The next installment of our TOP 11 series will introduce you to a few things you really need to know about advertising with digital video.

1 – VIDEO QUALITY AFFECTS RESULTS
We've all been exposed to both ends of the spectrum when it comes to digital video ads - you've seen beautiful videos that were extremely relevant to you, and you've seen videos that look awful and left you wondering why you were served that video and if you could possibly get your last few minutes back.  Is it worth it to invest in high-quality video from someone with a proven portfolio and a reputation for always having the latest and greatest in software and equipment?  You bet.  The quality of the video you use in your digital video advertising will directly affect the results of the ad campaign.  You get what you pay for, and it's always important to make sure that your video production is from a true professional with a proven track record.

2 – AD NETWORKS GIVE TREMENDOUS REACH
Ad networks, like Google (through their AdWords platform), Facebook Audience Network, and Yahoo! Gemini, give you a huge reach.  When you post a video on any or all of these platforms, your reach instantly covers millions of websites and mobile apps.  Welcome to the new world of marketing.

3 – AD NETWORKS HELP YOU TO TARGET
Ad networks have a ton of data available to help you to effective segment your audience and be very specific in who you target.  Getting the right message (video) in front of the right person drastically improves your likelihood of gaining a new customer.  The more targeted you are, the more effective you'll be.

4 – AD NETWORKS TARGETING ISN'T ENOUGH
To effectively target your audience in a very granular way, we get into a lot of additional data that 1) isn't available without significant investment, and 2) very few, if any, marketers are willing to invest in (probably because they think it's enough to just use the default settings).  This data helps understand not only your business, but your ideal future customer, in a whole new way.  There's a reason the average online marketers consistently only get 2-4% of the clicks that we do - DATA.

5 – IT CAN BE INEXPENSIVE
We had a client that opened a new location and posted an awesome grand opening video on their Facebook, garnering a couple hundred views.  Two weeks later, the same video was posted again with minimal investment, and quickly had 10,000 views and great engagement.  If done right, digital video advertising doesn't have to be a pricey endeavor.

6 – IT ISN'T THE BEST PLACE TO START FOR EVERYONE
Different brands in different sectors with different budgets need different things.  Just by saying that, I just stepped on the metaphorical toes of a lot of other advertisers who think what they do is the be-all end-all of marketing.  It's important to evaluate where you are as a business, where your audience is, and what's truly necessary to expand your business.  For many businesses, focusing on Search Engine Marketing or SEO to begin with is actually the smarter thing to do.  It all depends on what the data tells us.

7 – IT'S MEASURABLE
The big question for any marketing is "is it working?"  Yet so much of marketing results are only available through anecdotal evidence - something like "do people stop you in the store to say they heard you on the radio?"  Ultimately, results from other forms of advertising is evaluated by asking "do you think it's working?"  And that's it.  Everything we do is trackable.  We can track your customers from the moment they see your ad until the time they make a purchase.  Emphasizing analytics holds us accountable while also allowing us to continually refine our approach.

8 – IT CAN AND SHOULD BE ACTIONABLE
Not to keep picking on traditional advertising, but no advertising out there is as easily actionable as digital.  Through your digital video ads, your future customers can act immediately.  With one click, they could be on the phone with your sales department, be navigating your website, or even open directions to drive to your store.  Making it easy for customers to take action results in higher conversion rates and awesome ROI.

9 – EVERYBODY'S DOING IT
Huge companies such as Mondelez (that amazing company that blesses the world with snacks like Oreos) have been actively shifting most of their budget to digital.  Why?  They report getting twice the return for half the cost.

10 – VIDEO CAN BE RECYCLED
High-quality video is truly an investment.  Your marketing budget is precious, and dedicating a portion of it to video shows true commitment to this strategy.  The video you get should therefore be used as much as possible - use it in your ads, use it on your social media profiles, and use it on your website!

11 – IT'S THE BEST WAY TO CONVEY A MESSAGE
Digital video is so flexible and multi-dimensional.  No other medium is as effective in conveying a rich message to a specific audience.  If your brand is truly worth knowing about, and you have a specific audience you want to reach, digital video advertising is the way to go.

