The Foundational Approach to Facebook CPC Ads

Executing for a Single Interaction

When developing a foundational Facebook media plan, you need to incorporate the needs of the client request and a desired goal into the strategy.  A project brief and planning session can help create the framework of the campaign and answer questions, such as:

• Target audience (demographics:  M (25-49), educated, in GEO, with certain behaviors)
• Product information (price, seasonality, use cases)
• Goal (build a fan base, drive conversions on a website)

 

With this information you devise a marketing plan as usual, while utilizing Facebook’s vast amounts of targeting options to create detailed audience segments and match the right messaging to these segments.  By segmenting your audiences clearly in Facebook (or via a management tool like Marin’s Facebook Management Solution), you can efficiently manage and optimize your segments easily and:

• Measure performance by audience including location, age, likes & interests
• Filter new ads by targeting criteria
• Create automated bidding strategies by segment to desired goal

The execution of a foundational Facebook CPC ads campaign is to support a relevant set of placements for a SINGLE interaction. (Search Marketing minded approach).

Executing on Paid & Social Synergies

Executing for a Series of Interactions

To effectively target different segments that may have different goals (engagement vs. conversion) at different stages of a purchase cycle (or seasonality), you can build a more complex plan that feeds off and builds from its own momentum.    Unlike the foundational Facebook campaign that drives to a single desired action, this approach incorporates a series of consumer interactions.

It all starts with a Facebook ad with the goal of driving Fans and “Likes”.  This is where Paid & Social Media collide and can do powerful things together.  The Facebook CPC ads in a more intricate model take the consumer mindset and social interaction stage into account to drive a multi-stage cycle.

Introducing the Facebook “Like” Cycle

 

Facebook ads have a lot of opportunity to reach, communicate and interact with audiences within its own social environment, or cycle.  Break out of the mold of thinking of simply the foundation but applying a more complex and dynamic campaign execution that speaks to consumers at different stages of their brand engagement.

Let’s break down each segment further and discuss the possible consumer mindset within each:

1. AWARENESS:  Build a Fan Base

This might be the most obvious but could also be shortsighted and capped of its extended benefits.  Serving Facebook CPC ads (Sponsored Stories Ads, CPC ads or Video ads) to increase traffic, are valid ad types to make consumers aware of your Brand.  The capability of directly “Like”ing your brand fuels your Fan base that is not only a pool of loyal customers that can develop and share positive sentiments of your brand, but those positive sentiments can then be turned into your Sponsored Stories ads in your campaign.

Additionally, adding “Fans” to your brand’s Facebook page has more value than just counting the #s of likes.  Driving Facebook Likes can also benefit your SEO program as “Likes are the new Links.”  Further value are mentioned in the next segments of the “Like” Cycle.

2.  dWOM:  Facebook Interaction and Engagement

As the Fan base to your Facebook page grows the fans will inevitably voice their opinions and interact with the fan page.  The positive sentiments and stories (even simple “Likes”) can become Sponsored Stories ads that will show to a Fans’ Facebook Friends which acts like Digital Word of Mouth (dWOM).  This ad type brings a new power to online advertising as it integrates dWOM into its copy that it isn’t surprising to hear Facebook claims Sponsored Stories ads “perform twice as well in engaging users” compared to standard CPC ads on the network.

Facebook recently announced at AdWeek its belief in Facebook WOM and belief “that word-of-mouth conversations among friends are the most influential for getting a brand’s message across.”  They went on to cite comScore research “showing that fans and friends-of-fans of a Page are more likely to visit a store, website, and even purchase a product or service.”  For instance, “Fans and friends-of-fans of Starbucks spend 8% more in stores than the average Starbucks customer and transact 11% more frequently”.  (Source: Fast Company: Oct 3, 2011)

3. ACTION:   Convert Your Audiences

Now that you have an established (and growing) Facebook Fan Base and built out audience segments to target with Facebook you can run a Facebook CPC ads campaign with a direct response message that leads the consumer to a desired action.  This campaign can build off the momentum of the first 2 cycle segments that drove Fans and inspired Engagement with the brand to build demographic targeting segments.

