How to Create Attention-Grabbing Images on Instagram

 

Need to catch attention with images on Instagram? You’re in the right place. In this post, we walk you through 8 ways to use attention-grabbing Instagram Images for your brand – including case studies and examples you can use for inspiration right now!

Instagram has so many daily active users nowadays that it’s probably easier to count who isn’t on the platform yet.

From average folks looking to be social and connect with other people, to brands trying to market their businesses online — everyone on the platform is constantly on their A-game, sharing their visual best images on Instagram, in order to get liked, shared, and followed.

If you’re one of the very few just starting out on the visual medium, or maybe someone who’s had an account for a while and is now looking to get more noticed — you’re in luck! We’ve compiled a quick and easy guide to help you create – and curate images – on Instagram.

Let’s jump in and look at 8 ways to create Attention-Grabbing Instagram Images:

How to Use Images on Instagram to Grab Attention

Whether you’re creating your own images on Instagram or curating user-generated content, this post will help to give your visuals a boost.

1. Start with the Basics

First of all, for whatever reason you’re on Instagram, it’s important to know and list down your objectives. Why? Well, this allows you to plan what kind of content to publish.

Pinning down your objectives also lets you pin down which metrics to follow and use to determine whether your campaign is a success.

Are you looking to get more followers? Skew your content to invite people to follow your page. Do you have a specific post or product you want people to know about? Play up your captions and hashtag-game to get more people to see your post and hit ‘like’.

Part of knowing your objectives is determining your target market, too. Now it may sound tempting to keep casting a wide net in an attempt to get more views, but this is actually counterproductive! The trick to getting genuine interest is to nail down a sweet spot in your audience.

Figure out what age group they are, what their Instagram behaviors are — basically, try to know exactly who they are. Once you’ve figured this out, channel your energies towards marketing and speaking to them.

Trying to get the attention of a few people genuinely interested in you, versus pandering to a huge crowd who may not be as invested, takes less effort and yields better results. This tip is especially pertinent to brands and businesses: remember, the invested few are those who are most likely to share your posts to their friends and make a purchase.

2. Know Your Audience (and Engage with them)

After figuring out your objectives and target market, it’s time to pin down your social media branding!

Study your brand and see how it can translate to images on Instagram. If your brand were a person, how would he or she speak? Is he or she funny or witty or irreverent? Or is he or she more about quietly sharing inspirational thought pieces? And of course, is your brand a he or a she?

This all sounds a bit funny, but turning your brand into a person allows you to plan your content and craft your captions with precision. This also gives you an ownable tone and language, one that hopefully stands out from every other brand on the platform

Hot Tip: Make sure you get permission before sharing user-generated content. And don’t forget to tag them in your post as well.

3. Create your Brand Template

Because Instagram is all about visuals, your branding should stand out in every image you share. What are your brand’s tone and colors? Is your brand dark, grainy, and gritty, or does it veer towards bright lights and pastel hues?

Once you’ve got this figured out, try and create a visual template that can become the guide for all of your content and images on Instagram. You can edit your images using Instagram’s in-app filters and settings or download your own photo-editing app.

One app worth checking out is Instasize, a creative toolkit with a number of modern filters, border tools, and font options for you to choose from. (Instasize is available for download on iOS and Google Playstore.)

Get creative with filters, borders and fonts with Instasize

Once you’ve downloaded your app of choice, play around with the tools and filters to create an ownable look that’s true to your brand. Save or remember your set-up and use it as a template to run your future posts through.

4. Sell a Lifestyle

Instagram is all about visuals, but remember that it’s also a social media platform. This means people browse through feeds to be social and connect, and the last thing they’re expecting is to be advertised to.

Telling a story is a great way to do this. Pair an engaging image with an engaging story or caption and you have the attention of your audience.

If you want your visuals to be successful on the platform, your posts have to be visually arresting without trying too hard to market your brand — or else people are just going to scroll past them.

So try to keep the sales talk on the down-lo. Aside from promoting your products, try to sell your brand and the lifestyle that it fits into. Use your content to engage your audience, while giving them insight into what your brand is all about.

5. Curate Your Grid

Coming up with amazing content goes beyond thinking about your individual posts. You’ve got to pay attention to the overall look of your page, too.

One way you can make your content grid more stunning is to try adding borders to your posts. Borders can add some space or breathing room between the images on your page. And depending on which borders you use, they can even unify the look and feel of your content.

Borders work like filters to lift your images.

What’s great about adding borders is that it’s as easy as slapping on a filter on your images. Simply download a photo-editing app of your choice — or if you’ve already downloaded it, try the border packs available on Instasize. Play around with a few and see which ones fit your brand’s visual identity.

6. Play Around with Carousel Posts

A carousel post is basically an album or a slideshow where you can share as many as ten photos all in one post. What’s great about this format is that you’re no longer limited to having to post several times, or worse, cram everything you want to share all in one image.

So if you’ve got a ton of information you want to post about, try breaking it down into several images on Instagram … in a Carousel.

You can even use an infographic maker to create informative yet visually arresting carousel posts to appeal to both the artist and data whiz.

If you’re planning on highlighting a new product, you can also share a carousel post that allows people to swipe right to see all its details up close.

Got before and pictures you wanna share and show off? Carousel posts are perfect for this purpose as well. You can also use them to show tutorials or step-by-step processes.

7. Get Creative with Your Stories

If there’s any place on Instagram where you can truly flex your creativity, it’s through your Stories.

Unlike the posts you share on your page, the 24-hour lifespan of your Stories allows you to be a little more candid. It also has several features that allow you to be even more engaging: you can add stickers to ask your audience questions or invite them to vote between options.

It also comes with its own text tool, which comes in various fonts and editing options. You can choose from an array of colors — and if those aren’t enough, you can press on a swatch and swipe through a spectrum to find a hue that suits your need.

Another trick you can try is tapping on the eyedropper icon, which then allows you to change the color of your text depending on where you place your cursor.

Use the eye dropper tool to match images.

You can use this to complement the color of your text with your image of choice, or if you’re trying to hide a bunch of hashtags, perfectly match it.

8. Create Cover Photos for Your Highlights

So as mentioned above, Instagram Stories last 24 hours — until, at least, you decide to add them to your Highlights.

Story Highlights go below your bio on your Instagram page, and in essence, become part of your content. And because of this, it’s always best practice to make sure that the cover photos of your Highlights are cohesive with the look of your entire page. A great way to address this is to create and add your own cover photos.