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​​About us: Level 11 Online Marketing is a fast growing digital advertising agency that is becoming known for disrupting the status quo.  We specialize in digital advertising, video production, SEO, SEM, advanced analytics, custom web solutions via website design & implementation, social media strategies and conversion optimization.  Headquartered in Utah, you will find Level 11 team members in Utah, Washington, California, Idaho, and Colorado. We have the best creative minds in the industry backed up by the most talented software developers and video production teams which leads to powerful, efficient advertising campaigns.

If you have questions, comment here or email us at info@level11.io today!

In general, businesses that advertise through traditional methods (TV, radio, print, etc.) do so for a number of reasons - they have a very broad audience, it’s what the prior generations of business owners have done, they haven’t had time to learn/understand digital advertising, they're skeptical of digital advertising, etc.

Regardless of the reason, it’s important to know just how to evaluate where you are and what method(s) of advertising are going to be right for you. The purpose of this blog is to help you get started in evaluating whether it’s truly optimal for you to continue with traditional advertising methods, or if you should look to make a shift to digital.

EVALUATING YOUR AUDIENCE
We often encounter business owners who truly believe that “everyone” needs their product. The truth is, there is always an alternative to your product, even if that alternative is simply going without your product. Begin the process of analyzing your ideal audience by identifying the specific characteristics that can be attributed to your audience. If your most worthwhile customers have a net worth of over $100,000, that drastically shrinks potential audience. Sometimes you should be targeting families with children in elementary school. Again, we’ve shrunk your potential audience. Doing this over and over will help you to build what’s called your “buyer persona,” which is the person you need your marketing to reach most effectively. Throw assumptions out the window, because they may cause you to miss out on opportunities – for example, YouTube currently reaches more 18-49-year-olds than any cable network in the US on its mobile app alone, with an average viewing session of over 40 minutes… if you thought that running ads on ESPN would give you the best reach to those ages, you clearly shortchanged yourself and limited your reach.

RECOMMENDATION: Digital Advertising is excellent for reaching an audience that’s well-defined. If your audience is active online, or if people seek your service on-demand (like a lawyer, a tow truck, or something else you Google), there’s no more budget friendly and ROI-optimized option than digital.

YOU DON’T HAVE TIME TO LEARN
It’s easy to understand why your business is still advertising like it’s 1999. Ultimately, you do what you are familiar with, and if you’ve always advertised on the radio, it can be really easy to just keep going with that. Sometimes, you’re just doing what you do because it’s how your parents or grandparents advertised when they were running the show, and you just don’t have time to figure out what else you could do with your marketing budget.

First off, you need to account for all of your current marketing efforts. You can’t improve anything until you’ve effectively figured out what you’re actually doing. Once you have a full accounting of your current efforts, it’s time to actually take the time to learn. There’s no way to hack this – to improve your marketing, you need to invest some of your attention. It could be helpful to ask some of your peers what they do and why. Make sure you’re seeking advice from those people who clearly are with the times and have dabbled in modern advertising techniques (you don’t take money advice from people who are broke, so don’t take marketing advice from people who don’t know what’s out there today). There are numerous audiobooks that are full of wisdom that will help you get a better understanding about what you can do to grow your business today, and self-educating yourself will help you astronomically.

RECOMMENDATION: A little shameless self-promotion here… We’re from a background of not only marketing, but business development consulting. We love to teach, and we clearly know a lot about online marketing. We also stay abreast of all the developments that are always happening in this field, so we are always current and have a good feel for what’s in store for the future. The FASTEST and EASIEST way for you to learn about digital advertising is by talking to us. Let us answer your questions and help you figure out what, if any, new methods of advertising could be wise for you to explore and utilize.

YOU’RE SKEPTICAL
A lot of people look at digital marketing as voodoo magic. You’ve maybe been burned in the past by snake oil salesmen making empty promises, or perhaps it makes so little sense that you can’t place any confidence in it. The thing is, YOU’RE RIGHT. Yes, there are oodles of so-called “experts” out there that are really as smart as a box of rocks, and they just happen to be good salesmen that have no idea how to actually deliver results for you. We’ve seen enough horror stories to know that not all digital marketers are created equally. And yes, if digital marketing doesn’t make sense, you certainly can never be confident in investing in it. The best way to overcome your skepticism is by learning. As detailed earlier, there are tons of ways you can gain a more in-depth knowledge of social media, digital video advertising, PPC/SEM, SEO, etc. The more you educate yourself, the better you’ll be able to evaluate potential marketing opportunities in the future.

