there are now 7 major audiences you should be thinking about in your facebook targeting!
July 1, 2016
The 7 Major Facebook Ad Audiences
1. Geo Targeted Audience: Target an area by zip code or location radius using general demographic information for saturation targeting. Example: Men 25-33 years old within a 5 mile radius of downtown Orlando.
2. Facebook Interest and Behavior Data: You can also target based on interests and behaviors that have been identified on Facebook. Want to target a specific profession or someone interested in a specific industry? You can with Facebook. Want to target someone by the school they likely attended? You can using Facebook. Want to target someone by their hobby? You can using Facebook.
3. Facebook Partner Data: In additions to targeting customers by their own interests you may be able to use Facebook partner data. For instance if you are in Automotive Facebook’s partnership with Polk allows you to target likely in market intenders or those that currently own a specific make of car.
4. Custom Database Audience: Upload a custom segment of your database to Facebook and the database will match to Facebook’s own database on the basis of e-mail and phone number. About 30-40% of any given data set will find matching Facebook profiles.
5. Look-A-Like Audiences: Upload your own audience and then find people in a targeted area that match their general profile and demographics.
6. Website Retargeted Audience: Pixel a specific page of your website that will allow you to target your website visitors now on Facebook.
7. Your Facebook Page Followers: Did you do it right from the beginning and grow a natural fan base of loyalists to your brand? Then you still may want to make sure you are speaking to them.
explore the 7 major facebook ad types at your disposal
July 1, 2016
The 7 Major Types of Facebook Ad Campaigns
When you are thinking about your Social advertising strategy it’s important to understand the mechanics of the different types of ads at your disposal. Facebook’s ever expanding arsenal of ad products is great because it gives advertisers a choice in the way they reach their targeted audience. But without a proper understanding of how each ad ultimately works and you may be misusing the platform.
1. Video Views: Just like Pre-Roll Facebook Video Views are a great way to get a video message in front of a targeted audience. You can also build any Video View campaign to gear towards website referral and build website referral campaigns to include video. You can also push your Video View campaign into Instagram which is a big plus. Negatives: About 85% of Video Views on Facebook are still happening without sound. Most of our ads are built with closed captioning to combat the fact that Facebook Video’s fire without sound. Also you are charged for a Video View even when it is far from a completed view.
2. Website Referral: Website referral ads can be static images or video content with a goal of delivering customers to a message relevant landing page on your website. If your audience is well aligned with your message (think a previous customer or a specific product) than website referral campaigns utilizing static images can be quite effective.
3. Lead Ads: When lead ads were introduced I could hear the entire retail realm cackle with excitement (especially those in higher end industries such as real estate and automotive). The proper way to look at lead ads is like that of a hand-raiser. Remember when someone engages with your ad it is because you put an appealing proposition in front of them. Social is unlike paid search in that you are pulling people into the shopping funnel. A new product launch would be an excellent event for a lead ad. Customers could express interest in the hope of additional information being made at a different time. Negatives: When you build out a lead ad campaign you identify specific data sets that you would like when the customer expresses interest in your offer or special. The more data you ask for the lower the likelihood that a customer will fully engage with a lead ad. Once the customer confirms their interest and the data transfer, information than transfers into your Facebook page and is downloadable into excel. Another big downside of Facebook lead ads is the lack of any real integration with CRM’s outside of Sales Force.
4. Canvas Ads: On the surface canvas ads are flexible and interactive. They have the potential to be beautiful BUT they do have a downside. Negatives: Canvas ads only work inside of mobile platforms and and if your goal is website referral you are adding an extra click to deliver your customer to your landing content. What we have seen in the early goings is that while Canvas ads can accomplish a variety of goals in execution it will be at a higher cost than other more seamless campaign structures.
5. Claim Offers: Outside of Fan Generation and General Post Promotion, Claim Offers were Facebook’s original type of advertising. Like an offer on Groupon the customer “claims” the offer by clicking on it and is e-mailed the full offer details and disclaimer that can be printed and presented like a coupon. I still love claim offers from the standpoint of it putting your audience in the most control.
