Retail Global Las Vegas: Connecting the world of eCommerce
E-preneur, E-Commerce I know you may be wondering what does the E stand for (if you are not already in the E-Biz). Well E-commerce is business that is transacted by transferring data electronically, especially over the internet (shout out to dictionary.com). Online selling! Yep, that’s right! So I had the opportunity last week to go alongside my uncle-mentor John Lawson to the Retail Global Conference which was in Las Vegas. The conference is for retailers wishing to connect with other retailers and gain information in order to successfully grow their biz. Phil Leahy, the founder, did an amazing job of putting together this conference and for it to be my first business conference I am WOW’d by all the information I received.
I had soo much fun at the conference simply just learning how to grow my business! Marketing tools, SEO, FB advertisements, Engagement, Data Analysis.... you name it the conference had it!
Not to mention it was emceed by the gorgeous, Emmy Award-winning television journalist and Al Jazeera anchor, Richelle Carey. Her joyfulness and comedic punchlines really caught my attention and made the conference exciting and worth sitting through. (Not that the conference was not already worth sitting through!)
Retail Global was a 3 day conference filled with workshops, stream sessions, vendors, great food & drinks, and many eager business owners wanting to build with others and their businesses. I attended several of the stream sessions and I learned something vital in every last one of them. Not to toot my uncle-mentors horn but he was one of the speakers in an amazing workshop pertaining to Facebook Advertising “Paid vs Free: The eCommerce Blueprint to Facebook Success” and I must drop some of his valuable gems with you guys.
Now I know a lot of us young entrepreneurs may think Facebook sucks it’s for old people! But you are SOO wrong and I was too when I thought that. Facebook is one of the best Marketing tools and you will learn how now.
If you have a business Facebook page you are able to create paid Facebook advertisements. The advertisements are ways for people all around the world to reach your post which will result in increased traffic to your site and conversion.
Here’s how:
Step 1. Go to the left sidebar on your Facebook home page and select “Ads Manager”
Step 2: Select the option to “Create Ad” on far right of page
Step 3: Pick your marketing objective. I like to go with Awareness- Boost your Posts
Step 4: Select your Audience. Now this is one of the most important steps. Selecting your audience is actually picking the type of “Customer” you envision for your business. For example, is your target customer someone that could have the name of Brittany living in the New York City area who is between the ages of 18-35, female, who is interested in Cosmopolitan magazines and watching shows such as Modern Family. All of those options you can pick right in the Audience section. The good thing is you can save your audience and also select different types of audiences for different Ad campaigns.
Step 5: Next is setting up your budget & schedule. This feature is cool because you have the control over how much you want to spend on advertisements and also set dates on when the advertisements will occur. A tip I learned is start off by simply doing $5 ads weekly.
Step 6: Last step, select where the ad will post and pick which post you would like to create an Ad for! Easy right? Yes, this small advertisement will go a long way!
5 bucks can take you far, 76 post engagements and 1,772 reach. May not seem like a lot to you but imagine doing this every week, your numbers are going to rise!
I hope this has encouraged you to take your marketing skills further and start with Paid Facebook Advertisements and see what it does for you!
Again, the Retail Global Conference was amazing and I am so excited I had the opportunity to attend. Have any questions or want to know other information I learned? Feel free to comment.