Depending upon the in-house skills that you have (and your advertising budget), you may consider commissioning outside help. You may find the help you need in Commercial Support Services: Advertising & Marketing.

These agencies can also help with placing ads with sites which generate large volumes of relevant traffic (e.g. Kompass, the BBC, online newspapers etc.). In these cases, visitors to those sites will be shown adverts for your services or products.)

Advertise with Kompass Display Advertising:

(This option is only available for Booster and Booster International subscribers; see: The Kompass Directory.)

In addition to having a greater company profile within the Kompass Directory, you can build greater brand awareness and position your business within your global B2B marketplace by display advertising on Kompass.com helping you attract new business leads.

• Eye-catching banner advertising in up to 70 countries.
• Generate traffic to your website from 7.5 million visitors.
• Fully optimised and targeted by activity and location.
• Attract new business leads and website traffic.
• Flexible options to fit your marketing campaigns.
• Accurately targeted to your B2B audience.
• Track results and analyse audience behaviour.

Choose your format and display period

Kompass offers two types of web banner in standard IAB formats:

• Mega banners (720x90px, 50mb): used for Local Display.
• Square banners (300x250px, 50mb): used for both Local and International Display

You can also take advantage of flexible display periods for your banners: from 1 week to 1 year!

Measure your return on investment

You can track the results and analyse your audience behaviour through your back office access to the Kompass.com platform. This will help you determine the success of banner advertising on Kompass.com as an effective marketing channel for your business and brand.

Key online advertising features:

• IAB advertising format.
• Support & advice on format choice.
• Flexible location & duration.
• 2 million unique visitors/week globally.
• Performance statistics available.

Pricing:

Local display – 12 months @ £350* plus VAT each month (minimum period 1 month):

• Home page square.
• Megabanner.
• Activity Square.

International display – 12 months @ £950* plus VAT each month (minimum period 1 month):

• Activity Square

*N.B. Let Kompass know that you saw this information here to be given a 10% discount on these prices.

Grow your business with Google Ads. Get in front of customers when they’re searching for businesses like yours on Google Search and Maps. Only pay for results, like clicks to your website or calls to your business.

You can get started in just five steps:

Step 1 Tell Google your goal (choose: calls to get customers on the phone, store visits or take action on your website).

Step 2 Decide where to advertise (Go global, countries, global or local).

Step 3 Create your message e.g. what’s best about your business in 3 short sentences and\or add a compelling banner.

Step 4 Set your budget cap (There’s no minimum spend and no commitment. Google will recommend a budget along with estimated results.)

Step 5 Go live.

In addition, Google will provide reports, insights, and ongoing tips, so you can track your progress and make your ads even more successful.

In addition, Google will provide reports, insights, and ongoing tips, so you can track your progress and make your ads even more successful.

To increase the probability of the success of your Google Ads campaign, you should avoid the following (common) mistakes:

X Poor keyword Research

The cornerstone of any Google Ads campaign starts with keyword research to ensure you target the right users who fit your target audience. This could take the form of product-related terms, service-related terms, and competitor terms. Irrelevant keywords contribute to wastage spend and hinders ROI potential.

X Not Using Negative Keywords

Negative keywords give you the ability to exclude search terms across your campaigns. These keywords need to be highlighted beforehand in order to tell the search engine what you “don’t” want to rank for. This can make your campaign more targeted since your ads won’t show up to irrelevant users.

X Don’t Mix Search & Display

This is a big ‘no-no’. Both mediums are great ways to drive leads and sales. However, they need to be used in isolation and require completely different approaches.

X Poorly Written Ads

Advertising copy plays an important role in articulating your offering to the target audience. It’s imperative to ensure your advert includes the main features and benefits of your offering to stand out on Google.

LinkedIn has currently over 675 million active professionals. You can target them by: job title, function, industry, country, professional or personal interests. LinkedIn Business Solutions can help you build brand awareness, generate leads and drive website traffic.

However, please note, LinkedIn does not provide you with a channel to spam its members. LinkedIn would take a very dim view of any such attempt. It would also be extremely counter-productive – anyone receiving spam from within LinkedIn is likely to form a very negative view of both the individual and the company sending such messages. Therefore, any messages you send out should be carefully crafted and targeted so that they cannot be considered spam.

