Read here to see what the Facebook engineers had to say, and hear what has worked for several case studies.

Intro: Facebook Platform for Mobile

How has the web changed since the early days?

• Photos!
• Facebook tagging (social)
• Games
• Not focused on rendering the best graphics, but social aspect
• 200 million people playing games on Facebook Platform
• The rise of mobile
• Across all levels of mobile devices
• 350M users of Facebook mobile
• Twice as engaged as desktop version
• Social + Mobile
• Friends, Newsfeed, search, notifications, requests, bookmarks
• Photography, websites, music, communication, games, books

Web Apps (HTML5) Development: Matt Kelly & Vikas Gupta

• How to facilitate sharing with friends
• Problematic when sharing over different types of devices
• Apps don’t exist across platforms
• Hard to share content between them even if apps exist
• How can Facebook fix this?
• The social channels
• Requests: user to user direct messaging
• Make sure they are super fast! Almost real-time
• News Feed: one to many sharing with friends
• Posting, view on wall, view on news feed
• Open Graph: Lightweight, seamless sharing
• Wherever your app lives or works, Facebook distributes properly so there are no holes.
• Bookmarks
• m.facebook.com
• Gives users a specific spot to get back to your app
• Mechanism for engagement
• Native facebook for iPhone
• Payments
• Use credits to monetize apps
• Build social from the ground up
• Search, login auth, directed to app
• Social apps work everywhere
• iPhone, laptop, android, ipad, android tablet
• HTML5 works across all platforms

Native App + Open Graph: Aryeh Selekman & Christine Abernathy:

• iOS and Android + Facebook platform
• Open Source Native SDKs
• Developer app settings
• Fields to configure iOS and Android apps
• Linking and app distribution works appropriately if these fields are filled out correctly
• Single Sign On (SSO) login without typing
• Login with facebook button

• Understanding Native Distribution
• If an iOS or app exists, all requests/News Feed Stories/Timeline stories will link directly to native app (or apple store if not installed)
• On android, requests/News Feed Stories/Timeline stories wil only direct to your mobile web app
• 5 Best Practices
• 1. Build a mobile web app
• HTML5: distribution on m.facebook.com on all webkit enabled touch browsers
• native wrappers
• take advantage of SSO capabilities

• 2. Implement SSO
• 3. Implement requests for app discoverability
• Rate now, invite friends, send requests
• 4. Leverage existing friend graph
• Promote activity and interaction
• Re-engagement
• Push notification through native channels to let you know your friends joined
• 5. Get your app on timeline

• Open Graph and Mobile Apps
• One API – distribution to ticker, Timeline, newsfeed
• Allows you to define what people do in your application
• Reading, listening, watching, etc.
• 4 Steps to get started using open graph
• 1. Define your actions and objects
• Action verbs
• 2. Design your Timeline aggregations
• Pictures, maps, represent actions and data that people send through
• 3. Markup and expose your objects
• Everything represented by underlying URL
• Where do objects live
• 4. Publish actions
• Object URL
• Action names

Native Distribution for Mobile Apps

Case Study: PhoneGap

• Pattern
• Embed a chromeless browser in a native app
• Create a bridge between the browser and the native code providing access to native APIs
• Write a web app
• Package the web app with the native code and deploy to devices
• Write once debug everywhere
• Take note
• HTML, JS, CSS included in an app package
• HTML loaded on file:// URI scheme, no cross domain request restrictions
• Engineering wise, approach is simple to extend to new platforms
• Support Platforms
• iOS, Android, BB, webOS, Symbian, Windows Phone (mango), Samsung Bada
• Mobile first!
• HTML5: write native code easily, scale like an app so width is design width – no pinch zoom etc
• CSS3: webkit transformations
• The future
• Tooling
• WebGL
• Facebook, Linkedin, Walmart use case
• Continue polyfilling HTML5

Case Study: Washington Post Social Reader

• Coding for the futures
• Everything you write effects possible futures
• Architect for the foreseeable futures
• Short term futures
• Building mobile second
• Use mobile to rethink boundaries
• Roll mobile learning back into the webapp