Need a quick and easy cover photo? Simply choose an image that best represents the category of your Highlights. Run it through the same filters you use for the rest of your content, then add your cover.

Got a bit more time to spare? You can use a photo-editing app to design a photo with some icons and labels.

Once you’ve got your cover photos ready, add them to your Highlights by tapping on the preview. Tap on More ( ⠇) on the lower right of your screen then choose “Edit Highlight.” Tap on “Edit Cover” then upload your cover of choice.

Wrapping It Up

When it comes to getting creative with your visuals or images on Instagram, you honestly need just two things: inspiration and practice. So aside from reading up on the best tips and tricks to try, you could also keep browsing through your feed or visiting various accounts.

See what your competitors are up to — and learn from what they’re doing right and what they can possibly improve on.

You could also check out the accounts of other creative content creators like artists and photographers. See if there’s anything about the composition and layout of their posts that you like and could possibly even use.

After scrolling through all the inspiration you can find, try things out for your own content. See what works for your brand, and keep building up from there.

Over to You

What works for your brand for engagement and images on Instagram? What tips from this post will you use to boost your engagement and results? Let us know in the comments below!

New Study Shows How People Use Social Media to Grow and Promote Their Businesses

Social media is one of the most popular marketing channels existing today. Yet, some business and organization leaders have questioned how effective it is in reaching their marketing objectives. Is it worth the financial and human resources investment?

The newly released 2019 Social Media Marketing Industry Report from Social Media Examiner provides us with some insight on social media usage and behavior. The study surveyed more than 4,800 marketers with the goal of understanding how they’re using social media to grow and promote their businesses.

Increased exposure and traffic are the top social media marketing benefits for the past five years. Increased exposure grew to 93% from 87% in 2018 and increased traffic improved to 87% from 78% last year demonstrating that positive results are possible even in a crowded social media landscape.

The next two important increases:

• Generated leads increased to 74% from 64%.
• Improved sales rose to 72% from 53%.

Even though Facebook and Instagram are the top two platforms used by marketers, it’s worth noting that Instagram grew from 66% to 73% and Twitter fell from 62% to 59%.

Facebook is number one for both B2C and B2B marketers, however, when separating B2C and B2B responses, the number two spot for B2C is Instagram at 78% while B2B’s second spot is LinkedIn at 80%.

Overall, YouTube is still the number one video channel marketers prefer, with Facebook’s native videos coming in second. When the study separated B2C and B2B responses, B2C marketers use more Instagram stories and Facebook native video while B2B marketers use more LinkedIn native video.

Of the platforms marketers regularly use for social media ads, Facebook is way ahead of the other contenders. However, when separating B2C and B2B, the study shows that B2C marketers are more likely to use Facebook and Instagram ads while B2B marketers are using more LinkedIn ads.

As with many studies of this nature, I always question the ROI (return on investment) for marketing activities. Is social media marketing worth the financial and human resources investment?

Even though we see some ROI results in the first chart, “Benefits of social media marketing,” this next chart demonstrates how marketers need to uptheir measurement activities.

In response to the study’s question, “I am able to measure the return on investment (ROI) for my organic social media activities,” only 44% agreed they were able to measure their organic social activities. This is a challenge that has plagued marketers for years.

Social media marketing is a necessity in most marketing mixes today. Yet, the return on investment still eludes many of us.

4 Tools to Help Boost Your Social Media Marketing Productivity

For small business owners and , time is a precious commodity. The online world never sleeps, and in order to be successful. it’s essential to be on the ball, to as great an extent as humanly possible.

Trying to maintain high levels of productivity, while simultaneously juggling the tasks of creating and distributing content, developing your brand’s marketing campaign, promoting said brand across multiple channels, and setting your goals and objectives is no mean feat – and that’s just the beginning. If your business is on the larger side, you may also have the added complication of motivating staff and upholding your respective standards across the board.

Canva For Work

Quite possibly the most important duty of any social media manager is that of creating the content itself. Enter Canva for Work, an easy to use tool which will guide you through every step of the process.

Whether you’re a novice, or a seasoned veteran, Canva has a bit of everything – and it all works via a simple drag and drop system which enables you to create flashy graphics to show off your brand to your heart’s content. You can tinker with fonts, colors, sizes etc. You can also choose from one of Canva’s built-in templates, or create your masterpiece completely from scratch, if you’re feeling confident.

The capacity to establish a uniform style across all of your designs can really help to formalize your branding, while the eye-catching animation tools can help bring a certain sense of flair to proceedings.

You can take advantage of the generous 30-day free trial to ensure that this is the tool for you before making any commitments, but if you do decide to sign up, all of this and more can be yours for a respectable $9.95 per month.

Zoho Cliq

If you manage a workforce of any size, Zoho Cliq, a communication and collaboration tool for teams, is an excellent starting point for any social media manager.

Team communication is very much the order of the day here – the objective of Cliq is to enable your colleagues to communicate with each other easily and efficiently, with minimal fuss. The simple interface includes an instant messenger system – not unlike the gone but never forgotten MSN – where team members can discuss any ongoing strategies, updates or anything else in real time. The drag and drop system makes it easy to share files with each other, and the inclusion of emojis can helps to bring a more light-hearted touch to proceedings.

Another handy function of Cliq is that it comes with its own app, which will give you and your team 24/7 access, wherever you are. Admittedly you may not be thanked for asking them to talk shop outside of office hours, but in an ever-moving industry, that kind of flexibility truly can be the difference between failure and success. Add to that a fully searchable chat history, and completely unlimited storage, and it’s pretty handy all around.

There is a somewhat restrictive free version (mostly in terms of storage space), but if you’re looking to go the whole hog, there’s a tiered price structure, dependent on how many users you require.

Agorapulse

A one-stop shop for all of your social media needs, Agorapulse provides a comprehensive dashboard which simplifies the entire process for you.

Keeping everything under one banner can, in itself, be an incredibly effective way to boost productivity, and with all the features at your disposal here you should be all set.

One of the standout features of Agorapulse is the ability to monitor all the social media conversations related to your business. You can compile a report which shows you, at a glance, who’s talking about your brand (and what they’re saying about it), who your biggest repeat ambassadors are and every time you’re hashtagged. Another handy time-saving feature is the ability to schedule posts.

