countdown to GA4 is finally coming to a close, and it brings a lot of changes, which include user engagement metrics. We’ve outlined the 8 key GA4 differences you can expect, but now we’ll explore how to use the engagement metrics in Google Analytics 4 to your advantage.
Once you become familiar with user engagement in Google Analytics 4, you’ll be able to use these metrics to better define your marketing strategies and ultimately gain an extensive understanding of your audience.
What User Engagement Metrics Should You Track?
There are a lot of metrics for you in GA4, and trying to track all of them would be very overwhelming. On the other hand, if you’re not tracking the right ones, you might become more confused about what’s successful for your company and what needs work.
As you consider what metrics to track, you should align this with the purpose of your website and your company’s marketing goals. For example, if you’re looking to sell your products or services online, your KPIs are going to look slightly different than a company looking to provide thought leadership to its audience.
Below, we’ll outline some of the most influential user engagement metrics you can track to know the effect of your marketing strategies.
In appropriate sections, we’ll highlight an industry average or target range. This may vary depending on what type of industry you’re in, so you can always use Google’s benchmarking tool to find specific averages on user engagement.
Users
There are three different types of users that you should be aware of in Google Analytics 4. Each is similar but tells you a slightly different story about what your audience is doing on your website.
New Users. In Universal Analytics, each device counted as a new user. However, GA4 will use cross-device tracking to recognize the same user on different devices.
Total Users. Similar to what you’ve seen before, total users let you know the number of users that had an event on your website during a specific period of time.
Active Users. Active users are a new metric you can track within Google Analytics 4. These are engaged users, or someone who stayed on the page for longer than 10 seconds, had a conversion event or visited more than 2 pages on your website. Ideally, a good benchmark for active users is 60% – 70% of your total users.
*Note that in Google Analytics 4, active users will be labeled as just “users”.
Why is this metric important for understanding user engagement? Increasing new users is a really great indicator that your brand awareness is growing. If you want to take this a step further, you can also see how many of these users are engaging with your website, viewing multiple pages, and spending more time on your site.
If you’re noticing that you have a lot of new users but not as many active users, it may be because your site needs some UX improvements so visitors are given a great first impression of your website.
Engaged Sessions
The engaged session metric will also be something new with Google Analytics 4. Just like with an active user, an engaged session is when someone spends more than 10 seconds on your site, viewed more than 2 pages, or completed a conversion.
An additional, new metric in Google Analytics 4 is engaged sessions per user. This number can be found by dividing the number of engaged sessions by the number of total users. So, if you have 683 engaged sessions and 1,100 total users, your engaged sessions per user is 0.62, or 62%.
Why is this metric important? What we provided above highlights your entire website’s engagement. But you can also narrow this down to specific pages. By finding specific pages that have higher engaged sessions, you can continue to promote that product/service/insight on multiple platforms.
On the other hand, you can find pages that aren’t performing as well and have lower engaged sessions. This could be a great indication to rework those pages, rewrite the blog, or to better promote the page across different mediums, like social media and email blasts.
Bounce Rate
Since engaged sessions are now an engagement metric in Google Analytics 4, you can use it to get a better idea of what your bounce rate percentage is. Simply inverse the percentage of engaged sessions to get your bounce rate.
This bounce rate will tell you how many users stayed less than 10 seconds on your site. So, continuing with the example above, if the engagement rate is 62% that means that 38% of total users went to your site and then immediately left.
Average Engagement Time
This is an important metric to show you how long your active users are spending on your website. If you’re noticing that people aren’t spending a lot of time on your page, and aren’t converting, it’s likely that something needs to be adjusted.
Again, use this metric to see where users are spending the most time on your site. If you’re noticing that your blog posts, case studies, landing pages, or other online materials are getting little engagement time, try creating evergreen, engaging, and authentic content.
Events
Now the main difference you’ll see in UA vs GA4 engagement metrics is it’s now tracking events rather than goals. Ultimately, this is going to help you see a more well-rounded view of your users and their engagement.
Make sure the events you are tracking are the most important for measuring your marketing strategies. So, if you’re an eCommerce website, you probably want to be tracking when users are browsing the inventory, adding products to their carts, and eventually checking out.