Case Study: Thuzi

• Hospitality app
• Social by design
• Send invites, RSVPs
• Share great offers with my friends
• Provide reviews of the experience
• Capture the moment for a special occasion (Timeline)
• Local by design
• Dining is a local experience
• Find a local restaurant
• Invite friends, redeem offers, find out what’s happening
• Native by design
• Want to ensure you have access to the newest native APIs
• Want to have the fastest app possible
• Want to guarantee formatting correctness
• More choices for monetization – iAds, etc
• Many existing open source libraries and blog posts and tutorials
• Are not dependent upon plugins or other 3^rd party series for push notifications

Original at Facebook Mobile Hack NYC BlitzLocal

The Bottom Line: Facebook Ads are the most versatile, targeted way to advertise online, and they have incredible reach.

Challenges with Facebook Advertising

• Banner Blindness
• You have to hire a graphic artist to make all the ad creatives

Facebook Glossary:

• Connections: The number of individuals who liked your Facebook page, RSVP’d to your event, or installed your app within 24 hours of seeing your ad or sponsored story. Basically, a connection is a conversion.
• Unique Reach: The number of individual people who saw your sponsored stories or ads.
• Social Reach: The number of people who saw your sponsored stories or ads because their friends liked your page, RSVP’d to your event, or used your app.
• Frequency: The average number of times each person saw your campaign’s sponsored story or ad. This is helpful for measuring ad fatigue.

Basic Ad Formats

• Basic Ads
  • “Like” ad: Links to tab on Facebook page
  • Event ad: Links to event
  • Application ad: Links to application
  • Standard ad: Links to specific URL
  • Sponsored Stories
    • Page “Like” Story: Mary-Jane likes your page, Page “like” Story lets Mary-Jane’s friends know about the like
    • Page Post Story: You published a post to your page’s fans. Page Post Story allows this post to show up in fans’ news feeds
    • Pages Post “Like” Story; Alex liked one of your page posts in the last 7 days. Page Post “like” Story lets Alex’s friends know about the post like
    • App Used and Game Played Story: Lauren played/used your game or app. App Used/Game Played Story tells her friends about this action
    • App Share Story: Hayes shared a story from your app in the last 7 Days. App Share Story lets Hayes’ friends know about the share
    • Check-in Story: Lisa checked in or claimed a deal using Facebook Places. Check-in Story lets Lisa’s friends know about it.
    • Domain Story: Mike liked/shared content from your website or pasted a link from your site to his wall. Domain Story lets Mike’s friends know about this action.

The complexity and potential of targeting on Facebook

• There are so many ways of targeting that it can be confusing
  • Age, likes, interests, birthday, apps, education, timeline content, friends, event RSVPs, fans
  • When choosing targets, focus on two things:
    • Narrowing your audience
      • Demo and Geo Targeting
        • Geography: Country, State, Province, City or Zip targeting
        • Demographics: Gender, Age, Birthday, Relationship Status, Language
        • Workplace and Education Targeting
          • Workplace, Education, Preferred Language
        • Likes and Interests Targeting
          • Favorite TV Shows, Movies, Books, Music, Hobbies, Religion, Political Views
• Thinking outside the box – Let’s say you want to sell golf clubs
  • Nick (who plays golf) is an obvious target
  • Barbara doesn’t like golf – but she likes the Palm Beach Country Club
  • Chaz doesn’t have the word golf anywhere on his profile, but he plays golf for a living: he’s a sales guy!
  • Try the obvious targets, but Facebook’s best advertisers use non-linear thinking to target ads.

Campaign Organization Tips

• An “Account” in Facebook is similar to a “Campaign” in Paid Search
• A “Campaign” in Facebook is similar to “Ad Group” in Paid Search
• Warning: Don’t create campaigns with many different targets and ads. Keep your campaigns small.
• Do not put all segmented target groups in one campaign – as your ads are competing within the campaign.
• Prevent ad fatigue, or banner blindness by changing ads frequently
  • As soon as CTR trends down, submit new content!

