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

6)  Making The Wrong Type Of Facebook Page

*RcFishingWorld would be much better off on Facebook with a business page instead of a personal profile.

Personal profiles are the only pages most Facebook users will ever be familiar with, however, they lack many essential resources which business profiles otherwise would include. For example business pages give page administrators access to insights about your pages’ audience through statistical insights such as; page views, demographic views, traffic sources, and other key statistics otherwise absent in a personal profile. Even though business pages do not allow you to actually “friend request” your target market, they still give you access to your audiences news feed via the “like” button. Bottom line: make sure you make the right type of profile!

5) Not Posting Frequently Enough On The Wall

*Mortgage Advice is not engaging their 2,000 fans.

Take this business page as an example, “Mortgage Advice.” This page has over 2,000 fans, but they are not reaching out to any of their fan’s news feeds, because Mortgage Advice is not posting anything. By simply posting, “Check out Mortgage Advice… For such and such reason,” they would easily generate a couple hundred impressions and draw a small piece of internet traffic to their business, but they are not utilizing this potential. If Mortgage Advice added a few nice graphics and than reinforced their more professional look with some interesting wall posts, which were than updated and maintained, than even this business could generate some revenue on Facebook! Instead their simply letting their fans waste away.

4) Not Engaging Your Audience, or Worse Yet; Acquiring Fake Fans!

By neglecting fans, business pages are essentially shooting themselves in the proverbial foot. Edgerank and Post Quality Score are metrics of Facebook’s content management filters. Unlike the past, everything users post does NOT appear in your audience’s news feeds; information which users do not engage, is subsequently filtered out to save users time, relieving content which may be perceived as spam or unimportant to the user.

This also means fake fans will do more harm than good to your page because they bring down your engagement rates. Companies which entice clicks and engage people through interesting posts, will maintain contact, pages which do not engage their audience will be filtered out of their audiences’ news feeds all together!

Some tips for increasing your engagement;

• Make sure to respond to comments, and don’t worry about commenting on your own material.
• Never leave a fan hanging and always respond to whatever questions fans may post, positively enforcing fan engagement.
• Also feel free to “like” your own material, as this does not harm your Edgerank or P.Q.S. scores.
• There are many techniques to raise your engagement for example try to ask your audience questions,  instigating engagement. Using these simple guidelines, can quickly garner huge results and massively improve your pages marketing on Facebook

*See how each post only makes impressions on 10% of CiviliansNews.com‘s audience?

3) Not Running Sponsored Stories

Sponsored story advertisements are displayed for current fans and friends of current fans, in order to spur re-engagement. Re-engagement is for fans who at one time “liked” your page, yet lost interest over time. After a fan becomes un-engaged, ignoring your page for some time, their news feeds will start filtering out your pages posts, losing contact to your audience member’s news feed. In order to regain contact with these fans you SHOULD run a sponsored story Facebook advertisement, if un-engaged fans click the advertisement than just like that, your page will start making impressions again on that user’s news feed.

A tip for sponsored story advertisements: try to focus on third party articles which positively endorse your organization. This makes the sponsored story appear as if it may have been run by a 3rd party, so you don’t look like you’re tooting your own horn.

2) Not Keeping An Eye On Your Competition

Later this year Blitzmetrics.com is going to be bringing FREE social media analytic dashboards to all businesses who sign up on their website. These dashboards will be full of information about your competitors’ social networks as well as your own fans’ engagement. However, this free product is still not scheduled for release until later this year. Until then let’s talk about keeping an eye on your competition manually.

It’s really as simple as “liking” your competitors’ pages, than following their activity in your business page’s news feed. When logged in as a business page, the business will maintain a news feed consisting of things the business page “liked.” This is useful because, by liking your competitors, you can personally monitor their actions on Facebook everyday. Commenting on your competitors’ pages is also allowed as well. Spamming a competitor’s page is an easy way to violate Facebook rules and policies, however, it is still not completely disallowed. Often times, large companies will even disregard this type of engagement because even if you’re shouting out your own page on your competitors’ walls, it raises your competitors’ engagement rates, making this tactic a double edged sword.

Ignoring your competition is a massive mistake: make sure to keep a close eye on what your biggest competitors are doing everyday. Check out how they are utilizing social networking and employ techniques that they have used successfully for yourself!

