Social Media Marketing Podcast helps your business thrive with social media

How do you promote your business locally? Are you using Facebook and Instagram? To explore how to reach a local customer base on social media, I interview Bruce Irving. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Bruce Irving, the host of the Smart Pizza Marketing podcast, where he helps local pizza restaurants master marketing. He's a former pizzeria owner and you can find him at SmartPizzaMarketing.com. Bruce explores why social media marketing is worthwhile for local businesses. You'll discover tips to get your local business started with social media video. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now You can also subscribe via iTunes, RSS, or Stitcher. Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Facebook Marketing for Local Business Bruce's Story Bruce has been in the pizza industry since he was 16 years old. He worked his way up and then partnered with someone to run his own pizza business. The restaurant did a pretty high volume of sales for their style of restaurant, which had 10 seats plus takeout and delivery. Starting in the late 1990s, Bruce and his partner used old marketing methods such as direct mail, which worked well until the mid-2000s. Around 2008, the effectiveness of that kind of marketing started to dwindle, so they tried marketing their restaurant on social media. Even as the economy struggled after the 2008 economic crash, their pizza business was successful and growing. When relatives and friends in the pizza business started asking how Bruce and his business partner used different types of marketing to grow, they began sharing their methods. Bruce decided he wanted to talk to other pizzeria operators so they could learn from each other. In 2015, Bruce started his podcast and the knowledge-gathering he did for it evolved into creating an agency that helps local pizza-specific restaurants run social media and digital advertising. For the last 16 months, Bruce has been running the agency full time, helping local pizzerias grow their business and get better results with online marketing. Listen to the show to discover why podcasting was a great way for Bruce to learn from other business owners while running his own pizza restaurant. Video in Social Media A pizzeria is a very visual style of restaurant. The cooks often work the pizza dough and put together pizzas in front of a big window because it's entertaining. Even more traditional restaurants are moving to the open-kitchen concept because the chef creating the food is part of the show. To bring this entertaining element to the web, Bruce encourages clients to do video. A lot of them shy away from video in the beginning, but it's important to become comfortable in front of the camera. Different styles of videos work in any business, not just restaurants. For instance, you can do tutorials. You can also give people a look behind the scenes. If you have the best pizza in town, show your fans why. Do you make your own dough? Do you use a special kind of sauce? Do you cut up all of your own vegetables? Showing what makes your restaurant special helps you compete with every other place in your neighborhood and the big chains. Your personality also differentiates you from your competitors. If you're a personable owner and can be charismatic in front of the camera, your personality (along with your products and services) separates you f...

Do you use Facebook ads? Want to make them more effective? To explore how to create a successful Facebook ads strategy, I interview Nicholas Kusmich. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Nicholas Kusmich, author of Give: The Ultimate Guide to Using Facebook Advertising to Generate More Leads, More Clients, and Massive ROI. He also heads up the H2H Media Group, where he consults and manages accounts for high-profile speakers and authors. Nicholas shares how the four M's can help you plan your Facebook ad strategy. You'll discover the three key elements every Facebook ad needs. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now You can also subscribe via iTunes, RSS, or Stitcher. Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Facebook Ads Strategy Nicholas' Story Nicholas got into Facebook ads almost by accident. He had been marketing his products on the Internet without any success, even though he followed what everyone said to do: Create a course or ebook, and get paid traffic to sell it. His next step was to try Google ads, but then Google had another algorithm adjustment. Fortunately, around that time, two websites' ad platforms were being released in beta: Plenty of Fish (the dating site) and Facebook. Nicholas jumped in to advertise his products on both and soon realized Facebook was going in a very aggressive direction. He was in the right place at the right time. Nicholas learned about Facebook advertising very quickly and got the advantage of being an early adopter. This was about five years ago. These days, Nicholas runs his marketing business with two key services. His boutique agency serves clients in a fully managed scenario. His business also offers marketing training and consulting for business owners and entrepreneurs who want to implement their marketing for themselves. Listen to the show to hear what Facebook ads were like in the early days. The Role of Facebook Ads in Marketing Nicholas loves the paradox of Facebook's size. On one hand, Facebook is an enormous platform: around two billion users log in for at least a few minutes each day. Therefore, regardless of your type of business or message, your prospects are probably using Facebook. Moreover, you don't need a 30-second spot on the Super Bowl to reach hundreds of millions of people. With Facebook, you can do that with a few clicks of a button. On the other hand, Facebook allows advertisers to zero in on a small, specific audience because Facebook aggregates data. Facebook notes where people check in, what they like, whom they follow, and what they mention. And it makes that kind of information available to advertisers. So, for instance, if Nicholas wanted to target a Beverly Hills housewife who lives on a particular street based on her zip code, and who shops at Whole Foods, has an Amex card, and spent money on it in the last seven days or so, he could. This capability makes Facebook an interesting platform for an advertiser (a business owner or entrepreneur) who has a message, product, or service and who knows the audience they're trying to reach. Facebook allows people to advertise at far lower cost than traditional advertising. So in the grand scheme of marketing, Nicholas believes Facebook advertising is the best direct-response platform and distribution channel to get a message to your ideal prospec...