If your website’s main objective is to disperse information and show yourself as an industry expert, you should be tracking events that occur on your blog posts or case study pages. Events like page scroll depth, video progress (if relevant), and clicks.
Conversions
In Universal Analytics, you had to set up goals that would then track your conversions. It’s going to look a bit different in Google Analytics 4. All goals have turned into events, and you can mark your most important events as conversions.
Simply toggle the switch to indicate which events you’d like to mark as conversions. We recommend marking events like form submissions and phone calls as conversions.
Why is this metric important? No matter the purpose of your website, you’re going to want users to take action. Conversions are one of the best ways to track user engagement in Google Analytics 4.
Not only can you see specific actions being taken, but you can see where these conversions are coming from. You may see conversions come from an email campaign you sent out, a social advertisement, or a pay-per-click campaign.
Especially during a time when you need to reevaluate your strategies, being able to see where conversions are happening can help you focus your attention on those specific channels.
How to Improve Engagement Metrics in Google Analytics
With a little time, specific tools, and website testing, you can make changes that will benefit users navigating your site.
Explore the Why
In marketing, there isn’t usually a one-size-fits-all answer as to why things are happening. Here are a few tips you can explore to gain a more accurate depiction of ways to improve your engagement metrics.
Depending on your industry, there could be multiple reasons for a decrease in engagement. If you work in an economically dependent industry, this could play a huge factor in site engagement.
There will be similar effects if your business has a seasonality factor. If that’s the case, try comparing year-over-year data rather than month-over-month, so you can get a better view of what’s happening through each season of the year.
If you are seeing dips in engagement, don’t panic! What’s important is that you’re continuing your strategies and creating engaging, evergreen content that can be used across multiple platforms to engage more of your audience.
Encourage Engagement Across Multiple Channels
It’s important to reach your audience where they are. Cross-promotions allow for your message to spread to a wider audience, nudging them to visit your site and discover your content.
As we said, there sometimes isn’t a definitive answer to why engagement is increasing or decreasing. So, it’s never a bad idea to test what you think may be the reason for the fluctuation or try implementing a new strategy.
When you’re A/B testing, make sure you’re not changing everything at once. You should only change one element at a time, so you can accurately identify the most positive effects on your user engagement in Google Analytics 4.
Need help analyzing your current strategies and pinpointing areas of improvement on your website? Contact our specialists today!
This blog was originally published on September 25, 2019, and updated on June 28, 2023.
We’ve already created a Facebook Ads Checklist, but that’s not the only great social media platform to advertise on. LinkedIn can be an exceptional tool to target the right audience and move users through the customer journey.
LinkedIn can also be overwhelming and intricate until you really nail down your audience, ad formats, and campaign objectives. This is why we’ve created this LinkedIn Ads Guide, so you can feel a little more confident as you start the process.
Before Starting Your Campaign
Before we get into the meat and potatoes of your LinkedIn ads guide, you’ll first want to set up a LinkedIn business account. Once the page is made, you’ll know it was successful if you have an “advertise” icon on the top right page of your personal LinkedIn page.
Your campaigns will only improve the more you post organically on your business page. This is the same across all platforms. As you start to advertise on LinkedIn, your profile will be gaining more traffic, so you want to make sure there is credible and beneficial content on your page.
Step 1: Set Up Your Campaign Group
There are three levels in LinkedIn Ads Manager that are listed below. We’ll go through each level and give you insight into how to succeed at each step.
Campaign Group
Campaign
Ads
If you’re familiar with Facebook advertising, think of your LinkedIn Campaign Group as a Campaign in Ads Manager. It’s the first step and the shell that will hold all of your individual campaigns.
You can organize your campaign groups however you feel fit. At Tower, we create monthly campaigns, so we organize our campaign groups annually. Meaning, we create a new campaign group once every year.
By organizing your campaign groups in an easy way, either annually or bi-annually, you’ll easily be able to look back at previous campaigns and consider running the same ones again.
Step 2: Add Your Campaign
The next few steps in this LinkedIn ads guide are all under level 2, or the campaign level. You will choose a campaign objective, audience, ad format, budget, and schedule. Under each step, we’ll cover LinkedIn ads’ best practices so you can create a successful campaign.
