May 24th, 2011
When preparing a Facebook audit for a brand, a cookie-cutter approach won’t work. Each brand has its own factors that must be considered when evaluating campaign strategy, but there are some common strategies you can use to create killer audits for any brand.
Many Brands Within The Brand
Some large brands consist of many sub-brands. Let’s consider P&G as an example brand. They have many sub-brands, 23 of which have over a billion dollars in annual sales. Some of these sub-brands include Tide, Bounty, Pampers, Duracell, etc. Ideally, this type of megabrand should have a portfolio of sub-brands that tie back into a central hub page. The central hub is often weak, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but strengthening the hub will usually result in strengthening the brand overall.
When measuring the power of the megabrand, especially when comparing against their competitors, be sure to include their overall portolio (i.e. P&G vs. Unilever), as well as brand-to-brand comparisons of the sub-brands, such as Duracell vs. Energizer.
Targeting and Relevancy
When designing sample Facebook ads, remember that success with Facebook relies on being SUPER relevant to users. Let’s take a look at a few examples of how this can be applied.
Utilize Brand Connections
If the user is already familiar with the brand via a related connection, target those users specifically. For example, Tide has sponsored a car in Nascar for a long time. Fans of Darryl Waltrip and Ricky Rudd are then likely to also be fans of Tide, so targeting the fans of those Nascar champions is an easy win.
Leverage Existing Campaigns
We can leverage the power of a brand’s existing advertising. For example, if the brand is Yoplait yogurt, you know that they’ve spent a huge amount of money on the pink lids for breast cancer ad campaign. By targeting Susan Komen, breast cancer, and related interests– and then pairing that targeted base with a message that Yoplait supports breast cancer research, you can make their existing non-Facebook ad campaigns work double-time here. Send users to an appropriate web page that has a Like button on it (preferably on the Facebook page), to solidify that connection.
Harvest Celebrity Endorsements
Someone else has already done the footwork needed to attach a celebrity’s fan base to the brand, so harvest that base. For example, Carrie Underwood uses Olay, so target Carrie’s fans with relevant messages and landing pages for the Olay brand on Facebook. There is a LOT of celebrity traffic – a lot more than people who say they like laundry detergent or batteries or skin care products – so harvest that mass of low-hanging fruit.
Milk The Competitors
There’s nothing wrong with actually reaching out to the fans of the competition. For instance, if they like the Energizer Bunny, it’s possible they’ll also like Duracell. This can be hit or miss, as some fans are loyal to a fault and won’t have any desire to switch, but you won’t know without testing. Many fans are on the fence and can be pretty easily persuaded to flip.
Manage The Audit Process
The simplest tool to have on hand during the audit research phase is the spreadsheet. First, research a list of the interests that are related to each of the brands. Create a spreadsheet consisting of one row per interest, using four columns:
- Interest
- Audience Size (shown in Ad tool)
- Relevant Brand Fan Page URL
- Relationship Between the Interest and the Brand
The relationship column should include things like:
- Is the interest a competitor of the brand?
- Is the interest a non-profit that the brand supports?
- Is the interest a celebrity that endorses the brand?
- Is the interest a current advertising campaign that the brand is using?
When possible, ensure the spreadsheet includes at least a dozen interests. If the brand is a huge megabrand, you might end up with perhaps a hundred interest targets, all in the same spreadsheet.
With smart, highly relevant targeting, you can show the benefits of a Facebook campaign to any brand – big or small.
Tags: ads, advertising, audit, brands, facebook ads platform, facebook advertising, target
Posted in Facebook, Learning Center | No Comments »
May 12th, 2011
I did a quick calculation in Excel to determine how far an ad server should run before automatically shutting off an ad or making a bid decision. An ad server can shut down due to the URL being down, being scrubbed, the landing page not converting, the particular ad not performing, or another variable.
Let’s say that you have an offer that converts at 1%. Then you’d expect to have 1 conversion in every 100 clicks. What if 200 clicks go by and there are no conversions? Is that a sign of something bad or is that just noise?
The math of calculating statistical significance can be complicated, so I’m going to show you a short cut that comes from probability theory. If you want to go straight to the formula skip to the bottom.
