As prominent figures in the business industry, optimizing your time and effort is of the utmost importance. We all know that leads are important, the basic formula for every business is ‘Leads = Customers = Profits’. The biggest mistake we see companies make is spending countless hours trying to generate leads, that when one actually comes through, their profit margin is minimal given the extensive time they put to getting that lead. Leads are important, but you cannot spend your entire day trying to generate them. So how can you let other platforms do all the work for you, and bring the leads right to you? Read this article for the answer!

Leads are important, but you cannot spend your entire day trying to generate them.

Instagram And Facebook Are Your BFF’s

I am sure you all know about Facebook & Instagram advertisements. You have probably been talking about a product with your friend, and then 10 minutes later as you are scrolling through Instagram, you see an advertisement for that product. Yes, this is quite creepy but proves how effective Facebook’s algorithm is. So what should you do? Take advantage of the millions of dollars Facebook has put into perfecting its ad campaigns and utilize it for your company. Here’s how you do it

Step 1: Identify Your Target Market

As a business, you should already know who your ideal customers and clients are, but it’s time to get specific. Saying that you want to work with ‘small businesses’ is too broad. Narrow it down, and make a list of 5+ ideal clients for your companies. For example, if you want to work with companies in the health and wellness industry, make a list of 5 skincare, beauty, or health companies you would like to work with. If you want to work with real estate agents, write down the names of 5 prominent agents you see your business collaborating with.

Step 2: Stalk Away! (Don’t Be Ashamed, We All Do It)

Now that you have your detailed list, stalk, stalk, and stalk some more. You need to show Instagram and Facebook that you are genuinely interested in this company, person, or brand.

Step 3: Let Instagram/Facebook Work For You!

You are going to start seeing ads related to the client’s pages you stalked during the last step. Stay active on social media, and continue to interact with those ads. When you see an ad that you identify as an ideal client, like their post and visit their page. This simple step will tell the algorithm that you are still interested, and should still be shown ads like this. Now, as you are leisurely scrolling through your Instagram and Facebook feed, you are getting a personalized list of ideal clients!

Step 4: Take Note Of The Ads You See

Now that your social media accounts are working for you, it’s time to track those leads, and make an introduction. Each time you see an ad, take a screenshot of the account’s contact information. Then, record this information in a spreadsheet, or any other platform that works for you. Here’s what works for us: throughout the week, we screenshot ads that represent ideal clients. Every Friday, we add the name, contact info, and small details about the company to a shared google sheet. Then, each Monday, we move on to step 5.

Step 5: Every Monday, Send A Cold Email!

Take the list you generated all week, and send each of those contacts a personal email from you. Make sure you introduce who you are, and what value you can provide. Mention something specific that stuck out to you about the brand. This is extremely important, you need to personalize the email. If your email is obviously a computer-generated template, brands will likely disregard your message. Personalizing the email is simple. For example, if you notice that one company’s Instagram has no video, mention how you would love to introduce video to boost engagement and send examples of how you have successfully done this for other clients. For more information on this process, and examples of the templates we use, check out this TikTok.

Step 6: Continue The Social Media Stalk

Right after you send the email, show the company that you are not a robot. Now it is time to follow the account, like, and comment on their most recent pictures. It is important to do this immediately after, so you are on top of their mind. Once they briefly see the email from you, they should see you show up on their social network. Now you are no longer a stranger; you have a connection.

Step 7: Don’t Be A Stranger

One week after you send the initial email, send a follow-up email. Keep it short and sweet. This will set you apart from the computer-generated emails that this company probably gets on a weekly basis.

Starting a new business has many layers to it. With a saturated market, everyone is trying to do something different to stand out. Around 20% of startups fail within their first year of launching, so having a strong digital presence, especially in the current times, is crucial to the success of your business.

Within the marketing realm, there are many platforms to help get you off your feet, but which ones are the best? It can be overwhelming with all of the options. There are just about 100+ organizational softwares that are all ‘perfect’ for your business. You should sort through them yourself, but here is our list of the top five marketing platforms that will help your startup, small business, or agency.