Agorapulse also features several team collaboration tools, enabling you to manage your social media as a team, and set up clear and effective social media workflows.

Agorapulse offers a tiered pricing structure, again dependent on how many people are going to be using it, as well as the number of social profiles required.

Cyfe

Particularly useful if your social media presence spans across multiple platforms, Cyfe brings everything together onto a single, easy to use dashboard.

Analytics are very much the key element of this one – Cyfe gives you the opportunity to track websites, SEO keywords and domains, amongst various other vital pieces of data. You can also keep tabs on your social media demographics, followers and brand mentions over a set period of time, to give you an idea of how you’re performing on the whole.

Cyfe also boasts a range of inbuilt widgets which enable you to pull data from existing services, such as Google, YouTube and Salesforce. With the ability to run every one of its many, many dashboards simultaneously you can transform your desktop into ‘Mission Control’, and ensure that you never miss a thing.

You can sign up to Cyfe for free, but if you’re looking to make the most of what it has to offer the premium version is a pretty good value for money. For $29 per month, you can access the full shebang, including unlimited dashboards and widgets, historical data over a 30-day span, a raft of custom themes, and the ability to schedule an unlimited number of posts to your social media accounts.

Conclusion

Being a social media manager is an often challenging, exhausting and thankless task. Do it the right way, however, and it can also be an extremely exciting one. Remember that you don’t have to go it alone – make use of the tools available to give you a head start and your brand, and business as a whole, is sure to reap optimal benefit.

How to Get Real Results from Your Social Media Marketing Efforts

When my agency receives inquiries from organizations, we first ask them about their goals for social media. Most tell us that their key goal is to increase sales. We then talk with them about the difference between a goal and an outcome – money is an outcome, not a goal. Experience has shown that a more realistic goal for organizations who want sales would be lead generation.

However, the approach to acquiring leads is something of a gray area.

I’ve advocated that social media success comes down to alignment. A company that wants to actualize results from social media marketing must align their efforts with the values of the business, and solidify their commitment to relationships.

Here’s an overview of how that process actually works.

The Social Media Funnel

If we built a marketing funnel for social media, it would look like the diagram below.

Too many businesses want to jump right to the leads, and bypass the other steps, but you audience will have no desire to download your eBook until they know who you are, and they like what they see. It’s the same “know, like, and trust” approach that’s become a key tenet of modern-day marketing.

Bottom line: Businesses are often focused on the wrong things, and improper focus leads to inaccurate measurement, and ineffective steps to correct it. As a result, the conclusion, often, is that social media doesn’t work.

The Importance of a Strategy and Relationship-Mindset

It’s vital to have a social media strategy which aligns with the organization’s values.

Most profitable businesses have values at the heart of their company, and it’s those values that empower their teams and drive their business growth. Yet, when I look at businesses that employ social media, it’s infrequent they emulate these values online, especially with customer service. If service is a value to your organization, you need to respond to your audience online.

The other caveat is that it’s not an overnight process. Social media marketing is relationship-building, and relationships take time.

When was the last time you built immediate trust? Did you give someone the key to your house upon meeting them at the dog park? Put Mom in a home before seeing the facility? Just because someone ‘liked’ your page, or accepted your LinkedIn request, that does not invite you to hound them to the sale.

Relationship marketing is a long game.

How to Fulfill and Measure the Social Media Funnel

You may be wondering how you can fulfill these objectives using social media – below I offer some examples that can help you determine goals for each objective, the measurables or Key Performance Metrics (KPI’s) associated with each goal, and content suggestions that have worked for our clients to achieve positive ROI.

Please keep in mind that these are general guidelines – each business will need to determine the most effective goals to fulfill these objectives, and measurement will vary by channel. Also, this is just a sample. There are dozens of goals you could set – and, some will overlap. For example, engagement such as post comments can also fulfill the awareness objective by resulting in higher reach and following.

Top 11 social media marketing tools for 2019

There are many social media marketing tools to improve your social presence. Which one is better for your business?

Social media marketing can help you improve your brand awareness, boost your engagement with your followers and even explore new opportunities with potential customers. However, it’s not easy to manage all social media platforms without the use of the right tools. There are many social media management tools to help you be more effective.

All the available options can make it hard for you to decide the right one for your business. We’ve compiled a list with 16 tools to give you an overview of some of the most popular options before you pick the best choice for your team.

Whether you’re currently using one of them or you’re looking to switch to a different one, this list with 10 social media marketing tools should be of help.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite helps you manage all your social accounts in one place. It is probably one of the most popular options in social media management and monitoring.

It allows you to publish and schedule your social media posts and you can also use it to monitor your mentions and the keywords that you want to track.

This way you can use the platform for all the stages of your content, from finding new ideas to publishing them and measuring their performance.

The paid plans allow you to integrate your boosting plans into the platform while you can even integrate hundreds of apps to make your social media marketing more effective.

It’s one of the most popular options among social media marketers and it’s also a good way to get started to social media marketing if you’re still getting to grips with it and all the tasks you need to complete throughout your week.

What you need to consider

There is a free version for those who want a very simple solution but it’s limiting the number of posts that you can schedule and the data that you’re seeing through analytics. If you want to give it a try, the free option lets you schedule up to 30 posts while you can link up to 3 social profiles.

The pricing plans depend on the features and the number of profiles and the users that you want to add. The bigger your team the higher the pricing. Some marketers don’t find Hootsuite’s UX appealing comparing to other tools while its advocates are focusing on its functionality and the features that you can have in just one platform.

The Professional plan at $19/month allows you to connect 10 social profiles for 1 user and it includes unlimited scheduling. If you want to involve 3 users, you will have to pay $99/month and you’ll be able to connect up to 20 profiles along with team message assignments, custom reports and exportable analytics.

A complaint that I’ve heard from fellow marketers about Hootsuite is that it hasn’t really changed its interface through the years and it can be overwhelming if you’re just getting started. This is not necessarily a bad thing if you can still get all the features that you need in one place, so the decision is yours!

Buffer

Buffer is a popular social media management platform that many brands use all over the world.

It’s probably the most popular option along with Hootsuite and they both have their own strengths and weaknesses.

Buffer is focusing on publishing and scheduling and this has been the main feature ever since the tool launched. The user experience is focusing on simplicity to ensure that you’re able to schedule and plan your content without having any problems.