When you initially create your campaign, you have to put it under a campaign group. This is why it’s important to accurately name and organize your campaign group.
Create a Campaign Objective
When comparing Facebook ads vs LinkedIn ads, you’ll notice there are similar campaign objectives to choose from. Below is the list of each available LinkedIn campaign objective.
Brand Awareness. This will get your advertisement out to as many people as possible, showing them your product or service. This would be a good campaign objective for a newer LinkedIn business profile. The main objective in this campaign will to be increase impressions.
Website Visits. If you’re looking to drive traffic to your website, then we suggest using the website visits objective. You can choose to take consumers to a contact page or a specific landing page related to your advertisement.
Engagement. Creating engaging content should be a goal for your campaign no matter what, but this objective will show your advertisement to users that are likely to follow your page and engage with your content.
Video Views. If you’ve created a great promotional video, then this LinkedIn campaign objective is for you! If you choose this as your campaign objective, you must use the LinkedIn video ad format. Your ad will be shown to users that are most likely to watch your entire video.
Lead Generation. LinkedIn lead gen ads allow the user to fill out a form directly from your ad. This information can then be found under “Assets” and then “Lead Gen Forms”.
Talent Leads. This LinkedIn campaign objective is used for your company to engage with potential employees for your organization. You’ll likely want to send users to your career page so they can learn more information about your company.
Website Conversions. Linkedin conversion ads are only available if you have conversion tracking set up. If these are set up, LinkedIn has the ability to track conversions from your advertisement.
You are able to track conversions within that window between a determined time period (usually up to 90 days) after the ad runs. So if a user doesn’t immediately take action, don’t worry! LinkedIn will still be able to track the conversion.
Job Applicants. This is similar to talent lead ads. LinkedIn will show your job opportunity to users. Your audience is a crucial part of this ad objective because you want to receive views and engagement from qualified candidates.
Note: Once you click “save and exit” at the bottom of the page, you will not be able to change your campaign objective without starting over!
Step 3: Craft Your Audience
Throughout this entire LinkedIn Ads Guide, you’ll find expert insight into best practices, but we believe that the most crucial step is crafting your audience. LinkedIn gives your company the ability to specify a variety of characteristics.
These audiences are very intricate and granular, which at first glance, can be overwhelming when you first start. Don’t worry, sometimes it takes months to craft an audience where you see high click-through rates and engagement.
The characteristics above can be excluded from your audience as well. For example, you won’t want to show your advertisement to competing companies. Or if you’re restricted to a certain location, you’ll want to exclude outside areas.
This helps you get the most out of your budget, which we will talk about more in step 5. However, with these specific characteristics, comes finicky rules. Sometimes, you can’t include something in your audience and then exclude another thing.
At first, this can be confusing and perhaps a little annoying. But here’s an example: you cannot include Job Titles in your audience and then exclude Job Functions. LinkedIn will give you are warning message and grey out the attribute.
As you are building your audience, you’ll see “Forecasted Results” on the right-hand side. This is a great indicator of the size and segmentation of your drafted audience. It helps you get an idea of who will be seeing and engaging with your audience. So, if it’s not exactly the right fit, you can adjust the audience before the campaign goes live.
Retargeting Audiences
In addition to the audiences above, another benefit of LinkedIn ads is the ability to retarget specific contacts or companies. This technique enables you to pull together an audience very specific to your ideal market.
Another type of retargeting audience on LinkedIn is pulling information on who has visited your profile, or website, or filled out a lead generation form. This type of audience typically has a higher click-through rate because there are fewer barriers if they’ve already interacted with your site. In time, this could lead the customer to convert further down the consumer funnel.
These functions can be found under “Assets” in your Linkedin ads manager.
Step 4: Choose Your Ad Format
It’s finally time to review the different LinkedIn ad types you can choose from within your campaign. We’ll provide an overview of each type here, but you can find more information on LinkedIn’s support page.
The options you have for your ad format will change depending on what you choose for your campaign objective.
LinkedIn Single Image Ad. Simple enough, this ad will show one photo with ad copy.
LinkedIn Carousel Image Ad. Give users multiple photos and headlines in one ad. The call to action will have to be the same across each image card.