Q&A:

What is a good CTR?

• Anywhere from 0.1-0.4 is really strong CTR, even .08% is okay
• Dennis Yu, CEO at BlitzLocal outlines 11 Killer Ways to Increase Your Facebook CTR

What images work best?

• Logos traditionally don’t work well
• Images of people are effective
• Format design keeping small size in account

What is a preferred or optimal frequency?

• Keep it small!
• 6,7,8 is bad

Any issues with click fraud?

• There is a department at Facebook dedicated to click fraud with a sophisticated monitoring team.
• More difficult to produce in Facebook than in search where you can just search to make a specific ad appear.

How will timeline affect ads/business pages?

• Yet to be determined!

Fans much more likely to take some type of action than non-fans.

Targeting workplaces is a great tool for B2B marketing.

What sort of company uses page post story? How breaking should the news be? What types of posts work best?

• Entertainment, news businesses using these most effectively
• Have emotional connection so people will click

Is there advertising on Facebook mobile?

• In testing, not released to general public yet.

Notes taken by BlitzLocal Analyst Matt Prater

Graphics obtained from: http://www.slideshare.net/TradaPaidSearch/facebook-ads-you-can-make-them-work and www.facebook.com.

Original at “Facebook Ads: You Can Make Them Work!” Webinar by Trada BlitzLocal

1. Locate the conversations
2. Gauge the overall sentiment of those conversations
3. Participate in the conversations
4. Work towards increasing positive sentiment

Tools to help businesses locate the conversations that are taking place around their brands, products, and services have proliferated over the years, so achieving #1 is generally a piece of cake.

Participating in the conversations simply requires good old-fashioned customer service, as does increasing positive sentiment, although a fair amount of training may be required to teach employees how to navigate different social networks, and help them understand just how public their interactions really are. Despite the extra training, numbers 3 and 4 are still hands-on, human-touch activities that that businesses already understand how to handle, and they generally don’t handle being automated very well. Customers would rather have no interaction with a company, than to have nothing more than automated robots attempting to solve their problems.

So if number 1 is easy to solve with automated tools, and numbers 3 and 4 are handled primarily with human-touch activities, what about the second need – gauging the overall sentiment? This is an area that into that fuzzy, not-quite-sure-how-to-handle area. People and businesses are trying to automate this process because applying a sentiment grade to huge datasets is beyond the capacity of manual human power. At the same time, trusting a machine to correctly analyze sentiment is fraught with problems.

Let’s first consider the ways that a machine might analyze sentiment.

Methodology 1: analyze human-scored data, in which humans first analyze and rate sentiment of each piece of data, and the machine then analyzes those ratings to produce reports and aggregated summaries.

Methodology 2: the machine applies a human-scored dictionary of phrases to incoming data, then analyze the data to produce reports and aggregated summaries.

Both methodologies require manual human action first, and neither is a perfect solution. Either humans must score data, as in methodology 1, which is not scalable, or humans must score dictionary phrases, as in methodology 2, which is much less accurate because the phrases cannot take things like mixed messages or sarcasm into consideration. “I love my ugly shoes”, has both positive and negative dictionary words (love and ugly). How should a machine evaluate that? Or “Wow, that’s the most awesome mullet I’ve ever seen!” might sound positive to a machine, based on words such as “wow” and “awesome”, but that algorithm will miss the fact that the user was being sarcastic.

For now, the best solution seems to be the human/machine/human process. Humans must first create phrase dictionaries (or use ones created by others), possibly run actual data through a group of humans who score the data as the basis for which machine learning can rely on, then let the machine classify new, incoming data using the human-scoring process as a way to improve the machine algorithm. The entire process should be repeated as often as deemed necessary. Eventually, the classifier should improve, but humans will always be needed to oversee the results.

Clearly, this process is not merely a matter of humans vs. machines. Both are required to properly handle sentiment analysis.