1) Being Overly “Business-ey”

Have fun! When utilizing the social networks for business, it is always important to remember what you’re doing and where you’re doing it. The social networks are still a taboo, unknown realm of marketing. Most users are young people, and most of their time on the sites are spent concerned with high school friends and ex-girlfriends, which will often take precedence over corporate marketing campaigns.

As far as posting content, remember that users are unlikely to engage with the same monotonous business messages. Try adding a bit of provocation to your posts. A sense of professionalism is always inherently mandatory, however, don’t be afraid to dive into a funny joke, funny topic, or peculiar interest. Stirring up, or aggravating fans increases engagement and inevitably will increase the volume for which your material is shared.

Hopefully these basic guidelines help you run a successful business or fan page on Facebook. Good luck!

-William Larsen, BlitzLocal Analyst

This is an article from one of our analysts, who we encourage to share opinions. It may or may not reflect the views of BlitzLocal.

Original at The 6 Biggest Business Mistakes On Facebook! BlitzLocal

Ranking well for the proper keywords will generate targeted, high quality leads for any business. Customers who shop or price check online are constantly using Google search, and the businesses that rank well on Google meet potential clients who found them because of their search engine rankings. Dennis’ friend recently started a racquet stringing business out of his home in Boulder, Colorado. Knowing his customers often found racquet stringing services online, he asked Dennis if he would help him climb up the Google search results for keywords like “Tennis”, “Boulder”, and ”Racquet“, knowing his customers would likely use these search terms if they were looking to get a tennis racquet strung in Boulder. Often times competition for search results is fierce, making it a very competitive field. Take the term “Remote Control Car” for example. Searching even this three word term, causes Google to display 15 million results. Obviously, the results listed first will receive the most views from prospective customers; but how do you get your business to the top of the ladder?

Dennis started by explaining that clickable links online, termed “back links”, are essentially connecting web traffic together from one site to the next. For example, any link in this article, which takes you to another page, is a back link. Receiving high quality, “back links,” from reputable sites, is one of the major components Google uses when ordering search results, particularly when a search query returns millions of results. Essentially, the amount of back links and how well they fit the target search (among other things) determines who gets to be at the top of the search. This creates multiple dimensions to the importance of back links to your site. It is important to have back links because, not only do they account for a great source of direct traffic to your website, they piggyback off other sites’ traffic and funnel it through a direct link to yours, and play a vital role in how Google ranks sites in keyword searches.

The impact of a back link is determined by the rank of the page your site is linking with. This clout, or credibility of a website, is kept in a system of scoring called “Google Page Rank.” You can easily download a page rank application, which tells you the page rank of any page you are surfing, or linking to,  displayed in the bottom right hand corner of your browser, after downloading this free tool from quirk.biz.com. The page rank scale goes from 1 to 10, but it is important to note that the page rank scale is also aggregate. An aggregate in this context, means that sites which rank even 1 level higher than others are ten times stronger than sites ranked even one level lower; exponentially rising and falling in the Google pecking order. In order to zoom past all the other search results on Google, it is important to score well on Google for back links, because Google takes into account the quality and amount of back links to your pages, ranking pages with more, higher quality back links, ahead of sites which are not as well-linked to the rest of the internet.

Although ranking a small business page requires more than simply 1 or 2 back links, even from a page rank 5 site or above, a single “PR5″ back link is usually enough to rank well on certain Google keywords. Particularly if your intended Google keyword queries return less than 2 or 3 million results, and the keyword results your seeking are not in heated competition with other websites. In more sought-after search fields, one must acquire more back links that are ranked higher; ideally with matching keywords and topics, to impact competitive search results the most. A good way to obtain back links on reputable sites is to guest-post material on other sites, for example a friend’s blog, but that is just one suggestion for anyone getting started tackling any major keyword searches.

To rank his friend’s tennis racquet business, Dennis started by quickly writing a short article on his PR5 blog, laced with keywords for Next Day Racquets, that he later hoped to rank for in Google search. He identified ”Boulder, Tennis and Racquets,” as the keywords that would work best, because the company is a start-up business in Boulder, Colorado that sells tennis racquets, and Dennis realized that it was feasible to rank even higher than his friend’s business rivals for these keywords. He again determined, “Boulder, Tennis ,Racquets,” was the ideal search term for his friend’s business by discovering that the term received an acceptable amount of highly targeted web traffic, while additionally targeted prospective local customers. Keyword research played a vital role in this process, whereby any search query with less than 2 million search results would be relatively “low hanging fruit,” that with a few steps could be overtaken on search results.