RECOMMENDATION: A huge difference between us and other digital marketers is that we employ no sleight of hand and strive to ensure you know what we’re doing. We want you to understand what we’re doing, so we teach you and answer every question to make sure you truly get it. We also are transparent in our efforts. You don’t have to rely on anecdotal evidence to know if things are working – we show you the data and show you everything we are doing. In a sense, we’re terrible poker players because you ALWAYS see the cards. You don’t even have to pay a dollar to know if we will work out for you – we will dig into the data before doing anything to see if and where opportunity exists, then explain what we’d do and what would be the likely result of our efforts. You can talk to our current and past clients to see what their experiences were like, and surely they’ll be raving fans too, because we go out of our way to ensure that every concern is addressed and every effort is optimized. We’re disrupting the field of digital marketing by telling our clients what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and what will come of it, from the very first moment we connect with them. No recommendation could be as strong as this: talk to us, and soon you’ll know more than you ever have and you’ll trust us so much that you’ll go out of your way to refer all of your acquaintances to us.


​About us: Level 11 Online Marketing is a fast growing digital advertising agency that is becoming known for disrupting the status quo.  We specialize in digital advertising, video production, SEO, SEM, advanced analytics, custom web solutions via website design & implementation, social media strategies and conversion optimization.  Headquartered in Utah, you will find Level 11 team members in Utah, Washington, California, Idaho, and Colorado. We have the best creative minds in the industry backed up by the most talented software developers and video production teams which leads to powerful, efficient advertising campaigns.

If you have questions, comment here or email us at info@level11.io today!

"Can you make this go viral?" Yeah, never ask this question. It shows a glorious lack of understanding. What it means to "go viral" is that something is being read, viewed, or shared online at a higher than normal rate. Essentially, something is catching fire on the internet for some reason. The result of something going "viral" is generally a temporary spike in page views. While the small victory is nice, something else will inevitably come along and push your content off people's screens and into obscurity again.

So is it worthwhile to aim for this type of result? Can/should you craft your campaign around the objective of "going viral"? Probably not. This is why we, your advertisers and social media managers, focus on other goals - ways that marketing and social media can help achieve your overall business and marketing goals.

TAKEAWAYS

Learn about which goals on social media are worth your while. Having clearly defined objectives (beyond simply accumulating page likes) will help you stay on track. Talk with us about how you can measure your success and how social media can help your business achieve what "going viral" is truly all about: awareness.

​About us: Level 11 Online Marketing is a fast growing digital advertising agency that is becoming known for disrupting the status quo. We specialize in digital advertising, video production, SEO, SEM, advanced analytics, custom web solutions via website design & implementation, social media strategies and conversion optimization. Headquartered in Utah, you will find Level 11 team members in Utah, Washington, California, Idaho, and Colorado. We have the best creative minds in the industry backed up by the most talented software developers and video production teams which leads to powerful, efficient advertising campaigns.

If you have questions, comment here or email us at info@level11.io today!

It seems like everybody everywhere is always on their phone. People comsume media very differently today than they did even a few years ago, and as a business, it's critical that you are taking advantage of mobile advertising. Social media platforms such as Facebook have an insanely captive audience, and we have troves of data about this audience that allows us to very efficiently and aggressively target your ideal audience. Facebook is a very valuable tool that many of our clients use, and here's some amazing facts about it!