“It’s hard enough to determine sentiment via email– think of when you may have misinterpreted tone in your own personal communications. Now try to determine sentiment when you have only 140 characters or when a third of these interactions come through a mobile device. Irony, sarcasm, and humor are hard to convey via a 4 inch touch screen. Thus, automated sentiment analysis is problematic, at best, but can at least give you a general sense of how your customers feel. Then manual checking of sentiment can sit on top of your automated monitoring.”

– Dennis Yu, CEO of BlitzLocal

So how should companies gauge sentiment if automated tools aren’t sophisticated enough to pick up on sarcasm, for instance, but humans aren’t scalable to meet the growing flow of data?

There may not be a “correct answer” to this question, but I believe a smart strategy is to choose the best tool to meet your particular needs, and then use intelligent, business and marketing savvy humans to “analyze the analysis”. This human-based analysis of the analysis will ensure that the data reports are not only correct, but are also actionable. After all, knowing that 93 customers are unhappy is a meaningless metric. Understanding which customers are unhappy, and why they are unhappy, leads to being able to take the necessary action to accomplish goals 3 and 4 – participating in conversations and improving sentiment.

Let’s take a look at a few ways that sentiment analysis an be turned into direct action:

Customer service: find specific complaints and negative sentiment, so those users feelings and issues can be addressed, before they cause widespread brand damage.

Promos and offers: determine how a new promotion is doing, enabling quick decisions on what to promote further, and what to discard. Sometimes, a promotion backfires, and should be pulled (and perhaps explained) before negative sentiment explodes.

Understand conversion problems: make note of potential blocks within the conversion funnel that is creating negative sentiment, thereby causing potential sales to fall off the cliff.

As I mentioned early on, there are many tools to help locate and monitor the conversations taking place about your business. These tools range from the simple Google Alerts tool to the more robust and complex Radian6, with most small businesses choosing a tools that fall somewhere in the middle, such as socialmention or Trackur.

Some tools that are either entirely focused upon sentiment analysis, or include sentiment analysis as one feature of a broader social monitoring tool, include:

• OpenAmplify
• Social Mention
• Amplified Analytics
• Lithium
• SAS Sentiment Analysis
• Trackur
• Radian6
• Collective Intellect
• Heartbeat
• Webtrends Social Measurement

Which tool is chosen will depend heavily upon company needs and budget. Regardless of the tool used, however, the question businesses need to ask is, “Do we have the manpower needed to properly assess the results, and then take action to enhance or improve sentiment?”

A smart marketing team, in conjunction with a customer service team, should do “an analysis of the analysis” to determine the next steps to take. Understanding the causes of sentiment and making smart marketing and customer service decisions based upon that understanding requires people who are trained and highly skilled in these areas. These people may be in-house, or may be a part of an outsourced social media marketing agency such as BlitzLocal provides, but what is clear is that while machines may be necessary to process large datasets to calculate sentiment, humans are a crucial factor in not only refining the analysis, but in taking necessary actions based upon that analysis.

Original at Understanding Sentiment – It’s Not Just A Humans vs. Machines Approach BlitzLocal

When I googled “social media vs. seo” (in quotes) this morning, 12,400 results were returned. Restricting the same search to only the past year, over 800 results are returned. Obviously, many people are pitting the two against one another, and have been for some time.

There’s little sense, in my mind, in postulating whether social media is better than SEO or SEO is better than social media. Making these two marketing channels adversaries is akin to pitting shirts against pants/shorts. For those people who don’t wear dresses or jumpsuits, they’ll likely be wearing a shirt and a pair of pants. Asking them which is better will probably only result in having them give you a look that implies they think you’ve lost your mind.

Cross-Channel Marketing Rules

When promoting anything, whether it’s a business, a website, a product, or a brand, promotion works best when it covers a broad spectrum of marketing channels. Television ad campaigns work best when they are reinforced by radio campaigns, magazine campaigns, newspaper campaigns, email campaigns, etc. Cross-channel marketing succeeds because the layers of reinforcing messages work together to create a connection with the target audience.

