Monetizing Social Media – Set your targets and expectations!

Today’s article on eMarketer predicted social media ad spending on Facebook to grow around $3 billion, essentially reiterating the social giant’s firming grip on the digital advertising share. According to them, the ad spending on the world’s top social network will reach $2.19 billion this year in the US and just over $4 billion worldwide – both more than double last year’s figure.

For a business or brand owner, this could trigger incremental investment in social media efforts, especially on Facebook. But regardless of whether you a Fortune500 brand or a sole proprietor, the basic rules of the game never change. So, make sure you have a good grip of the following big five once you decide to embark on monetizing your social media.

Goals – Social media is cool, useful & free. But when it comes to monetizing, the rule of the game changes. With Facebook’s current estimated reach of 134 million adult (Over 18) users living in the United States, how can you not “Like” it? Any campaign on Facebook should revolve around these 3 goals:

• Awareness or Branding – High volume of impressions lends a hand to brand building.
  

• Clicks – CTR( click through rates) tends to range between 0.04% (something similar to display ads) and 0.2% (somewhat closer to a low search performance). But given the huge volume of impressions , even small CTRs can go a long way in generating desired level of clicks against any call to action.
  

• Actions –Facebook “Like” is just one of the many possible call to actions. In fact, when it comes to actions, I have never treated Facebook any differently than how I treat search, display or even mobile. Your options are unlimited! A “Fan Like” is just one of them. We get the most out of client campaigns when we “split actions”.

The first version is a direct response call to action.

The second version is a  call to action towards a Facebook asset ( In this case, “Fan Like”).

Targeting –  A lot of us, tend to get caught up in ad, creative and sometimes neglect the demographics. This does not hurt too much for search but when it comes to Facebook ads, you want to keep a razor sharp focus in terms of targeting.

The biggest strength of Facebook ad platform is their estimating tool. The more granular your targeting is, the better yield you leverage out of your campaigns in terms of customer and prospect engagement. The challenge however lies in how best you can narrow down your audience from those 135 million Americans and 500 million worldwide.

So..Investigate and be innovative beyond age, gender, birthdays, language & education. The biggest opportunity lies with “Interests”. Here’s a campaign that we ran for an university’s sustainability program. Given the extremely niche audience, no age limit or professional restriction, no defined levels ( it’s both a credit and a non-credit course), we knew that the key to our success will depend on how well defined we are with capturing the interests.

• The campaign has been able to draw more than 0.1% Click Through Rate( considered a runaway success from a Facebook benchmark standpoint) with less than 30% bounce rate( relevant and right on target audience) and a 3.04% goal conversion ( this is the key!). The average goal conversion from other channels for this program varied between 2-4%.
  

 

Landing page experience – Landing pages ultimately drive all online campaign goals. The more relevant and aligned the landing pages are to the ad copy, the more successful your campaign is.

Facebook is no different.

Recently, we tested 5 different ad copies and used 2 different landing pages for a travel industry campaign. The first 3 were directed to the website. We put a special offer on the landing page that reflected the offer on the ad.

 

 

The next 2 ads landed on a custom fan special tab on Facebook, which had a similar offer but additionally drove the “Like” metric. All other parameters, including targeting, remained consistent.

After a  month, the click through and goal conversion rates for campaigns directed to the website were higher than those directed to the Facebook tab. Now.. this is not typical, even within the industry. We have seen contrasting results for different clients. Hence, the need for testing landing pages in order to establish audience behavior and preferences for your particular brand.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Drive your game plan with numbers – Please measure, measure and measure your social media investments. Facebook has a strong reporting portal. But you should be ready to go beyond and derive ROI from your Facebook ads, just the same way you do for your other paid digital channels. With some exceptions, we mostly run  multi channel marketing for our clients. In this case, we ran a Facebook ad campaign and a Google Adwords campaign, all at the same time, with the same set of goals, for an energy company. Once again using custom URLs for all of our Facebook campaigns that enable us to track beyond clicks, impressions and click through, we tracked total visits to the site and goal conversion rates for both the campaigns. Here are some of the results:

• There were 39 Goal-1 conversions from Facebook (Social) compared to 64 from Google Adwords (Search).
  
• Cost per conversion for Facebook worked out much lower than Search for Goal-1.
  
• However for Goal-2 – A higher value goal and directly related to sales – conversions were higher for Google than for Facebook.
  