The ability to load the posts in the ‘Queue’ help you load posts in your profiles without necessarily setting the time manually on all posts. This way you can automate your planning to ensure that you’re only picking your ideal times once through the Settings.

You can also reschedule your posts by looking at your Sent posts and picking the ones that can be loaded again to the Queue. The Buffer Chrome extension can also help you simplify the idea of curating content while you can even create quick images for your posts through their free tool, Pablo.

If you’re interested in monitoring the replies you can also sign up to Buffer Reply, which is currently an additional product for Buffer. Moreover, you can also sign up to get early access to their upcoming product focusing on analytics, Buffer Analyze.

What you need to consider

The free plan can help you get started to learn how to use the tool. However, it’s very limiting so if you’re thinking of scheduling more posts you might want to consider a paid plan. The free plan is currently let you connect up to 3 social profiles and you can schedule up to 10 posts. It’s similar to Hootsuite’s limits on the free plan, but it is limiting even more the number of posts that you can schedule (30 over 10). It also doesn’t give you access to analytics to start measuring your performance.

The cheapest option starts at $15/month and it lets you connect up to 8 social accounts for 1 user and schedule up to 100 posts. You are also able to access Post analytics to analyse the performance of your posts.

The Pro plan can be a great solution for small businesses that want to schedule their content and save time when planning ahead. You are even able to include Pinterest as an additional integration and load content to the Queue for up to 100 posts. You can also access the Content Inbox to follow up to 15 RSS feeds.

However, if you have more than one person in your social media team, you might want to consider the Business plan that let you connect 25+ profiles and invite 5/10/15 users to your dashboard. Moreover, the Business plan lets you schedule up to 2000 posts in advance and you are accessing enhanced Analytics and reports. The small business plan starts from $99/month with 25 profiles and 6 users and you can upgrade depending on your team’s needs.

Buffer’s biggest advantage is the simplicity and the UX that understands what social media managers really need. However, if you want to include the Reply feature to your tools, you will need to pay an additional amount per month, starting from $50/month.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is another popular option among marketers for social media management. Its goal is to “deepen real connections with the people who love your brand”. The messaging is focusing on improving efficiency and communication through social media, both within your team but also with your supporters.

It is a complete social media management platform and it also provides a social CRM and an all-in-one social inbox to monitor all your messages. It can be really useful when working as a team and you’re involving social media customer service in your business.

You can publish, schedule and draft posts while you can also monitor and profiles and keywords to keep track of what’s important for your business.

Their support can also help you ensure that you’re making the most of the platform and it’s useful that their site can help you understand how to tailor the products to your needs (brand, agency, freelancer, etc)

What you need to consider

Sprout Social has many happy marketers using it. If you’re working as part of a team then you’ll certainly enjoy the collaboration features, the smart inbox and the ability to blend the social CRM with your scheduling and monitoring.

The pricing plans start from $99/month, which can be considered a bit more expensive compared to other social media platforms. This plan is limited to 5 social profiles so if you’re interested in adding more profiles and make the most of analytics, then you might benefit from the Professional plan starting at $149/month. Except for the features of the Standard plan, it also involves engagement and trends reporting, campaign planning and reporting and also reporting on your team’s productivity.

It is also offering the option to purchase your own add-ons, such as Amplification and Social Selling to improve your social media success as part of your own funnel.

All in all, Sprout Social goes beyond social media scheduling and it can help you streamline your social CRM more effectively.  It might be more expensive than other options, but it depends on the features and the tasks that you want to include in your social media marketing.

AgoraPulse

AgoraPulse is a social media management and CRM platform to help you improve your social presence. It promises to simplify social media publishing, monitoring, engagement and team collaboration. It is focusing on simplified social media publishing to help you improve the success of your social content. From content labelling to queues for evergreen posts, the goal is to be more effective either on your own or as part of a team.

It can also be a useful platform for social CRM, managing your inbox, the comments and messages that you’re receiving on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube and Instagram.

You can also manage the comments from your Facebook and Instagram ads, which makes it easier to monitor all comments in one place. It can also be a useful tool when trying to find new opportunities to build relationships through listening or even to find your brand’s best ambassadors.

What you need to consider

There is a free trial option and the Small plan starts from $44/month. It allows you to connect 3 profiles and 1 user while you’re having unlimited reporting, publishing, and mentoring. It can be a good option if you’re managing the social presence of a small business. However, if you want to bring your team together, access advanced sync of inbox monitoring and the option to monitor ad comments on Facebook and Instagram, then you might need the medium or large plans at $89 and $180/month respectively. The Medium plan lets you connect 10 social profiles and 3 users and the Large plan allows you to connect 25 profiles and 6 users. It is the most popular option, especially for medium-sized teams who want to make the most of the team workflow in their content by creating their own processes for drafts and approval. It

It is also useful to note that AgoraPulse doesn’t support Pinterest, in case you’re interested in having all social platforms in one dashboard.

ContentCal

ContentCal is a visual calendar that can simplify your social media content planning. Its simple and intuitive use makes it very appealing to marketers of all skills to ensure that they streamline their planning as much as possible. Except for the usual social media planning, it offers a useful visual overview of your posts across all platforms. The calendar plays a key role in this tool and it can include your posts from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

There is the option to create draft posts and the pinboard allows you to plan your ideas and drag them to the calendar when they are ready to go live.

It also features the option to auto-publish your posts to save time while you can collaborate as a team with user permissions and post approval.

What you need to consider

ContentCal is trying to meet everyone’s needs with their different pricing plans. There is a free plan for the social media enthusiasts who want to create their own basic version of a social media calendar to connect up to 4 social profiles while scheduling 50 posts per month.

For a freelancer who wants an improved use that is still affordable, there is the Pro version at $12/month that involves one calendar and up to four social profiles. It lets you schedule as many posts as you want and there is also a monthly calendar view and the function to search for your posts in the calendar. This plan also provides access to Analytics and a PDF export.

If you have two people managing a social media calendar, then the Company plan will be a good option. It starts at $39/month and it features 2 calendars and 2 users. You can also add more calendars and users at an additional cost. The different with the Pro plan is that you can now manage approval workflows, access comments to improve the collaboration within your team and use a professional video uploader. The premium plan at $80/month is still for 2 users and 2 calendars but it also features multi-calendar posting, sending Facebook posts to drafts, training and filtering of the Analytics.

