Effectively Leveraging Facebook Advertising (Part 1)

This is part one of a two-part series on Facebook ads. There was just so much to say about Facebook advertising that we couldn’t fit it all into one post!

We just started another Facebook advertising campaign for one of our clients, and we wanted to share some of the results of the first 10 days:

What do those graphs mean? The first graph shows the number of people that clicked on our ad. The second picture is a spreadsheet of some of the numbers behind the results. At The Cyphers Agency, we are always measuring our results so (1) our clients know that their money is being used effectively and so (2) we can measure our success against benchmarks, and adjust strategy as needed.

If the graph above is somewhat confusing, no worries. Here is an explanation of each term and how it plays into the bigger picture:

Impressions

This simply shows how many times your ad was displayed to the audience you are targeting. In this example, we are targeting a very specific group of people, with only a modest budget, so the impressions are relatively low. Some of our Facebook advertising campaigns see tens of millions of impressions.

Clicks

This shows how many people clicked on your Facebook ad. As you can see in the graph, with under $32 in media costs, we garnered almost 300 clicks to our client’s website! (Debbie Downer Disclaimer: the costs described here are misleading as they don’t reflect all the planning and strategy that came before this ad’s execution)

Click Rate

This shows the percentage of people that saw your ad (impressions) divided by the number of people that clicked on the ad (clicks). This gives you a benchmark to compare to other ads and other campaigns. Although each industry and audience produce different average click rates, we tend to see an average of %0.02 – %0.04 click rate. This might seem low, but when you see how cheap it can be to reach 1,000,000 people in your target audience, those 200-400 clicks can be a huge boon for business. Combine that with several different ads, or with the rest of your campaign, and you’ve got some serious traction. Of course we’d like to take this opportunity to point out our stellar .22% average click rate!

Actions

“Actions” explains how many people interacted with your Facebook ad and decided to “like” whatever you are advertising. These are powerful numbers, because they (1) show affinity for your product/service/brand, and more importantly (2) are people whom with you now have direct communication. Similar to an email list, people that “like” your Facebook page will see your regular status updates. Often “actions” can be just as important as clicks; although sending people to the website (clicks) often drives immediate revenue, “actions” drive customer lifetime value, and help stimulate word of mouth marketing. What would you rather have, 10,000 people to your website or 10,000 people that will each tell 5 people that you are having a sale? Good thing you don’t have to choose, because we can deliver both. With under $32 spent, we’ve garnered over 180 subscribers to our client’s Facebook page! (not to mention the 294 visitors sent to the website!)

Cost Per Click (CPC)

This is a way to bid on the delivery of your Facebook ad. If you choose this option, you pay every time that someone clicks on your ad. When is this method best? When you (1) can’t target your audience or (2) your audience isn’t succinctly defined. This way, you can show your ad to 1,000,000 people, but if only one person clicks on your ad, you only pay for that one click. With Cost Per Thousand (CPM), you would need to pay for each 1,000 people to show your ad to all of those 1,000,000, just to get that one click. We did not use CPC bidding for the campaign in the graphs above, but Facebook still shows us our average CPC, based on what we are paying and how many clicks we have.

Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM)

Another way to get your ad in front of an audience is to bid a certain amount to show it to 1,000 people in your target audience. If you’ve narrowed down your audience to those that you know might be interested in your product/service, this can be a great way to leverage your budget. For example, if your audience size is 1,000,000 people, it will be expensive to show your ad to all of them, just to get to the 10,000 people that might be interested in your product/service. However if you use the targeting options (see “strategic targeting” and “tweaking and maintenance” below) you can start out just showing your ad to those 10,000 people. That way, you make sure that they see it, and can even show them multiple ads multiple times. We used CPM bidding in the example above, and it delivered a very good return on investment. When we created the campaign we could have paid for each click (see “CPC” above), which would have cost approximately 50-80 cents per click. But because we chose CPM, our cost per click is approximately 12 cents. This leverages our client’s budget so that we can get maximum exposure and results.

Spent

Simply put, this is the money spent for each day of results. As you can see, we earned this client an average of over 8 clicks for every dollar spent. That’s 8 people sent to the client’s page for every dollar spent, 8 people that interact with the brand, 8 people that are saying “I want to know more.” This is a strong example of how much your budget can work for you if you know how.

Old Spice Guy Wins the Hearts of Many, Including Ours

Do you remember the off-the-wall Superbowl ad featuring a suave, manly man describing the manliness of Old Spice? (If you don’t, the ad is embedded below.) At that point the advertising campaign was good – witty, memorable, and on-brand. But this week, the campaign evolved into one of the best advertising campaigns we’ve seen in a while.