Waves of Data Engulf Users

People today are absorbing external stimuli in huge waves of data, much like a whale ingests enormous swarms of krill. It is unlikely that a whale would be able to pick out the one particular krill that tasted peculiar amongst the millions he ingested. Likewise, the data we absorb each day is so large and diverse, that recognizing and remembering one marketing message amongst the continuous data flow is rather low. It’s much easier for a lone marketing message to be lost in the flow than it would be if it were repeatedly reinforced by entering the data stream in various ways, from various places, and at various times.

Be Where They Are

The goal should always be to interact with users where they are. If they are searching via a search engine, then an SEO campaign can help reach them during that process. Of course, a PPC campaign also works hand-in-hand with SEO to cover both the organic and paid listings that are returned in the search results for the queries relevant to your brand, service, or product.

Users are spending a considerable amount of time on social networks, so a social media campaign is needed to reach them there. Like the concept of using both SEO and PPC campaigns to cover organic and paid search listings, social media campaigns will include organic interactions such as tweets, Facebook Likes and wall posts, etc., in addition to paid interactions such as promoted tweets and Facebook ad campaigns.

Value In Each Piece Reinforces Overall Value

Each channel will reach users at a different point in the marketing funnel, so the value should be calculated and compared in relation to other marketing efforts aimed at that same audience. In most cases, a search user is likely to be in one part of the marketing funnel, and a Facebook user is in another (or may even be outside of the funnel altogether). Pitting the value of an SEO campaign aimed at the search user against the value of a social media campaign aimed at the Facebook user will only result in a confusing matchup. There is value in both, with each being one important part of an entire cross-channel promotion.

Give each marketing channel its own level of respect, evaluating the effectiveness of each using data that is relevant to that particular channel. Analyze how well the campaign is working within its channel, adjust, re-analyze, adjust again, until you are satisfied that it is accomplishing the goals you set for that particular channel.

Make sure each channel’s message is consistent with the messages from other channels, so that every channel reinforces the others. As the daily influx of data streams through each person, those reinforcing messages will build upon one another and help the entire package of marketing messages stand out in the user’s mind.

The key isn’t to compare seo vs. social media, but to use the right messages in the right formats to ensure the best chance of reaching users at the right time and in the right place. The more often you can accomplish that, with consistent messaging, the more successful each campaign will be, no matter which channel it was focused upon.

Let us know if you’ve found a particular combination of cross-channel marketing especially successful, or if you’ve had problems connecting various channels to create a tight overall campaign.

Original at Social Media vs. SEO – No Contest! BlitzLocal

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.

Original at Create Rock-Solid Facebook Audits Every Time BlitzLocal

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.

.

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:

• How to use Google Conversion Optimizer in just 3 minutes
• Dennis Yu gives Facebook optimization tips for hosting companies
• GoogleAnalytics vs. Omniture: Independent Analysis
• Funeral marketing is no grave matter – Focus on conversion rates
• 11 Killer Ways to Increase Your Facebook CTR

Original at Want to Calculate the Best Conversions? BlitzLocal

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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. Once a retargeted user converts, the cookie is removed, and the user falls out of the retargeting group.
7. 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.

Original at What’s Up With Retargeting? BlitzLocal

Mike presented first and began with some statistics:

86% of television viewers skip tv ads and 44% discard direct mail without even looking at it . People went from filtering out advertising via TV and print, and now are also filtering out email as well. In addition, the spam filters that we are familiar with in email, are also now social, and social cues are used to filter messages. Where email used to be organized by date, and flagrant spam was sent to the bottom of the pile, social filters promote things you like (people and brands) to the top of the messages you receive, and demote things you don’t like or don’t know to the bottom of the pile.

What this means is that it is getting harder and harder to get into someone’s email inbox.

Though marketers are addicted to advertising , the traditional marketing channels are becoming less and less effective. The old methods include renting the capability of building an audience from someone else, such as renting an email list, or via outbound marketing such as traditional advertising, conferences/events, paid search / ppc, and cold calling. Instead of putting money into advertising that is being missed by your customer, in turn wasting money, a better thought presented by the speaker was to build your audience so that it becomes an asset to your company rather than an expense. Types of marketing that can be considered assets are blogging, SEO, free tools, opt-in email lists, and social media such as twitter and a facebook fan page. These assets are within your control, so these are the things you want to utilize.