Switching examples, let’s say that you flipped a coin 100 times. What is the probability that you get at least 1 head? You might want to calculate the probability of getting just 1 head in 100 tosses, add that to the probability of getting 2 heads, and so forth– all the way up to 100 heads. This is lots of math.
But did you know that the opposite of at least one is none? If you didn’t get at least 1 head, you got none. Thus, the probability of not getting a head each time you flip is 50%, so the answer is just 50% to the 100th power.
Back to our offer that converts at 1%, the probability of a click NOT converting is 99%– 100 percent minus 1 percent. Thus, the probability of not getting a conversion in X clicks is just 99% to the Xth degree. If 200 clicks go by, you would expect to see 2 conversions– but if there are none, what is the probability it’s just random noise?
Plug those numbers in and you’ll see that if an offer should convert at 1% and you see 200 clicks go by, then it’s a 13.4% chance that something is wrong and therefore a 86.6% chance that things are fine. If you change the conversion rate and number of observations, then the probability changes, too– just plug in the numbers.
Now before you set up a script to alert you to changes in conversion rates, consider that if you set the thresholds for alerts too low, you’ll get inundated with false positives– the equivalent of “crying wolf”.
So in the above case, if there’s a 13.4% chance something is actually wrong– the URL being down, the offer sucking, the ad not performing, or otherwise– and you’re running 20,000 clicks a day, then you are evaluating this test 100 times a day (200 x 100 = 20,000). Thus, you’d get alerted, on average, 13 times a day to check if something is wrong. Is that too many times for you? You decide the balance of sensitivity that’s right for you.
If your expected conversion rate is 5%, for example on dating offer, then you’d expect to see a conversion every 20 clicks. Thus, the probability you don’t have any conversions after 200 clicks is far less than if you expect 1%. In fact, the probability is 0.004%.
If you’re not a math guy or somehow got lost in all the numbers here, just use this rule of thumb. If you don’t have a conversion in 3 times as many clicks as you’d expect to get one conversion, then something is probably wrong.
So if you expect to see 1 conversion every 25 clicks, then shut things down after 75 clicks.
If you expect 1 conversion in 100 clicks, then stop after 300 clicks.
That gives you a 95% confidence interval– another way of saying that you’re reasonably sure that it’s something worth looking at.
Set your confidence interval too low and you get false positives all day.
Set it too high and you’ll burn way more inventory than you should to detect differences in conversion.
See chart below– the percentages there are the chance that the alert is due to just statistical noise. 100% minus each number is, therefore, the chance that there’s a problem. For example, if you are looking at a 2% conversion rate and 200 clicks, then there’s a 1.76% chance nothing is wrong and a 98% chance that something is out of whack.
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If you want to discuss the formulas in more detail, just reply in the comments and I’ll do my best to get back to you.
Here’s to more profits to you!
Related Reading:
Tags: conversions, PPC
Posted in Learning Center | No Comments »
April 26th, 2011
This webinar was presented by:
Brendan King, CEO, Vendasta
Mike Hartrich, Director of Digital Products, LocalEdge
Greg Sterling, Opus Research
Intro:
Small business are increasingly interested in social media and “conversational commerce”. However what does that actually mean? After the Twitter account or Facebook page is established, what next? SMBs and the sales channels and publishers that serve them are struggling with how to divide the labor and bring social marketing to SMBs but in ways that are efficient and still preserve the “authentic voice” of the local businesses.
Greg begins with a few words about himself and Opus Research and then presents a series of surveys that were done which helps us see the current state of the rise of social media and its impact upon small businesses.
The Rise Of Social Media For SMBs Occurred Because Of Several Factors:
- SMBs claim that most of their business comes from WoM (word of mouth)
- Reviews/social media are an extension of WoM, and they can be very powerful.
- Social tools and sites are free or cheap
- Social media is more intuitive, giving SMBs the confidence that they “can do it all by myself”
- SMBs are following the consumer, going where they are (e.g. 600 million facebook users)
Survey: Are You Marketing Savvy?
In one survey, 65% of the respondents chose either “neutral” or “not savvy”.
Survey: How Do Customers Find You?
- 82% word of mouth
- 66% search/internet
- 37% “advertising”
- 23% yellow pages, etc.