Nonetheless, LinkedIn offers an unparalleled channel for you to reach your market in an extremely cost-effective and focused manner. There are six steps to getting started:

• Create your Campaign Manager Account. - This is LinkedIn’s all-in-one advertising platform. You can set up ad accounts, run campaigns, and control your budget.
• Determine your objective. - Whether you’re focused on lead generation or brand awareness, selecting your objective is the first step to help LinkedIn streamline and customise your campaign.
• Select your targeting criteria. - Selecting your audience works the same way regardless of which ad type you choose.
• Choose your LinkedIn ad format. - You can use:

+ Sponsored Content - Sponsored content appears directly in the LinkedIn feed of professions you want to reach, and comes in three different formats: single image ads, video ads, and carousel ads.

You can also Use Direct Sponsored Content to test variations of your messaging.

+ Message Ads - Message Ads lets you reach your prospects on LinkedIn Messaging.

+ Dynamic Ads - Dynamic Ads use LinkedIn profile data - like photo, company name, and job title - to personalise ads. Select a Dynamic Ad format to personalise your message for each member in your target audience.

+ Text Ads - Text Ads are simple but compelling pay-per-click (PPC) or cost-per-impression (CPM) ads.

• Set your budget and payment profile. - There are three options:

1. CPS is used when you run Message Ads campaigns. You pay for each message that is successfully delivered.
2. CPC is often used for action-oriented campaigns like lead generation or event registration.
3. A CPM model is typically a better fit when brand awareness is the goal.

You will enter a suggested bid, daily budget, start date, end date, and total budget. Regardless of the end date you choose, you can cancel your campaign at any time.

• Measure and optimise your campaign.

Once a campaign has been started you can monitor your campaign performance. And track the performance of your ads with conversion tracking. You can then adjust your settings to maximise results.

For more information see:

+ How to advertise on LinkedIn: Get Started in 5 Simple Steps.

+ LinkedIn - Maximise Your Budget.

+ LinkedIn - Ad-Bidding Tips.

+ How to prepare for your first LinkedIn campaign.

+ Create your first campaign.

+ How to set the right bids for your ads.

Whereas YouTube is by far the more famous of the two, Vimeo also offers video services relevant to businesses.

The differences between them are essentially:

• YouTube is a massive social media site that helps viewers discover videos.
• Vimeo is a video hosting platform for organising playlists - but still has an impressive community of over 260 million users.

What can be confusing is that there are some basic overlapping features between them. Both allow you to upload videos, measure views and create playlists.

Vimeo differs from YouTube as follows:

• Hosts can password-protect videos - which is very useful if you are only sending to specific contacts.
• It is easier to monetise both videos and live streams to reach a paying audience,
• You can set different user levels and payment plans.
• There are no advertisements.

To decide which service to use, it is helpful to ask yourself the following questions:

• Who is your target audience?
• Do you just want to post and host videos or are you looking to interact with your audience?
• If you want to interact with your audience, should you build a YouTube channel or are you hosting a Virtual Event?

YouTube is undoubtedly the most famous video sharing platform in the world. More than 84,000 videos are watched every second on YouTube. Furthermore, the ever-growing user base has propelled YouTube to the status of the second most visited website after Google in 2020.

You can use YouTube for 2 prime reasons:

1. Publishing specific product information and service videos for existing clients. These should not only save your company in pre and post sales servicing but generally help your sales activity. (Customers consider these videos as prime value added services.)
2. Promotional videos for your products and services. These are designed to generate sales leads.

N.B. If you decide that YouTube is a valid channel for your products and services, then if you do not use a professional agency, we recommend that you invest in some good recording equipment. Record your videos in HD and use a high quality microphone. This will help make your video look and feel professional.

Phase One - Roadmap

If you are thinking of using YouTube, then you should create a roadmap. The first steps you should take are

Step 1: Determine why you need a YouTube channel in the first place. Decide on what your channel should be about and how the viewers are going to benefit from it.

Step 2: Prepare a content plan: the type of videos and how often they will be published.

Step 3: What is your target in terms of subscribers and traffic conversion?

Step 4: Prepare your video optimisation strategy (see below).

Step 5: Brand your YouTube channel. It encourages visitors to take you seriously. It helps you increase brand awareness and spend more time with your audience.

Step 6: Use your company logo for your channel. On top of the banner image, you also can include links to your website and social media.

Step 7: Promote your videos via other media e.g.

+ LinkedIn.

+ Scoop.it.

+ SlideShare.

+ Your own website.

+ Your printed sales and marketing collateral.

+ This Expo.

+ The Kompass Global Directory - International Booster Profile..

Step 8: Bear mobile users in mind – and whether the video works without audio; 85% of YouTube videos are watched without sound!

Phase Two – Preparation.

Once you have set out your roadmap and decided on the video content, you should prepare the video.

Step One: Video duration.