LinkedIn Video Ad. Highlight your promotional video through a LinkedIn video ad. You must provide a headline for this type of ad, but additional ad copy, or introductory text, is optional.
Your video can be used with a variety of campaign objectives depending on your company’s marketing strategy. For example, if you want to use your promotional video to drive traffic to your site, you can use the website visits campaign objective.
LinkedIn Text Ad. This ad is shown on the right-hand side of your LinkedIn desktop feed. You’ll have a limited character count to capture your audience, so this ad format needs to truly stand out.
LinkedIn Spotlight Ad. Spotlight and Follower Ads are personalized to a LinkedIn profile. Spotlight ads show a specific offering that aligns with your target audience.
LinkedIn Follower Ad. On the other hand, Follower Ads are also personalized but are used to promote a company page rather than an offering.
LinkedIn Document Ad. This is a relatively new ad format that LinkedIn has introduced. You can now let users read and download documents directly from the advertisement. This is beneficial for sharing high-quality content with your targeted audience.
LinkedIn Message Ad. We’re sure you have received a message ad in your LinkedIn inbox. These are a more personalized way to reach your target audience. Be wary, a user can get annoyed by the overload of ads in their inbox, so you want to make sure yours stands out from the rest.
LinkedIn Conversation Ad. These are similar to message ads but you can include multiple call-to-action buttons rather than a single call-to-action. This means you can link users to a landing page and a lead gen form, all in one message.
LinkedIn Event Ad. Advertise your LinkedIn event that will show in your target audience’s feed.
LinkedIn is a very effective way to target your audience and bring awareness to your brand but all of these options can make for a puzzling start. Our specialists are here to help you through the trial process and onto being successful with your LinkedIn campaigns.
Step 5: Set a Budget and Schedule
Similar to Facebook ads, you can decide either to set up a daily budget or a lifetime budget for your campaign. LinkedIn ads’ minimum budgets are $10 a day, or a lifetime budget of $100.
When you set up your schedule and budget, LinkedIn may warn you that the budget you’ve allocated is not enough for the entire duration of your ad. If this warning pops up, you must either shorten the duration of your advertisement or add more to your budget.
Step 6: Create Your Ads
Set up is complete! It’s now time to create your ads. LinkedIn has made it really easy to reuse photos and videos from previous campaigns through a recently added tool, LinkedIn ads library.
When creating your ad, you want to name each ad to easily identify them. This is especially important if you are creating multiple ad variants. LinkedIn has recently stated that campaigns with up to 5 ad variants can receive a 12% higher click-through rate.
LinkedIn ad specs suggest vertical images with a size of 1200 by 627 pixels. These best practices can also help increase your campaign’s click-through rate.
Writing Your Headline and Introductory Text
Something positively different about LinkedIn ads vs Facebook ads is the character count for the headline and introductory text. You have a lot more breathing room on LinkedIn compared to Facebook.
Your character count can be up to 200 characters long and your introductory text can be up to 600 characters. LinkedIn best practices suggest having a headline of up to 150 characters so it’s concise for better engagement.
Introductory text that is over 100 characters risks being truncated on the desktop. In order to avoid this, you’ll want to keep the copy around 75 characters. However, sometimes it is necessary to add more text, and there are times these ads perform very well.
In that case, keep in mind where your text will truncate so you can complete a clear thought before the copy is cut off. Just in case a user doesn’t take the action of clicking to see the entire ad copy.
The final step in the actual creation of your LinkedIn ad will be choosing a clear call to action. LinkedIn has a predetermined list for you to choose from. It’s important to select a call-to-action that represents what you want your audience to do with the ad.
Step 7: Launch your Campaign!
Once you’ve finalized steps 1 through 6, it’s time to launch your campaign! LinkedIn strives to review ads within 24 hours of submission, so you should know pretty quickly if something isn’t approved.
Under each of the three levels, campaign groups, campaigns, and ads, you will be able to see the “status”. As you’re working through the campaign, the status should be “draft”. This means you can still edit the campaign and launch it.
Most commonly, if everything is approved, it will either say “active running” or “active not started”. Active running means the campaign is currently running and being shown to your target audience. Whereas active not started means the campaign is ready but scheduled to run in the future.