1 - Facebook’s ‘Like’ button used to be the ‘Awesome’ button. Facebook engineer Andrew Bosworth said that he and other engineers were enthusiastic about the “Awesome” button, but that the idea was ultimately vetoed by Zuckerberg in 2007. The site eventually settled on the “Like” button, a decision that Bosworth said was met with a decidedly lukewarm reception. (source)
2 - Facebook stores approximately 300 PETABYTES of user data on its servers. There are 1 million gigabytes in a petabyte. The entire written works of humankind, in every known language (including Latin and other historical languages) from the dawn of recorded history, would occupy approximately 50 petabytes. Think about that for a minute. (source)
3 - In 2014, the alleged global economic impact of Facebook was approximately $227 billion. However, this statistic (and the methodology behind it) has been called in question by several leading economists. Whether you buy Facebook’s data or not, there’s no doubt that Facebook has had a serious impact on economies around the world. (source)
4 - Facebook’s user base grows by eight people per second, or 7,246 people every 15 minutes. Some naysayers have foretold of Facebook’s impending demise, but aside from boasting the largest user base of any social network in the world by a gigantic margin, this statistic proves Facebook is still growing. (source)
5 - In 2015, Facebook boasted 22% of WORLDWIDE mobile Internet advertising revenue. That means almost one-quarter of all advertising revenue generated from mobile Internet ads in a single year went to Facebook. (source)
6 - There are now more than 2 million active advertisers on Facebook. The popularity, impact, and cost-effectiveness of Facebook ads has made the site one of the most popular online advertising platforms in the world, and its upward trajectory seems likely to continue. (source)
7 - Facebook ads targeting custom audiences have 14% lower cost-per-click and 64% lower cost-per-conversions than ads utilizing interest- or category-based targeting, on average. In addition, Facebook ads using custom audience targeting had conversion rates 387% higher than ads only using demographic targeting. (source)
8 - Every minute of downtime outage costs Facebook approximately $24,420. The “prolonged” outage that lasted for 19 minutes in August 2014 cost the company almost $427,000 – and you thoughtyou were pissed when Facebook goes down. (source)
9 - Posts published between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. EST receive approximately 88% more interactions on average than posts published at other times of the day. Also, ending posts with a question lifts interactions with those posts by an average of 162%. (source)
10 - In September 2014, Facebook users watched a collective 1 billion videos per day. Today, that figure is more than 4 billion – and 75% of these video views occur on mobile devices. (source)
11 - Videos are the most-shared content type on Facebook. On average, videos receive 89.5 shares per video, significantly higher share counts than photos or text-based posts. (source)
BONUS! - Posting just once or twice per day on Facebook yields an average of 40% more engagement than posting three or more times per day. This shows that, despite marketers’ best efforts to beat Facebook’s rapidly declining organic reach, you can’t just use brute force to make yourself heard. (source)

Thanks to Wordstream Blog

About us: Level 11 Online Marketing is a fast growing digital advertising agency that is becoming known for disrupting the status quo.  We specialize in digital advertising, video production, SEO, SEM, advanced analytics, custom web solutions via website design & implementation, social media strategies and conversion optimization.  Headquartered in Utah, you will find Level 11 team members in Utah, Washington, California, Idaho, and Colorado. We have the best creative minds in the industry backed up by the most talented software developers and video production teams which leads to powerful, efficient advertising campaigns.

If you have questions, comment here or email us at info@level11.io today!

In our previous post HERE, we detailed why organic reach on Facebook is so very low (this took up numbers 1-6 of the TOP 11 List). Now, we'll show you how you can increase your organic reach on Facebook! Here's 7-11 of the TOP 11 List of solving the organic reach challenge! For reference, you can learn more about what organic reach is right HERE.

7 - CONTENT IS KING
Having excellent, quality content is so important because whenever people engage with your page, they'll be more likely to see your page in their News Feed later because of algorithms Facebook has in place. Creating content that will get people to like, share, and comment will be a game changer for you.

8 - LEARN ABOUT AND USE FACEBOOK INSIGHTS
This nifty little tool will help you learn more about your audience. Play with it and you'll soon start seeing that it sheds a lot of light on your audience. When you understand your audience, you can tailor content to them that much better.

9 - KEEP AN EYE ON THE COMPETITION
Watching what your competitors are doing (post frequency, content, likes, shares, etc) will help you catch on when something is working well. It also is just a good rule of business to keep an eye on your competition. There are some third-party tools out there that help monitor your competitors, so check them out if you could use more insights on your competition: BuzzSumo, Simply Measured, and Social Bakers.

10 - BUILD A COMMUNITY
Focus on your users, not yourself. If every post is salesy - pushing your product - you'll lose audience. Post useful content and build up a two-way line of communication with your audience. Give away value for free, and they'll recognize what you're really worth.