 

4. CRM:  Consumer Retention

As you continue to build the fan base and loyal customers, you need to retain them and continue the conversation and build further loyalty.  From here you have access to the Fans through creating a Facebook email strategy or implement contests and promotions on Facebook.  Additionally, Sponsored Stories ads can be run throughout the year to not only drive new Fans or “Likes” but also to leverage positive sentiments and push those stories and wall posts to Friends of Friends as a Digital Word of Mouth (DWOM) campaign.

Conclusion:

Executing for a Series of Interactions:

The PPC Ads Facebook “Like” Cycle has the ability to continuously evolve, grow and drive results for your Brand.  The “Like” Cycle requires executing placements for a SERIES of interactions that aren’t easily identified in advance, but if planned for strategically can result in more sales.

It is a complex ecosystem that takes the basics of targeting, buying and optimizing to a new level of campaigning that is dynamic, complex and potentially more rewarding.  With Facebook’s movement of viewing the act of online Sharing as an indication of Value, it is a testament of the “Like” Cycle and how marketers should adapt to this new model.

Think through your own Brand’s campaign and how the “Like” Cycle fits your Brand’s needs.

Caveats:

* People can enter the cycle at any moment, not necessarily at #1.

**This cycle has many “legs” to it and doesn’t fully represent Social Media’s engagement and interaction experiences and benefits

***This cycle is a depiction of the number of ways to reach, engage and retain customers through Facebook ads and interactions.  We realize this cycle is not perfect or one size fits all.

Google recently (officially) announced that Google+ and +1’s are influencing your search results, and given the opportunity for Google+ to augment this even more, expect to see an influx of social applications on your search engine results pages (SERPs) in the next year.

This wish list includes several features that may socially alter search results and the searcher’s experience within them. Some are immediately applicable, while others err on the lofty side. But, if you are going to dream, dream big.

Social Influence Categorization:

As Google+ grows and users are forced to engineer Circles and group greater amounts of connections, search results influenced by shared information across the social network will need categorization. Imagine you’re searching for a particular topic and you have 1000+ connections. If several connections shared the same link that rises to the top of the results, wouldn’t it be beneficial to tell the searcher to categorize certain Circles above others? For instance, if I’m searching for movie reviews and the top result was shared by my Marketers, Friends, Family, and Google Circles, I’d be much more influenced by my Friends and Family Circle than my Marketers Circle – which includes thought leaders I’ve never met. Leveraging this user-provided data will make my results more relevant; therefore, increasing my satisfaction with the search results.

Social Meta Information:

When a connection shares a link on Google+, they rarely share only the link. Usually, they’ll also share a little blurb or opinion on the link. To augment the context of that shared link in search results, wouldn’t it be nice to see an excerpt of that blurb right below the search result? Google introduced more white space and spacing between results with their latest creative refresh, and this increased white space allows them to provide more detailed results when applicable. I’d love to know why my friend shared a link and their opinion on it versus only showing the fact that it was shared. In essence, this creates a dialogue between you and your connections within Google search instead of purely relying on what search marketers provide in the title and description.

Social Paid Search Ads:

Facebook has an offering similar to this idea. However, Google+ and +1’s proximity to Google search make this a winning feature. As paid search marketers, we are constantly striving to provide more relevant results to searchers in hopes of improving our CTR and increasing site traffic, leads, and revenue. In order to connect search marketer’s desires with consumers’, Google should roll out a new product offering within AdWords: Social Paid Ads. This offering would allow paid search marketers to serve special ads that immediately call out that the domain of your landing page was shared by a searcher’s connections.

Social Filters:

As Google’s database of shared information continues to grow, it would be very beneficial to filter by “Results Shared by your Connections”. The slash search engine, Blekko, already enabled this feature, but they are lacking the database to fully pull it off.

Google+ Comment Plugin:

As the +1 Button continues to span across websites, there’s a clear opportunity to allow these sharers the ability to add their voice to the +1 as they browse a website. Similar to Facebook’s Comment plugin, this would immediately post the user’s comment on Google+ and potentially influence the idea of Social Meta Information above.

What are your ideas on how Google can make its core business more social? Sound off in the comments.

It is my theory that human beings are inherently self-obsessed and in need of constant attention.

