SMX Social Media 2011 – Successful Targeting Strategies for Facebook Ad Campaigns
Ok we have a new session!!! Without further ado, let’s get right into it- this one’s a doozy!!!!
Our new session is Successful Targeting Strategies for Facebook Ad Campaigns.
First speaker up is Matt Lawson of Marin Software.
His talk is making the transition from Search Marketing to Social Advertising. Most search marketers are built for the process – dealing with large data sets, and other parts of the process.
Facebook allows you to target based on interests which are like keywords but the similarities end there.
There are big differences in the metrics. There is more available ad inventory. We’re talking about people with more specific intent. Very large audiences. It is not unusual to have dramatically more impressions than other advertising.
Lower click through rate. On Facebook your’e only going to get a fraction of the standard 1-2% clickthrough rate.Their average is .09%
Lower average CPC.
Different conversion rates.
Half of our customers are treating FB as a peformance channel. They’re trying to convert them as they would in paid search. In some cases they’re doing better. Half of them are using FB as a branding page channel.
First think about your goals – are you trying to drive people to a like or are you trying to build your fan base? The route you choose will have a dramatic impact on your goal.
Consumers exposed to a brand’s social media are 50% more likely to click on paid search ads.
#1 – Always start with Friends.
The people who are most likely to convert on your paid Facebook ads – your friends.
#2 – Expand to fans of related brands.
This is behavioral targeting. How do you find fans of brands that are similar to yours?
#3 – Use Keyword Stemming to Find Interests
Target people with similar interests in the campaign.
When you’re trying to find out which keywords are good, try typing an extra a, different misspellings, and others that will help target the right audiences.
#4 – Micro-segment your audience.
If you’re targeting a strong market you will end up getting many different people who may or may not be good candidates for the campaign.
Finely tuned segments allow you to shift spend to audiences that perform, increasing conversion and ROI.
#5 – Test images before copy
The big difference between Facebook and search is images – images can be very powerful.
Draw attention to ads with contrasting colors.
Link images to audience to increase relevance.
When in doubt, test pictures of cute puppies!!
#6 – Keep your ads fresh
Finely targeted audience x 4 hours/week on Facebook = Ad blindness.
Rotation = optimization
Rotate ads every 2-3 days or as impressions drop, which indicates people are getting used to your ads.
Maintain impression volume.
Increase click through rates.
Lower cost-per-like.
#7 – Maintain the Facebook Experience
The Facebook graph is a useful tool to help determine more information about your audience.
If you’re taking the social user out of the Facebook they are expecting a more social experience so you can increase your conversions by creating a more social experience on your website.
Next up is Addie Conner, VP Advertising of SocialCode.
Search
People ask, you answer
Ads are a response to demand
Place ads in front of users whose needs are satisfied by your offer.
Filter users by keyword (positive and negative)
Send user down information or conversion path
Facebook
You create the demand.
Looking for profiles, rather than demand-related behavior.
Filter based on user attributes and language within the ad itself.
Ads allow first connection to establish long term relationship with the user.
The thing about Facebook is that it has an ecosystem of its own.
Build targeted fan bases.
Engage Fans.
Monetize Fans.
Pages, Apps, Surveys, Ads, Pages.
It all comes down to research – the core of everything that you do on Facebook is RESEARCH. When you do FB 
targeting, you’re doing it based upon all the elements of someone’s profile. You have interest data that is self driven rather than data that is just behavioral.
Audience profiles contain a number of elements:
Ad Elements (Headline, body, image, word of mouth, text, category, verbiage, image type)
Demographics (age, gendeer, education level, marital status)
Interests (competitors, behavioral, media and entertainment preferences, positive and negative sentiment
Lolcation (conuntry, state, region, city, metro vs. Non-metro, coastal vs. Non-coastal)
Brands can use this for a number of things. 1. How can I understand my user? 2. Who is the right person for this ad? Interest Categories by age, and Gender by region. What if I want to use a volume ad for something based on gender by region?
What are the right times? A lot of this can translate to the activity going on on one page. Understanding when should I be heading up my posting schedule? When should I schedule my time to engage users in social media? How can I engage other social media tools at what times to more effectively engage users? These can help make Facebook a lot more efficient, not just in advertising but for the entire Facebook experience.
Understanding value
For most brands if there isn’t much of an ROI then Facebook is not going to be used for a longer period of time.
What they did was that they based their marketing on fan bases that were responding heavily. They wanted to ask: What is the difference between someone who is a fan and someone is not a fan? What they found was, that real fans were converting both off the like and the click.
Leveraging their client fan bases to drive deeper action.
This is a good way to help increase much more awareness of your brand, and allows people to help others recognize your brand. Non fans converted at a rate of 10%.
ROI = marginal benefit of being a fan – cost to acquire a fan.
In every single case the value is there and it could be measured, even though across many different conversion types there are very different conversion rates.
Another way of measuring results is by measuring newsfeed impressions. This allows you to reach the entire Facebook population through fans and friends.