Survey: Current and Future Media
Most Used Media Right Now: Created a social profile, IYP/newspaper site, email marketing, print yellow pages, blog, direct mail, print newspaper
Plan To Use Soon: email, video, blog, direct mail, print newspaper
Won’t Use: TV, local radio, groupon/deals
Survey: Current Marketing Methods
Company website, social media, email marketing, seo, ppc, online display, video, blog
Survey: Top Sites Used By SMBs To Promote Business
- Google/Google Places
- Facebook
- Yahoo
- Linkedin
- Twitter
- Citysearch
- Yellowbook
- Bing
- Superpages
- Yelp
Survey: Why Do You Have A Facebook Page?
- 41% had a Facebook page vs. 27% a year ago
- It’s an easy / affordable way to create extended awareness of the business
- Best way to communicate with customers
- We have to to stay competitive
- Important way to generate sales
Survey: Social Media Benefits
- 41% better relationship with customers
- 37% increase visitors to site
- 29% increased phone calls
- 28% increased sales
New: Facebook Deals
The Groupon / daily deals phenomenon is now coming together with the Facebook pages platform.
Social Media Challenges: Time, ROI
- 66% of SMBs said they updated Facebook at least weekly
- 63% feel social media has helped make customers more loyal
- 56% feel social media has taken up more time than they expected
- 25% estimate that they made a profit on their social media spend while 15% estimate they have lost money. The remaining respondents said they broke even
- Many SMBs often think that social media has fallen short of their expectations
Mike presents next:
Social Media – A Small Business Perspective
What Are Business Owners – HEARING?
Customers are saying to SMBs:
- Where can Ii find you online?
- Is your site up to date?
- What about this review I read about you?
- Can I find you on Facebook?
- Do you have Foursquare coupons?
Other business owners & analysts are saying to SMBs:
- You need to be on Facebook
- You need a mobile strategy
- You need to be on deals site
- You need to engage more
What Are Business Owners – SEEING?
- New technology
- New articles
- New studies
- New growth stats
- New sites
- New channels
- OVERWHELMED
What Are Business Owners – FACING?
- Advertising/customer
- Engagement segmentation
In the past, small business owners split their focus between main business activities. Now owners must:
- Assure their website is updated
- Monitor their SEM PPC campaigns
- Review their organic SEO listings
- Update social media
- Monitor business reputation
SMBs are finding it tough to stay authentic and still push sales.
What Are Business Owners – SAYING?
- They need help.
- They cant keep up with their website, blog, SEO, PPC, Facebook updates, online reviews, daily deals
- Confused, distracting, cluttered
- How are my competitors doing?
- How can I track online?
- Is there a service that manages all this?
What Are Business Owners – MISSING?
Many SMBs dont have:
- Websites
- Basic CRM
- Social presence
Many SMB owners are:
- Too busy
- Lacking experience
- Behind the curve
- Too sales-focused
- Missing the point
- Not able to track
What Are Business Owners – CHANGING?
- Focused on online
- Engaging their users
- Building knowledge
- Sharing their experiences
- Seeking partners
- Gaining confidence
- Running out of TIME
What Are Business Owners – DOING?
Finding Success:
- Testing self-service
- Finding online agencies
- Expanding traditional relationships
- Hiring talent in-house
Building/Buying:
- Websites
- Social presence
- Reputation management
- Online CRM
- Analytics
Content creation is a challenge – or rather, doing enough of it. For example, posting on Facebook and Twitter on a regular basis is hard. They are looking to partners to help them build that content.
Brendan begins his presentation now.
The explosion of reviews and UGC content is everywhere.
What is Reputation Management?
- Presence/visibility
- Reviews
- Mentions
- Social engagement
- Competition/industry benchmarking
The medium is two-way, not just push – consumers can participate so it has implications on reputation, which makes it scary for the business owner. The brand becomes what your customers say it is, not what you say it is.
Their company released some stats and wants to qualify the data they used. They chose 2000 random accounts from all users who use their services. These random accounts came from secondary and tertiary markets rather than the large markets such as New York or Los Angeles, so that the numbers would be more representative of the typical SMB. Here is what they found.