For years, people had to call or meet up with friends to update them on the latest happenings in their lives.  As lives became busy and distances grew, that evolved to emails sent to friends.  A circle of friends was limited to 20, maybe 30 people.

But that wasn’t enough.  We wanted more friends, more attention.

Enter Facebook.

At first, it was great.  It brought long lost friends together, reunited families across the world, allowed young men to gaze at bikini pictures of young women they barely knew.

But then it got worse.

There came a point where it basically allowed people to broadcast to the world what only their Toto used to know.

Just ate a ham and cheese? Why not tell Facebook about it.  Caught your bus on time?  Facebook would want to know. You favorite baseball team just won one of 162 regular season games? Facebook’s gotta know.  Went to work on a Monday just like everyone else?  You get the point.

If there was an inane, vapid comment popping up in your brain, you had a medium to broadcast it.  What was worse was that there were people commenting on those posts, encouraging and enabling that behavior.

Enter Google+, the anti-Facebook.  Social networkers weary of the Hyde Park podium that is Facebook rejoiced.

Ah, circles.  Circles, where you could create little groups of friends and post information that was relevant just to those friends.

Did your team just win a cricket match?  Celebrate with your “Cricket Fanz” circle.  Found out about a job opening at your company? Help out your buddies in the “9.2% of My Friends” circle.  Just won the lottery?  Oh, what the hell, post it to everyone.

But it didn’t work.  Man’s inherent need for unwarranted attention and self-importance came in the way.

In my three weeks of using Google+, I have seen it become yet another extension of Facebook.  In an absolutely unscientific survey of my stream, 85% of the posts are still sent to the “Public”.  Even “Limited” posts are addressed to over 50 people.

Could circles already be dead?

I hope not, because I think it’s an idea Facebook was never able to figure out (or maybe didn’t want to figure out).  It could be that people are still warming up to the idea and we will see more use of it in the near future.

Until then, I look forward to the day I will have only relevant content in my stream.  Sorry, friend-who-just-saw-a-puppy-and-decided-to-post-a-picture-of-it, I really don’t care.

Are you having similar experiences? Will Google+ ultimately succeed? Click the link to vote!

Google+ just announced it has reached more than 15 million users. It’s the fastest growing social network to date.

But, will it ultimately succeed? We asked this question during a recent Razorfish Search NY meeting.

 

The success criteria:

- 500 million users.

- Surpass Facebook’s ad revenue.

 

The results:

The ‘Yes’ crowd and the ‘No’ crowd are just about split. However, there are more males in the ‘Yes’ crowd and more females in the ‘No’ crowd.

Looks like Google+ is a frat house for now.

The last time this style of voting happened, the vast majority of the team predicted that the iPad would be a failure.

Well, in the words of the urban poet Jay-Z, “Men lie. Women lie. Numbers don’t.” The iPad sold 1 million units in 28 days and has sold over 25 million units to date.

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What do you think about Google+? Will it succeed? Vote below!

 

 

 

Google+ Circles could solve a huge problem for marketers attempting to connect with consumers in the Social space: segmentation. Sure, you can buy advertising against segmentation, but can you speak to your consumers by segmentation? Nope. You wouldn’t use the same vernacular, inside jokes, or offers in London that you would in New York City, example: take away vs. take out.

Brands on Facebook, especially in location-sensitive verticals have felt the pain of this dilemma. Do you create separate identities for separate countries, regions, states, etc.? That seems to contradict the entire purpose doesn’t it? Your brand isn’t Bob in New York and Billy in Alabama.

But, brands do need some control in order to increase the relevance of the content they share with their followers. Insert Google+ Circles.

And, in case you’re not overly familiar with the awesomeness of Circles just yet, here’s a quick overview:

 

Think about the example above on Facebook, whereby brands wishing to speak to consumers in a local manner may have to establish multiple pages or risk alienating a large portion of their following with each broadcast. With Google+, brands could set up Circles by country, by state, or even by behaviors. While this level of control would be HUGE for brands, it is completely contingent on Google allowing brands to segment Circles in this manner.

So, Mr. CEO of Google, you’ve promised business-centric offerings for Google+… go ahead and add this one to the list.