The now-famous “Old Spice Guy” begun answering questions and comments from users that were submitted via Facebook, YouTube, and other social networks. The videos were hilarious, personal, and on-brand. See an example below. Most importantly, it wasn’t just one or two videos – over the course of two days, the team created over 100 video responses, which ended up generating well over 4 million views (and they are continuing to rise!).

Here are a few facts about the campaign:

According to Google, there have been over 7,000 blog posts written in the past week that contain the words “Old Spice Guy.”

The Old Spice Channel is now the #2 most-viewed sponsor channel on YouTube, with over 61 Million views.

The online campaign strategically responded to influencers online. The Old Spice Guy responded to celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher, Alyssa Milano, and Kevin Rose. But he didn’t forget about the little people either, and made sure to answer plenty of comments from average joes. This made sure that the messaging was authentic and engaging, but also sure to reach millions of people.

Here are some impressions from our team about the campaign:

“The pure volume of videos (183 in two days!) is astounding!” – Lucas

“The consistency of hilarity in the videos is amazing.” – Jocelyn

“The frequency of videos, at times, was mind-boggling – as fast as a video every 5 minutes. When you think about the fact that each video required finding an appropriate comment to respond to, thinking of a response, filming a take (probably several), some quick edits, and uploading the video, this is a very impressive statistic. And they kept it up hour after hour, for two days straight.” – Bailey

“I know it’s subjective, but I honestly want to go buy Old Spice body wash now. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I feel like I owe the brand for all the laughs they gave me over the past few days. Maybe it’s because I want to be like  that guy Isaiah Mustafa. Maybe it’s because I’ve always liked Old Spice, and this will just push me over the edge. Either way, this is great advertising – not because it is entertaining or well-produced, but because at the end of the day, it makes me want the product being sold.” – Andrew

“Blatant Old Spice promotion. The videos are anything but subtle, and the blatant promotion fits with the personality of the campaign. As a viewer, I was content with the promotion because it was a small price to pay for such hilarity.” – Anna

If you are interested in exactly how this was orchestrated, here is a blog (from ReadWriteWeb) post that explains how Wieden and Kennedy (Old Spice’s Agency) created such a phenomenon: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_old_spice_won_the_internet.php

A Facebook Movie: Social Media Becomes Part of Traditional Media

Two weeks ago Columbia Pictures released the first preview for their new movie that will come out this fall, the “Facebook movie,” or, what is actually titled The Social Network. The movie tells the story of  Mark Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg), the founder of Facebook, during his college years and his launch of the social networking site from his Harvard dorm room. A feature film about Facebook? What were they thinking? Maybe that Facebook is one of the fastest growing and most popular social networking sites with over 400 million active users, and bound to be a sure hit at the box office.

The Brand is Hero No More

Every person, journalist, blogger is talking about the evolution of media. Traditional means of communication have been turned upside down and shaken up. Social media is now becoming the norm, changing the way that we view information distribution. As advertisers, this change has a huge affect on what we do. We are constantly learning how to incorporate this change into our clients’ brands.

Brand Voice

Years ago (or maybe even just one year ago), branding and messaging were entirely in control of the advertiser. The message was displayed how, when and with whatever messaging the advertiser deemed necessary. The ad men formed meaning behind a brand, telling consumers what to think. Consumers were a passive audience that were receptors to those messages. Unfortunately for traditionalists, social media killed the brand hero.

Social Voice

With the increasing use of social networking sites and online communities, communication has changed. That changed created a need for advertisers to adapt, learning to really listen to the voice of their consumers to help mold a brand. These consumers are no longer strictly targets of advertising messages; they now play an active role in the brands they associate with.

This social voice also allows for trust to be generated between consumers and the brand. For years, people have either hated or distrusted advertisers and the messages they present; they think that advertisers lie. Embracing consumers’ interaction and engagement with a brand can help get to the truth, or clear the air, if you will, about what something really is. And while advertisers can still create strong strategy and messaging for a brand, this interaction creates a unique equation. Given the opportunity to complain, give feedback, or praise a product or company, consumers are given an environment to be heard. This interaction with the brand gives such meaning to the brand itself that the two cannot be separated.

Take Zappos.com for example. The site has become so much more than just an online place to buy shoes. Their use of social networking sites like Twitter has helped mold their brand image. Their shoes, social media policies, and internal culture go hand in hand; they have become inseperable.

Social Brand

Bringing the social voice into a brand can be a scary thing. But with the input of a consumer community, brands can adapt and become further defined, taking on new or deeper meanings that are linked directly to the consumer. The brand, once completely controlled by the advertiser, is now a social brand that results from advertisers and consumers meeting somewhere in the middle.  And ultimately, isn’t that what we should have been going for the entire time?