When the status of your campaign or ad is “active not running” it means there is further action you need to take because it can run. You can learn more about why you received this status by going to the LinkedIn help site.
Step 8: Monitor Your Ads
With any marketing tactic, it’s important to analyze and report what’s happening once the campaign is launched. There are a lot of moving factors within LinkedIn Ads Manager so it may take some trial and error for you to find the sweet spot in LinkedIn campaigns.
If you aren’t immediately seeing the results you hope for, try adjusting your audience size. It’s possible it’s either too niche where not enough people are seeing it or it’s too broad where the correct people aren’t seeing your ad.
Once a LinkedIn ad launches, you’re able to “chart” it to get more demographical information. This will help you further define who is interacting with your ad, what industry they’re in, where they’re located, and even the company they work for.
Currently, LinkedIn ads’ best practices suggest that your cost per click should be below $6 and your click-through rate should sit around .4%. These results can vary depending on your industry as well as the campaign objective you selected.
For example, if your campaign objective is video views, LinkedIn isn’t showing your ad to users that are likely to click through to your landing page, hence lowering your click-through rate.
As we finish up our LinkedIn Ads Guide, it’s okay if you haven’t mastered the platform. But you should feel confident in starting your first LinkedIn campaign. And if you’re thinking: “I want to do this, but I don’t have time,” well, that’s why we’re here.
Ready to experience the benefits of LinkedIn advertising? This LinkedIn Ads Guide is only the beginning. Speak with our social media team to learn about your possibilities.
Why use Facebook ads for marketing? The answers are in the numbers. Facebook’s users have grown 6.2% since 2021 and now stand at 2.91 billion monthly active users. And since Facebook purchased Instagram and now has turned into Meta, you can find 77% of internet users on one of these platforms.
So now your question may be, how do I get started with Facebook Meta advertising? For you to be successful with your advertising, we’ve created a Facebook ads checklist that provides step-by-step guidance on how to initiate, monitor, and analyze your Facebook campaigns.
Meta Business Suite vs Business Manager
A significant difference that has come out of this change is there is now Meta Business Suite, where before it was known as Business Manager. In the Meta Business Suite, you’ll get a full view of analytics, advertisements, and activity on your page. This platform makes it easy for your business to oversee multiple platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, in one place.
Facebook Ads Checklist
This Facebook Ads checklist will allow you to hit all the bases, ensuring your ad is set up for success! We’ve provided a Facebook ad step-by-step guide so you can feel confident with your social media marketing.
Step 1: Set Up Your Meta Business Suite
Advertising on Facebook can be a very low-cost option. Within Meta for Business, you have a great opportunity to target specific audiences, retarget existing customers, and analyze your campaigns for future improvements.
Initially, you’ll need to set up your business suite to fully utilize everything Facebook meta advertising has to offer. Once this page is built, there are multiple avenues your business can take in order to advertise on Facebook and Instagram.
To start using Meta Business Suite, including Ads Manager, you’ll need to go to Business Settings and set up your ads manager account. Your business will have an individualized business ID that will be important to know if you decide to set up pixels or share your account with other pages. (For example, working with an agency to enhance your social media marketing.)
Facebook will need your company’s address and payment information in order to create your account. To check to see if you have successfully created your ads account, go to Ads Manager to see if you can build your first campaign!
Step 2: Create Your First Campaign
Once you have successfully created your ads account, you’re all set to start generating advertisements. The hierarchy in Ads Manager begins with a Campaign, then an Ad Set, and finally your Ads.
Special Ads Categories
Depending on your industry, you may need to choose one of the following special ad categories, which need to be reviewed by Meta to ensure it doesn’t go against any Meta ad policies. You may also notice certain interests and demographics are unavailable for use if you fall into one of these categories.
Credit. Ads that are offering credit cards or long-term finances.
Employment. Highlighting open job opportunities or professional certification programs.
Housing. Advertising real estate listings, homeowners insurance, or mortgage loans.
Social Issues, Elections, or Politics. Political campaigns or ads bringing awareness to economic, civil, or social rights.