• Conclusion – It was easier to pull conversions for higher value goals when people are actually in an advanced state of search for similar product or services (search).
  
• Social works well for branding or small value goal conversions (catalog request, email signups etc).
  

Think about it. How in the world we could have possibly known this if we did not measure our efforts?

 

 

Finally , get into the right mindset –

1. Just because a Facebook ad is cheaper doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy. You are, in fact, targeting an audience who’s in no frame of mind to buy from you right now, unlike search, where you are serving relevant ads to folks already looking for similar service/product. This actually makes Facebook a more difficult channel to yield results.
   
2. The above often leads to a situation when you risk mindless spending. Seeking professional help might make sense.
   
3. From a consumer standpoint, social & search marketing are aimed at two different strata of mental state for brand engagement and needs to be distinct in order to derive effective results.
   
4. From a marketer’s standpoint , due to it’s nascent nature, the investment risks for a social media channel, especially Facebook are still lot higher than any other forms of online advertising.
   

Here’s my wish list of things that I would like Facebook to change:

• Clarity on ad position and ranking parameters – How’s my ad rank determined or what parameter(s) determines the impression? What drives the rank position, now that there are 5 ads that can be served on a page? Is it just the bid ? If so, then Facebook is falling prey to the hands of the wealthy brands at the risk of losing smaller but more powerful and relevant advertisers – something Google has strategically avoided.
  
• Ad variations – How come I am just allowed a combination of only an image & text? What about mobile? How does my ad render on Facebook smart phone apps? Will video ads be ever allowed?
  
• Bidding process , quality score – We search marketers live & breadth by Quality Score. It helps us to outperform the bigger and the stronger brands with all the money power but weak ad creative, irrelevant landing pages and/or keywords. There are no set quality scores on Facebook to guide me during hours of need.
  
• What happened to keywords ? Any plans on bringing them back, now that Google ( despite all the denials) is reflecting social results on search pages?
  

I hope all of my fellow digi-marketers out there are trying or willing to try this powerful marketing platform. As always, we are here to help. Please “Like Us” on Facebook and be entered to win one free Facebook or AdWords campaign- building, monitoring and reporting using a custom URL for your brand. The offer includes all creative work for the ads in the campaign.

Share your thoughts , bring your comments and let’s get the conversation started here at Curve Trends Marketing.

Best,

Bibi

Getting ready for Search Marketing? Here’s a check list

Lately, I’ve been busy working on my start- up Curve Trends Marketing – A Search Marketing & Analytics consulting platform geared towards small & medium businesses. By small & medium businesses, I am referring to companies with average monthly website traffic of 20000 visits or less. Those of you just getting to know me – small business growth & development is a subject very close to my heart. My earlier post on benchmarking, touches some aspects of it .Small venture entrepreneurs need to travel that extra mile to extend their reach out to the target audience. Currently, the top deterrents for traditional advertising have been:

1. Lack of target audience
2. Rising cost of paper (for print campaign)
3. Lack of tracking & reporting tools to quantify the return on investment (ROI)

It comes as no surprise that NAA estimates that newspapers’ ad revenue will have plummeted almost 40% in two years by end of this December.

Online ads and search mechanism , on the other hand have revolutionized the overall business trends .Small businesses need to switch gears faster than their larger counterparts; not only stay afloat but also to remain profitable. Recently BusinessWeek reports from consulting firm Parks Associates, indicate that online U.S. advertising share will  hit 10% by 2010. ..Well, I must say that’s a conservative estimate. It assumes web advertising, now a $12 billion market, to be growing at 14% a year, which is about half the current pace. It can safely be assumed that small businesses will contribute to a substantial portion of that spend.

Launching search or online marketing however could be pretty intimidating for small businesses or any business for that matter. The biggest fear is that of the “unknown”. It’s after all, a relatively new world of search marketing with lots of noise & chatter.

Google Adwords is a very easy, free & effective tool that enables any business to assess, build, launch & optimize as well as accurately report their search marketing initiatives. With Adwords, an advertiser can serve ads to a targeted audience at the right place & the right time, armed with the right product.  In other words, unlike traditional marketing, a single online campaign can target buyers at every stage of their buying cycle. For small businesses, which cater to a local or specific geographic domain, this tool comes in very handy.