11 - BE CONSISTENT AND DON'T GET LAZY
Consistency goes a long way. This isn't to say that you need to post all the time - we're simply saying that whether it's best for you to post three times a day or three times a month, be consistent. Being lazy won't help either. There's ways to literally buy followers, but you'll be banned in a hurry, not to mention you're pretty crazy for thinking that your bought audience will be in any way interested in what you have to say (really, having a thousand new followers tomorrow that in no way are interested in you, or more likely aren't even real people, will not make you a cent).

All in all, success in solving the organic reach challenge is all about content. High-quality content that promotes audience engagement will help you in maximizing your organic reach right away.


About us: Level 11 Online Marketing is a fast growing digital advertising agency that is becoming known for disrupting the status quo.  We specialize in digital advertising, video production, SEO, SEM, advanced analytics, custom web solutions via website design & implementation, social media strategies and conversion optimization.  Headquartered in Utah, you will find Level 11 team members in Utah, Washington, California, Idaho, and Colorado. We have the best creative minds in the industry backed up by the most talented software developers and video production teams which leads to powerful, efficient advertising campaigns.

If you have questions, comment here or email us at info@level11.io today!

No you're not imagining things... there just really aren't a lot of people that are seeing your Facebook posts. It's like every time you click "POST", Facebook is saying "shhhhh". Well, this is all because of declining organic reach. To learn more about what organic reach is, click here. In this post, we'll examine why organic reach is disappearing (and in the second part of this TOP 11 Series List, we'll see how you can improve your organic reach).

1 - TOO MANY POSTS IN THE NEWS FEED
Facebook needs users to have a good experience because user experience translates directly into $$$. A Facebook study found that 1,500 posts appear in the average user's feed daily, with that number approaching 15,000 for very active users. Because Facebook's goal is to show engaging content, all posts are not created equal. As we often say, CONTENT IS KING. The News Feed sorting algorithm, EdgeRank, analyzes over 100,000 indicators, so everyone has to earn their spot in the feed of users.

2 - POOR ENGAGEMENT TORPEDOS YOUR REACH
EdgeRank has tracked the decline of organic reach. 16% in 2012, 10% in 2013, 6% in 2014, and now 2-4% in 2016. Brands that struggle to connect with their audience have been hit the hardest.

3 - LARGER BRANDS HAVE LOWEST REACH
Many brands still maintain a reach of 4% (even better in some instances), but for pages with 500k+ likes, 2% organic reach is the norm. Some Facebook sources have even unofficially advised some managers to expect that reach to approach 0%.

4 - PAY TO PLAY
Advertising is Facebook's primary source of revenue, and not surprisingly the rate of organic reach is inversely related to the stock price of the company. Some brands simply haven't made the jump to paying to increase reach, so their reach has suffered.

5 - CONTENT IS KING
Socialbakers analyzed over 4,000 brand pages and nearly 700,000 posts, finding that video is the most effective way to reach audience. In the best circumstances, video's organic reach can approach 8.7%, followed by Links and Text Only posts at 5.3% and 5.8% respectively. At Level 11, we use video for many clients and have seen incredible success from it in terms of ROI. Learn more about that here and here.

6 - RELEVANCE TO YOUR TARGET
A case study for Castrol Motorcycle Oil measured a social media campaign. The first phase relied totally on organic reach for six months. It delivered 5,000 fans, 26,000 social interactions and a reach of 2.7 million. However, only 20% of those fans were located in the US. The next phase incorporated paid reach, and this time added 36,000 new fans, half of which were in the US, while reach hit 14 million. The content was the same - tailored to a specific audience - but the paid reach was focused on North America, which made all the difference.

​To finish this TOP 11 Series List, go HERE to learn about how to increase your organic reach on Facebook!


About us: Level 11 Online Marketing is a fast growing digital advertising agency that is becoming known for disrupting the status quo.  We specialize in digital advertising, video production, SEO, SEM, advanced analytics, custom web solutions via website design & implementation, social media strategies and conversion optimization.  Headquartered in Utah, you will find Level 11 team members in Utah, Washington, California, Idaho, and Colorado. We have the best creative minds in the industry backed up by the most talented software developers and video production teams which leads to powerful, efficient advertising campaigns.

If you have questions, comment here or email us at info@level11.io today!

