So you have a campaign goal. You’ve chosen your ad types and dispersed your budget accordingly. Now how do you make the most of your ad dollars while your campaign is live?The answer is: there is no one answer. You plug things in. You find out what works. You experiment…and then, you optimize.Optimizations can come in many shapes and forms. They can be manual optimizations or automatic optimizations that are performed by a third party platform. In this article, we will be focusing solely on manual optimizations.
The capacity to optimize is based on various pieces of the initial campaign setup. Two of the key elements for optimizing manually are targeting and creative. Strategic planning in both of these areas is an important preemptive measure that will increase opportunities for optimization later on in the campaign. To better understand these elements let’s examine the following example:You are getting ready to launch a campaign for Bling.com, an online shopping website. The goal of the campaign is to increase the number of fans on the Bling.com Facebook fan page through the use of Facebook Like Ads.
Effective advertising focuses on reaching the people who are most interested in your brand. The more precise your targeting, the more successful the campaign will be.
Bling.com’s target audience is females ages 25-45. The Facebook target audience size for this demographic is 40,000,000 users. You may think, perfect! An audience size this large will surely generate fan growth. This is a common mistake in Facebook targeting. Remember, your goal is to find quality users who will be most interested in the Bling.com brand. Instead of wasting dollars promoting ads to random users, you should narrow your focus to users that are interested in the characteristics of your brand.There are several ways to hone in on potential fans. Targeting can be refined by delivery location, age, gender, geography, language, various psychographic options like Facebook’s broad & partner categories or more specific keyword lists created by a third party technology.Let’s dive a little deeper and take a look at interest keyword targeting as an example. To create a keyword list for Bling.com, you must first answer a few questions:How would you describe a Bling.com fan? What do your fans love? What kind of music, movies or other entertainment are they into?What kind of activities are they most involved in?We know the Bling.com fan is a female between the ages of 25-45 years old (assuming the target audience is an accurate representation of the demo of the current fan base). We can safely assume they like to shop. You might also know that they love chick flicks and yoga. Details like these can be used to craft a number of keyword lists that can be tested throughout the campaign.If you want to create a “Shopping Keywords” list, you might choose to use the following interest keywords: #Piperlime #ShoeDazzle #Nordstrom and #Bloomingdale’s. By overlaying these four keywords, the target audience size is reduced to 4,800,000 users. At the same time, the relevancy of each impression served has become more valuable. The likelihood of a user clicking on the Bling.com ad (CTR) has increased and the cost per fan acquired has now gone down. The more niche your brand, the more specific you will want to be with precise interest keywords and therefore, the smaller your target audience will be.
Based on the goals of your campaign, determine whether or not you will be targeting current fans, or non-fans and friends of fans. For Bling.com the goal is fan growth so you will want to target non-fans and friends of fans.
The next piece of the puzzle is the ad itself. Your targeting can be right on point but very useless if your ad doesn’t utilize the brand’s content appropriately to attract clicks. Therefore, the three variables you must consider in ad creation are title, copy and image.
The title character limit is 25, but do not feel required to use all 25 characters. Get creative and test various titles. Try the brand name, applicable slogans or a Call to Action.
Facebook Like Ad copy is limited to 90 characters. For most campaigns, ad performance usually peaks between 70-80 characters. Copy is an important vehicle for testing your brand message. Experiment with messaging techniques as you draft your copy. Use copy to highlight specific promotions or features of your brand. Test capital letters to draw attention to key words or phrases. Include incentivized terminology in the Call to Action like “download” and “win”. Engage fans by asking a question, using trivia or other exclusive content. Attract users to your ad by incorporating time sensitive messaging such as “In TWO DAYS…”.
Use bright, clear images that display the product or model. The use of close-up images is typically the most attractive. Whenever possible test a familiar image or well-known character. Avoid using generic images. Finally, it is always a good idea to test the brand logo.
In a nutshell, you need to know who your fans are and what they like in order to find them online and increase the value of your ad impressions. Begin by strategizing the best ways to reach your fans and then as the campaign progresses, pause out the variables that are not working.If you are interested in understanding your fans better, try our new social intelligence tool – Qu. Click here to learn more.