Presence/Visibility
They look at what kind of presence the SMBs have across 25 social networks, to see what the business’ current visibility is. They found that 32% have 10-14 social media listings, 27% have 5-9 listings, and 15% have more than 15 listings, with the rest having fewer than 5 listings. Even in small markets, 49.8% of SMBs that use their services already have a Facebook page, while only 5% have a Twitter account. In addition a large number of them have a page on Foursquare that they don’t know about, so they have not claimed those pages. Many of those unclaimed Foursquare pages have check-ins, which the business owners are unaware of.
Reviews
22.3% of all those SMBs have reviews, which is up from 8% last year.
- Yelp: 51.1% of those SMBs have Yelp reviews
- Google: 17.4% of them have Google reviews
Reviewed Businesses By Category:
- 40.4% – local services
- 13.4% – restaurants
- 12.6% – local shopping
- The remaining business are across many smaller categories
Mentions
99.7% of the SMBs had “some” mention of them online
SMB Usage Of Their Reputation Management Tool
Within one month of receiving alerts, 13.6% of SMBS logged in to interact with the tool. At some point, over time as they use the tool, they have a lightbulb moment, and they come back more frequently. The average time per visit is just over 7 minutes, and 20.1% spend over 10 minutes per visit.
This was the end of the presentation. What follows is the Q&A:
Q: Someone wanted to know if they believed the SMBs when they stated that most of their business came from WoM?
A: Everyone agreed that if the business owners were to dig deeper, they would likely realize that they lumped together a few different channels into WoM, mainly because they dont really know where the leads are coming from.
Q: How should SMBs manage the task of dividing up labor between themselves and the partner(s) helping them keep up their content creation (both on site and on Facebook, etc)?
A: They’ve found that partners are helping SMBs craft the message that goes out, including idea generation, and that is effective. It is challenging, however, to get a small business owner to get focused on building out those relationships, rather than just concentrating on making sales.
Q: PPC vs. social media? Are SMBs becoming less focused on paid search as they move towards social? Or are they embracing both?
A: They are seeing more SMBs branching out – not replacing – just adding social to the marketing mix. SMBs are looking for a balanced approach. They want to work with trusted partners that direct them into channels which are good fits for their business – showing them what works best for their vertical.
Q: SMBs are screaming, “Help me, Help me!” How do you scale that?
A: Instead of just selling, selling, selling, SMBs need to build relationships. They need tools and guidance to help them do that easily.
Q: Look into the future. Predict major trends in a year or a year and a half.
Mike: As SMBs get more engaged and spend more time and priority on content creation and doins more CRM, they will be seeing the effects of what they’ve done.
Brendan: The future holds more social media. The nature of advertising has changed, and SMBs need to catch up. Reviews won’t go away. SMBs need more transparency, direct contact, and more openness. They’ll see more complexity and confusion, which is why guidance and tools is so important.
Tags: SMB, Social media
Posted in Facebook, SEO and Marketing | No Comments »
April 25th, 2011
Retargeting is a new buzzword that is quickly spreading through the marketing community. Many online business owners have heard the term recently but aren’t quite sure what it means. I spent some time researching this fast-growing marketing technique and wanted to share my findings with you.
Let’s start with a common definition of retargeting. Retargeting, also commonly known as “behavioral retargeting” or “behavioral remarketing”, essentially means targeting ads and marketing efforts at consumers and prospects who have previously visited your website, but did not convert.
The key here is that you target your ads only at users who have visited your site, have had some kind of experience with your brand, and who are now considered “lost” users. Retargeting aims to bring those lost users back to you, using ads that can skip the “introduction to your brand” phase.
Anyone who sells anything on the web understands that converting is the number one goal. Retargeting allows you to go after those lost conversions, and some studies show that retargeting can increase conversion rates by up to 125%.
Keys To Successful Retargeting Campaigns
- Granular targeting: Being able to segment your visitors into small, tightly focused groups enables precise retargeting. For example, by knowing exactly which specific products and services your visitors engaged with on your site, you can later deliver those same product ad to that group of users.
- Working with ad networks who have the technology to track and use the information obtained to present retargeted ads across a large network of sites is essential to making this work. When a user visits your site, a cookie is dropped to track that user’s interests on your site. You share that cookie with your ad network, who in turn, serves relevant ads to that same user as he or she lands on any other site that uses that ad network to serve ads.
- Personalization of the ad is critical. You’ll set business rules to determine which ads get displayed (using dynamic content insertion) based on various factors, such as whether the user is a registered user of your site and has supplied you with an email address in the past, what phase of the buying cycle she is likely to be in, how many times she has visited and left without converting, etc.