If you want an even better option to save time with your social media posting, the AutoPilot plan at $399/month is taking care of the posting for you based on your needs and the type of content that you prefer. It’s an interesting option to avoid searching for content ideas simply to approve the suggestions that you’ll be receiving from the tool.

Zoho Social

Zoho Social can help you set up a smarter social media presence through a series of features that improve social scheduling, monitoring and measuring.

It allows you to schedule your posts in the times that your audience is most active by loading your posts to the SmartQ. You can re-schedule your content at the times of your choice while you can even create posts for a specific audience based on the timezone or the location.

You are also able to save time when scheduling your content by using the zShare Browser Extension to make the planning easier in the calendar.

When it comes to listening, you can organise your listening columns based on your needs to create your customised monitoring board. You can follow real-time updates and you can even turn your followers into leads by adding details to each contact. You can improve the CRM functionality by integrating the tool with Zoho’s CRM to make social media more effective for your brand.

You can also track your social performance through real-time analytics to focus on what matters. The reports can also be automated to receive them at the frequency of your choice. Collaboration can also be part of your reporting simply by sharing the stats within your team to hear their feedback and plan the next steps.

What you need to consider

Zoho Social is a useful social media platform that blends posting, monitoring and collaboration. Its integration with Zoho CRM and Zoho desk can make it part of a wider set of tools that can streamline your marketing and customer success to improve cross-team transparency.

If you want to try out the tool, there is a free plan with very limited functionality for 1 member and 1 brand that lets you publish content or use the zShare Browser Extension. It does not include content scheduling so it’s only a good option if you want to get the first exposure to Zoho’s platform. If you want to start scheduling your content, the Standard plan starts at $11/month for 2 members and 1 brand. You can publish, schedule, use the SmartQ for the best times and use the repeat posting. You also have access to Basic Analytics and you can create 5 monitoring columns. If you want to improve the tool’s efficiency, you might want to consider the Professional plan starting at $28/month. It lets you add 3 members and 1 brand and it involves bulk scheduling, custom audience targeting, 15 monitoring columns, advanced analytics and scheduled reports.

Both the Standard and the Professional plans can be integrated with Zoho Desk and Zoho CRM to turn your social media management into a team effort. If you’re using social media for customer service or lead generation, then these integrations might be really useful.

MavSocial

MavSocial can help you simplify your social media marketing and monitoring. It involves an easy-to-use campaign calendar to plan your posts in advance while you can even reschedule your most engaging posts. Except for scheduling, it also features monitoring for keywords, tracking your messages and comments across all networks and a digital library to organise your visual content.

An additional feature is the option to amplify your reach with boosted posts on Facebook, while you can even improve team collaboration by assigning roles for your colleagues and monitor the progress of each task.

It’s a combination of social media planning and a social CRM and it involves 6 popular social networks including WeChat for some of the plans.

What you need to consider

MavSocial can be a useful and cost-effective tool if you’re the only one managing social networks in your organisation. The first plan starts at $16/month for 1 user and 10 social profiles. This plan allows you to publish on 6 social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Tumblr, Instagram), it has unlimited publishing and it still lets you access your social inbox, repeat publishing and bulk uploading.

The next plan at $65/month is granting access to 3 users and up to 30 profiles and it also involves social listening and ad comment monitoring. This can be a useful plan for a small team that wants to blend social media planning and listening. If you’re part of a bigger team and want to make the most of collaboration, then you will need to pay $166/month for 5 users and up to 50 profiles. Except for all the previous features, you are also able to manage a post approval process, boost Facebook Ads and track usage permissions for UGC content.

Thus, it can be a great solution on a smaller budget, while it can still be useful at a larger budget if you want to involve team collaboration, monitoring and UGC curation in one dashboard.

Sendible

Sendible is aiming to centralise your social media management. It’s a powerful dashboard for businesses that want to make the most of social media marketing. It allows you to publish, schedule, monitor, measure, improve your social content on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

The social publishing can be easy to use and the social inbox can help you keep track of all the messages and mentions that you need to monitor.

You can also analyse the best times to share content and you can create your own reports based on your needs and your business goals.

What you need to consider

Sendible’s most affordable plan starts at $33/month and it gives to one user unlimited scheduling and 12 services (interactions per channel). You can create up to 10 queues in this plan, recycle evergreen content, bulk schedule posts, monitor keywords and access your priority inbox with a one-hour sync. You also have access to basic reporting, which makes it a useful plan for someone who wants an affordable option for social media planning and monitoring.

The Small plan costs $113/month and it involves 3 users, 48 services and 6 customised reports. It also helps you improve your team collaboration with post approval process and social profile grouping, while you also have access to 200+ charts to include in your customised reports. The Medium plan is even more powerful and it costs $219/month for brands and agencies that want improved functionalities for their social media strategies. You can invite up to 7 users in this plan and enjoy up to 105 services with custom team workflows and up to 35 analytics reports. You can also have a Priority Inbox with a 30-minute sync, integration with Bitly pro, 70 queues and a scheduled report delivery.

Sendible seems to be a useful tool for brands and agencies that want to have one platform for different tasks as part of their social media marketing but it might be more expensive for those who seek a simpler solution.

Lightful

Lightful is the first social media management tool made for nonprofits and social enterprises.

It provides an affordable solution for charities and nonprofits who want to improve their social presence.

As with other social media tools, it is offering publishing and scheduling options, a visual preview of your posts and a calendar to plan your week or month ahead.

It also features all the upcoming Awareness Days to plan your content accordingly and it allows you to load content to the Approval Queue to improve the collaboration within your team.

There is also a StoryBuilder feature to help you improve your campaign planning with the use of templates to get you started when planning the story of your campaign.

Its intuitive user experience is aiming to encourage nonprofits to embrace the power of social media marketing without necessarily needing a big budget for it.

What you need to consider

There is a free plan that lets you connect up to 3 profiles (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) for 1 user. It is ideal if you’re just one person managing your organisation’s social accounts since you can still access the platform’s features scheduling up to 50 posts.

The Growth plan ($26/month) lets you connect up to 10 social profiles and 5 users and it is ideal for medium-sized organisations who want to improve collaboration efficiency in their and social media accounts. It is featuring an additional number of Stories in the Story Builder, the option to manage and approve your posts and enhanced access to post and page analytics.