Do you create videos for your business? Wondering how to best leverage your videos on Facebook? To explore Facebook video strategy, I interview Jay Baer. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Jay Baer, a digital marketing and social media strategist. He authored Hug Your Haters, a book about social care, and also hosts the Social Pros Podcast and the Jay Today show. Jay discusses the differences between video on Facebook and YouTube. You'll discover the tech and tools Jay uses to produce his own videos. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now You can also subscribe via iTunes, RSS, or Stitcher. Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Facebook Video for Marketers Facebook Versus YouTube Jay says a lot of people do very well with YouTube videos, and just as many do well with Facebook videos. However, not too many people do equally well with both because each platform has a specific use case. People watch YouTube as a replacement for television entertainment or they're searching for how-to videos. On Facebook, videos appear in the news feed and can interrupt people while they're on the platform. At Convince & Convert, Jay says they advise clients to think about what the video is and under what circumstances people will want to watch it. Based on that assessment, choose one of the platforms as the primary home for the video. I mention how views of The Last Jedi trailer on Facebook far surpassed views on YouTube within the first 30 minutes of its release. Jay responds by noting a few factors that might have contributed to that difference at that particular point in time. One is that Facebook allows users to share content with others easily. Also, Facebook defines a "view" differently than YouTube. Although we both suspect most viewers of The Last Jedi are watching the whole trailer, marketers should remember that Facebook counts 3 seconds as a view, whereas YouTube requires 30 seconds. Also, a video on Facebook may receive substantially more views immediately after it's posted but the YouTube video may receive more views in the long run, especially on a strong YouTube channel. To clarify how The Last Jedi example pertains to the everyday marketer, Jay stresses that Facebook drives exposure based on engagement. So if you put a video on Facebook and a disproportionate number of people like, comment, and share, then a disproportionate number of people will see the video in their feed. This visibility gives even more Facebook users an opportunity to share the video with somebody else, and the cycle continues. Jay sees this ripple effect every time he posts a video on Facebook. If he gets immediate engagement, then more people see it. If he doesn't, users' engagement with the video will plateau. Next we talk about streaming live video to Facebook versus YouTube. For vlogging, Jay says that you could use both Facebook and YouTube. Jay does something like this with his Jay Today show. He streams the live video first on his personal Facebook profile and posts the video file elsewhere afterward. Jay explains that Facebook's API prevents you from live-streaming anywhere else while you're streaming to Facebook Live. To stream to Facebook Live, Periscope, and YouTube Live simultaneously, you would need multiple phones or computers. That limitation is one reason Jay goes to Facebook Live first; he can't be anywhere else.

