Uncategorized | BYK Digital Marketing

Marketing a Niche Business

Niche markets are generated by introducing products or services that resonate with a small, specific audience, rather than mass markets. Niche businesses can charge premiums for their products or services and are generally more profitable than other types of firms. If marketed well, these businesses can be extremely lucrative. So here’s what to focus on to market your niche business right.

Targeted Content

Unlike mass marketing, simply writing blog posts won’t cut it for niche businesses. This information will get quickly lost in a sea of other content. To successfully capture the attention of your specific audience, you’d need to craft more compelling stories that appeal to their situations.

Niche businesses can’t rely on discounts to generate more sales – their customer bases are too small for that. Instead, you must craft compelling stories that will resonate with your target audience. A dependable method is picking a specific problem your audience may face, and presenting a practical solution for it through your products or services. In terms of media, try case studies, presentations, and videos. It’s important to include a strong call to action and providing your expert consultation. Remember, the expertise and specificity of your niche business are what sets your business apart from others.

Focus on creating evergreen content – don’t let your content have an expiration date! Your content should be relevant at all times, and never be time-oriented. Make sure it’s comprehensive, useful, frequently updated, and always easily accessible on your page.

Instead of focusing on advertising, value listening. Carefully monitor your comments and customer interactions and respond thoughtfully. Be prepared to deal with criticism and respond well – your audience will take note.

Careful Promotion

Use tools like Taboola, Outbrain, or Facebook Look-a-like audience to find and target your specific audience. Services like Google Adwords can also be used for interest-based targeting and the ability to exclude negative keywords. Email marketing automation can help you easily generate leads and referrals from site visitors. Users who are prepared to leave your website without engaging with a call to action can be targeted with a strategic email campaign, hopefully creating an ongoing relationship with these users that may lead to future sales.

Consider collaborating with other businesses with a similar target audience. If you’re not directly competing, maybe if your products or services are complimentary, you both could gain a lot by combining your audience base. An easy way to do this is affiliate marketing: after paying an initial setup fee, you’ll gain access to affiliate businesses with similar user bases, and you’d only have to pay additionally once affiliate sales have been made. This is especially useful for online sales.

Marketing a niche business requires more careful planning than mass marketing. But when you know how to run it well, your niche business has the potential to pay off substantially. What’s your niche?

2019-12-30

Our Top 5 STL Food Influencers

Forget New York and LA. St. Louis is filled to the brim with diverse and delicious restaurants, and we think it’s the underrated foodie town everyone should be looking out for. And where there’s good food, there are food influencers! Here are our top 5 STL food accounts you should be following to stay on top of St. Louis’s flourishing restaurant scene.

1. Whiskey and Soba

Pic: Sidney Street Cafe

If food influencers were whiskey, Whiskey and Soba would be top shelf. Spencer Pernikoff takes beautiful, sophisticated photos of not only his food, but also behind-the-scenes kitchen shots. His recommendations are so sincere that you feel like you have to try the place now. Aside from his Instagram, his website includes thoughtfully written yet humorous restaurant reviews, recipes, and curated eating guides. Whiskey and Soba is an invaluable resource for those of you who carefully research your slightly-more-upscale restaurants before going.

IG: whiskeyandsoba

Website: whiskeyandsoba.com

2. We Eat Stuff

Pic: Mission Taco Joint

As self-described hipster foodies, Christine and Charlie (and their dog, Waffles) of We Eat Stuff wants you to know that they’re not food critics; they’re food evangelists. Ever so humble, We Eat Stuff insists they’re not bloggers, they just really like to eat and drink in St. Louis. With an Instagram post almost every day, we can see just how much they like it. We love their vibrant, so-close-you-can-almost-taste-it photos and message to eat local and support the hospitality industry.