(Note: Questions arose after the presentation about how things like Facebook fan pages may not really be an asset or within your control as Facebook could disappear or change things at any time. The presenter mentioned that Facebook’s interests are aligned with businesses’ interests, since businesses drive traffic and money to Facebook, so they will want to keep businesses happy. I agree, but also think it’s prudent to be prepared to switch gears if an outside asset that you don’t have full control over goes under at some point).

Competition: Your competition is not who you think it is. Our competitors are those that compete for the time and attention of your social media audience, and social media is only one piece of the new marketer’s puzzle. The funnel begins with social media marketing and search engine marketing, flows through to content marketing, then conversion marketing, then lead nurturing and sales support. It’s time to focus on inbound marketing and nurture the audience.

Some stats: Companies with a blog receive 97% more links. 85% of web pages have less than 7 inbound links. So just getting a few links can have a real effect. While links are still important, what’s new is that Likes are replacing links.

SEO/Blogging & Social Media

- Blogging often leads to higher Google search results rank
- More inbound links, the higher the rank
- More content makes you interesting

Coming to SEO: Likes are replacing Links

The Past: SEO Ranking Algorithm = Context + Authority
The Future: Ranking Algorithms = Context + Authority + Social Graph

Lead Generation and Social Media

Social Media = leads and sales , and is effective for both B2B and B2C. The evolution of the marketing database begain with the direct mail list. Then phone numbers were added to the database for telemarketing. Next, email arrived, and now, it’s social. Each new phase brought more touchpoints with customers, and now the marketing database is becoming a lot more social.

Branding and Social Media

The old way: Hire an agency > Agency makes creative > Buy ad slots in TV and print > Produce a sterile ad that tells people what you want them to hear, creating a one-way communication. Customers either ignored or accepted it.

The new way: Brands are whatever people say it is, so grow a brand by cultivation, not control. Allow people to state their real opinions of you, good, bad and ugly. For example, Domino’s “Show Us Your Pizza” campaign let consumers display how bad the pizzas looked when they arrived. Domino’s embraced those real opinions to let consumers control the brand perception.

Research and Social Media

Current Twitter stats: 110,000,000 tweets/day = 1300/second

Focus groups are dead, because the participants don’t act the same as they do in real life. Now we can see how people really feel and react in the real world because social media tools allow us to do that. This is great for research.

Advice for the Road Ahead

- Stop thinking like an advertiser.

- Start thinking like a publisher and socializer.
- Commit to the new inbound strategy.
- Don’t dip your toe in the water. Commit and jump in all the way.
- Showing customers you’re really interested will make them commit to engaging with you and will let your brand take up their time to do so.

Victoria takes over now with Facebook tips.

3 Aspects of Successful Facebook Marketing

Grow > Engage > Monetize

Facebook benefits for marketers: 92% of fans say that since becoming a fan, they are more likely to recommend that brand to their friends. 36% say that their desire to buy from the brand increased, after becoming a fan. 90% trust their friends, and only 33% trust online ads.

3 phases:

Phase 1: GROW

This is the time to grow your existing audience and build it up by obtaining fans. Use cross-promotions with your current newsletter and website. The idea is to encourage your existing base to become fans, and be sure to give them a reason to do so. Offer a prize, deal, or exclusive content to them. Encourage them to spread the word. Another way to acquire fans is with Facebook ads. 75% say they learned about a fan page because of an ad.

How to run effective Facebook ads:

1. Give them a reason to click.
2. Don’t drive people outside of facebook.

3. Advertise to friends of fans. Everyone who sees your ad will see that their own friends like your brand, right there on the ad.
4. A/B test and keep it fresh. For example, faces and beautiful scenes will usually work better than large crowds with indistiguishable faces on images, but testing will let you know what works and what doesn’t. CTR drops if people see the same ad over and over again, so use new images and new copy often.