A community manager is a special breed, and often times it’s challenging to find the right fit for your community. Placing your brand into the hands of a CM requires trust and a keen understanding of what it takes to bring your fans to life. Luckily, we’ve identified the top ten signs that you’ve found the chosen one.
SMART Goals = Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.
It can be challenging to put a strategy in place regarding how to address that latest influx of messages. A truly great CM knows who to talk to first, and how to engage them in the most successful way. It’s important to know who your Influencers and Super fans are so you can gain the most value for your time.
By listening to conversations, you can gain valuable insight on what the community is actually wanting in terms of content, engagement and even functionality. Remember, you’re guiding the herd… not pulling them along; this means you need to know where they’d like to go.
The social space moves quickly and never sleeps. A prepared CM knows what they’re publishing 3 months from now, but also has a sixth sense in knowing what to do if the community’s direction changes over night.
A community manager should really feel like another member of the community, just with more responsibility than others. The ability to guide a community is easiest when they view you as a community leader.
You should be up to speed with current events, happenings, sentiment, and anything else that could affect the way your community members interact. Timing your posts and content around these insights will drive viral reach, aid in customer service efforts, and even assist in handling the occasional crisis.
Determine what, how and when to share or whether to share at all. Having good judgment and a levelheaded attitude is what will save a brand's reputation in a time of crisis… and your job. It's important to respond quickly to things, however, it's probably more important to give yourself time to think through how something sounds before you hit send.
While a community of young adults might appreciate short and sarcastic quips about relevant world events, a community of baby boomers might want something completely different. A good CM is able to adapt the personality of its members in a heartbeat and continues undetected.
Multitasking, prioritizing and picking your battles wisely will keep 'em high up in the air! Take risks, experiment, push the envelope, and learn from it quickly.
It can be challenging to be the person responsible for excitement and creativity day after day. Those who master this always have the next idea ready to go. Having a deep pocket of ideas helps to foster creativity and makes you look like a genius in front of the client!Want to learn more about Community Management? Feel free to reach out to Cheristy at cheristy@socialtyze.com
In social, ads don’t look a lot like ads. In fact, the lines between earned and paid media are becoming more and more blurred as the ad units evolve. When Facebook launched Promoted Posts roughly a year ago, it was the next natural step for the platform to become increasingly discerning about what their consumers get to see. Marketers need to become more strategic when incorporating their brand into the newsfeed by making it more seamless between the brands you’ve liked and the products that advertisers want you to like.Over the last few months, Socialtyze has been growing our data set on this particular ad unit, and have compiled our observations into the following playbook. Here are our 6 simple rules to help you achieve the best possible CTR on your next movie campaign.
Photos proved to be 166% more efficient at creating clicks than videos in campaigns that used both media types.
Nothing is more important in your success than the photo that is paired with your ad. Photos were 2X better at predicting an ad’s result than copy.While there was a negligible difference between having one or two people in the photo, adding text to the photo proved to be disastrous. Photos with one person and no text performed 15% better than those with 1 character and text. Photos of 2 or more people with text saw a 32% drop off compared to those with no text.
Promoted posts that used quotes from a movie performed 47% better than the campaign average and was the top performing post type overall.
Ads that had a clear tune-in or focused on tickets ranked 3rd out of 8 possible post types and was 10% more efficient than our total baseline.
Posting your own review in an ad can stop a customer dead in their tracks. Ads with a review mention were just half as efficient as campaign averages.
America is a melting pot and, as a result, just under a third of our promoted post sample was in Spanish. While the Spanish language posts did under perform, language was not a significant predictor of success (or failure). That means that those posts probably underperformed for reasons that had nothing to do with the language they were in. This result gives media planners the freedom to experiment with Spanish, so that they can speak to their audience in the best possible way.
With the introduction of video, Instagram has become even more visually stimulating and consuming. So how do you keep up with your progressive Instagram community? No need to feel intimidated - here are 7 simple tips to boost your Instagram game!