Around 20% of startups fail within their first year of launching, so having a strong digital presence, especially in the current times, is crucial to the success of your business.

Canva

If you haven’t heard of canva, it is a graphic design platform that allows users to design social media posts, ads, banners, flyers, and anything else you can think of to help show off your business in an aesthetically pleasing way.

Canva is free, but has a pro-version available that gives you access to over 400,000 free photos, illustrations, and templates. You can add team members to your account, to streamline the editing process to quickly turn around designs. Posting beautiful designs is a fool-proof way to engage your audience, and the user-friendly interface is amazing even for non-designers. When you upgrade to the pro version, you are able to generate a brand kit, allowing all of your posts to reflect your brand identity, colors, and logo. When you are working with 10+ different companies, having brand kits for each of them makes it very easy to create appropriate content.

Not only can you create amazing instagram and facebook posts, but you can also create instagram stories, and presentations to help keep your brand identity consistent throughout all of you business adventures.

Here are just a few of the hundreds of designs we have made in the past few months. You can see they are tailored for ads, facebook, instagram, presentations, and stories.

Later

Later is a marketing platform that helps you plan, schedule, publish, and measure the analytics of your social media posts across multiple platforms. Coming from a company that manages many social media accounts for our clients, Later is a life-saver when it comes to posting. Later allows you to schedule posts, days, weeks, and months in advance to automatically publish on your accounts. You can connect your instagram, facebook, pinterest, tiktok, and twitter accounts to Later, making it easy to build your company’s presence on social media.

Later also gives you access to your accounts analytics, to see how your posts are performing, when the best time to post is, and how many likes, follows, and comments you get from each post. When creating a post, Later gives you the opportunity to see which current hashtags are performing well, in order to drive more traffic to your page. You can then analyze the tags to see which hashtags organically introduced people to your page.

If you run a business selling specific products, Later also offers the “linkinbio” feature that will essentially take users to an instagram look-alike page, featuring all your products with links to them on your website.

Overall Later is a life-saver when it comes to time-management and media planning.

Google Trends

For a startup business, gaining insight on what people are searching for, and looking for in a product is extremely important. Many times focus-groups are an effective way to collect this kind of data, however, they can be expensive and infeasible for start-up businesses. A free tool that is useful to find data on consumers is Google trends.

Google Trends allows you to pick a location, and a category that your business is a part of. For example, if your business is focused in California and specializes in social media management, you can click these boxes on Google Trends to refine your search. Once you have done this you are able to see what people interested in this industry are searching for, and can then create content to bring more viewers to your site.

Trello

While Trello is not your typical marketing tool, it allows you and your team to streamline the marketing process by staying up-to-date and in touch with your businesses objectives and future goals.

Trello allows you to add your business team members to a page where they can check in daily to see their required tasks for that day, and any big projects coming up. You are able to watch cards and boards, meaning you get notified when there has been any adjustment. Especially in current times when mostly everyone is working remotely, Trello has quickly become the epicenter of our business.

Trello will help save your business time and therefore money by minimizing confusion around projects with simple tools to organize tasks and track progress.

If you have multiple businesses you can create different boards for them to keep all information in its respective category. One board we highly recommend making is an onboarding staff page, so when your startup grows you have all the documents and information in one place.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp allows you to create beautiful email templates to send out newsletters to clients who subscribe to your mailing list. It is free to start out, but once your subscriber list grows you will have to pay more to keep up with your growing rate, which is perfect for start-ups.

Email marketing is important to get your brands name out there, and stay relevant. It allows you to follow through with leads, current customers, as well as previous customers. Mailchimp collects data that allows you to analyze how your campaign is doing, and how your marketing converts to website views.

Bottom Line

Startups can be stressful but with the use of helpful tools like these, you will be able to track your business’s growth over time to ensure that you and your team are staying on track with your goals. Make sure to take advantage of the free platforms out there. They are there to help you! We hope these platforms help you with your business endeavors!