IG: weeatstuffstl

Website: weeatstuff.com

3. STL Food Baby

Pic: Nudo House STL

STL Food Baby is everything a food Instagram should be with its bright, dynamic, and cohesive photos of casual food and short, witty captions. No one can accuse STL Food Baby of false advertising – all this food would certainly cause a food baby. But all the food looks so good you wouldn’t regret it.

IG: stlfoodbaby

4. STL Foodies

Pic: Taste Bar

Ashley Q. of STL Foodies posts mouth-watering yet casual food, drink, and dessert photos with personal touches thrown in here and there. Don’t feel bad if you start drooling over this indulgent food porn.

IG: stlfoodies

5. Eat Drink St. Louis

Pic: Frazer’s Good Eats

Eat Drink St. Louis is your premier Instagram for, you guessed it, eating and drinking in St. Louis. This is a food account that features drinks pretty often, so it’s a great resource for deciding where to go for a meal that’d come with great drinks! And of course, the food looks pretty delicious too.

IG: eatdrinkstl

We hope you got a little hungrier reading this. Well, do you love food and think you’ve got what it takes to become a food influencer? You’ll have to carefully decide on your goals and messaging, and create a marketing strategy. It’s not so easy as just posting photos. But while you’re at it, we post some pretty good food photos, too: follow us at bykdigital on Instagram! Happy eating.

2019-12-30

11 Ways to Upgrade Your Instagram Game

If you have a business, chances are you’re on Instagram. It’s one of the fastest-growing social networks, hitting 1 billion users in 2018, and counting! But not every business is using Instagram to their highest potential. Here are 11 ways you can get on top of your Instagram game.

Use Stories for engagement, and Feed for conversions. This just means Stories are the best way to connect with your existing follower base, and your Feed is your best bet for attracting potential new followers. Be sure to tailor your respective posts to target each specific audience – use Stories to allow your followers to keep up with everyday updates, and Feed to pique interest and hook new followers in.
Hashtag thoughtfully, not randomly. If you just carelessly tag the most popular hashtags, your posts will get lost in a sea of millions of other posts. Use specific hashtags to best attract your unique niche audience. You can even use third-party resources to find the best, specific hashtags for you: try Hashtagify or Hashtag Expert.
Strategically like other posts in your specific hashtags. This way, you’ll grab the attention of people interested in the same niche. You can even follow the users posting in your hashtags to show you’re really interested.
Add emojis to boost interaction. According to Quintly, emojis lead to 47.7% more interactions on Instagram. But don’t overuse them! Try to limit your emoji usage to just one or two per post, otherwise, it could get annoying.
Make sure you tag your location for both Story and Feed posts! According to Simply Measured, location-tagged posts lead to 79% higher engagement
Save your own posts to collections to beat algorithms. Saving posts signal importance/relevance, so your posts will seem more important to Instagram’s algorithms and prioritized on your followers’ feeds.
Share your own important posts to your Story. But only a few important ones that you want to prioritize, otherwise your followers will expect to only see your posts on stories! You can strategically tease your post in your Story without showing the full post to lead your followers to the actual post.
Increase caption readability. No one really wants to read a long, blog-length post on Instagram. Use plenty of line breaks if you have more than a few sentences of information to share, so your followers don’t get overwhelmed by walls of text.
Use custom fonts on your Story to make them stand out! Everyone has access to Modern, Neon, Typewriter, and Strong, but using other fonts will help your stories stand out from the crowd. Try Typorama or Font Candy.
Get creative with your Story. Try coordinating font colors to colors of your image and using stickers and GIFs!
Beat the 30-hashtag limit. To really reach as many people as possible, you can tag 30 in the caption, and 30 more in the comments.

With these tips, Instagram has the potential to help your business reach unprecedented new heights of follower engagement. Have these tips worked for your business? Let us know!

2019-12-02

Brand Identity Matters

Brand identity is more than just a logo – it’s every association, every experience a customer has with a brand. Most small businesses don’t put enough effort into building their brand identity until there’s a glaring issue. We’d advise against this – all businesses, especially small businesses should be actually consistently putting work into their brand to ensure such issues don’t arise.