Step 3: Choose Your Campaign Objective
Once you have an ad account set up and you begin building your Facebook campaign, you’ll be prompted to choose the objective. Here are a few options you can pick from.
Brand Awareness
Reach
Traffic
Engagement
App Installs
Video Views
Lead Generation
Messages
Conversion
Catalog Sales
Store Traffic
There are a few questions about your Facebook ad goals that you should ask yourself. Do you want users to navigate to a particular link? Do you want them to engage with your ad, and if so, why? Would you rather they browse your products? These are important questions to ask as you set your goal.
Step 4: Set Your Ad Budget
Moving onto the New Ad Set level, you’ll decide on how long your ad will run as well as the budget for your campaign.
It can be intimidating to decide how much to put into your Facebook marketing budget. As you consider how much to invest, consider your overall marketing goals and how much of your audience is on Facebook.
In Ads Manager, you’ll have two options for your budget, daily or lifetime budgets. So, which budget is better to use? Daily budgets are better to use if your ad will be running for a longer period of time. If your budget is more flexible and has the potential to be changed, a daily budget allows you to take it day by day so you can adjust if needed.
A lifetime budget, in comparison, will take more advantage of a well-performing ad day. For example, if your ad is performing well one day, Facebook will spend more. But with a daily budget, the platform wouldn’t be able to spend more to take advantage of the high performance.
Another difference between the two is with a lifetime budget, you can control what hours of the day your ad is actively running. If you’d like to only run your ad during your business hours, you’ll have to go with a lifetime budget.
With digital marketing, you can put a small amount in and receive reports, the ability to see patterns of users going through their digital journey, and the flexibility to test various ad copies, images, and objectives. Our recommendation is to spend between $300 and $500 for a month-long campaign on a lifetime budget.
Step 5: Find Your Target Audience
Your target audience should encompass users that will interact with your ad, follow the call to action, and learn more about your business. Within Ads Manager, you will have a wide variety of interests, demographics, and behaviors to choose from.
There are three types of audiences you can choose from. Once you have perfected an audience, remember to save it to use in future campaigns.
Core Audiences. This is the most common audience and is defined by the user’s age, interest, and other demographics.
Custom Audiences. A retargeting audience, this type will help you reconnect with users that have already engaged with your business. You will need to set up a pixel to utilize this type of audience.
Lookalike Audiences. Facebook has the ability to find new users for your ad, but the interests are similar to those of your existing customers.
The options may seem overwhelming at first, but once you have a strong idea of who your target market is, you can test various attributes to find an audience that maximizes engagement and your organization’s goals.
Step 6: Decide on a Facebook Ad Strategy
Next, you’ll move on to the New Ad level and decide on a Facebook ad strategy. Think about how you’ll achieve your Facebook ad goal. Will you try to evoke emotion from users? Is there a specific event, product, and website page you are trying to get users to interact with? Will you use specific imagery or a different ad format?
You have the option to create one of the following Facebook ad formats:
Image, allows you to add a single image.
Video, allows you to add a single video.
Image Slideshow, Facebook will create a small slideshow with 2-15 images
Carousel, which can have up to 10 images.
Collection, an ad that displays your product catalog.
When creating your ad, you’ll have the option to apply standard enhancements or a fullscreen mobile experience. If you decide to check standard enhancements, Facebook will need a variety of text options and a video or image from you.
Facebook will create different variations of your ad and make text or image combinations based on your audience’s interactions. They may also enhance your photo or video through filters, templates, or labels. These enhancements optimize your ad and bring better performance to your campaign.
You’ll also have the option of adding a fullscreen mobile experience, or instant experience, to your ad. If you select this option and provide the necessary details, your mobile landing page will open instantly when someone interacts with your ad. It’s designed to encourage people to visit your website or app, increase brand awareness, and drive product sales.
Short and to the point. Facebook will truncate the copy of your ad, so the first sentence should capture the attention of someone scrolling through their feed.
A/B Test. You can’t expect to get it perfect the first time, so we suggest creating multiple variations of your ad. This could mean changing photos, your call to action, audience attributes, or even the copy of your ad.
Take advantage of what Facebook offers. There are a lot of great features of Facebook meta advertising that should be used to your benefit.