Follow Phocal’s journey on all of our social medias below, for more marketing and business tips:

Instagram: @phocal.productions
Facebook: @PhocalProductions
Pinterest: @PhocalProductions
TikTok: @Phocal

Pinterest is a visual search engine that allows its users to save images and videos as pins to fuel their inspiration. Unlike other social media sites, Pinterest has a lengthy shelf life that allows content to continuously be discovered.

Unlike other social media sites, Pinterest has a lengthy shelf life that allows content to continuously be discovered.

First of all, what is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a visual search engine that allows its users to save images and videos as pins to fuel their inspiration. Unlike other social media sites, Pinterest has a lengthy shelf life that allows content to continuously be discovered. With over 320 million active users, Pinterest is able to help drive sales from the site to your business page, thus increasing engagement for your brand. The biggest difference between Pinterest and other social media platforms is, as we mentioned, it is a search engine. Meaning people do not have to follow you to easily discover your content. Pinterest is a great way to gain exposure and boost leads.

Who uses Pinterest?

The majority of users on Pinterest are women. Why is this important? Women between the ages of 25-54 hold 80% of the buying power in US households, and that same demographic makes up 71% of the global Pinterest users. This means that the same people who are on Pinterest looking at pins, are the same people buying and spending money in the market. Money that could be going to your business. Use this demographic to your advantage!

What Performs Best on Pinterest?

Right when we launched our Pinterest, we were not gaining much traction. With no current ad budget, we began posting videos, specifically our TikToks. Our impressions and views jumped from almost nobody, to 67,800 viewers a month. It is clear that Pinterest users love videos. In fact, video Pins are listed at the top of Pinterest mobile app search results. Videos can share so much more insight on your brand than a photo can.

How to Track Demographics?

Pinterest is extremely helpful with showing you what kind of demographics you are reaching. Once you click into analytics, tap at the top of your Pinterest page; you can see insights on what your existing and potential clients are interested in. You can also break down your demographics by age, gender, location, and device. This is essential information for businesses. You should then take this information and compare it with your company’s target demographic. If these do not align, alter your Pinterest posts to ensure you are effectively reaching proper people.

How do you use Pinterest Analytics to Generate Views?

Pinterest ranks your top pins from the last thirty days on your analytics page. Once you look at which of your pins are doing well, you’ll want to make more of that kind of content. To maximise your searchability, you’ll want to create descriptions for your pins that are user-friendly. Use your business name in the first sentence of your description to help consumers find and recognize your brand,and if you’re selling a product, make sure to include the price. Pinterest also has the option to link to any website, so make sure to link the direct page that your specific product is on to drive your sales up. Also, as with any search engine or social media platform, hashtags are key! We suggest using Google Trends, Pinterest Trends, or softwares such as ‘Later’, to generate your hashtags.

How do you Promote your Pins?

One feature on Pinterest that is great for product exposure is the rich pins feature. Rich pins provide more information than regular pins allow. You have several options here: movies, articles, products, places, and recipes. The product pin stays up to date on pricing, availability, and where to buy the product. This feature makes it extremely easy for users to find and buy the product from your business. A bonus feature to rich pins, is that if a user pins your product, they will get notified if it has a price drop or is on sale, encouraging them to purchase it.

Promoting pins is another great way to increase sales. You can promote specific pins that are doing well on your business page, and offer a discount or a promotion code only to your Pinterest followers. This ensures users are inclined to stay following your page, as they know they could possibly receive more discounts in the future.

Lastly, cross promoting all of your social media accounts on different channels will raise brand awareness and bring traffic from one of your sites to the rest. You can create a Pinterest tab on your website, and Facebook! And of course, make sure to attach your website to your Pinterest account so it is convenient for your followers to find you.

How do you Optimize your Account?