Promotion: The #1 reason people become fans is to get deals, giveaways, contests, etc. Companies that run contests have twice as many fans as companies that don’t.

How to run effective promotions:

1. Simple, simple, simple – dont make them work hard to enter. Use short entry forms.
2. Consider how to make it social. Group deals, etc. make them want to share it. Normal sweepstakes aren’t social, because they won’t want to share with friends, as that will reduce their chances of winning. But if you give 2 prizes – a winner and a referral prize, then it becomes important to share with friends. Another idea: give a group prize (tickets to them and the 4 friends they share with).
3. Tap into their interests and passions. They’ll share something that expresses something about their persona. Run campaigns about sports, hobbies, pets, etc., They’ll share it more because it taps into their passions or causes. Have them share to have you donate to a charity. They’ll feel good about sharing for that.

Phase 2: ENGAGE

Facebook newsfeed: Communicate with your audience; tell fans what you want them to do. The algo only shows your posts to some of your fans, so the more engagement you get from your fans, the more the algo will show your posts to more of your fans.

Engagement means getting people to comment on or like your posts.

Ask Questions to get comments. Tell them about a sweepstakes, but in the same post, ask them a question about it. Keep it simple – yes/no, or just a few words to answer.

Ask for Likes. Example: “If you think this video is interesting, click the like button.”

Quality posts are better than quantity of posts. Even if one post gets 500 comments, if a bunch of the previous posts got very little engagement, the algo will factor in all those that didn’t do well and won’t show your future posts to as many fans.

Make fan pages better with deals, entertainment, and exclusivity. Also tie interesting content to holidays as well.

Phase 3: MONETIZE

Make the buying process fun and social, which is consistent with why they are on Facebook in the first place.

Example One: Instead of a boring coupon campaign, give it a fun element. For example, you could make the coupon a mystery, where they have to become a fan before they can see what kind of coupon they “win”. Make the campaign short, so there is a sense of urgency.

Example Two: Group deals.

Example Three: In-store giveaways. If a fan comes into the real-world store, they’ll get something small for free. This gets them into the store, and they almost always buy something else as well.

Presentation is over, now we’re on to Q&A:

Q: Do contests bring more or less loyal fans?

A: Over 95% are more likely to recommend and buy from a brand when they are introduced to your brand through a contest. Loyalty is increased because of this kind of introduction. Target your contest carefully to those who are likely to be interested in your product. Make the prize relevant to your product/service, so you attract the right new customers.

Q: Is this really right for B2B?

A: B2B generally will get less fans, but can still be very successful with a smaller, but targeted fan base. However, if your audience is only 50 companies world-wide, then you’re probably better off with a sales force, but if your business can sell to many business around the world, then Facebook is a good way to reach out to that diverse audience.

They ended with how to use Wildfire apps and Hubspot. Wildfire apps use a wizard, leading you step by step to get the campaign going. Most apps charge per campaign, and can be as low as 99 cents per day. Hubspot has a suite of marketing tools, such as software to blog, build forms, landing pages, seo tools, email marketing, analytics, etc. all in one marketing system.

Final thoughts from Donna, Anna, and Sarah:

Anna: I thought that the webinar was interesting. It confirmed the shift that is happening in marketing/advertising I had sensed coming. It was helpful to hear how to communicate this information to businesses in a way that is not intimidating but very straight forward and attainable for them. Ties into the needs that I feel BlitzLocal is trying to offer to its clients…very exciting.

