Recent changes to social ad platforms mean marketers may have a bit of catching up to do in the social advertising arena. Twitter recently launched their new advertising API, allowing marketers to work with Ads API Partners to manage Promoted Products and Accounts ads; eMarketer expects Twitter ad revenue to grow to over $800 million by 2014, to account for 12.7% of all social network ad revenues.
Meanwhile, Facebook doubled their mobile ad revenue YoY in Q4 2012. Their emphasis on mobile, added capability for targeting based on web browsing history and the debate over ROI have even seasoned marketers on the lookout for advanced ad optimization and performance advice. The opportunity for lead gen and customer acquisition through paid social is massive, with proper planning, quality content and great optimization.
Optimal Social Ads Performance Requires Advanced Platform & Campaign Knowledge
Tomorrow morning at SES New York, marketers Tal Baron and Jennifer Wong will take attendees on a deep dive into Facebook and Twitter ads in their 11:45am session moderated by TopRank Online Marketing’s Miranda Miller.
Baron is the Client Services Social Lead at DataXu, which utilizes real time bidding across many digital advertising channels including online, video, mobile and social. His presentation on best practices for FBX and Facebook Marketplace ads is a can’t-miss, with tactical goal-setting, KPI and optimization advice backed by case studies and his own extensive experience. Baron’s company has been with FBX since the beginning; that, with his previous experience with one of Facebook’s API partners who executed Facebook marketplace ad campaigns for Jaguar, Volvo, Choice Hotels, Philips, and Green Mountain Coffee, among others, makes his insight particularly valuable.
Wong is a marketer I’ve personally followed for some time and had featured previously in a social advertising best practices article. Now leading Marketing at HasOffers, Wong will share her extensive experience in an advanced Twitter Ads optimization presentation. She will discuss actionable tactics such as the planning process to ensure a successful output: defining goals and KPIs, content and offer alignment, seamless user flow that leads to the end goal and ensuring sales is attributed to the social media efforts.
“Research has shown that that the half-life of a tweet is approximately four minutes. That means the majority of the clicks a tweet is going to get is in the first four minutes after it is tweeted. With that statistic, it’s not very likely that one of your tweets is going to be seen by your Twitter followers,” Wong told us at TopRank. Twitter Ads can be an effective way to get your tweets (and offers) seen by a greater audience on Twitter, she advised. Her tips and recommended tactics will also be validated with results from experiments she has conducted in the past 18 months, using Twitter Ads for demand generation.
I asked each of these speakers a series of questions to give the audience a sneak peek into their SES New York presentations. Here are all the great pieces of advice and tips they had to share.
What opportunity are marketers currently missing on Twitter or Facebook and how can they maximize their efforts there?
Baron points to the wealth of data available to Facebook marketers as an area of opportunity to enhance ROI and social content. “Facebook provides a lot of insights that advertisers can leverage both in and out of the Facebook environment. Page insights were really enhanced in 2012 to provide rich data about fans and post engagement,” he said. He believes marketers can do a better job at leveraging page post insights to influence both organic page post strategy and paid, by promoting the most engaging content.
Wong told us that there needn’t be confusion around the value of social ads as part of an integrated marketing strategy. “Social advertising is starting to mature as a predictable marketing tactic to add to your marketing program, as long as you approach it in a smart way and are able to measure your success,” she said, pointing out that Twitter ads can be use for branding and awareness, demand generation or even customer acquisition. “Users are becoming more acceptable of social advertising as long as marketers are doing it right,” Wong added.
What should marketers know about the changes Facebook recently made to their newsfeed?
There are three main areas of opportunity for marketers to focus on based on these changes, according to Baron:
- Different news feeds for different activities (friends, organizations, pictures, music will most likely create additional, more targeted inventory for advertisers. In a similar move, Facebook recently provided a way to target certain sub-domains of the site such as homepage, profile page, photos page etc. through FBX. We have been testing various pockets of inventory and have found some interesting results.
- Larger photos for posts will provide an opportunity for larger and more visually appealing ads, which is a plus to advertisers looking for new ways to engage with the Facebook audience.
- A more consistent user experience between desktop and mobile. With so many users accessing Facebook through mobile and tablet devices, Facebook wants to create a consistent experience across screens for users as well as advertisers.
Why should a brand pay for advertising on Twitter if they already have a good organic strategy?
Wong advised that marketers who already have an organic social media marketing strategy that involves Twitter have a great opportunity to lift the success of all campaigns with Twitter Ads. “Adding a layer of paid advertising can help you reach your goals faster and test new campaigns,” she said.
“The biggest benefits I’ve found from using Twitter ads are the flexibility and speed of creating campaigns. Marketing is all about sending the right message, to the right people, at the right time. With Twitter advertising, marketers can do just that – launch campaigns targeted at the right people with the right message in real time.”
Where does FBX fit in the sales funnel?
FBX can fit anywhere in the sales funnel, depending on advertising objectives, according to Baron. “For the top of the funnel, FBX can extend campaign reach by efficiently finding unique users in 3rd party data segments that advertisers are trying to reach to raise awareness for their products or services,” he pointed out.
In Baron’s experience, the most common place to utilize FBX is direct response campaigns – think lead generation for the middle and online sales for the bottom of the funnel.
What are a few of your favorite Twitter tools and why do you prefer them?
Surprisingly, Wong is pretty traditional with the Twitter tools she uses. “I’m fascinated by savvy uses of technology that add value to social marketing, but I honestly don’t have time to try out every hot new Twitter-tool-of-the-week,” she said. Wong prefers tools in the form of a software suite designed to help streamline the process of social media management, execution, and reporting.
She noted, “I like using Hootsuite to plan out social marketing campaigns across multiple handles and channels. You can also easily learn more about your audience It’s also a great publishing tool for teams that collaborate on the content and management of social media.”
Tune in to the TopRank Social Community for SES New York Coverage
Keep your eyes and ears tuned to Online Marketing Blog for coverage of the greatest tips, tactics and strategy coming out of SES New York, March 25th to 28th. Follow TopRank on Twitter for live highlights and commentary. And if you’re heading to New York, grab your copy of Optimize to have it signed!
Image from sxc.hu