Do you track the return on your social media activity in Google Analytics? Want to discover some valuable shortcuts? To explore cool hacks for Google Analytics, I interview Annie Cushing. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Annie Cushing, Google Analytics expert and chief data officer at Outspoken Media digital marketing agency. She's a total analytics geek who loves teaching other marketers how to make the most of their analytics data. Annie explores Google Analytics, social reporting, dashboards, and more. You'll discover how to customize Google Analytics reports for yourself. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now You can also subscribe via iTunes, RSS, or Stitcher. Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Google Analytics and Social Media What's New in Google Analytics Starting May 15, 2017, Google Analytics will allow people to do remarketing across multiple devices. Annie explains that if someone visits your site on their mobile device and then comes back to it on their laptop, as long as they're logged into Google in both places, you'll be able to target them across their devices. This new capability is a huge step forward for remarketing audiences because few people shop only on their computer, tablet, or phone. Annie explains that Google previously relied on user IDs to offer remarketing features, but most businesses couldn't implement the technology very easily. Only advanced analysts could set it up for sites where users were highly incentivized to log in. Because most businesses don't have sites like that, this new ability is groundbreaking. Annie says one issue she regularly sees with clients is they seldom use Google Analytics for retargeting. Instead, they use AdWords and DoubleClick. However, Google Analytics enables marketers to get much more granular with targeting. For instance, you can serve an ad to someone who visited a certain page but didn't convert or to someone who put something in a cart but didn't check out. Hopefully, multiple-device retargeting will incentivize more people to take advantage of Google Analytics. Listen to the show to discover how a retargeting ad saved Annie last Christmas. Google Optimize Google recently announced they were releasing Google Optimize, a free tool for A/B testing. For example, say you want to experiment with product page design, such as the placement of the price or Buy button or different font colors or text. In an A/B test, you run two versions of your page and compare how each version performs. Up until this point, Optimizely has been the industry standard. At Social Media Examiner, we use Visual Website Optimizer. Annie believes Google Optimize is perfect for small- to mid-sized or even large businesses. (Google Optimize 360 is the enterprise-level version.) Annie recommends that businesses get what they can from the free version first. Then as your organization develops more sophisticated testing needs (for instance, reducing the bounce rate or increasing the conversion rate), consider paying for more advanced features. Annie also notes that Google Optimize is user-friendly. To move things around, you simply drag and drop. You don't have to ask a developer to customize the page for you. Listen to the show to hear my description of how optimizing tools work.

Do you use Facebook to market your business? Wondering how marketing on Facebook is evolving? To explore how marketers should adjust to Facebook's recent and future changes, I interview Mari Smith. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Mari Smith, the world's leading Facebook marketing expert. She co-authored Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day and is author of The New Relationship Marketing. Mari shares why it's time for marketers to rethink how they use Facebook. You'll discover where Mari believes Facebook is headed. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now You can also subscribe via iTunes, RSS, or Stitcher. Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Facebook Marketing The Facebook Algorithm Mari explains that the Facebook algorithm pre-filters content that users see in their news feeds. The algorithm manages the vast amount of content posted to Facebook and thus helps advertisers, while hopefully showing Facebook users the most relevant content among the thousands of posts they could see. Users can have as many as 5,000 friends, join up to 6,000 groups, and follow up to 5,000 pages. With posts coming from all of these sources, users might see as many as 15,000 posts. Mari says that the Facebook algorithm narrows down what users actually see to about 1,500 posts, and from that pool of content, narrows what users might see even further to about 300 posts. Mari says the algorithm is complex with about 100,000 weights, of which only about a half-dozen are known. For instance, Facebook favors stories from users' friends, video content, and so on. Also, when the algorithm came out in 2008, along with Facebook business pages, it made the news feed non-chronological. Mari explains that the algorithm exists because Facebook needs to keep users coming back and also offer value to advertisers. Each day, the average user logs on about 14 times (more for marketers), and is on Facebook an average of 50 cumulative minutes. That creates a huge captive audience, which is a massive amount of potential to offer advertisers. To maintain that value, the algorithm encourages user engagement. Mari notices how she loves keeping up with her friends and community via Facebook and sees an advertisement about every third post. The better the targeted ad, the more likely she is to respond. Mari also notes that by encouraging user engagement, the algorithm also encourages users to share information with Facebook. This information helps Facebook keep the users and advertisers happy. I ask what marketers should do so users see more of their content in the news feed. Mari recommends not only sharing video, but also slightly increasing the length of videos. For uploaded videos, Mari has discovered a minimum of 90 seconds makes content more visible. For a live video, Mari recommends broadcasting for at least 5 minutes. Mari says Facebook favors slightly longer video because it enables Facebook to insert mid-roll ads. These ads break in and run for about 20 seconds. At the moment, mid-roll ads are in beta and you have to sign up before they'll appear in your video. Also, Mari says these ads appear only if you have at least 2,000 followers of your profile or page and 300 concurrent viewers. Mari explains that the decline in Facebook user posts and the algorithm's preference for camera-based content are related.