Original at How Marketers Succeed In a Social World – Liveblogged BlitzLocal

• Like addresses in same genre: Consider two chiropractors who share the same office but have different suites. The addresses are too similar and the listings will likely get merged. However, a chiropractor and a mechanic within the same complex are less likely to be merged.
• Like business name: Let’s take “Atlanta Pest Control Inc” and “Atlanta Pest Control Service LLC”. Too close. If you are trying to create a similar listing, you might notice Google ask if you are “Atlanta Pest and Bug Control”. Ultimately, the guy with the most credible references matching his name, address, phone number, and website will gobble up the other listings. Some merges end with a mix of the two companies– His name, your phone number. We’ve seen this happen with large franchise clients. So you should add more content to your local listings, not just for Universal Search, but to prevent your listing from getting merged accidentally.
• Same business name, but different locations: Franchises may see their listings merge. Key reason– identical website address and phone number across the listings. Thus, it’s a good idea to have specific landing pages for each location, plus a local area code, not a toll-free number. If your locations are “fake rental mailboxes” or “virtual offices”, then you are at a higher risk and may be guilty of locksmith spam. Ranking and trust factors also likely play a role here– to what degree, Google won’t say.

How to Unmerge

1- Fix Claimed Listing: First check and perhaps fix it in your Google Places. If the info is correct in the listing then try making another edit, like to your description, so that your Google places has the most recent edit. Note that this may cause another request for verification. If it does then simply comply and wait for the verification.

If you have not claimed the listing and it says owner verified, then you will want to claim the listing for yourself. Simply click on the text “Owner Verified” and it will take you to Google places. You can create your profile there and claim your listings. This will take time as you will have to wait for Google to verify you and then sort out who the real owner is. There are ways to weight this judgment in your favor.

2- Correcting the information elsewhere

Your first line of attack in correcting online local information is: InfoUSA. This one site feeds thousands of other directories. Fix your info here. Add your info here. It will take some time to spread, but they are a key ingredient. If two legit business exist with similar addresses, then make sure both are added. Yes, you are doing your neighbor a favor, but you are also protecting your listing.

3- Adding more information

Google scrapes content from other sites. Make sure you are listed on those sites. (Superpages, YellowPages, Insiderpages, Yelp, Yahoo, BrownBook, Dex, Mojo, UrbanSpoon, Your BLOG). MAKE ALL OF YOUR ADDRESSES CONSISTENT. Use the exact same punctuation, abbreviations, everything. Make it either “Suite – C” or “Suite C”, “Avenue”, or “Ave.”, “West” , “W” or “W.” Yes, Google should catch all of this and they do a good job for the most part, but Don’t leave it to Google. Even the littlest of inconsistencies could give you a huge headache later.

4- Wait for it.

Google usually doesn’t show edits immediately. Some updates will take place very quickly, within a couple of hours or a couple of days. Most unmergers will take months. These steps should solve your merging problems and even unmerge listings. If you had reviews with your previous listing then you want an unmerge. Google stores all the previous information. Just check the reviews.

Old Review Sample: In this case, the review is still in Google’s system but is not associated with a local listing. If you get the error, “We no longer support this location” then your listing was banned. If your listing was merged with another location then they will merge the reviews as well. Creating an unmerge should bring those reviews back over, as in the sample review the original address that was associated with the review is still attached to the review.

5- Last Resort: Create a new listing.

If those steps do not fix your problem after 3 months then you may attempt to create a new listing all together. You will probably lose your reviews. Make sure that you still follow Step 2 so that other sources are parroting your business information. Without outside references your business listing will not stick.

Original at Help! Google Merged My Local Listings – Causes and Fixes BlitzLocal

For more information, tune into the web class, “Killer Facebook Landing Pages—What Works and Why” with Dennis Yu on Wednesday, October 13th at 10:00am PDT/1:00pm EDT.  Sign up for free here: http://landingpagesuccesssummit.com/.

Dennis Yu is an entrepreneur and internationally recognized lecturer in search engine marketing. He has written articles for and been interviewed by such media outlets as National Public Radio, TechCrunch, Fox, and KTLA-TV. He has spoken at Search Marketing Expo, HostingCon, Affiliate Summit, Affiliate Convention, and Ultralight Startups. Yu has also counseled the Federal Trade Commission on privacy issues for social networks. Yu is co-founder and chief executive officer of BlitzLocal.

Original at Top Ten Things Local Businesses Can Do To Get More Social BlitzLocal