If you are advertising to people who are qualified and have the money to purchase your services, this helps increase ROI significantly vs. if you are advertising to anyone – people that are unable to understand the value of your services and totally unable to pay for them.
Social Responsibility Case Study: The Power of Giving
Aligning with a philanthropic cause (donation of 1$ per fan) saves a brand money
Without donation language:
Cost was 56% higher
Actions/impressions 48% lower
Actions/Clicks 38% lower
CTR was 17% lower
Next up is Marty Weintraub of AIMclear
I swear this guy is an outstanding presenter. Perhaps the cup of coffee he held in his hand throughout the presentation had something to do with it? Or the fact that he’s an all-round extreme expert on this subject? Either way his passion and energy shined through. Well, on to Marty’s presentation. He delivered some fantastic information about developing better targeted Facebook ads.
According to Marty’s presendation, back in the day you had:
Incredibly Low CPM.
Little Editorial Governance.
Very little competition.
And it was the contest Wild West.
Not anymore.
The beautiful things FB took away:
Mine individual PPC user names
Capture User IDs from Templates
Easily buy User IDs
No transparency Apps mined personal info.
Lost reporting clarity.
So how can we get around this? How can we most effectively pursue successful ad targeting?
It’s what you do with what you have that matters.
State of the art is what you do with what you have.
When you think about where people are on Facebook, you ask questions like:
Occupations and employment.
Groups and Affiliations.
Publications online and off.
Product Categories.
Classic Mainstream Interests.
Competitors.
There are several different types of targeting to be mindful of:
Literal Targeting
Targets direct relationship with the demographic segment, often keyword for keyword
Easy to research, often better for direct-response KPIs.
Literal associations are not always realistic in FB.
Competitive = Targets competitors’ fans both positive and negative sentiment.
Qualifies customers by known brand predilections. Killer tactic for poaching other brands’ communities
May run into future legal problems. May have ethical issues now. Watch for backlash from competitors.
Inferred Targeting
Targets deep personality traits of users.
Invokes an emotional response that may seed deeper engagement.
Requires a very creative marketer to map the associations.
Literal targeting = obvious
So you can sell hockey sticks to hockey players.
You can sell Jonas Brothers tickets to 13 year old girls.
Are there future litigation issues with Competitive targeting? There can be.
Competitive targeting includes such qualifies as luxury, gender, age, geography, etc.
Example:
Estimated Reach 24,740 people.
*Who live in the United States.
*Age 18 and older.
*Who like rolex, rolex watches, rolex official fan page, or rolex watch.
There are thousands of vulnerable brands that are not immune to this kind of targeting.
Another example is using Apple for behavioral targeting:
Estimated Reach: 30,920 people.
*Who live in the United States.
*Age 18 and older.
*Who like dell, dell deals, dell go green, dell computers, dell inspiron, dell inspiron 15, dell laptops, or dell studio laptops.
Another example is Canadian Sephora Lovers:
Estimated Reach: 32,560 people.
*Who live in one of the countries: United States or Canada.
*Age 21 and older.
*Who are female.
*Who like sephora.
Another example is Kellogg’s Corn Flakes:
Estimated Reach: 41,300 people
*Who live in the United States.
*Age 18 and Older.
*Who like cheerios, honey nut cheeriors, banana nut cheeriors, or chocolate cheerios.
Yet another example provided is Pottery Barn:
Estimated Reach: 98,760 people
*Who live in the United States.
*Age 18 and older.
*Who like crate barrel.
Negative competitors’ sentiment
Powerful leads are Unsatisfied customers of competing brands.
Could be susceptible to alternatives.
“sucks,” “suck,” “hate,” “terrible,”
“horrible,” “f_cuk,” “f_cked,”
Double Negative: “Like” Bucket + “Sucks” in keyword = “Hate”
An example provided is the iPod:
Estimated Reach
1,400 people
*Who live in the United States
*Age 18 and Older
*Who like “I hate itunes” or “itunes sucks”.
Another example is Big Kmart:
Estimated Reach: 41,360 people
*Who live in the United States.
*Age 18 and older.
*Who like “walmart sucks balls,” “no walmart in monroe,” “i hate walmart,” “walmart high cost low price,” “boycott walmart” or “not shopping at walmart”
Be careful of this though. Be VERY careful.
There can be a backlash of [Brand] Lovers.
The other brand might sue you.
Follow the Laws of Jurisdictions ® © and ™
This targeting should be guided by what you’d do (or not) in public.
Occupation targeting is a killer hack
This is the golden age of occupation targeting.
B2B B2C products consumed by business people.
Never truly off duty.
You can catch them at home, off guard.
You can get hundreds of millions of impressions.
A good example of occupational targeting can be Real Estate Agents/Realtors:
What would I know about a realtor?
Real Estate agents are go getters
What are some good products?
Productivity software, easy-upload video
Cameras, Magnetic Car Signs
Computers, Snow Plowing, Cars, Phone Service & Restaurants.