Fans want to see what you’re selling, so take advantage of this intrigue and post a picture of that delicious special your restaurant is serving tonight, or a preview of that dress you just can’t keep on the rack. It will remind fans what you have to offer and why they want to spend money with you.
You can easily find success on Instagram by utilizing a hashtag to highlight key subjects in your photos. Hashtags like #Puppy or #Beach can bring a lot of eyes to your photo. However, it is possible to have too much of a good thing. Try and keep your hashtag count to less than 3 per post. The most effective way to choose a hashtag is to search various options and see what has the best results.
Don’t let curiosity kill the customer! Your fans want to know how your products are made, or a little known fact. Give them a taste of the action and show them a little something from behind the scenes. A shot of the kitchen, organic product shots or even just your employees working together in the conference room, the goal is to capture the moment!
Leverage the audience you’ve built on your other social networks by cross promoting your content and increasing your Instagram follower count. A great way to do this is to share your latest captivating video or best performing picture via a link on your Facebook or Twitter account. You can also incentivize fans by hosting contests and giveaways via Instagram and promoting them with your other pages.
Don’t spam your Instagram followers. 1-2 posts daily will keep you on your fans’ radars, but not overwhelm their feeds.
Engage with your audience by following your own hashtag, @replies and location tags. Also, be sure to “like” and even comment on the photos fans post. This will alert fans to your account and make them feel appreciated by your brand.
Trust us, they’re fun, easy to make and an engagement driver. The goal is to produce 15 seconds of easily digestible content. Unlike Vine, you can edit as you go and adjust the exposure as you shoot. You can even save the videos to embed later. Don’t forget: good lightening, sound, and a stabilized camera are critical!
Want to learn more about Community Management? Feel free to reach out to Cheristy at Cheristy@Socialtyze.com
This 2013 summer has been an exciting time for the Socialtyze team! We’ve had the opportunity to work on a few interesting projects that are definitely worth highlighting. Here are just a few of the Apps and Campaigns we’ve been working on:
“Best Father’s Day Film Ever”
It was a dream scenario, two clients with complementary needs. A film studio needed to activate 16 Facebook fan pages. A restaurant brand with a powerhouse page wanted some content to give their fans something fun to do.
A movie match-up of 16 titles going toe-to-toe to see which made the best Father’s Day film.
12 fans won ALL 16 titles and a $50 gift card to The Cheesecake Factory. One lucky player landed a $100 gift card and a box set of the best Warner Bros. films of the last 90 years.
BuildaJoe.com
With the movie, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, rapidly approaching its launch to DVD, our team has created a microsite (optimized for iPad and Mobile) hosting an interactive avatar builder and an exciting sweepstakes involving Hasbro.
Users can go to the website and build their own G.I. Joe Avatar with access to over 500 assets to choose from to customize their Joe. Once users complete their avatar, they can choose to do one of three things; download it to a trading card, make it into a screensaver (desktop and mobile), or enter their avatar into the sweepstakes.
Paramount has partnered with Hasbro to recreate one lucky winner’s Joe avatar into a real life figurine.
“How Southern Are You?”
Southern Living was looking for a unique way to engage their current Facebook fan base but also discover new email leads through an engaging and fun social media application. The Socialtyze team has created the "How Southern Are You?” checklist where users can check off how many “southern” things they've done, and receive custom Southern badges based on their level of completion. Afterwards, they are encouraged to share and complete the entertaining list with their friends. The app has been promoted with media and email blasts, which lead to a significant increase in awareness. We’re particularly excited about this campaign’s success with mobile audiences.
The app has generated to date 79,000 unique visitors, 35,000 email leads for the brand, and over 8,000 shares! The interesting part of these results is that over 50% of app play took place on a mobile device, with 86% of our users being female and 96% of them being 25 years and older. This demographic directly aligns with their target consumer.Curious how Socialtyze can help your next campaign? Email Garret Houts at garret@socialtyze.com or visit our website for more info!
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