If you’re a nonprofit exploring all your options, Lightful might be a more affordable option for adding multiple users and having an approval queue for your posts among all the other features.

The integration with Unsplash and GIPHY can also be useful when planning your visual content while the Story Builder templates can be handy if you’re just getting started with social media for your organisation.

Kenshoo Social

Kenshoo Social is a social marketing platform that can help both agencies and advertisers create more effective social media campaigns. It can help you simplify your social media advertising and your social media campaigns by focusing on ROI.

Kenshoo allows you to scale both your creative performance but also your analytical mindset to be able to prove the worth of your work to the rest of your team.

Its machine-learning and automation tools can make the social media planning easier while trying to create more engaging ads. You can also improve your engagement by building customised personas to manage multiple audiences across different channels. Your audience strategy can greatly benefit from this feature and it’s certainly good to have this feature when trying to understand your audience on every channel.

You can also improve your collaboration by streamlining the workflow in the way that it’s more effective for your team and your personalised needs.

What you need to consider

Kenshoo Social allows you to connect Facebook, Instagram, Snap, and Pinterest. It’s a more creative social media platform that can also help you improve your social ads through these channels.

The pricing is available upon request and they are also featuring some great case studies from different industries. Another advantage is Kenshoo’s experience with e-commerce and search products, especially if you want to bring together all these elements as part of your company.

It’s also worth mentioning that Kenshoo Social has also been awarded in our recent Marketing Technology Awards 2019 as Best Social Platform, which definitely gives it good social proof.

Tweetdeck

If you’re looking for a free scheduling tool for your Twitter profile then Tweetdeck should be one of the first tools to try out. It is built from Twitter to provide a free solution to Twitter scheduling. It allows you to plan your content, monitor your favorite hashtags and users and keep track of your mentions.

Tweetdeck’s interface may remind you of Hootsuite but in a simpler version that focuses on the key tasks of Twitter management and monitoring. It is ideal for someone who is just getting started on Twitter to understand how to use the platform. It can help you improve your Twitter marketing experience without necessarily paying a fee for it.

What you need to consider

There are many marketers who add Tweetdeck to their list of favorite tools. If you’re new to social media management and focus on Twitter then Tweetdeck can be useful for your business.

However, if you’re looking for additional flexibility and functionality, then you may have a look at one of the other suggestions that we’re mentioning in the post.

Overview

There are hundreds of social media tools that can help you improve your social strategy. Many of them share similar features but they all stand out with their unique user experience and how they can benefit your brand.

The ultimate choice of picking the right social media marketing tool for your business depends on your own needs. When it comes to picking a social media tool, here’s what you need to consider:

• Key features: what are the features that you definitely need in a social media management platform? Are you focusing on scheduling? Do you need a monitoring dashboard? Will you need to integrate publishing with social CRM? Do you want to involve boosting posts?
• Ease of use (UI and UX): not everyone is looking for a complicated platform. A good UX can play a key role in someone’s decision to pick one tool over the other. If you’re new to marketing technology, then this may be a very important factor for your final decision.
• Budget: your budget will significantly affect your choice so make sure you align your budget expectations with the tools that you can find in this range.
• Customer support: A good customer experience can make the learning curve of a new tool easier for your team. It can even make marketers loyal to one tool so always have a look at the support and training options when picking a tool.
• Integrations: If you’re using many different tools, integrations can be vital for your social media management platform.

What’s your favorite social media marketing tool?

5 Social Media Marketing Myths to Ignore

Social media has become inseparable part of our everyday life. With over 2 billion active users it is the most widespread marketing medium available. While traditional marketing such as leaflet printing and distribution, TV ads etc. are still very much effective, using various social media platforms it is possible to reach out to thousands or even millions of people at one go. With the immense power of social media marketing it is definitely the top marketing medium and with that comes a number of myths which were popularly believed and propagated. Here are some top social media myths you need to let go of this year.

Myth 1: You have to be online 24X7

It is absolutely false that you have to be online and available 24X7, sharing new content. In fact, it is practically impossible to do so without compromising on the quality. Maintain a regular social media presence by posting quality content, sharing and replying to comments messages etc. In fact, constant social media posting can be quite annoying for your followers, so it is important to strike a balance.

Myth 2: You have to be on every platform

You do not need to have profile on every social media platform in order to new social media marketing so it’s best capability. Do your research on preferred social media platforms demographic and thus, opt for the chosen platforms of your target people. This will help you streamline your ads more effectively, aiming at the right group instead of fumbling around, trying to balance everything. Instead be on only as many platforms as you can handle efficiently.

Myth 3: Works only for online businesses

One of the biggest reasons why several companies stay away from social media marketing is because they think that it works only for the online businesses. Irrespective of whether your business is new or old, large scale or small startup, online or based at a physical store, social media marketing can be used to improve your business.

Myth 4: It targets only kids

Contrary to popular belief social media is not used by the young millennial crowd only. Hosting a total of over 2 billion accounts, various social media platforms are thriving people of all ages, from younger gen Z to baby boomers. Therefore, it doesn’t really matter what business your age group is targeted at, there is always the right place on social media to start at.

Myth 5: Influencer marketing is expensive

Influencer marketing can be as expensive or as affordable as you need. Depending on the number of follower’s influences charge their fees, therefore all you need to do is to find the right influencer for your budget. If you are unsure of spending money you can look for aspiring influencers who are interested in unpaid collaboration.

Social media marketing is surprisingly fluid and flexible. It is what you make out of it, and thus, with your honest effort and work, you can reap fruitful rewards.

How Social Media Helps Define Brands as a Marketing Platform, Make the Most of It!!

Did you know that 90 percent of all marketers say social media marketing has increased their business exposure? Or that 66 percent of marketers that spend at least 6 hours on social per week has seen more leads? With the advent of social media, traditional marketing methods no longer seem enough to sustain a business. Social connectivity has become the key to marketing and building the brand’s image for the buyers. Analytics and other measurement tools can enable entrepreneurs to find how they can take advantage of social media as a marketing tool and also how to use data to optimize their social marketing campaigns.

The Great Panorama of Sites

Social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are here to stay, which means that marketers can leverage this popularity and use it for their brand’s growth and also to pad their wallets. One of the greatest benefits of social media marketing is that it helps you reduce marketing costs, without sacrificing the results.