Is your local business on Facebook? Wondering how to market your business more effectively? To explore how to use Facebook in creative ways, I interview Anissa Holmes. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Dr. Anissa Holmes, the author of Delivering WOW: How Dentists Can Build a Fascinating Brand and Achieve More, While Working Less! Her podcast is the Delivering WOW Dental podcast. She's a practicing dentist and teaches Facebook marketing courses for dentists. Anissa explores how local businesses can grow using Facebook. You'll discover why Facebook is more valuable for local businesses than review websites. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now You can also subscribe via iTunes, RSS, or Stitcher. Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Facebook Marketing for Local Businesses Anissa's Story After practicing dentistry in the U.S. for several years, Anissa moved to her husband's home country of Jamaica in 2010 and started a new dental practice from scratch. She knew most dentists typically get 10 to 15 new patients per month through referrals, but with a startup practice in a totally different country, she decided to try promoting her new practice on Facebook. In early 2010, Anissa set up a Facebook business page and began sharing what happened in the practice each day, including behind-the-scenes snapshots and stories about how the practice's dental services were changing people's lives. Anissa's strategy worked. Her practice began getting 5 to 10 new patients a month. Anissa figured she was onto something and began buying Facebook ads. As the Facebook algorithm changed, she made adjustments. Her practice now spends about $500 a month on Facebook and those marketing efforts attract about 50 new patients every month. With such outstanding growth, the practice's revenue tripled, and Anissa's practice was able to pay for a new office with three times the space totally out of profits. The practice is debt-free and so is Anissa. She shares that this financial success and security is a result of the business growth she achieved through Facebook marketing. After dentists started asking Anissa how her practice was achieving those crazy results, last year Anissa created a Facebook course and began lecturing to dentists all over the world about Facebook. The journey has been interesting, Anissa says, and she attributes the success to Facebook. When new customers come in, they already know the practice and how it can solve their problems. They're already connected and ready to make a purchase. Listen to the show to learn more about Anissa's background. Why Local Businesses Need to Go Beyond Review Sites If your new customers hang out on Facebook, Anissa says, that's where you need to be. People aren't hanging out on Yelp or Google. Most people (including Anissa) check Facebook first thing in the morning, between daily tasks, and in the evening. That's why Facebook marketing needs to be your focus. Anissa says creating the right content is important. A lot of businesses post information about how great they are and share a lot of stock content, but Anissa says that really doesn't work. She stresses that local businesses need to share their story and what makes their business unique. For example, if you have a plumbing company, what are you offering that's different from everyone else?

Have you considered moving to an Instagram business profile? Wondering what advantages you'll gain? To explore Instagram business profiles, I interview Jenn Herman. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Jenn Herman, a social media consultant and Instagram marketing expert. Her blog, JennsTrends.com, has placed in our top 10 social media blogs three different times. She also wrote an ebook called The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Instagram. Jenn explores Instagram analytics. You'll discover valuable Instagram business profile features. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now You can also subscribe via iTunes, RSS, or Stitcher. Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Instagram Business Profiles The Instagram Algorithm The Instagram algorithm came out last year and Jenn explains that for marketers, the algorithm is helpful. You can use it to get better reactions from, engagement with, and reach to your target audience. Jenn stresses that the Instagram algorithm is more personal than the Facebook algorithm. On Facebook, when something is really popular, Facebook is more likely to show that content to more people. However, the Instagram algorithm is based on personal use, not public use. Instagram users don't necessarily see someone's content just because others engage with it. That said, the Instagram content that each user engages with most does show up higher in his or her feed. To make the Instagram algorithm work for your marketing efforts, Jenn recommends sharing the best content for your customers and followers. When you emphasize quality over quantity, your users are more likely to stop, engage, comment, like, and so on. As a result, your followers will constantly see your content higher in their Instagram feeds. Also, Jenn says the Facebook and Instagram algorithms re-sort content differently. Facebook constantly re-sorts content, whereas the Instagram algorithm doesn't. Instead, on Instagram, the re-sorting is based on how often you post and how often a user logs into Instagram. For example, if a user logs on and then logs on three hours later, Instagram re-sorts only the content uploaded in the last three hours. The content that appeared during the user's last login appears exactly as it did before. For marketers, this approach to re-sorting means that your Instagram followers won't miss your content if they scroll far enough through their feeds. For example, say someone follows Social Media Examiner and likes to engage with its Instagram posts. The user logs in after 24 hours and Social Media Examiner has posted three times. In this case, Jenn says the user will see Social Media Examiner's three posts higher in his or her feed, but not necessarily back to back. I ask what marketers can do to encourage fan activity and make their content seen first. Jenn says the key is having better content and (counter-intuitively) posting less content. When you post a lot, Jenn says it's more difficult for that content to show up high in your followers' Instagram feeds. People are more likely to skip your posts. However, gorgeous posts can create a strong connection with your followers and people are more likely to engage. To increase the chances people see and engage with your Instagram posts, Jenn recommends posting your best content three times a week. Also, Jenn suggests adding calls to action.