The material that ranks number 1 on Google, on average, receives 4 times the amount of organic traffic that the content ranking number 2 receives. So the importance of being ranked high, for any business, is tremendous. After determining the desired keywords, Dennis wrote a highly targeted article about,”Boulder, Tennis and Racquets,” on his PR5 blog. Dennis also went ahead and created a social media outlet, (his specialty), via a Facebook.com fan page, for his friend’s business (which it would use as a sales page for the time being). He then went on to link his blog to a new article post about Next Day Racquets, while intermingling another link into Next Day Racquet’s Facebook fan page.  After linking the PR5 blog with Next Day Racquets Facebook fan page, he went ahead with a simple little trick that quickly allows Google to index the newly posted material. WordPress blogs are already great at pinging the search ladders, informing Google instantly about the emergence of new content, but a great way to get indexed even faster is to use the Google plus 1 system. By pushing plus “+1″on the newly formed content on his blog, Dennis actually got Google to instantly crawl the post and in turn got the post instantaneously indexed on the search ladder, with no wait or time-delay!

The result? Next Day Racquets ranked number 1 for the keywords, “Boulder, Tennis, Racquets,” in 15 minutes! By simply writing a high quality, keyword articulated article, on a reputable site (his own blog), then linking it to his friends business fan page and then “+1″-ing the results, Dennis instantaneously brought the Google indexing spiders running to the site and had it ranked number 1 on the search engine keywords just as fast. Dennis achieved what most business owners never do; he ranked Next Day Racquets in the top 5 of Google search for important keywords and search terms. Not only that, he did it quicker than I could have ordered a Domino’s pizza. After a few weeks the listing did fall from ranking very 1st on the ladder, down to number 4 on the search results. Even so, Dennis Yu was able to get his friend more Google recognition in 15 minutes than home businesses ever get at all! Not only that, he didn’t use any unethical business or black hat S.E.O. and instead properly mounted Next Day Racquets on the search ladder, for the long run. Dennis Yu is truly a professional. Check out more on his blog www.Dennis-Yu.com.  I hope this article helps people maximize their search engine opportunities; it sure helped me!

-William Larsen, BlitzLocal Analyst

Original at Dennis Yu of BlitzLocal Ranks Small Business #1 on Google in 15 Minutes! BlitzLocal

Depending on the term, it could be 90%+ of these searches not being relevant, and at $5-10 a click, that’s a lot of irrelevant clicks to pay for to find a winner, even if that winner will pay you $10,000 for a new website.

The biggest problem with B2B is that when someone types in “dentist”, you don’t know if they are a dentist or if they are looking for a dentist.

The die-hard PPC folks will argue that you’re just not choosing the right keywords (go for more specific terms), don’t have enough negative keywords (exclude anyone searching with city terms—since these are likely consumers), or you’re not writing specific enough ad copy (supposedly, consumer won’t click on your ad if your title is “Hey Dentists!”) While these comebacks are true, they are missing the big point.

In B2B marketing, you must target WHO the user is, not WHAT they are searching on.

In search, you don’t know who the user is, but you have a clue by the nature of their search terms. In social, you know WHO the user is and you’re catching them before they search.

STEP 1: Isolate the Target

So while you can get a ton of consumer traffic by targeting “dentist” in Google, when you interest target “dentist” on Facebook, you’re targeting by job title and profession.  Try it. In fact, try a number of job titles and see just how many chiropractors, teachers, plumbers, administrative assistants, and marketing managers there are out there.

Voila!  Now you’ve pinpointed all the dentists, dental assistants, students studying to be dentists, retired dentists, and folks who have a dentist fetish—all of them on Facebook. Now narrow down to the specific target you want by age, location or even specialty—maybe you want to talk to just cosmetic dentists in California.

Add in lateral targets—magazines they read, associations they’re a part of, and so forth.  You can read more about micro-targeting here.

STEP 2: Get Your Testimonials and Trust Signals

You probably thought I’d next talk about ads, which is what most people do.  Nope, in social people don’t search—they are interrupted with banner ads. You can focus on ad copy in Google PPC because people are actively looking. In Facebook, you have to gently nudge people to take a look at you and momentarily distract them from spying on their friends, or whatever they happen to be doing on Facebook.

So you need distraction-worthy content, which comes in the form of what their friends are doing. If that potential dentist client of yours is perusing through what her friends did yesterday, she might be persuaded to click on news where those very friends are talking about your business—maybe how they used your software to get more traffic to their website, streamline billing operations, etc.