Not only can you reach a global audience with limited resources but social media can get you a target audience. Having access to all these customers will help boost traffic. When a new blog or update is put on the homepage, it can take time to get traction through Google, which means that few customers will know the new content if they are not searching for your product or service. Using social media for business also boosts your site’s SEO.

Understand Your Customers Better

Social media marketing will help you understand your audience. Social channels like Twitter and Instagram become effective marketing tools with the way they facilitate interaction with your customer base. As a matter of fact, many brands use YouTube to beta-test their ads before launching TV commercials. The reason is obvious: investment is low, the market is huge and the results are almost instantaneous. Brands for starters have started off by promoting itself in viral videos.

Another reason brands are taking to social media platforms to get their name out is that they have got most of the early adopters. Youth are the most likely target market for food delivery and car rental apps. It makes sense for brands to test their adoption online.

Also, by reading their tweets and status updates, brands can easily gain insight into the daily lives of users, thereby allowing you to gauge their behaviour as a consumer. Social media marketing, or SMM, can allow you to easily understand the kind of products that they are buying and why, their hobbies, the kind of posts that they share, the websites that they frequently visit.

This knowledge is bound to have obvious marketing benefits. If you understand your customer, you can write better content and more compelling posts, which leads to more traffic. But the benefits can sometimes go far beyond – it can help you in identifying customer pain points, refining your product strategy and also in improving sales.

Adds on Socia Media and Their Reach

Talking about social media ads, they have another plus point — they allow targeting and retargeting. Social media platforms offer highly targeted advertisement that can be customized based on the customer’s needs. For instance, Facebook ads can target customers by several factors — like age, education level, location, industry and even user behavior (the number and the kind of pages the user has liked).

Businesses that have high selling frequency can benefit more. Have you ever wondered why you see brand ads on your Facebook dashboard? Well, Facebook and Google allow you to retarget, making it easy for the brand to capture user information and share more offers with users that have used the service already.

Through social media, you can help get noticed and also earn media coverage. The success of an event heavily depends on effective promotion. And what better way for promotion than social media? An active social media presence is always an advantage. Brand image thrives on social media marketing. The way your brand is presented on social networking sites, nowadays, has more power to create an image in any potential customer’s mind than TV commercials. Since almost everyone is on social media and people constantly keep checking their phones, regular updates about the brand can also be given – like the launch of a new product or the betterment of an earlier service or sales and discount offers.

Brand Value and Loyalty

A strong media presence will also build brand loyalty. It can considerably reduce your customer response time as these days if there is a problem with your product or service, the consumer expects it to be solved right away. It was found in a report published by Texas Tech University that brands with an active social media presence are likely to have more customers.

Engagement with people on social media helps marketers develop a connection and a rapport, which in turn enables them to widen their customer base. It is a positive step in providing your followers with useful information and help, along with some entertainment that manages to keep their interest peaked. This will also project that you value your customers as people and not just a source of revenue. Customers will see you as an entity that cares about them and they too will be able to understand the brand’s vision. In the competitive business world of today, this has the ability to make a huge difference. Social media can also be perfect for a well-suited PR strategy.

Not only can you develop stronger relationships with your customers, but it will also enable you to acquire more customers. It has been estimated that 70 percent of business-to-consumer marketers have acquired customers through Facebook. So, yes, social media plays a great role than you can imagine in increasing your sales through its obvious innumerable benefits.

4 often-overlooked platforms for social media marketing

The social media marketing world does not end after Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.

The “big four” encompass about 90 percent of all social media marketing. According to a recent UMass-Dartmouth study, 91 percent of Fortune 500 level companies use Twitter, 89 percent use Facebook, 63 percent use Instagram, and 98 percent use LinkedIn.

However, a slew of niche social networks could help your social media marketing efforts.

Let’s look at the audiences you’ll find there, their potential uses for brand managers and which businesses might gain the most from them.

1. Quora

The stats:

• 190 million users
• 400,000 topics
• 775,000 monthly visitors in the U.S. alone

Quora is essentially a Q&A site, so this is a great place for brand managers to establish authority by answering customers’ questions—and teach them about their products or services. A few simple queries can tell you what people are interested in.

2. Pinterest

The stats:

• 250 million active users
• 175 billion pins
• 50 percent of millennials using Pinterest daily

Long tail-pins last indefinitely, and that means long-term engagement and traffic. Also, according to research, 87 percent of pinners have bought a product because of Pinterest. Finally, it drives a lot of traffic. According to Shareaholic, around 5 percent of all referral traffic to websites comes from Pinterest—second only to Facebook.

3. Reddit

The stats:

• 300 million users
• More than 850,000 subreddits
• 58 million daily votes
• Average visit: 15 minutes, 47 seconds

Reddit isn’t a marketing play, as most social networks can be; it’s a community play. Microsoft uses Reddit as a customer service channel. It’s not marketing Xbox; it’s answering questions and addressing concerns about the product line. Redditors (site users) have a long history of calling out companies that try to market (the traditional way, at least) on Reddit. So, you have to take creative approaches, such as AMAs—“Ask Me Anything” sessions.  That concept started on Reddit, and it’s a great way for brand managers to interact on the platform.

4. Nextdoor

The stats:

• 200,000 active neighborhoods
• More than 17M recommendations
• 90 percent of U.S. neighborhoods participating

There’s already a fair amount of “brand spam” on Nextdoor, with companies pitching their products right in the feed—which seems out of place. What really works well here, though, is government and nonprofit content. The city of Minneapolis offers regular posts about hyper-local events and programs, such as street sweeping and its 2020 strategic plan.

5 Major Social Media Marketing Mistakes And How To Overcome Them

Most modern businesses understand the importance of using social media to promote their brand and interact with consumers. Indeed, social media is at the core of many companies’ digital strategy, often delivering measurable results in terms of sales, leads and customer service. That said, there are many social media mistakes that we see time and time again: strategic errors that leave leads on the table and opportunities unexplored.

In this blog post, I will focus on just five of them and highlight why they are dangerous from a marketing perspective. If you’re already using social media for your business, great; but how many of these mistakes are you making? And how much better could your social media marketing really be?

 You’re not listening to your audience

Your audience is speaking; but are you listening? Sure, you might see notifications appear on your dashboard but they represent a fraction of the social dialogue centered on your business, industry, service, products or competitors.

According to Brandwatch, 96% of people who discuss brands online do not actually follow those brands on social media.  As such, business owners have to look beyond their own feeds to keep tabs on that chatter and obtain insights to influence overall strategy.