Do you broadcast live video? Want to learn how to create an engaged following? To discover what he's learned from broadcasting over 1,000 live streams over the last two years, I interview Alex Khan. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Alex Khan, the founder of Attractive Media, a German social media agency that helps businesses with live video. You can find him online at alexkhan.tv. Alex shares his formula for beginning and ending live video. You'll discover how Alex makes his live videos look more professional. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now You can also subscribe via iTunes, RSS, or Stitcher. Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Live Video Alex's Story Alex started his first website in the late 1990s, back when email open rates were incredibly high. In 2005, he became managing director of Attractive People, a social network. In that role, Alex discovered what builds trust and how people behave on social networks. In 2012, Alex founded Germany's first mobile marketplace for fashion, which another company later acquired. Alex continued working behind the scenes in social media until 2015, when Twitter acquired Periscope for $100 million. After a company acquired his own app, Alex says he was curious about what a $100 million app could do. In March 2015 on the first day Periscope became available, Alex downloaded it and it immediately blew him away. Alex knew that driving engagement builds trust and increased visibility; however, creating engaging content was (and is) a challenge. Periscope helped Alex solve the engagement challenge because he could start a one-to-many conversation from anywhere at any time. Alex says it's still fascinating that you can reach so many people for free. In the beginning, Alex directed his live videos with his employee as the Periscope star. They created fun content such as jumping in a pool, which had nothing to do with Alex's area of expertise. After a few weeks, Alex's business partners shared their concern that this fun content wasn't professional, especially because Alex was COO of the company. Alex agreed that their point was valid, so he decided to change his subject matter. With 10 years of experience in social media, Alex knew people would have questions about how to use this new platform. He decided to use his expertise to help people understand how to build their audience with live video. I ask Alex to share a snapshot of his audience today. Alex says that in only two years, he's built his audience from nothing to 230,000 followers and 55 million hearts on Periscope. Through cross-promotion, Alex has attracted a total of 400,000 followers on social media. To build that audience, Alex says his experience working in social media, building companies, and training people gave him the necessary expertise, but live video technology was also a critical gateway. Listen to the show to learn about Alex's first live broadcast on Periscope. Advice for Going Live Alex says that even after doing more than 1,000 Periscope broadcasts, he still gets nervous. For Alex, three questions spin around in his head when he thinks about going live: "Who are the people watching me? Will they like me? What will I tell them?" Alex has found that his viewers are regular people who are early live video adopters and curious about what he has to say.