The first thing users see when they click on your Pinterest profile is your bio. You’ll want to explain who you are and what you can offer in your bio. Use wording that is on-brand to give users strategic insight on your personality, and make sure to include keywords to increase searchability. For example, our bio for Phocal Productions says “Phocal is a full-service Digital Marketing Agency. We are a mission-driven company. We aim to inspire companies, connect people, and stimulate growth.” We get across the main points of our company, and use our key words that define our business.

You’ll want to follow accounts with similar goals and ideals as yours, and look at who’s following them, and so on and so forth. This way you’ll be following people who you know are already interested in your type of brand or product.

Are you too Busy to Post? Heck No!

We are all busy, but it is so important to prioritize your social media marketing objectives. A site that we, Phocal, love to use is Later. On Later, you can schedule posts to automatically publish to your Pinterest account. With this feature, you can schedule pins weeks and months in advance, making it easy to plan out campaigns, launches, and regular posts. Later also helps you find the current top trending hashtags, to help optimize SEO.

The Bottom Line

Now that was a lot of information, but the one take away we hope you find from this article is that your brand SHOULD be on Pinterest (no excuses!). Not only does it open you up to many different audiences, but due to the nature of it being a visual search engine, Pinterest has qualities like no other app or platform. We encourage your brand to start making video content, and see how well they’ll perform, you’d be surprised.

Follow Phocal’s journey on all of our social medias below, for more marketing and business tips:

Instagram: @phocal.productions
Facebook: @PhocalProductions
Pinterest: @PhocalProductions
TikTok: @Phocal

Our motto is to ‘Never Stop Learning!’ Though we have 100s of recommendations, our is the list of our top 10 favorite books you need to read to become a better marketing (and human in general).

Our motto is to ‘Never Stop Learning!’.

1. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Although not a direct marketing book, this book sets the stage and provides the resources needed to be an effective leader and influence people to like and respect you.

2. Permission Marketing by Seth Godin

In his book, Seth Godin explains how to create an effective ad campaign and why it is important to pay attention to customers who have already shown interest in your product.

3. The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period! 2.0, by Stoney DeGeyter

This book provides checklists for every outlet of marketing, ensuring that you have all your bases covered. With information on ecommerce, mobile, and video, this book aims to guide your company to utilize every outlet possible for marketing.

4. Crushing It!: How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business and Influence-and How You Can, Too by Gary Vaynerchuk

In his book, New York Times bestselling author Gary Vaynerchuk shares lessons from multiple entrepreneurs and business people about how they took a non-traditional approach to building their own personal brand and then their own empire.

5. You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life by Jen Sincero

While also not a direct marketing book, this book gives great advice on how to grow your confidence, which is essential for being a successful business professional. The book provides stories, exercises, and advice to help you start becoming the person you have always wanted to be.

6. Tap: Unlocking the Mobile Economy, by Anindya Ghose

Social media marketing is relevant more than ever, and in his book Ghose explains how businesses can alter their strategies for maximum impact on social media. He translates digital code to useful information that is understandable and easily digestible.

7. Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout

The authors of this book share how to position your brand to find the right customers to sell to. They give advice on what niche to attack, how to name a product, and even how to find out the weak spots of your competitors.

8. Top of Mind: Use Content to Unleash Your Influence and Engage Those Who Matter To You, by John Hall

This book gives advice on how to position your thinking to make sure you’re at your peak performance. The author shares how consumers’ minds have changed and why transparency, likability, and consistency are crucial for success.

9. Crisis Ready: Building an Invincible Brand in an Uncertain World, by Melissa Agnes

In this age of canceled culture and the need for brands to be perfect on every level, this book gives your business the tools to be ready to respond to any kind crisis with elegance and transparency.

10. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath

In this book, Chip and Dan seek to find out why some ideas die and others are carried out. They reveal how you can create ideas that resentate or “stick” with people, and why this is important.

Instagram: @phocal.productions
Facebook: @PhocalProductions
Pinterest: @PhocalProductions
TikTok: @Phocal