When you have a TON of testimonials (across Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and so on), paired with content that you’ve published in major outlets, paired with positive things that other reputable organizations have said about you—then it’s more likely they are coming to you versus you coming to them. Some people call this “inbound” or “pull” marketing because you’re leveraging that prospective friends to do the selling for you. Because, despite your Harvard MBA and years of business experience; sorry Charlie, they trust what their friends have to say more.

Ideally, get this content to live on your website or Facebook page, although this is not completely necessary. Let’s say that you wrote some compelling article in an industry journal. Send ad traffic directly to that site so you can leverage their trust. If you wrote your article correctly, the by-line (about the author piece at the end) will have a line or two about what you do. And if you did a good job creating real value in that article, as opposed to selling, they’ll contact you. No need to scream at them or place popup windows in their path—they’ll find you.

Step 3: Turn Your Ads On 

You wouldn’t have a grand opening party without first making sure your place has plenty of food and drinks, right?  In the same way, make sure you have the compelling content from Step 2 before you start advertising. Otherwise, you’re just wasting money.

Take the interest targets that you set up in Step 1 and pair it against the content you have in Step 2.  Think about WHO you are talking to, not WHAT they might be searching on. For example, if they are a dental hygienist, what content is most compelling to them? What if they are a receptionist—what might they find interesting? You’ll find that you might not have super relevant content for everyone. That’s okay—you’re just testing at this stage. Later you can mix and match what combinations work best.

Note that this is NOT landing page optimization, which is more superficially about elements that comprise the landing page—the image, the size of the button, the headline, and so forth.  We’re talking about the whole lead gen. lifecycle—creating a clear path between the targets, what we say to them, and what we want them to do. That last piece is the landing page—to get them to call the phone number, fill out the form, watch the video, etc.

Step 4: Run the Math

Set your Facebook campaign budgets low, perhaps $10 a day. Use the default CPC bids, since you don’t need to get into the nuances of how bidding works—this is not Google. What you care about is your Cost Per Click and conversion rates.  CPC divided by conversion rate is your cost per lead, by the way.  We created a calculator for your use, in case you are rusty on first semester statistics:

This is B2B, so your cost per lead could be over $100. Maybe you’re at $2 a click and 1 in 50 clicks results in a phone call.  Maybe it’s a lot more because you’re selling something that costs thousands, so that a hundred dollars is an acceptable price. Or maybe you’re competing in New York City, where the price is exorbitant from all the advertisers that overlap one another from poor targeting.

Whatever the case, if you’re doing this on Facebook, you have to be prepared for seemingly negative ROI for the first few months.  Why? Because we are catching people well before they are searching, so it could be months before they want that new website, CEREC machine, billing system, or whatever it is you’re advertising. With Google, the conversion timeframe might be that same visit. This is unlikely in your case, unless your product is an impulse buy and also under $100.

Some final thoughts:

We are often asked a common set of questions, so let’s address some of them here:

How big should my interest target be? You don’t need a thousand ads—just a handful that target just the people that you want to hit. If your interest target is over 10,000 people, then either you’re doing something wrong or your audience is nationwide.

Do I need new landing pages for Facebook? Probably. Video is what converts nowadays, so you probably need to fix your other landing pages while you’re at it. Camera shy? They aren’t choosing you for your good looks, so get your Flip video, some good lighting, and film a 2 minute intro. Say what you’d say if that dentist was sitting right in your office—don’t be “fake” or talk like a newscaster.

Will BlitzLocal do this for me? Sure, if you have at least $10k to spend in fees, not counting advertising budget. If you’re a dentist, we require only $2k a month in total (labor plus ad spend), since we’re targeting just one region and because our dental campaigns can be replicated. If we have to build something that is not reusable across many clients, then we have to charge more for it. We are not the cheapest game in town.

Do you offer free articles and training?  I would love to use your service, but cannot afford it. Sure. Send a note to info@blitzlocal.com and we’ll send you some of our internal training materials. You can also post a question at facebook.com/blitzlocal, where others can see and benefit from what you ask.

 About the Author:

Dennis Yu is Chief Executive Officer of BlitzLocal, a Webtrends partner that builds social media dashboards to measure brand engagement and ROI, specializing in the intersection of Facebook and local advertising. You can reach him on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, his blog, or good old-fashioned email at dennis@blitzlocal.com. BlitzLocal is a leader in social and local advertising and analytics, creating mass micro-targeted campaigns. Mr. Yu is an internationally sought-after speaker and author on all things Facebook, and has been featured in National Public Radio, TechCrunch, Entrepreneur Magazine, CBS Evening News, and other venues.