Do you want to learn more about how people use your website? Wondering how the Behavior reports in Google Analytics can help? To explore how to navigate the Behavior section of Google Analytics, I interview Andy Crestodina. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Andy Crestodina, author of Content Chemistry and co-founder of Orbit Media. Andy specializes in content marketing and Google Analytics. Andy explains how to analyze the behavior of your website visitors. You'll discover a few Google Analytics tricks to employ immediately. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now You can also subscribe via iTunes, RSS, or Stitcher. Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Google Analytics Why Marketers Should Care About the Behavior Category In Google Analytics, the Behavior category is one of five main categories that you find on the left-hand sidebar. Andy says the categories are organized from the top of the funnel down to the bottom. The first category is Real-Time, or people on your website at the moment. Real-Time is followed by Audience (who those people are), Acquisition (where they came from), Behavior (what they did), and Conversions (who took which successful profitable action). People dedicate a lot of time to the Behavior category because the reports show what's happening on each URL and how people flow through your website. Andy says you can see where people go, how much time they spend on pages, bounce rate, percentage of people who leave after seeing just one page, number of pages per visit, and so on. The Behavior category is the core of Google Analytics reporting. What you find through Behavior reports is often surprising, Andy continues. Although a website is designed to encourage visitors to navigate through it in certain ways, the Behavior reports show how visitors actually move through your site. Listen to the show to hear an explanation of the value of behavior analytics with a restaurant analogy. Behavior Flow Report Andy believes Behavior Flow is an interesting and sometimes confusing report because it mashes up data from other reports. The Behavior Flow report looks almost like an infographic. It shows how many people are on your website, where they move as they navigate from page to page, and the page where they leave your site. After the starting page, the next column is first interaction, the column after that is second interaction, and so on. Behavior Flow shows the most popular path through your website, which is important. Knowing the most common path helps you prioritize changes to your website. For example, if you have only 10 minutes to work on your website this week, you need to spend that time on the pages people visit most often. Even if your website has thousands of pages, a small percentage of those pages receive the most traction and traffic. Therefore, when you have a great piece of content such as a beautiful testimonial or a compelling visual, you want to put it where people are more likely to see it. If your website was a city with a highway flowing through it, you'd put your billboards on the highways, not on little backstreets. In the Behavior Flow report, the first column is the Landing Page option, which reflects where your website traffic comes from. You can change the default Landing Page option to see the website traffic from a specific source. For example,

Do you want to communicate with your customers via Facebook Messenger? Wondering how Facebook Messenger bots and Messenger ads can help? To explore this topic, I interview Molly Pittman. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Molly Pittman, the vice president of marketing at DigitalMarketer. She specializes in customer acquisition and teaches regularly for DigitalMarketer Engage, which is the company's membership community. You'll discover how businesses can benefit from integrating Facebook Messenger features into their marketing. Molly shares use cases for Facebook Messenger marketing. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now You can also subscribe via iTunes, RSS, or Stitcher. Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Facebook Messenger Marketing Why Consider Messenger Ads? As soon as Facebook Messenger ads became available in November 2016, Molly started experimenting with them. Molly says she's excited about Facebook Messenger ads because they're not just a new interface element or feature. Facebook Messenger ads are a whole new channel. Molly believes the value of Facebook Messenger ads lies in the app's popularity and convenience. More than one billion people communicate via Facebook Messenger. Because that's where people are having conversations with friends, family, colleagues, or whomever, Molly believes businesses should be connecting with their customers via Facebook Messenger, too. The app's popularity makes Facebook Messenger a good place to buy ads, connect with prospects, and talk to customers. Molly says that DigitalMarketer's initial tests have shown good results. The open rate and consumption are really high. Molly has seen the benefit from the consumer's standpoint, too. A few months ago, as Molly was driving in Austin, she saw a new apartment complex being built. Molly was interested, so she went to the company's Facebook page and contacted them through their Message Us button. They responded almost instantaneously. Every step of her communication with the company was done through Facebook Messenger. I ask Molly if she believes Facebook Messenger will replace email. Molly responds that email will likely always be a powerful tool for marketers, certainly for the next five years. However, she says Facebook Messenger isn't necessarily a replacement but is the mode of communication most similar to email. In some aspects, Messenger is better than email, she continues, because people tend to respond instantaneously on Messenger, whereas people don't feel compelled to respond to emails right away. Listen to the show to hear Molly and I discuss our predictions for the future of Facebook Messenger. The Types of Messenger Ads Molly explains the two types of Facebook Messenger ads. The first one is called a destination ad because when you set it up, you choose Facebook Messenger as the destination (as opposed to your website). Like a regular ad, a destination ad appears in the news feed and can display a video, carousel, or image. When someone clicks the ad, a message to your Facebook page opens in Facebook Messenger and you can begin a conversation. For example, the first test Molly ran was a simple destination ad that said, "Do you have questions about how DigitalMarketer can help grow your business? We'd love to chat." When someone clicked the ad, a Facebook Messenger window opened where the per...

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