Utilizing social media listening tools is like turning up the volume on the conversations which represent opportunities for your business. Not only that, but they offer a unique means of researching a market, highlighting consumer demographics, gauging possible interest in new products and lines, reinforcing brand values, tracking the health of your company (and your rivals) and enhancing customer satisfaction.

By utilising a social listening tool, you can start interacting with leads in real time, or at any rate use the insights gained from monitoring chatter to improve your processes. They’re simple to use, too: mostly it’s a case of entering your relevant keywords and setting up alerts. The best of these tools (Awario, Mention, Keyhole) have powerful algorithms at their core and can yield valuable, data-driven results in no time.

You don’t have a clear objective

You’d be stunned at how many businesses concede to having no clearly defined goal. For those who manage to turn a profit anyway, it doesn’t seem like a pressing issue; but what if your business is stuttering? Wouldn’t it make sense to set meaningful objectives – to note exactly what you want to achieve in the months and year ahead?

This applies to business in general, but also to your social media strategy. It’s no good simply posting a selection of random updates each day, hoping to attract a steady stream of likes, shares, new followers and sales. Broadening organic reach is more challenging than ever, as the likes of Facebook have become pay-to-play platforms. As such, stimulating interest and growing your audience requires investment in advertising.

With social media advertising, you can forensically track engagements, and as such it is crucial to set clear goals. How will you define the success or failure of a campaign? How much are you willing to spend to win a customer? And remember, it is essential to connect your social media output to wider business aims (and ROI) from the get-go: if you don’t, social media can become a siloed platform, a form of brand waving with no real connection to the company as a whole.

You’re not optimizing for each social network

At this point, you’re probably utilizing a range of social media platforms – and largely that’s a good move, even if some succeed more than others. However, a common mistake business owners make is to simply replicate updates and re-share them on different platforms. Not only is this somewhat lazy, but it overlooks one key point: audiences on different social networks are not homogenous; they are unique, and the content they expect is unique too.

When using multiple social platforms for marketing the same brand, you need to think outside the box but also reflect the desires of users on those particular channels. In some cases, improving ROI may even necessitate the closing of social accounts which are not performing or are not aligned with your business objectives. Decreasing your post output may also yield better results.

Utilizing the correct platforms by scheduling engaging, custom-tailored content is the way forward. Focus on creating valuable posts that have been shown to work well on the platform in question, and pay attention to the direction of the networks too. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg remarked a few years ago that the service would consist mostly of video “within five years.” Twitter, meanwhile, works best with newsworthy items and company updates.

You’re stretching yourself too thin

The pitfall of being active on social media is that you’re, well, too active. So committed are you to driving brand awareness and gaining top marks for engagement, you wind up stretching yourself thin without really hitting the mark on any one medium.

As with any area of focus, you have to pay attention to which social channel is working and invest your time (and budget) accordingly. Using analytics to better appreciate which networks are paying dividends, and which are stagnating, is paramount.

This doesn’t have to be a burdensome process, incidentally: you can leverage intuitive social media management tools to save time handling your accounts, streamline your workflows and ensure your content reaches your target market at the most advantageous time. Importantly, they’ll help you drive meaningful engagement and yield tangible results, thereby ensuring you don’t spread yourself thin.

You’re not offering real value

One oft-cited mistake that remains worryingly common is this: you are too busy pushing your brand without providing value. While you may believe it’s smart to use social media exclusively to build awareness, users gravitate to these platforms to engage and interact – not to buy.

Social advertising has many merits, but you absolutely must mix it up by sharing other relevant, topical or shareworthy content to ensure you’re providing value. Create content – infographics, blog posts, videos – that answers a question or delivers a message that resonates with your audience. Content that humors, enlightens and gives pause.

Content that evokes emotion, a reaction at gut level, tends to play better than direct sales messages. And is it any wonder? Try to remember the last time a sales message on social media had you heading to an online store. Now think of the last time a status update or tweet put a smile on your face or made you mad!

Social is a two-way medium, so establish value by employing role reversal and asking your clients questions. Starting and then stoking conversations will undoubtedly improve your brand image and increase the likelihood of conversions.

Conclusion

Avoiding these all too common social media snags is necessary if you want to increase your reach and influence ROI. While you heed the mistakes, you’re sure to capitalize on opportunities passed up by your oblivious competitors.

Should Facebook still be part of your social media marketing in 2019?

Many small businesses are trying to decide on their social media marketing in 2019. Marketing for most small businesses is often not a priority, but it should be. How else will people learn about your product or services? Word of mouth? Well that might have worked 15 or 20 years ago, but does not work now. Today’s audience does not “talk” to each other; they text, chat, and wave to each other online.

Small businesses can compete in the social media realm so long as they have a strategy.

For the first time in social media history, Facebook is in the number three spot for social networks, just behind YouTube and Google. Facebook still has 1.47 billion people logging in daily with more than 70% in the United States. Therefore, Facebook is still a safe and lucrative place to put your marketing dollars.

So, where do you start with your marketing strategy? My suggestion is Facebook, YouTube and Direct Mail Marketing. Otherwise known as cross channel marketing.

THE REAL DEAL ON SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING IN 2019

Facebook

Facebook is still a great place for your brand to get discovered. More people go to Facebook first for research and recommendations than any other social media outlet. Paid ads are a great way to get discovered, if you know your target demographics and use the audience selection features to ensure you are reaching your potential customers. It’s also cost effective with a great ROI.

YouTube

YouTube recently surpassed Facebook as the number one social network. Creating video content is a critical part of your marketing strategy. Not just video, but mobile-optimized video is crucial for brand awareness. There is nothing more frustrating to our mobile hungry younger generation than a video that doesn’t load or is not clear in the size screen they want to view it on. Slow-loading video is a quick way to lose potential customers.

Marketing is an ever-changing beast. Your market reach is no longer determined by zip codes. Social media is your marketing stage. Consider the numbers — two out of three shoppers online have purchased something from a business in another country. Does this mean we abandon the local SEO? Of course not, it actually means you have to work harder to get found because it’s not just what’s local. It’s more about convenience. Many of these studies have noted that people are willing to pay more if getting the product or using the service makes life easier for them.

So, how to appeal to the local market? Consider direct mail campaigns. This cross-channel marketing method helps you connect with your local customer in a familiar but new way.