6. General Content Promotion: If you are organically posting on Facebook these days (without promotion) you know what we have known for a long time. It’s not working. In the past you could use a 10-15% benchmark of Facebook followers that see a post impression. That number had dwindled for business on Facebook and in most cases is between 2-4%.
7. Promote Your Page (Fan Generation): Before Facebook’s ad platform matured the “name of the game” outside of general content promotion was fan generation. Back when organic posting still mattered a post that garnered quick engagement could easily gain traction amongst your followers (without promotion). The more followers you had on Facebook in essence the more people to see your content which was especially positive if your audience was relevant to your brand (and likely a customer). With custom audiences, 3rd party data and the ability to speak directly to your own database we have cut out the middleman and now speak directly to custom audiences without worry if they want to actually “follow” your Facebook page or not. Negatives: Fan Generation is not a noble pursuit in the modern era of Facebook marketing. You will still grow followers and fans as fans of your brand are delivered your targeted sponsored content.
The Messaging Application Battle: Who Goes Cross-Platform First?
February 27, 2014
Shortly after Facebook acquired WhatsApp they made an announcement that barely registered on my radar. The announcement was that they were going to discontinue @facebook.com e-mail service. There wasn’t much of an uproar simply put because few saw the value of an address integrated with Facebook messenger and far fewer utilized the service.
It got me thinking though of how Facebook could leverage WhatsApp into something far bigger and more useful than it already is. For many of us who follow tech trends we know that SMS is slowly going the way of the buffalo. People are beginning to see the value a WhatsApp, a Viber or a BBM bring to the table in the way of secure messaging, speed of data transfer and inexpensive Voip capabilities. So what’s the next frontier in the Messaging War?
For me it’s this. It’s one thing to have cross device functionality. I myself can utilize WhatsApp and BBM on my iPhone or my BlackBerry P’9982 but where their would be real value is in computer to computer communication. Take Apple’s iMessage product for instance. I love iMessage. The ability to continue a “text” conversation while I am on a plane (utilizing WiFi) or take it to my laptop (without having to reach for my phone) make for a seamless and efficient way to communicate. In the workplace I found that I could reduce my dependency on e-mail if my co-workers had iMessage and/or MAC desktops and laptops. But naturally iMessage isn’t so much an app is it is a benefit native to Apple’s iOS. So now that I am back to BlackBerry as my main device or if I am working on my Dell desktop in the office – iMessage is of no use to me.
What Facebook could do is take WhatsApp from being available across mobile devices to a platform available across ALL devices. If you could continue “text based” conversations across say your Mobile Device, a Tablet and ultimately into a desktop/laptop environment I think the average utilization would Sky Rocket per user. You also now conceivably have an Enterprise product to launch into the business sector as well.
But what if someone beat WhatsApp to this space? Would it be a game changer? Conceivably BlackBerry’s BBM and Enterprise services are close to offering this EXACT ability to businesses. What if they were able to bring this technology to the everyday consumer experience before WhatsApp? I think you might see a huge SHIFT in momentum. Like I said before I am a fan of anything that reduces E-mail dependency and brings efficient, low cost and quick data/text communication across multiple platforms. In today’s world I’m constantly rotating between by mobile device, tablet, desktop and laptop depending on my work environment and what type of activity I am conducting. It will be interesting to see who in this space arrives first.
Three Deadly Mistakes Your Current Social Media Partner Could Be Making
February 21, 2014
I’ve been in business for a humble seven years but it wasn’t long before I began to loathe some of our competition and venders. I felt like they were often praying upon ignorance and in many cases did not deliver the promised added value to our business.
I would allow that sometimes you must be critical of that vender in your waiting area (they usually aren’t hard to spot) that is offering you a ticket to the “next big thing.” When it comes to Social Media venders in any industry are willing to take painful shortcuts to show you short term gains. This is a dangerous strategy in both your long term social strategy and frankly for the reputation of the vender.