Here’s why a consistent, strong brand identity matters, especially to small businesses.

Makes an Impression

Presentation is everything. Customers form a brand impression from a ton of different factors that will all add up – it’s not just your logo, but that and your website, business cards, customer service, social media presence, etc. Making an immediate sale shouldn’t be your goal, but building up a positive long-term brand relationship, which can also lead to future consistent sales. Think big picture.

Creates Recognition

If you maintain consistent visual elements and brand associations, your brand will be easily recognizable. Think about how quickly you’re able to recognize products from, say, Apple and Nike. Consider what you could make your brand’s trademark, like Apple’s bitten apple logo, sleek chrome products, and simple, modern branding. Of course, it takes time for these things to be associated, but that quick recognition is something your brand should strive for over time.

Shows Credibility

A polished brand identity shows you know how to run your business and tells customers they’ll be in good hands.

Makes a Connection

When a customer buys, they aren’t just buying a product, but what your brand stands for. That’s why you have to carefully design your brand to convey exactly what you want and what you authentically stand for, and ideally your message will resonate with your customers.

Got it? Now here are some tips on how to build a strong brand.

Clearly define your brand. What drives your business? What sets you apart from others?
Build a long-term relationship with your customers. Don’t focus on short-term sales, but a lasting relationship. Again, think big picture.
Use a consistent, distinctive voice. However, don’t keep repeating the same message like a broken record – make sure your individual messages work together to form a coherent, singular message.
Don’t copy big brands – be distinctive. What works for you won’t necessarily work for every business – be bold and stand for your unique values.
Always consider your branding during communication. Every interaction you have with customers will contribute to the impression customers have of your brand.

A brand identity is so much more than just a logo. If you understand that and operate your business accordingly, you will be rewarded with more success in the long run.

2019-11-25

How to Highlight Your Highlights

Instagram Stories are an excellent way for brands to connect to their followers. However, since they expire after 24 hours, you’ll want to find other ways to make sure your audience will actually see it. That’s when Story Highlights come in.

Story Highlights are just saved Stories that appear below your bio on your profile. This way, you can ensure anyone visiting your profile at any time will be able to see them, even after your original Story disappears.

First, go to your Story Settings to ensure your Stories save to your archive after they expire.

To add new Stories to your Highlights, just click the plus sign below your bio on your profile and upload it.
To add expired Stories, go to your Story Archive and select Create Highlight.
To add current Stories, simply view your current Story and select Highlight.

We suggest adding a graphic for each Highlight with a cohesive visual language. It’s a very small space, so we recommend going the simple, flat icon route.

So what should you highlight? It depends on the type of business, but here are some suggestions that should work for any business.

Best product/dish features: Show your followers the best products your business has to offer.
Ongoing promotions: If your business is having special promotions or deals, this is a great place to ensure they’ll be seen.
Testimonials: Showcase your happy customer reviews here.
Polls: Have a question only your followers can answer? Put it here.
About: Customers love learning about your business’s backstory. Offer some transparency and let them get to know you and your business better.

Remember, only highlight the important parts. Now, Highlight away!

2019-10-28

You Can (Finally) Schedule Posts on Instagram

It’s always been a pain to schedule posts on Instagram. Instagram’s API restrictions on third-party tools have made it necessary to use paid alternative methods – until now. Now you can rejoice and post easily to Instagram via Facebook Creator Studio for free!

Other third-party posting apps have worked, but with limitations. For example, some don’t allow users to post carousel images and polls. Creator Studio allows more control and access to all of Instagram’s usual features, and also allows you to view exactly what your posts will look like on your feed. And it’s free, unlike said apps.

Here’s how to do it.