Once you’ve created the ad, Facebook will show you a preview of what your ad will look like on someone’s feed, in Marketplace, and in the search results.
Step 8: Launch Your Ad
If you think you’re ready to launch your ad, take another glance back through all your settings, copy, and video or images just to make sure it’s to your liking. Once it’s all ready to go, click “publish”. Remember, you will set a date range for when your ad will run, so when you click “publish” make sure the correct dates are set.
From there you’ll need to wait for a little while Facebook reviews your campaign. Once approved, you’re ad will launch based on its scheduled dates!
Step 9: Monitor Your Ad
During the first few days of running your ad, check back at least once a day to make sure everything is running the way it’s supposed to. After the first few days, checking in on the ad once a week is sufficient. As you monitor your ad, keep an eye out for
Daily/Lifetime Budget. See how much you’re spending each day on your ad. Whether you’ve chosen a daily or lifetime budget in your ad setup, the ad should be hitting close to your daily allotted limit every day. If it’s not, there may be something wrong with the ad.
Cost per Click. For obvious reasons, you’ll want your cost per click to be as low as possible. If your clicks are over $2.00, it’s an indication that something isn’t right. (That’s the average you want to be under.)
Ad Frequency. You don’t want users to get tired of seeing your content. Keeping the frequency around two or lower will help prevent that from happening. If you are noticing a high frequency (over 3), you can set up a frequency cap rule in Ads Manager or swap in a new ad creative.
Interactions. See how your audience is interacting with your ad to get a sense of what they do and don’t like.
Result Rate. This will depend on what type of ad objective you chose. Keeping an eye on this will help you see how well your ad is doing overall.
Need More Help Getting Started?
At Tower Marketing, we pride ourselves on the unique marketing challenges that clients bring for us to solve. Whether it’s creating brand awareness, driving traffic to a website, or encouraging users to write a review, your social ads should grab the attention of users that are likely to convert and engage with your brand.
For a majority of companies, social media marketing is only a fraction of their integrated marketing plan. The Markets at Shrewsbury came to us looking for a whole host of services, including social media advertising. After working with them for several years, our team was able to increase engagement and hone their target audience to help increase attendance and sales around seasonal events.
Ready to take advantage of Facebook advertising? Work with our specialists to create social campaigns that meet all the goals on your unique Facebook ads checklist!
Your website is often a user’s first impression of your brand, so you have to make a statement. But what makes a website stand out? These days, making a website attract attention is more than just ensuring it looks good. It must be easy to use, interactive, and informative.
If you’re looking at your website analytics and noticing a lot of users are coming to your site and immediately leaving (a high bounce rate) then it might be time to make some UX improvements.
What is UX?
UX stands for the user experience within your digital space and encompasses a lot of disciplines that may be overwhelming to think about. But we are here to simplify and explain what goes into a user’s experience. By definition, UX is how the user thinks, feels, and interacts with your product, or in this case your website.
When a user comes to your site, they may evaluate in 1 of 4 ways, which are defined below. Your website should give the user value, be easy to navigate and be enjoyable to use. To help characterize your UX, ask yourself the following questions:
Value: Is my site producing value for the user?
Functionality: Does my site have a lot of page errors?
Usability: Is my site easy to navigate and interact with?
Impression: When a user first visits my site, what are they thinking? What immediate actions are they taking?
Difference between UX and UI
The terms “user experience” (UX) and “user interface” (UI) are often used interchangeably, even though they are describing two related but different things. The UI of a website consists of all the elements a user interacts with, buttons, slides, menus, maps, etc., or the relationship between the users and the computer systems and software.
On the other hand, the user experience, as the name suggests, encompasses the entire experience of the website. UX takes into account how a user interacts with not just UI elements, but every other aspect of the website — load times, color usage, whitespace, mood, and subject matter in imagery, and even down to the amount of scrolling required to view elements on a page.
When looking to improve your website user experience, think about the big picture.
Why UX matters for your business
You may think that UX is something that will just help your website look better, but incorporating user-friendly features into your website design will also increase sales, and if applicable, products sold. If you are successful in improving your user experience, your bounce rate should also decrease.