- Careful and continuous analysis of web analytics is a must to create successful retargeting campaigns. Knowing which ads work, and which ads the user has seen too many times are equally vital. A good campaign will provide a variety of ads aimed at promoting the same thing to measure success and frequency caps to avoid ad burnout.
- Dynamic, customized landing pages work well. If a retargeted ad is successful in bring a user back to your site, acknowledging her return can welcome her and personalize the experience for her.
- Once a retargeted user converts, the cookie is removed, and the user falls out of the retargeting group.
- You can also use the same concept of retargeting in the social realm, though with admittedly less control, since you won’t be able to drop a cookie. You’ll also be limited to a narrow online world, but one which your users are likely spending most of their time. One of the big advantages of utilizing Facebook ads, for example, is that the ads can be targeted to highly specific groups. You can set up ads to target only Facebook users who have a relevant interest (or is a fan of a competitor), and who aren’t fans of you yet. Send them to a specific landing page. If they don’t convert (they don’t click the Like button), you can continue to show them a variety of different ads to remind them of your offer. You’ll also need to be careful to avoid ad burnout here, and may need to create shorter-term campaigns when retargeting within a social network. If your retargeting efforts succeed and a user converts, she’ll drop out of the user pool that you’re targeting with this group of ads.
Add Retargeting To The Marketing Mix
Marketers always want to supply the right ad to the right user at the right time. Sometimes, that means showing a generic display ad that introduces your brand to users who have never heard of you. Other times, you may show ads to search engine users with relevant PPC ads. Now, with retargeting, you can also show personalized ads to users who have already visited your site and failed to convert. Your brand is one they are already familiar with, so you can skip the introductions and move right to the phase of reminding them that they had considered one of your products in the recent past. Reminding “lost” users of your brand – and specific products – enables you to reach an audience that the other types of ads aren’t designed to reach.
Tags: advertising, conversions, facebook advertising
Posted in Facebook, Learning Center, SEO and Marketing | No Comments »
April 21st, 2011
This post was live-blogged from a webinar I attended today. It was presented by:
Susan Etlinger, Altimeter Group
Justin Huskamp, Product Marketing Manager, Coremetrics, an IBM company
The webinar begins with Justin discussing their Coremetrics Social analytics tool:
Social media marketing spend is the fastest growing investment, and will pass email marketing in 2013.
Facebook and Twitter command huge and growing audiences, and are a proven way for brands to reach their customers.
40% of Facebook users “like” companies
51% of twitter users follow companies, brands and products
Social likes and tweets are really just another form of a review.
Do social channels provide any incremental value?
- Social sites are second only to display for generating new visitors.
- Facebook engenders more session loyalty than email, twitter or referring sites.
- Facebook referrals are more efficient at conversions
Why build a social following?
People spend 90% of their Facebook time in their news feed. You NEED to be in the feed. Engagement makes the message viral. Once engaged, that customer is now an evangelist to an average of 137 like-minded friends. So, create a fun and engaging social content and contests. Don’t just throw offers at them.
Tracking Earned Media:
What’s Hot? Tools are needed to show where to focus on good content and good audiences. What’s converting? Once you track it, you need to appropriately attribute earned media alongside all channels. So, track the social channel, then compare it to other channels.
Susan is up now with her portion of the presentation:
Challenges of Social Data Measurement
- Multiple, shifting sources (which leads to)
- Inconsistent dataset
- New behaviors = new data types (what does it mean when someone likes…)
- Inconsistent quality
- No measurement standards (biggest issue)
- Privacy considerations
Social Measurement Sand Traps (3 Challenges)
Data Challenges
- Engagement – no agreement on what it means. Decide what it means for you and be transparent with your organization on that.
- Reach – Partial datasets, inconsistent measures
- Sentiment – Alogrithmic sentiment ~ 75% accurate at best
- Influence – Not all influence is created equal. Someone may have be an influencer to you for web tools, but not for cars or makeup.
Tool Challenges
Have to include new tools that specialize in social space, and old tools that specialize in enterprise crm, analytics, market research, so need tools that are a blend of both.
Organizational Challenges
Each corporate department looking at data in very different ways.