Sighting: Promoted Tweets

I saw this the other day when I logged in to Twitter: a promoted trending topic. I knew that Twitter had rolled out a promoted tweet platform, but didn’t expect it to come in this form. I grabbed a screenshot and tucked the occurrence in my mind for deep thought.

More than anything, I think I was surprised to see a promoted tweet as a trending topic. Will companies be able to purchase trending topics? How did that work? As an agency who works with a variety of clients, purchasing “ads” on Twitter would seem like a great option.

But I had to ask myself… What are the bigger implications of promoted tweets? Does it take the power away from the voice that Twitter users have?  Does it change the dynamic of the unique online community? Does it disable companies from having real conversations with their customers? If a topic is promoted, is it really “trending”?

I’m curious to see how promoted tweets or trending topics become integrated in the overall system. But I’m also curious to see how it going to affect the community. What do you think?

Cut the Crap – No More Lofty Social Media Terms

So we’ve been just as guilty as the next for using those lofty and abstract social media terms that drive everyone mad: transparency, engagement, content generation, conversation monitoring, blah blah blah. I think it is time we all shut up.

I don’t mean that we stop talking about social media or social influence marketing. I just think we need to re-evaluate the way we speak about it. We (as marketing professionals) need to move from the general to the specific and actionable. We need to move from “motivational speaker” to “business coach.”

Step back for a moment.

While we’ve got more and more people jumping at social media, we’ve also got some seriously bad lingo that follows. Let’s look away from jargon and look to stimulating specific, strategic social media dialogue. Saying that each client is different doesn’t cut it anymore. Let’s take these lofty ideas and break them down.

There are countless more ways to impact your audience: Need a flashmob? Don’t know how to pitch bloggers? Want to see how geo-location features can help your business? Need some social media resources? We try to give you resources to see how social media really works, and if you can’t do it yourself, well, that is what we are here for.

Setting Proper Expectations & Follow Your Plan

As an agency, its important to take a look at what is on our plate and strategize. Who is the client? What do they need? Are we working with a Business to Business (B2B) client? We can use social media tactics to locate key influencers in that company. Working with a Business to Consumer (B2C) client? We can locate their audience online by doing an in depth online audience scan and find their consumers, whether it be on blogs, forums, or Facebook, and leverage that community.

So can we please stop talking about lofty, abstract social media terms? Let’s cut to the chase and get working.

Big Results for Smaller Brands

In the past, you could have over 90% ACV nationwide (for non-food folks, that’s grocery store penetration), and your product may sell $40 million nationwide, but that still doesn’t allow for anything approaching an adequate budget for traditional media on a national level. But there’s another way to approach it today, and we’ve seen the light bulb go on for several smaller CPG brand managers recently: “Maybe I can’t afford a ton of mass media, but a well-integrated social media campaign will really leverage my budget.”

Of course, every brand is different; some products by nature are better poised to spark a passionate following than others. But for many brands, fueled by solid strategy and creative, there is suddenly the real potential to stimulate trial, generate buzz, deliver effective promotions – and yes, over time, make a real impact on sales.

Consider the possibilities. There’s the online PR angle – pitching foodie or mommy bloggers or meet-up groups. There’s promotion – contests, coupons, and free samples sent as rewards. There can be easy integration with labeling, POS tools and other existing programs. And if you really strike a nerve, you can enjoy genuine viral success.

Who would have thought you could impact a national brand on a modest budget? Just a few years ago it may have been near impossible, but today it can be a realistic goal.

Bailey’s Journal – Blog Posts from Cyphers’ Newest Employee

Bailey Whittaker, a recent graduate from Towson University, has recently joined The Cyphers Agency Push ‘N Pull team. She will post regularly on our blog as she learns more about how we use word of mouth marketing for our clients, so you can learn what we do from an inside perspective.

Social media is way more extensive than I imagined.  Being a recent college graduate, and 22 years old, I thought I knew a lot about social media.  I was wrong.  I thought if I knew how to use Facebook (which in my mind is the fastest growing and most commonly used social media site) I was good to go.  I was also vaguely familiar with MySpace, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Flickr,and some other sites.  As it turns out, there are many more sites online that allow people with common interests/goals to come together, and each in a different way.  I didn’t realize so many people were using online resources to find each other.  Social media is effective because it changes constantly, and people can become interactive with other customers, or the company itself.

I was also surprised at the wide audience range of people using these sites.  I think of the older generation as being generally internet incapable (sorry!).  As it turns out, lots of baby boomers have set up their own blogs, groups, and websites.  Maybe some of them could even teach me a thing or two.

In terms of cool websites I’ve learned about, I think MeetUp sounds awesome.  I’ve never used it, but it’s a really cool concept – I’m impressed. It shows that we can use online tools to find people online, but reach them in the real world too if we want.

I’m really excited to keep learning about all the things that we are doing for our clients. I’ll keep you posted!