Think about a local Pizza delivery joint, which open from 6 PM to 1 AM at night, in a small town in Montana. Google Adwords customized local targeting option enables this company to serve ads to hungry consumers within a radius of 30 miles from early evening to midnight, at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing campaign. Similarly, a restaurant owner in South Dakota, or a tools rental agency in Oregon or even a flower delivery company of Vermont, can choose to cater to their own defined perimeter for serving ads to the right audience precisely when they are looking for the product.

A recent study by Yellow Pages Association found that local search – the practice of using online search tools to find local businesses, products, or services – grew 58 % in 2008, reaching an annual total of 15.7 billion searches and outpaced the growth of overall web search. No small or medium businesses thriving primarily on local consumer network, can afford to neglect this powerful emerging channel.

This is even true for online businesses or ones that are targeting a specific demographic segment. They can select any combination of locations to target their campaign, including countries, territories, regions, cities and custom areas. For example, if someone wants to reach English-speaking users in select locations, they could target specific regions within the United States and a few large English-speaking cities in Europe, provided they have the capability to ship to those nations.

Now .. how do you do this ? The best option is to outsource it to a  search marketing agency who’s proficient in local targeting. The other choice would be to employ a Google Adwords Certified professional . But normally that works out more expensive than having an agency or a consulting firm manage the account. Being in this profession for quite some years, I ‘ve seen both best & the worst of the trade.

Here are my big top 10 to-dos before you embark on Search Marketing.

1. Remember – Google Adwords is just a tool to generate leads, sales or conversions and/or create brand awareness through online advertising. It’s your strategic goals & visions along with the consultant’s proficiency in executing it , is what makes it all work.

2. Always( please!) – have an analytics tool ( Google Analytics is a free tool and is very easy to install ) monitor your website’s basic key performance indicators ( KPI) – visits, time spend on site, bounce rates, top landing pages and goal conversions – at least 90 days prior to your online search marketing project. Keep in mind that your ultimate goal is to drive traffic to your website and Google Analytics can prep you for any action that needs to happen on the website in terms of design or goals. That way, when someone clicks on your ads and lands somewhere on your website, their landing page experience is optimized. Your landing page quality (Google has a number of parameters for measuring it) is extremely critical for a high page rank and lowering your spend ( It’s called Quality Score. More on that in my upcoming posts).

3. Set achievable & measurable goals. Look at past trends and ROI data from your traditional advertising campaigns and set your online marketing goals close enough to start off.

4. Research the estimated volume of search for similar products in your target location. You can do it yourself at  Google’s Insight for Search . This free tool from Google let’s you compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties. ..

Here’s an estimate of traffic in the last 90 days for the search term “ski pants” in the Denver Metro area in Colorado. The numbers on the graph reflect how many searches have been done for a particular term, relative to the total number of searches done on Google, over time. You can always use this as a guiding tool to set your expectations.

5. Determine your monthly budget. Be prepared to move around your initial budget allocation. Remember, it’s hard to fail with search marketing. So a calculated risk is worth it.

6. Communicate your budget & goals to the consultant when you ask for the proposal. Ask them to bring a list of top performing relevant keywords and the average cost per click and projected traffic volume for each of them. AdWords advertisers can control their costs by setting a maximum daily budget and specific amounts they’re willing to pay- per- click or per thousand impressions, which the AdWords will never exceed.

7. Prepare a list of your top competitors that you want to monitor , not because you want to replicate them but to establish your unique offering and set yourself apart.

8. Define your targets and break them down by a) location b) demography c) product spread

9. Understand how your site ranks on organic or natural search. A Google Adwords consultant should have the ability to pull the relevant data for you. Working hand in hand with natural search gives you additional leverage and visibility on the search network. For example, if you already rank high on the natural search, you have established a substantial amount of online credibility over a competitor who does not have any natural search ranking. That way, you spend a lot less for attaining high ranking in paid search.

10. Make sure you get a commitment of weekly reporting from your consultant. Use those meetings to re-look at what’s working & what’s not . Look at it as an opportunity to fine tune your campaigns.

Always keep in mind that AdWords ads can appear virtually anywhere online, worldwide, yet remain targeted and relevant. Unlike traditional marketing, you can view , monitor, measure, and edit AdWords campaigns at any time and enjoy unprecedented levels of control over your advertising spending and reach.

I plan on covering this in more details and a few other basic but critical Adwords features in my upcoming posts .. till then..

Send me your feedback.. What did you like? Did you learn something new? Was it of any help?

Let’s keep talking.