This whole "internet" thing really isn't a fad.  It's here to stay, and it has become a part of the lives of nearly every person on the planet. As a brand, your efforts in engaging with your audience can be very profitable and worthwhile. Social media platforms, such as Facebook, provide an incredible soap box for your brand (when used correctly). That being said, there is a cruel fact that many are still unaware of:

THERE ARE NO FREE RIDES!

We'll refer to Facebook as our example. Many businesses post regularly on Facebook. That can be very helpful, yet the organic reach of these posts is suspect at best. Organic reach is defined as the number of people your post will reach through unpaid distribution. Translated, organic reach defined is how many people will see your post when you simply put it out there without paying to "boost" the post. In 2012, organic reach per Facebook follower was around 16% - it's currently around 2-4% depending on how many follow the brand. This means that your post will be seen by a fraction of the people who are already interested in you!

This quagmire of a situation isn't due to Mr. Zuckerberg's greed or anything like that. Facebook is simply a marketer's dream due to the high amount of user information available, so the demand for eyeballs means that PAY TO PLAY is the only way to ensure you are winning audience over your competition. Putting some money behind your posts will automatically drastically increase your reach, often with minimal investment. We at Level 11 take it even farther with our incredible tools that help our clients get reach that they couldn't get by boosting posts on their own.

In review, organic reach is how many eyeballs your content will get without putting money behind it, and while organic reach is incredibly low, very modest investment can ensure your audience expands dramatically.

Learn more about SOLVING THE ORGANIC REACH CHALLENGE right HERE and HERE!


About us: Level 11 Online Marketing is a fast growing digital advertising agency that is becoming known for disrupting the status quo.  We specialize in digital advertising, video production, SEO, SEM, advanced analytics, custom web solutions via website design & implementation, social media strategies and conversion optimization.  Headquartered in Utah, you will find Level 11 team members in Utah, Washington, California, Idaho, and Colorado. We have the best creative minds in the industry backed up by the most talented software developers and video production teams which leads to powerful, efficient advertising campaigns.

If you have questions, comment here or email us at info@level11.io today!

If you're not up to speed with the lingo of online marketing, it can be really hard to keep up when you're learning about what online video advertising can do and how it works.  We've all been in situations where we have no idea what's being discussed, so we know it can be embarrassing and exhausting.  To help you out, here's a simple list to give you just a little head start (so that at the very least, you're able to follow the conversation and everything doesn't go right over your head):

TOP 11 TERMS TO KNOW ABOUT DIGITAL VIDEO ADVERTISING

1 – IMPRESSIONS
The number of times an Ad has been served (see Ad Serving), regardless of action taken by user.
 
2 – VIDEO VIEWS
A stat that shows how many times someone who had the Ad served to them (see Ad Serving) actually watched a significant portion of the video.  Often stats can also break down how many watched 25%, 50%, or 75% of the video as well.
 
3 – AD SERVING
A stat that shows the Ad has appeared on the end user’s device.
 
4 – CALL TO ACTION
Text within the Ad, or a graphic like a button, which invites the audience to take action.
 
5 – CLICK THRU RATE (CTR)
Reported as a percentage of total impressions, this statistic shows how often people who are served an ad end up clicking on it.
 
6 – CONVERSION
When launching a campaign, we determine a specific action or set of actions we want audiences to take.  Each time a member of the audience takes this action, it is counted as a conversion.  Examples could include filling out a contact form or completing a purchase.
 
7 – CONVERSION RATE
A percentage calculated by dividing the number of people who completed a conversion by the number of clicks the Ad received.
 
8 – GEOGRAPHIC TARGETING
Targeting an audience based on ZIP codes, cities, counties, etc.
 
9 – DEMOGRAPHIC/PSYCHOGRAPHIC TARGETING
Targeting an audience based on demographic data or interests, values, attitudes, or lifestyles.
 
10 – RETARGETING/REMARKETING
Serving Ads to people who have previously visited your website.
 
11 – PRE-ROLL AD
A pre-roll video ad is one that forces the viewer to watch the Ad before they are allowed to view the video they intend to see.

Thanks so much for coming to us at LEVEL 11 Online Marketing to learn more about the awesome world of digital marketing!  If you have questions, comment here or go to the contact tab.