With the holidays quickly approaching and Christmas just around the corner, consumers are not the only ones looking to find the best bang for their buck. Brands and marketers are beginning to increase their Facebook advertising budgets for the holiday shopping season, given the 375% jump in click-through-rates from the third quarter in 2012 to 2013. [1]Mobilize the ExperienceTo capitalize on what this holiday season has to offer and leverage the highest ROI for your brand, we leave you with a few stocking stuffers sure to optimize your campaign’s success.78% of Facebook’s daily users in the U.S. are on mobile devices, so it comes as no surprise that focusing promotion on mobile versus desktop is the way to go.2 Not only does mobile promotion help in driving traffic to online shopping sites, but it also provides consumers with their own personal guides when shopping in-store. Brands can further leverage mobile usage by promoting their retail-oriented applications living in Facebook to streamline user experience.Stay on TargetReaching the right audience is another critical piece to effectively market your product this holiday season. To really hone in on your most valuable customers, here are the top targeting methods to capitalize on.Facebook ExchangeFacebook Exchange is an increasingly popular method using cookie-tracking to re-target users on Facebook who have already visited your website. To glean the best results, it is important to start building the cookie pool a month prior to campaign launch in order to generate enough site traffic. Strategic pixel placement is equally important to consider, as a higher number of pixeled pages might yield a larger cookie pool, but limiting pixels to the most important pages of the site (e.g. checkout page) could also produce a more relevant targeting pool.Custom AudiencesIf time is of the essence, another way to capitalize on your already-established consumer base is through Custom Audiences. This targeting type allows advertisers to focus on users who have previously engaged with the brand via e-mail lists, phone numbers, Facebook user ID’s, or app user ID’s. It also opens up the opportunity to reach Lookalike targets, who are users likely to be interested in your brand based off the Custom Audience list provided.Keywords + Partner Category OverlayAnother effective tactic to maximize performance in your holiday campaigns is targeting users through traditional keywords with a Partner Category overlay. Teaming up with Acxiom, Datalogix, and Epsilon earlier this year, Facebook launched Partner Categories to give advertisers the chance to target users based on groups such as purchase history, lifestyle, and job title. Utilizing Partner Categories alone to target users can sometimes prove to be too broad, so the combination of keywords and Partner Categories allows marketers to really fine-tune their key audience.Keywords + Fans OverlayIn the same way that targeting users with a Partner Category overlay boosts performance, pairing keyword targets with a Fans overlay also helps contribute to campaign success. Fans targeting concentrates on those consumers who’ve already proven to be loyal brand advocates on Facebook. One of the advantages of running the Fans instead of the Partner Categories overlay is that there is less risk involved in predicting ROI performance. At the same time, however, if you’re looking to grow your consumer base Partner Categories is the route you want to take.Engage Your AudienceArguably the most important piece to the puzzle of holiday marketing on Facebook is the content used in the ads. Facebook offers a wide selection of ad types to choose from, but the challenge is to implement them intelligently.Unpublished Page Post Ads are a no-brainer when it comes to the optimal ad type to use this holiday season. These ads mimic traditional posts that live on brands’ Facebook pages, but allow advertisers to customize the content specifically for the campaign without over saturating users. With Facebook’s recent ad spec changes back in September, it is important to keep these key pointers in mind:
While there is no sure-fire recipe for a successful Facebook campaign, these best practices are helpful to keep in mind when considering how best to invest your Facebook advertising budgets this holiday season. Whether you’re looking to reach entirely new consumers or to simply capitalize on your current customer base, remembering to mobilize the experience, stay on target, and engage the audience will give your brand a strong base to help your campaign jingle all the way!Citations1 http://www.nanigans.com/2013/10/16/benchmark-report-retailers-facebook-advertising-roi-holiday-shopping/2 http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/13/facebook-mobile-user-count/3 http://www.nanigans.com/2013/06/17/how-page-post-ads-in-the-news-feed-drive-direct-response-and-roi-study/
We are living through a transformational shift in the way the world communicates. The development of social platforms, like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, have helped to inspire that change. The traffic on these platforms is huge - 700MM daily active users on Facebook[1] and 100MM daily active users on Twitter[2]. Pinterest is driving more referral traffic than LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit & Google + combined[3]. This is obviously not a new trend; some brands like RedBull and CocaCola have been leveraging social platforms for years now. But, there are many brands that haven’t even begun to take advantage of what social media has to offer. For some, it’s the lack of resources. For others, it’s the lack of understanding of how social media can benefit them and drive key marketing objectives.Since 2007, we've spent spent years working with marketers in all phases of social media adoption. We've worked with brands who have active communities of 1MM+, and brands that are just starting to dip their toes in the social media water. Our goal at Socialtyze is to help marketers understand the true value of social media and to help them strategize and execute programs that align with their goals.Oftentimes, brands will try to cut straight to the social execution without doing any of the “pre-planning” work. It is important to remember that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to social marketing. Although we’ve seen success with specific ad types and engagement tactics across the board, we believe that it is extremely important to “pre-plan” for every objective. We suggest that brands follow this 5-step approach when determining their next move in the social space. You might be able to skip a few steps depending on how far along your brand is in the social media adoption process.