-Bibi Mukherjee

In search of benchmarks

Most of the small businesses I talk to or have worked with, have a common concern for lack of available industry trends. We depend on either inside contacts, published competitor collateral or just plain old snooping around, in order to find out the current industry trends and offerings. As a result , small business leadership is plagued by lack of actionable industry benchmarks . ..how to understand where exactly their performance stand in terms of either the brand position or established benchmarks.

Google Analytics does a pretty good job with it’s benchmarking tool. It lets the businesses assess how their website compares against some of the industry verticals. I find this tool to be one of GA’s biggest strength.More so, since, there is so little actionable benchmark data available for small accounts( read business).

There’s one catch though. You have to have your data sharing with Google & other benchmarking tools enabled. Sometimes that can be the deal breaker. However, I’ve always been in favor of data sharing when it comes to Google ,since they do this anonymously . All identifiable data from your website is removed before it’s merged with other sites in comparable industry. There is no way you identify any of yours or your competitor’s data from the aggregated result . There is a bonus factor too. With your data sharing enabled, you also gain access to Google’s Conversion Optimizer that lets you adjust your bids to maximize conversions at the minimum price in Adwords .

The initial data presented takes into account all businesses of similar size. But you might want to drill down to your specific trade. GA actually lets you do that. This way you can ensure that the data is more pertinent to your particular business. In this example, I wanted to look at not only travel but even further ; Adventure travel players.

6 top level metrics data over the given timeline is displayed against the benchmark. It’s important to note that all figures are time dependent. Daily variations are possible due to parallel marketing campaigns and other promotional efforts. But comparing similar industry rules out any skew from the seasonality of the business since the seasonal trends of these companies are mostly alike.

Visits is the most basic top level measurement for any industry follower. The fact that in this example webpage visits are over 25% down from the industry benchmark, right away tells them to get their acts together and start working on improving the web site, spending more on paid search ,improve the quality of the links , landing pages and keywords , get more affiliate partners and network better on social media. Unless, this is a new brand, in which case, a benchmark has been established for them to work on. More on that in a min.

New visits= prospects= incremental sales. This is therefore such a key metric ,especially for new products or brands that just launched. The fact that in this example the new visits are about 5% over benchmark, almost tells me that it’s a new brand working to attract prospects and is generating a lot of interest. Over time, however, they can expect this figure to travel south and as long as it stays around 72% (which is the established benchmark)there should be no concern. Expectations set..Bingo!

Bounce rate – Anyone who has worked with me is aware of my obsession with this metric. I don’t know if I am obsessed or despise it, but for sure I can’t live without it. The fact that I’ve worked so hard to get this visitor to come witness my great offering and that he/she is leaving my site right away , without even giving me a second chance, kills me. If it was possible I would recommend the whole world wide web community to solely work towards bringing all bounce rate down to zero, and ban the word bounce rate. But hey.. that’s the extremist me. Sobering down..the bounce rate should never climb above 30%.. end of discussion. Even the benchmark bounce rate( 60%) in this example is super high. But it is what it is. Let’s accept it & move on.

Average time on site – I would definitely like my visitor to stay on. But there are times when we have them land on a page where all information is provided and they choose to just not look around. I am not sure I like that but that definitely brings down the average time spent on my site. That’s why we need benchmarking. If the visitor is spending around 5 mins on competitor’s site , am I not providing the quality experience for him/her to spend that much time on mine? What else can I do in terms of value proposition or in terms of uniqueness to improve that? On the other hand, if I am above the Industry benchmark.. oh well.. what can I say.. I ‘ve stopped bragging these days.

Pageviews & Pages /Visit – Benchmarking this can be counterproductive. That’s just me. Maybe it’s due to the nature of the business I handle. I am currently establishing a brand whose web site have a lot of information on single pages. Also, the page views depends on your product mix .Similar information can be served in different combination and layouts. But you might have a different perspective on this. Why don’t you share?

There is something else about benchmarking in GA that stands out for me- Able to visualize my brand positioning. Let’s look at these two examples.

The first one exceeds the benchmarking for every possible metric.From a top level, this is a leader to me. The alfha male!

Compared to that.. here’s another brand in the same category tracked over the same period of time. Does it tell you anything?. Look carefully. Compare it’s results to the industry benchmark. To me, it’s either a weak and a struggling brand or a new brand trying to make it’s mark.More likely, the later.. looking at the new visits.

What did I miss? How are you guys benchmarking your data? What are your sources? How do you validate? Please share with us.
Till then,
Happy Benchmarking

Bibi