Original at Marketing B2B via Facebook: The Most Common Mistake You’re Probably Making BlitzLocal

Hopefully, at this point, he stops throwing money at the world, and learns a better way to advertise that stands a far better chance of resulting in positive ROI for every dollar he spends. If so, then at this point, he learns that his ads should be shown only to the group of people who are not only most interested in his products or services, but who are also most likely to respond to whatever offer he is presenting.

On this journey of discovery, he adds two new words to his marketing vocabulary — “targeted” and “qualified”.

What is targeted traffic? Users who are specifically interested in the products or services he provides are the users he wants to target. The chances of converting those users are much higher than the chances of converting a user who landed on his site accidentally and has no interest in what he has to offer. It suddenly becomes obvious to the entrepreneur that if he only spends money advertising to people who already have a strong interest in what he has to offer, then his conversion rate will likely be high, and the return on his investment will likewise be high.

What is qualified traffic? Qualified users are those who are not only interested in his products or services, but are able and ready to actually to to buy. It’s the difference between “looky-loos” and those who have a real need for the product, the budget to acquire the product, and the authority to approve the purchase of the product.

Now our entrepreneur can begin to shed his “newb” status and start launching marketing campaigns that are aimed at targeted, qualified individuals.

Let’s take a look at an example how our businessman can effectively accomplish this new goal.

Our fictional company owner has created a specialized dating service aimed at matching wealthy singles who are both into adventure and extreme sports, and wants to advertise his service on Facebook.

Before he understood the merits of showing ads only to targeted, qualified individuals, he probably would have designed an that sounded exciting or intriguing, but aimed it at everyone. What kind of traffic would he have shown that ad to?

Now that he is a little more savvy, he can begin to narrow that number down.

First, he chooses to only show ads to people interested in sports.

After thinking about it, he realizes that’s still way too general, so he narrows that down to people who enjoy extreme sports.

More thought, and he realizes that he forgot to only target singles, so he adds that to mix.

Finally, he knows his service is pricey, so he wants to pre-qualify his targeted audience as much as possible. Facebook doesn’t have an “I’m rich” category, but our now-savvy businessman can make some educated guesses on finding those people who are more likely to be qualified to pay his steep prices. So he’ll also target various interests, such as yachts, for example.

Now he’s narrowed his ad campaign down to a very targeted group of people who are more likely to be qualified as well. He can choose many different interests besides yachts, of course, honing his campaign until he finds the sweet spot of targeted, qualified users that are most likely to sign up for his specialized dating service.

Suddenly, our online entrepreneur has become a businessman who no longer empties his pockets while chasing everyone in the world. He now understands why the terms “targeted” and “qualified” matter, and is currently enjoying his own extreme adventure.

Related articles:

How To Use Facebook’s New Power Editor For Ads

How to run an effective Facebook campaign for $5

Original at Why The Terms Targeted and Qualified Matter 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

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

I decided to play a little trick on my boss using the Facebook advertising techniques he taught me.

Using  the “Location” section in the ad tools, I entered Portland, Oregon which is where Blitzlocal headquarters is located.

In the “Demographics” section, I targeted males ages 30 to 40.

For “Education and Work” I typed BlitzLocal LLC and WebTrends.

The result ended with an estimated 80 people targeted.

About 4 days later, I get an email from my boss:

And this only cost me 6 cents.

Knowing that you can target down to where someone works, where they live, and how old they are– how might you use this in your business?

Original at Using Facebook Microtargeting to Play a Trick on My Boss BlitzLocal

• Enable frequency capping so you don’t waste inventory.
• Allow negation targeting or placement targets (maybe you don’t want to run inside a poker app, for example)
• Allow agencies to create multiple accounts for clients under a single domain (client1@blitzlocal.com, client2@blitzlocal.com), though there is potential for abuse here.
• Provide a desktop tool like Google AdWords Editor.
• Enable CPA bidding to allow for conversion optimization.
• Add more metrics to the Facebook Ads API.
• Reveal the ad Quality Score, like Google does.
• Better UI reporting– show trends as opposed to raw output data.

Original at Facebook Ads now more agency friendly– allows sharing among users BlitzLocal