The first thing you need to do as a brand, is figure out who you are. This probably sounds obvious or idealistic, but there are some brands out there that haven’t come to terms with what their value is to the consumer or how they truly differentiate from the competition. A few questions to ask yourself during this phase of the process:
[1] http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2013/07/24/facebook-users-q2-2013/
[2] http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2013/10/03/twitter-says-it-sees-215-million-monthly-active-users-100-million-daily-users-and-500-million-tweets-per-day/
[3] http://mashable.com/2013/10/15/pinterest-referral-traffic/
As marketers, nothing makes us happier than when Facebook releases a new way to target consumers. Not too long ago we were limited to profile targeting, which restricted us to target users only by the information they chose to include within their profiles. However, in Fall 2012, Facebook released Custom Audience targeting, which allows marketers to find their offline audiences among people who are on Facebook via email addresses, phone numbers, Facebook user IDs or app user IDs. In addition, in Spring 2013, Facebook took a huge step forward launching Partner Categories, which enables brands to target users based on their activity outside of Facebook. Each of these targeting breakthroughs has helped marketers reach their consumer on Facebook more effectively.
However, amongst the glitz and glamour of these more advanced targeting techniques, you might be overlooking a key audience within your social campaign strategy. When it comes to conversions, no target group performs better than a brand’s own fan base. Here are a few examples of that methodology in action:Driving SalesThis summer, Socialtyze was challenged with helping a publishing brand drive magazine subscription sales. We targeted the brand’s consumers whose subscriptions had expired via Custom Audiences (email matching), Magazine Subscribers identified by Partner Categories, and the brand’s fans. As a result, we found that fans were nearly 2x less expensive at converting to subscribers than both Custom Audiences and Partner Categories.
Email LeadsIn another campaign, Socialtyze ran ads targeting Fans, Partner Categories (Magazine Subscribers), and Broad Categories (Magazines) with the intent of collecting email leads. Socialtyze found that fans were 4x more likely to submit their emails than the other targeted audiences.
Contest SubmissionsIn addition, we have found that fans are the most likely to enter contests and sweepstakes. In a recent Dairy CPG brand campaign, fans were 771x more likely to submit an entry into the contest than other targeting, including Likes & Interests, Friend of Fans, and Partner Categories.
For another sweepstakes campaign for a different vertical, the Fans’ sweepstakes entry rate was 1.27%, which was 4.5x higher than the strategic Likes & Interests targeting. Fans comprised of more than 60% of the sweepstakes entries.
Nonetheless, it’s still important to utilize a variety of targeting methods to reach your ideal consumer. Just don’t forget to leverage your biggest brand evangelists that are right under your nose – your Facebook fans!Want to know more about our unique Social Advertising methods? Contact us! Linda@Socialtyze.com
I recently attended the Preferred Marketing Developer (PMD) Summit, and thought you'd be interested in the insight we gained into Facebook's latest direction as it relates to advertising. Of all the Facebook conferences I’ve been to, this one was by far the most enlightening. Without releasing any confidential information, here’s my list of the 9 core "take aways" for brands and agencies on how to think about Facebook in a different light that drives your businesses forward.
Facebook is moving away from focusing on social KPI's (Likes, PTAT, etc…) and has started to move toward measuring success based on KPI's that businesses care about, such as CPA, Video Views, Online Sales and Offline Sales. Socialtyze feels that the two can be worked together with a singular goal of stimulating long-term customer relationships and sales.
Currently, you can retarget your customers via "Custom Audiences" (i.e., website visitors, e-mail addresses and Facebook ID's). Without question, "Custom Audiences" has been the most effective marketing method in driving sales.So, what are the next steps?Our next step is to build powerful customer databases that are tied to Facebook. This can be done through apps; with authentication and the right privacy policy, you can build a powerful connection to millions of customers who you can reach out to with relevant messages, whenever you want, based upon engagement and purchase behavior.