You can also target via Education & Work.
You can target precise interests.
Use Alpha Patterns.
Such as searching for assistant a (which will bring up all results for assistant a like Assistant Athletic Trainer, Assistant Administrator, and so on).
Take the alpha a little bit deeper
Such as searching for sales repre, which will bring up: Sales Representative, Sales Represenative, Sales Representitive, and other such mis-spellings.
Use common job title words, like supervisor a.
The professional depth on Facebook is absolutely astounding.
Occupations are fertile for B2C as well.
You can target Budget brands to bartenders and waitresses
Metallica Memorabilia, Synthetic Motor Oil, fishing weekends to auto techs and young machinists
Targeting Professional Associations
Example:
Estimated Reach – 1,880 people
*Who live in the United States.
*Age 23 and older.
*Who work at Dental Health Products, American Dental Association, Goetze Dental, American Dental Partners, Discus Dental, Dentistry for Children
This is awesome – You can also do Fortune 500 Targeting.
Matriculate those with Interests Bucket occupations such as Corporate Marketing Director, C-Titles, etc.
Estimated Reach: 2,132,780 people who live in the United States
And work at: Wal-Mart, Chevron Corp, Fannie Mae, Berkshire Hathaway, General Motors, Bank of America, etc.
You can even go so far as, wait for it – going into privacy-busting targeting. It is a very at-risk procedure however. People are freaks, so try and see what they would be interested in but will never tell you about in person.
Medical targeting
Sell minivans to those who like “Being Pregnant”.
Sell disposable diapers to those who like “Hate Being Pregnant”.
Estimated Reach: 22,460 people
*Who live in the United States
*Age 18 and older
*Who like “i am pregnant,” “i love being pregnant,” “being pregnant,” “pregnancy yoga,” “im pregnant,” or “pregnancy birth baby bellybelly”.
Another example this time for hate being pregnant:
Estimated reach: 340 people
*Who live in the United States.
*Age 18 and older.
*Who like I hate being pregnant.
You can also target Conflict & Violence
14,600 Facebook Users like “Killing Terrorists,” “Probation Workers” & Like “If Killing Was Legal”.
7,220 are 13 years old.
Violent Social Segments = KPI sitting ducks.
1,154,140 women like fighting.
229,640 are 55+ years old!
Brand divorce attorneys.
Spa services.
Vibrators.
Show Me The People
What should you be asking? The following questions are good ones:
What are their personal traits?
Who’s professional characteristics?
Which radically private predilections might they entertain?
This concept transcends Facebook, and delves deep into the user’s psyche.
It is inspired by bottomless personalities.
How far are you actually willing to go to target specific users?
Climb inside the users’ psyche and seriously really get to know them.
Do you want to target body building towards steroid interests?
What about targeting Bali Vacations to Upper Crust Gays?
Or just go plain vanilla on your targeting? Tennis Rackets to Tennis Players?
Of course, there are those methods of targeting that are totally at your own risk and should not be taken lightly.
Real world targeting:
Figureheads
Causes
Political issues & orientations
Charitable causes
Religion
How Button – Current Events
Movements like Green and Occupy
When it comes to targeting your potential clients, the sky’s the limit. Don’t limit yourself to preconceived notions of what people want and where they can get it. Take your targeting to the next level by pushing the envelope and developing ideas that push targeting into the user’s psyche and targets those who may not even know they want your services and product. That’s where you’re going to beat your competition.
That’s the name of the game – you better use it, or you’re gonna lose it.
Next up is the final Question & Answer session for this session.
It seems that FB tactics are designed to combat the fatigue that comes with FB ads. What have you used to increase the efficiency of the ads?
Matt – This is one areas where tools can really help. FB has a number of advertising platforms that can help take a lot of time out of your day.
Marty – Be ready to build new ads, some of the ones that are successful. Know your ROI before you start. Build ads that are relevant.
Do any of your clients ever get concerned with targeting stereotypes that your audience might find offensive?
Marty – Stereotypes are often wrong but they’re often right too. When we target somebody on FB we think of them as the precious object that they are. (smiling)
Addie – A lot of what FB is about is audience discovery a lot of different ways. Brands can use this as a discovery tool within the brands’ guidelines.
Speaking of driving people, one of the questions – which landing page is better for FB ROI the website or the FB page itself?
Addie- We’ve done this multiple times and it’s different every single time. I’ve seen instances where driving off of FB is obviously better so my answer to this is – test it.
Marty – I think that we should consider who we’re targeting and what we’re telling them along the way.
What’s your method for managing Facebook ads from a billing and admin standpoint. Does the client pay for the ad or does the agency pay?
Matt – We charge a percentage/flat fee.
Addie – We manage on behalf of our clients.
Marty – We try to flat rate per month and administer a set amount of money for a company. We work with really good companies who have relationships in place. What’s happening in is that the marketing now with major multinational corporations is they’re starting to separate the marketing from the company.
That’s it for this session’s SMX Social Media 2011 Coverage…until next time!