All this adds up to…
data challenges + tool challenges + organizational challenges =
Frankenmetrics
Before you do anything else, have a goal for measurement!
Use approriate metrics at each level:
- Social strategist: engagement metrics: fans, followers, clicks
- Line Of Business/Geo Stakeholders: social media analytics, insights, share of voice, word-of-mouth, resonance
- Corporate Level – Business metrics: revenue, reputation
The Elephant in the Room: ROI of social media (which may be the wrong question)
ROI = [Gain from investment - cost of investment] / Cost of investment
A better question might be: What is the BUSINESS VALUE of social media?
Case Study: Let’s imagine a Comcast customer tweets a complaint about not getting a particular TV channel in his area.
Think KPI, not [just] ROI when looking at this tweet.
How do each of the departments look at this tweet?
- Brand Marketing – Brand impact? Do we deal with it, ignore it, or what?
- Product Marketing – Isolated incident or trend? Should we offer it?
- Competitive Intel – Vulnerability or opportunity to outshine competition?
- Operations – How much did it cost to resolve?
- Customer Service – Did we make the customer happy?
Six Use Cases for Social Media Value
- Brand Health – Understand how people talk about your brand on social web.
- Marketing Optimization – Decision support for social marketing investment
- Revenue Generation – Generating leads, conversions, and revenue via social media
- Operational Productivity – Reducing operational costs via social media (saving money in call centers, for example)
- Customer Experience – Helping customers and improving their experience with your company and across channels
- Product Innovation – Consumer-led ideation
Social Insights and KPIs
1. Brand Health
Insights:
- What topics spark conversation?
- What topics spark emotion?
- Sentiment by social media channel
- Stated intent to purchase
- Whether brand gets credit for promotions
KPIs:
- Volume of social media mentions
- Sentiment
- Share of voice vs. competitors
- Number of fans/followers
- Highest-performing topics
- Number of brand mentions per campaign
2. Marketing Optimization
Insights:
- Which channels generate highest visit loyalty
- Which platforms generate highest logyalty/conversion/revenue
- Where conversations about your brand occur online
- Likeliness to buy based on specified behaviors
- If social channels cannibalize other online channels
- Most effective times to post social content/engage
- Where to find brand advocates
KPIs:
- Conversions/sales by channel
- Impressions by channel
- View-through/click-through by channel
- Visitor loyalty
- Advertising equivalent of earned social media
- Most followed account/people who talk about your brand
3. Revenue Generation
Insights:
- Effectiveness of social channels for conversion and revenue generation
- Likeliness to buy
- Impact of social media on search results
- Whether social channels are cannibalizing other channels
KPIs:
- Conversions by channel
- Sales by channel
- Visit loyalty
- Improved search engine placement
4. Operations Productivity
Insights:
- Potential cost savings from deflected calls
- Most active adovocates
- Which services issues best answered online
- Knowledge base gaps
KPIs:
- Number of calls deflected
- Call deflection savings
- Number of advocates
- Value of advocates
- Reduction/deferred hiring of FTE
5. Customer Experience
Insights:
- Most common service and product issues
- Triangulation of above with service channels
- Acceleration of issues
- Sentiment and emotion drivers
KPIs:
- Number of customer service issues addressed via social channels
- Percentage escalated and resolved
- Percentage of positive ratings and reviews
- Sentiment ratios
6. Innovation
Insights:
- Most common service and product issues
- Customer requests
- Competitive opportunities and threats
KPIs:
- Speed to market
- Product development efficiency
The Future of social Analytics:
- Enterprise-class capabilities such as data quality, integration, governance and scalability will be checkbox items
- A basic ability to understand social data will be come a critical skillset
- Machine learning will continue to improve, but probably not as fast as everyone wants it to.
- In the next 1-2 years, we’ll see social benchmarks
- Ultimately, the terms “social media”, “social business” and “social analytics” will go away.
Recommendations
Focus on which is incidental and which is vital.
- Have an objective
- Know your data
- Think globally, not locally (across the company departments)
- Think directionally (look at data patterns over time)
- Don’t underestimate the soft stuff (processes and people)
That concluded the webinar. I found some useful nuggets of information in this presentation.
Tags: measuring, Social media, webinar
Posted in SEO and Marketing | No Comments »
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