Go to Creator Studio and click the Instagram icon next to the Facebook icon at the top of the screen.
Click “Connect to Instagram” and follow the instructions to link your Instagram Business account.
Once your account is connected, click “Create Post” at the top left of the screen. Select Instagram Feed to post images. You can also schedule posts for IGTV, but scheduling stories are unavailable for now.
Upload your image and add the caption. You will also be able to add emojis and location tags.
Click on the drop-down arrow next to the Publish button and set the date & time you want it to post using the scheduling tool.

There you have it! You’re now able to schedule all your posts on Instagram, as easy as that. Just don’t forget to keep up with your schedule.

2019-09-24

How to Maximize Success With Email Marketing Automation

Want to engage with your audience and introduce new ideas to potential customers? Try an email marketing automation campaign, also known as an email drip campaign or an email nurture journey. These campaigns are your best bet to maximize marketing effectiveness at a much lower cost than paid advertisements. According to MarTech, automated email campaigns generate three times the click-through rate of other marketing emails!

Interested? Let’s get started.

What is email marketing automation?

Email marketing automation is a series of pre-written emails designed to be strategically sent based on specific data collected about the recipient. They don’t require pressing a send button and are sent automatically when a new recipient that fits the criteria is added to a campaign. Depending on the recipient’s actions, additional emails will automatically follow up, with the intention of nurturing, upselling or retaining the recipient throughout the campaign.

Cater to your audience

An email campaign, automated or not, is only successful if it reaches the right people. Don’t just send your campaign blindly out to your entire contact list – this runs the risk of annoying recipients if it’s not relevant to them.

What kind of data can you collect from your audience? Divide your audience into groups with specific shared qualities, like their interests, demographics, engagement, etc. Personalize your emails to these groups as much as possible. The more specific your grouping, the more personal your emails can get, meaning more engagement.

Types of campaigns

There are many different types of email marketing automation campaigns – these are just a few options, but remember the sky’s the limit! This is a diverse medium that can be used for an infinite number of purposes.

Top-of-mind

Keeps customers engaged throughout the sales process.

Educational

Provides relevant information about products in preparation for a purchase.

Re-engagement

Wins back the interest of customers you haven’t engaged with in a while.

Competitive

Targets competitors and convinces customers to switch to your product instead.

Promotional

Informs customers of special deals and promotions, etc.

Call to action

So, once your recipient gets to the end of your email, what do you want them to do? Whatever it is, make sure it’s big, bold, and clickable. Try placing multiple calls to action in an email to see which one yields the most clicks. Again, personalize your call to action and make sure it’s relevant to whichever audience you’re targeting!

Test, test, test

Always test your campaigns’ effectiveness to see which strategies are most successful. Test different subject lines, content, and calls to action within your groups – for example, is an anecdote generating more clicks? User testimonials? Short or long emails? Compile your results to find the combination that’ll best fit each group. However, don’t test multiple factors at once – that way, you won’t know which factor actually boosted your results.

2019-08-21

BYK Scroll-stopping Content

Marketeer.com says of working in the creative industry, “It’s our job to create content so good that it stops our audience mid-scroll and forces them to pay attention.” Sounds easy right? With over 500 million tweets and 95 million photos posted a day, it can be hard to make your brand stand out. Here’s how you can curate content that will make your audience stop mid-scroll!

Use Visuals

We believe in show don’t tell. Using visuals is a great way to break up long texts commonly found in blogs, and they stand out more when scrolling down a page. Utilizing images, infographics, charts, maps, videos or any other visual is a great way to not only compliment your text, but it can even enhance your point.

Marketeer.com states that “visual content is more than 40 times more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content. LinkedIn posts with images receive 200% more engagement than text-only posts.” On Twitter, tweets with images are 150% more likely to get retweets.

When choosing images, here are some tips:

Don’t use stock photos. It’s unoriginal and boring. Instead, take your own. Your audience will appreciate the authenticity.
Utilize filters.
If there is text on the photo, make it short, easy to read, and catchy!