When a user visits your site, you don’t want them to move on from your site because they are frustrated when they can’t find answers on your site. Your ultimate goal in improving your website user experience is to grab your user’s attention and convert them into customers.
A website that is aesthetically pleasing is one thing, but you also want a site that is easy to navigate, has limited page errors and motivates users to interact with your company. Creating a site with great UX allows users to trust your brand’s quality and credibility.
We’ve outlined some of our best practices on how to improve user experience on your website that help generate traffic, keep users engaged, and allow users to easily reach their goals on your site. These practices are best paired with a strategic design team that creates content for your user.
Keeping up with the Best Design Practices
1. Clear Call to Actions
What do you want your users to do while they are on your site? Answering this question will give you call-to-action ideas to incorporate into your site. The RICE marketing strategy will help you determine what types of call-to-action, or CTAs, to include on individual pages.
If you are looking to interact with users that may not be quite ready to purchase your product or service, try adding soft call-to-actions on your website pages. Soft CTAs are not directing users to perform your main desired actions. Some soft call-to-actions ideas include:
“Join our Mailing List”
“Read Some Customer Testimonials”
“Learn More”
On some web pages, your goal should be to convert the user to a customer. This stage of the RICE marketing strategy calls for hard CTAs, which motivate a user to perform an end goal, for example, purchasing the product or service.
2. Internal Linking
When laying out internal linking strategies, be conscious of the path you want the user to take throughout your site. Including internal linking allows website visitors to stay engaged on your site and easily learn more about your product or service.
3. Take Advantage of White Space
Whitespace web design is crucial for users to be able to digest and understand the content on your website. Having a website that is cluttered with information, graphics, visuals, and other various content will cause users to feel overwhelmed and confused.
Whitespace creates a visual break for the user’s eyes. When a user visits your site, you want them to see a clean, polished look that is easy to comprehend.
Your whitespace web design can include more space between each body of content, margins on either side of the page, and group-related topics with white space. Remember, white space does not mean it needs to be white, the background color of your website can align with your branding colors.
4. Write to Your Target Personas
One of the best ways to improve your user experience on your website is to design your website for the user. What needs and pain points will your website solve for the user? Who will be visiting your site?
Don’t be afraid to ask users questions or have them rate their experience. This feedback will help you shape your website to what works best for your target audience.
5. Images
Images should enhance the copy and design of your website, not make the site disorganized or overwhelming. When thinking about what visuals to include on your webpage, find ones that explain the copy, evoke emotion, and talk to your audience. Avoid using images to just “fill space.”
6. Metadata
Metadata may not be the most obvious practice to think about when looking for UX improvements, but having the correct metadata in place will help users find your website. There are a few different types of metadata, including descriptive, administrative, and structural.
Your Google snippet will encompass the title tag and meta description, which is the first thing users see if your webpage shows up on their Google search. We recommend a title tag of fewer than 60 characters and a meta description of fewer than 160 characters.
7. Mobile UX Design
The UX improvements above are all very important to consider for your next website redesign, but if your site does not perform well through mobile, you’ll lose a lot of your potential audience.
Key takeaways for mobile UX design are to make everything “thumb-friendly” as users will not have the accuracy of a mouse. Larger UI elements will ease the navigation and interaction points of your mobile website.
Additionally, remember that everything will be stacked so the content will appear much longer, requiring additional scrolling on mobile. We recommend keeping paragraphs to a maximum of three lines, so readers are able to digest the content fully without being overwhelmed.
Mobile UX design is significant because it contributes to your Core Web Vital score. It will assess the accessibility of links, content readability, and other page elements.
The Role of a UX Designer
The UX Designer will work with user research, front-end design, information architecture, and usability testing to increase your website’s user experience. They’ll help you make your website easier to navigate and interact with, so users are more likely to revisit and engage with your site.
UX Audits
The UX audit is the first step in identifying any shortcomings on an existing site. The marketing team will comb the entire site, examining not only the UI but the overall user experience. This is to ensure the UX is serving the ultimate goal of the website. During this process, any user pain points or site goal misalignment will be identified and remediation will be suggested to ensure UX improvements across the site.
Ready to boost traffic and engage more users on your site through UX improvements? Work with our experienced web development team to set your site apart!