By default, when you create a YouTube account, the maximum upload length is restricted to just 15 minutes. However, the average video size on YouTube is less than 5 minutes. Also, you should consider that the first 15 seconds of your video are critical for grabbing attention.

Step Two: Different formats/scenarios.

Make sure to mix things up a bit by introducing new types of video formats or scenarios that keeps the users engaged. – Add an end-screen e.g. with calls-to-action to visit other videos or direct viewers to your website.

Step Three: Learn from your favourite channels.

Besides being source of inspiration for your own videos, it’s also worth remembering that YouTube is an incredible resource for self-starting learners. There are hundreds of YouTube channels that will explain to you how to be a successful marketer.

Step Four: Research your competition.

Browse your competitors’ YouTube channels and take note of which videos got the most and least views. Watch these videos get a sense of what kinds of content your audience likes to watch (and what they don’t) and use that to inform your own content strategy.

Read competing video descriptions to see what keywords they’re using in their YouTube search optimisation. Use similar ones to boost your ranking in YouTube’s search pages and recommended video feeds.

Step 5: Add hashtags.

You can add up to 15 hashtags to your video description – and make your content more searchable on YouTube.

Step 6: Translate your videos into different languages.

Expand your reach by adding subtitles to your YouTube videos.

Phase Three – Optimise your YouTube ranking.

Your video ranking is important as it determines the position of your videos when a keyword is typed into the search box. The ranks are calculated by the YouTube algorithm, but you can increase your ranking by considering the following:

Category: YouTube has some predefined categories and the videos that you upload must be put in the right one to get maximum reach.

Description: This is where you can play a lot with keywords, both short and long tail. Be very descriptive about your video. The description must be succinct and informative[4]. It can also have links to your landing page. Explain to the viewer why they should watch the video – what’s in it for them?

Keywords Find the right keywords – standard SEO stuff, right?

Subtitles: Subtitles do not carry much weight in terms of SEO or ranking, but they are a much-appreciated addition by the audience.

Tags: Tags are words or phrases that are used to help YouTube better understand the video. Make sure the tags that you are giving are related to the video that they represent.

Thumbnail: The first thing that the viewer is going it see when they are browsing through a list of videos is the thumbnail. Make sure that it is attractive and stands out! After your video is finished uploading, you can choose a thumbnail from the three options YouTube automatically generates, or upload your own.

Title: The next element that gets the most attention from both the user and the YouTube algorithm is the title. Ensure that the main keyword you are targeting is included in the title. Keep the title short – Best if less than 60 characters. This allows viewers see the whole title at a glance. Use clear and descriptive titles.

Phase Four – Monitor, Analyse, Adapt.

YouTube is not “fire and forget”. There are tools that allow you to monitor and analyse your traffic. You can then adapt accordingly to maximise the effectiveness of your YouTube channel.

Step One: Analyse your YouTube videos traffic sources and track the effectiveness of your videos.

Sign in to YouTube Studio, then go to Channel Analytics. While the number of views, likes, and dislikes are great indicators in determining the popularity of the videos, there are many more factors at play.

Step Three Ask your audience for Feedback.

All your videos must be created with the audience in mind. However, sometimes what you may think would work might not fit well with the audience. Hence, it is imperative that you understand their likes and dislikes.

“No-Cost” Advertising

There is the consideration that if you implement a successful YouTube video promotion strategy, you can generate leads without any ad investments.

In order to achieve this, it is imperative that you optimise your video titles (as described above) to bring in as many valid viewers and sales leads as possible.

YouTube Ads

With YouTube ads, you can reach potential customers and have them take action when they watch or search for videos on YouTube – and you only pay when they show interest.

On average, businesses pay an average YouTube advertising cost of $0.10 to $0.30 per view or action, with an average $10 daily budget. That means every time someone views your ad or engages with your ad e.g. by clicking on a call-to-action, you pay c. $0.10 to $0.30.

Video campaigns run on YouTube and across the web through Google Ads. By targeting your video campaigns on YouTube and Google video partners, you can advertise to people at moments that matter. With a wide variety of targeting methods available to you, such as demographic groups, interests, placements, and remarketing lists, you can reach specific or niche audiences based on who they are, what they're interested in, and what content they're viewing.

There are seven steps to advertising on YouTube:

+ Step 1: Upload Your Video Advertisement to YouTube.

+ Step 2: Create a New Campaign in Google Ads.

+ Step 3: Configure Your Campaign.

+ Step 4: Select the People You Want to Reach.

+ Step 5: Select Where You Want Your Ads to Show.

+ Step 6: Select Your Marketing Video.

+ Step 7: Configure Your YouTube Ads Video Ad.