It’s hard to know what pictures will stand out, but sometimes the best ideas are the simplest. You may or may not have heard of Fyre Festival, one of the biggest music festivals that never happened. With the help of social media influencers, it garnered much publicity in a short period of time. How did they do it? By posting a photo of an orange box. According to convergeconsulting.com, “This picture of a bright box posted by influencers was all that the future attendees needed to stop them from scrolling through their feed and dive deeper into the festival. Not only did it cause them to stop, it created a desire to find out what was behind the picture.”

Video, in particular, is more time-intensive than images, but the payoff is worth it. American Marketing Association claims that “video, on average, converts and engages at 10 times the rate of written content.” Creating videos is the best way to bring a brand to life and show off who it is. There are a variety of ways to deliver video, such as live streaming and webinars.

Know Your Audience

To make scroll-stopping content, you have to learn what your audience deems as scroll-stopping. Research and understand what your audience likes to click on, share and repost. Compare yourself to your competitors to see if you are getting more engagement from your content. If your content is popular, see which types of content are the most popular and try to implement those more. If your competitor is getting more engagement per post, see what type of content the competitor is posting, see which ones are popular and try to adapt it to your brand.

Track What is Working

After you experiment with a few of the techniques stated above, you’ll need to track its success. How you track the data will depend on what you posted. Marketeer.com suggests that “For a graphic you made to promote your latest eBook, don’t track just social engagement for the post—also track the download rate from social. For video content, track how long viewers watch and engagement rates over the course of the video…If you’re adding images to your social posts that direct people to your recent blog posts, you can track the click rate, bounce rate, and time on page.”

There are many resources out there that can help you track your engagement, such as Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and Sprout Social.

Don’t let your content get lost in the clutter anymore. With these tips, you’ll be creating stop-scrolling content in no time!

Sources:

How to Create Scroll-Stopping B2B Social Media Content

Stop The Scroll: Tips To Creating Engaging Social Media Content

How to Create Scroll-Stopping Content for Marketing & PR

2019-06-06

BYK’s Top 5 Posting Tips

At BYK Digital Marketing, a large percentage of our time is spent posting for our clients. With all the competition that our clients face, we need to be experts in making them shine on their social media platforms. We came up with our five favorite tips for creating and implementing posts. Enjoy, and happy posting!

1. Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail

Call us nerds, but we’re all about the planning stage of posting. Spontaneity has its place in life and social media, but when we can, we plan. We decide with a client how many posts a week we will create for them, and write out our posts for an entire month–weeks before the posts will see the light of day. This ensures we’ve established the frequency with which we will post, and that we are building routines for each client. There are quite a few social media management tools that can help you schedule your posts to publish onto each of your platforms. Buffer and Later are two that we use. We like Later because it allows us to visualize the timeline of our posts on a calendar, so we can clearly see how many posts we’ve scheduled for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Facebook and Twitter also allow you to schedule ahead of time within the platforms, rather than through a third party. You’ll find that different types of posts require different scheduling strategies, so definitely figure it out in advance!

2. Timing is (Kind of) Everything

We don’t think you have to be super strict about what times you schedule posts for, because it’s fairly easy to guestimate the safe time windows that lots of people will be scrolling through their social media accounts (ie. not between 12 a.m. and 5 a.m.). However, there are studies behind posting times, and it certainly doesn’t hurt to know about which times are the best to hit for highest engagement. This article by Sprout Social, Best Times to Post on Social Media: 2018 Industry Research, does a great, in-depth job charting how different time windows are best for posting, and how they differ across platforms. Since we post for our clients more than just once a week, and not just the most popular days, we think it’s best to highlight from the article the safest times throughout the week to post for each platform, so you can make sure you’re scheduling within those time frames when people are most likely to see and engage with your posts.

The safest times to post to Facebook include weekdays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
The safest times to post to Instagram are Tuesday through Friday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
The safest time to Tweet is every day from 10 a.m. to noon.
Tuesday through Thursday rank safest for posting to Linkedin.