By knowing and tracking your customers, you can close the loop between advertising, engagement and purchasing. You can then optimize, retarget, build loyalty and increase ROI.
With Facebook, you can target people, rather than cookies. Cookie blockers, multiple devices, and users turning off cookies make cookie targeting much less reliable.By targeting people, you can connect and track the same person across desktop, phone and tablet. 66% of digital users access the web through multiple devices and 30% delete cookies every month.What’s the difference in reach of a narrowly targeted audience? 38% online (cookies) and 98% Facebook (Nielsen, Aug 2013).
It’s worth working with a Facebook PMD, to align with third party data companies that will allow you to make the connection between your advertising and offline purchasing. In addition, we can create A / B testing to measure the effectiveness of your ad dollars.
Once you gather in-depth data on your best customers, work with a PMD to build new ones via look-alike targeting.
There is no question that Mobile is on fire. It now accounts for 49% of all Facebook revenue. FB's Mobile users were also up 40% to 874 MM in 3Q13 from a year prior.So what can you do as a brand?Shape your ad strategy with mobile in mind. Focus on building and/or upgrading your mobile apps to build your databases, engage/convert customers, then measure and optimize.
Advertising can be more about ADDING to life, rather than ADVERTING customers away from what they really want to do.Brands can, and should, be much more relevant in their messaging. Ads need to inform, entertain and engage users. Make an effort to truly connect with customers. Use smart data tools to help you understand what your customers care about most.Use copywriters and designers that know social and rely on advice from your data partners to create the right message and optimize to constantly improve.
Socialtyze believes in the power of social media, and we are particularly confident in the power of Facebook.Why? For all the above reasons I’ve listed, but also because:
"It is where you can find all the people that matter to you, where they find what matters to them."
In short, most of your customers and potential customers are on Facebook, and they are using it as a stream of information to gather updates on things happening in and around their lives. It shapes their opinions on what to do, who to see and what to buy. We want our clients to be an integral part of those updates, particularly for their best and most influential customers.In addition, by the numbers:
If you’re curious what our 10th take away is, reach out to us! John@Socialtyze.com.
If you’re a brand, and you’re thinking of dipping your toe into Facebook advertising - don’t do it. I’m not saying don’t use Facebook advertising - it works and it works really well. I’m saying don’t just dip your toe in. Social is not a place for the timid, and the earned media returns on ad spends give one reason to believe that Facebook’s algorithm agrees. Like any good Bouncer, if Facebook thinks your brand will spend a lot of money, it will reward you.Socialtyze looked at our internal database of communities that spanned across all verticals, sizes, and ad spend levels, and found that spending some money (ads reaching less than 100K people per day) provided a negligible impact on your ability to reach people in your posts (-5%). This finding was supported by Wise Metrics in their recent post on the subject. The communities in our sample spent roughly 80% of their time either not spending or spending lightly, so we don’t disagree with their results. What we’re more interested in are the outliers. Essentially, what we want to see is if Facebook can be bought - and it seems that it can be.
If you reached over 100K people in a day with your ads, or even better over a million people per day Facebook rewards you. Mid-level spends saw a 62% improvement over the baseline (which we normalized by both size and average performance for that size) and heavy spends saw a shocking 200%. But, there are a hundred ways to dice up those findings, so we’ll start with looking at them by vertical. When you look at just CPG’s organic reach, it actually dropped during periods of light spend, and then corrected at medium and heavy levels.
Entertainment was the most drastic example of this rule; although, it should be noted that there is a significant skew at work here. Studios are only going to spend heavy dollars right before a movie opens - when the Facebook page would be most active anyway. But, the improvement is shocking - +309% compared to baseline for heavy spend. It essentially justifies very heavy spending on opening weekend.
Segmenting our data by audience is where it got interesting. The graph below demonstrates how it makes more sense to spend heavily on pages that are male centric than female focused. The delta between female pages at medium and heavy spends was right around 20%. That same number for men was an aggressive 173%. Based on this data, it makes more sense to spend at the medium level, than the very high if the page targets women.
Finally, where the ad lives matters; the difference between ads on the right hand side of Facebook and in the Newsfeed is drastic. If you spend money promoting your post, Facebook offers organic incentives to continue spending. This is especially true at the medium level where native advertising far outstrips the right hand rail (the area to the right of your newsfeed)(+57%). The differences are less pronounced at the very heavy level, but that is rarified spending air. Basically, in terms of a creating earned media, the best ad units focus on the newsfeed.Want to learn more about our data research team? Email us! Jake@Socialtyze.com
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