These are the Three mistakes I have seen Social Media Venders Make:
1) Mis-Managed Social Media Contests
Sure the standard i-Pad giveaway can drive short term interest in your business’s Facebook page and increase your likes. BUT if you are conducting business in Texas and are wondering why you have 100’s of Pennsylvania housewives flocking to like your page here could be why:
Your Social Media Vender has placed contest information on contest related websites that are “fished” by contest and prize seekers daily. There are many obvious problems with this: a large portion of your fan growth is bound to be out of market (not your real customer) and is unlikely to “engage” with your social media content.
But doesn’t Size Matter? Yes and No. Problem is if you aren’t increasing your reach inside of your market area or amongst a local conquest segment – you’re probably talking to the wrong people. Also too you may see some significant Social “bounce” or “dislikes” once the contest is over. At the end of the day treat Facebook like you do your CRM. If you put garbage in – you will get garbage out.
2) Does your vender know your personnel?
As you begin your venture into Social your employees will be some of the first to engage with your content. Maybe sure your vender is doing a good job of taking the “pulse” of your true business activity and events but if they don’t know your people this can lead to a disconnect. I have seen countless posts that go something like this:
Jon B: Great post!
Dealership A: Thanks Jon you should do business with us!
Jon B: Of course – I’ve worked there for 15 years
While your social content manager means well he is creating a disconnect. Taking two minutes to find out where a stated “Fan’s” place of employment is would be wise but it’s not often done. This also hinders your ability to create true “relationships” in the Social world.
3) Reputation Management – the “Copy and Paste”
Yelp has a very strict algorithm in the world of “filtered” reputation management. With Yelp now fitting the role of Apple’s preferred places rater in Maps you will want to grow your reputation reviews the right way. Google has show us in 2012 that they are also constantly adjusting their own reputation management filters.
I had a business friend recently who told me that his reviews on Google + Local (Google Places) were reduced from 180 to 35 reviews overnight. When I pressed him for an answer he thought for a while. His “Social & Reputation” Vender was copying and pasting content from other sources and uploading from the same IP. Another instance I had heard about was a business “pushing” their preferred reviews from another source to Google. They had the same outcome.
Would you allow someone to be responsible for your personal reputation? Why do you when it comes to your business?
What to think of Facebook’s Multi Billion Dollar Purchase of WhatsApp?
February 21, 2014
Back in November I wrote on my personal blog that the tech battleground had moved from Social Networks (Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr) to Messaging Applications (WhatsApp, Kik, BBM). Data had shown that for younger generations these applications had appeal and were experiencing great utilization where as Social Network play was decreasing as demographics pushed towards a younger age.
So, in a way, it absolutely makes sense that Facebook would purchase WhatsApp. Facebook now has a recent history marked by gobbling up user-rich-apps that a) have shown appeal to younger generations and b) threaten to replace Facebook (in many ways) moving forward (think Instagram). It also to a degree is an open statement about the success/failure of Facebook messenger. While I think Facebook messenger is a nice addition to the Facebook experience, ultimately Facebook is basically saying that it could not complete globally for new users with the likes of a WhatsApp or maybe they didn’t feel they even competed at all.
So what is Facebook getting for it’s roughly $19 Billion in stock and cash? Well they are getting a rich user base. WhatsApp currently has 450 million “monthly” users with about another million joining each day. This doesn’t necessarily guarantee long term mobile relevance — but it comes pretty close. Each day mobile is playing a larger part in our general internet experience and it makes sense that that’s where the action is.
But $19 BILLION? Why is WhatsApp’s fair market value 19x the purchase price of that of Instagram back in 2012? That I’m not quite sure of. All I know is that somewhere inside of SnapChat’s HQ the Red Bull isn’t going down as easy as it once did.
How will WhatsApp monetize? Before the Facebook buy/sell WhatsApp made a modest living through a $1 a user subscription fee. All I can think is that moving forward that will increase. WhatsApp and messaging services like it do have a lot to offer (Free Voice Over IP Long Distant “Voice” calls for one). Indeed the “Times They Are-A-Changing!”