3. Image IS Everything

People want to see pictures, and posts that use images have been proven to get more engagement than their imageless counterparts. Even if you think you just want to share a link to an article about your client, make sure you have an image to go with it. This will make your content stand out and will invite people to interact more with your post. We find that we are happiest when we have a wealth of high-quality images to share with our content and dedicate time to capturing the photos or crafting the graphics with which we will populate our clients’ feeds. When we are able to meaningfully show the faces, products, and events behind a brand, we see more results.

4. Will You Marry Me?

No, we’re not talking about that kind of engagement. But seriously, once you publish posts, track their engagement and encourage as much interaction as possible. Make sure you are checking Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram regularly to monitor how your posts are performing, and to interact with people who are replying to or commenting on your posts. People truly care, especially on Twitter, about whether a brand responds to them.

We find it’s helpful to create social media audits for our clients so that we can survey exactly how posts are performing. Engagement is important to analyze, and you would also be smart to track what types of competitor posts are generating the most engagement! See what’s trending and emulate it, because numbers don’t lie!

Another way we can boost engagement is by creating contest posts that tell your followers to like, share, or tag a friend for a chance to win. People who might not otherwise engage with posts will suddenly jump at the opportunity to win a dozen cookies!

5. Carousel!

How could this not be a fun tip? Whether it’s a paid or organic ad, Facebook has a publishing tool that allows you to create posts with a whole carousel of images! According to Sprout Social, carousel ads have lower cost-per-conversion and cost-per-click compared to static ads. The carousel format is especially optimal for showcasing different products, whether they be menu items, clothing, or services!

2019-01-18

Frantz’s Top 5 STL Instagram Accounts To Follow

What’s the word STL?! Ahh, the sun’s out, the city’s booming and there seems to be a new graffiti tag on the downtown nearly every day. How do they even hit some of those spots? Do we even want to know? Anyway. If you’re like me, you’re constantly on social media, scrolling through pictures and profiles looking for that next account to follow, or that one DM to slide into (tis the season, after all). With that in mind, here are my top 5 STL-based Instagram accounts you simply must follow for all the best local and national music and art.

@speakerleaks

Founded by Brittanie Goldsby, @SpeakerLeaks is a broadcast platform based out of STL that covers artists of all media. If you’re looking for something, whether locally grown or more nationally known, Speaker Leaks is your new hub for all that is moving in these streets. Give them a follow and hit that notification button, trust me, you won’t regret it.

@damondavis

This artist really needs no introduction. If you’re a fellow St. Louis creative and you don’t know who Damon Davis is, then do yourself a huge favor and follow him ASAP. Damon Davis is a multimedia artist with projects that have been nationally recognized throughout the arts community. From lecturing at some of the nation’s most prestigious universities, to being featured in the Smithsonian Museum of African American History in Washington D.C., Damon Davis still finds time to pay homage to his roots. In one of Damon’s well known projects “All Hands On Deck”. Davis photographed individuals in Ferguson, Missouri with their “hands up” recalling the gesture of Michael Brown before his death, and transforming it into a powerful symbol of peaceful protest. If you would like to see more of Damon Davis’ work, make sure to hit the link and Follow him.

@sinnersmansion

CEO, photographer, event promoter, marketer and somehow still finding the time to be a student! This St. Louis based creative is on the rise and everyone knows it but you. There’s no telling what she’ll be up to next. Go ahead and give her a follow!

@shotsbyak

The next time you think of an aesthetically pleasing Instagram page, you’ll think of @shotsbyak. Delivering a library of perfectly color graded Instagram worthy photos, @shotsbyak is the perfect option for your next photoshoot. Give him a follow and check out his work.

@reprsntstl

Find yourself forgetting how beautiful St. Louis is? Well then you may need @reprsntstl to refresh your memory. With an Instagram profile compiled of amazingly beautiful shots of St. Louis submitted by various STL photographers and much more, @reprsntstl has become a destination for many to awe in the beauty of our very photogenic city. Make sure to follow them to see more!

2018-06-24

Category: Uncategorized