Brave Ad World

Brave Ad World - Episode 69

2012-05-28T04:00:59Z

Happy Memorial Day (to those in the US)! We hope you're having a great weekend. Episode 69 of Brave Ad World has been released, and we have a lot to cover.

This week’s headlines: Microsoft Launches So.Cl, Facebook Faces a Shareholder Lawsuit, Oracle Acquires Vitrue and Facebook Launches an Instagram Competitor (Say What?!).

The week’s news quick hits cover: TBS and Facebook Team-up, Groupon Launching In-Store Payment System, Facebook Tests a Close Friends Feature, Opera Rumored to be Purchased by Facebook and Yahoo Discontinues Livestand.

You can find the podcast on iTunes or you can visit the podcast section to subscribe through your preferred podcast player.

However you choose to listen, let us know what you think! Leave a review, contact us on Twitter or send us an email to braveadworld [at] gmail [dot] com.

The Auto Industry: Two Views on Facebook Ads

2012-05-24T15:19:20Z

Last week the auto industry ignited a debate around the effectiveness of Facebook advertising. Days before Facebook’s IPO, General Motors announced plans that it was “reassessing” its spending on Facebook advertising, a $10 million yearly investment. Instead, it will only use Facebook Pages. Ford, on the other hand, announced its plans to not only invest in Facebook ads but also accelerate ad spending to support its Facebook engagement efforts through Pages.

Two Views, One Industry

GM’s move was sparked by its regular adjustments in ad spending. “This is a regular part of business, and it’s not unusual for us to move our spending around various media, especially considering growth of digital and social outlets,” stated GM spokesman Tom Henderson. In other words, GM evaluated the return they were seeing from Facebook ads and determined the weren’t worth the cost.

Ford feels otherwise as Scott Monty, Ford’s head of social media, stated that Facebook ads are “very effective, and they’re most effective when we strategically combine them with great content and innovative forms of storytelling rather than a straight media buy.”

So what is the right answer? Should marketers invest in Facebook advertising?

The Role of Facebook Ads

Facebook ads are engagement drivers. They should not be used to drive direct response. GM wanted Facebook ads to increase car sales. That’s not a role Facebook ads can or should play, so GM was right in pulling its ads if that’s what it was looking for.

Instead, Facebook ads can be used to:

Build a network of advocates: Use Facebook ads to build a community on a Facebook Page that the brand can reengage time and time again. Facebook ads are the spark to the community, but the Page offers content to fuel the fire.
Amplify advocacy: Facebook ads can amplify the advocacy of fans when they take actions like liking a brand Page or sharing branded content. Ads allow those actions to receive higher prominence in News Feeds of friends, influencing them and contributing to community growth.
Promote Initiatives Where Users Are: With users spending more time on Facebook than any other site (53 billion minutes per month), Facebook ads offer high impact moments to increase engagement and education around key brand initiatives.

In other words, Facebook ads are best used when driving fan acquisition and driving engagement, not conversions and sales. They need to be part of a holistic Facebook presence.

A successful brand presence on Facebook is a combination of paid, owned and earned channels. Paid Facebook ads give marketers the ability to grow communities, while owned properties (Facebook Pages) offer the ability to spark engagement and generate earned impressions as user activity displays in friends of fans’ News Feeds. Success is contingent on all three areas working together, not living in individual silos.

GM plans to continue using Facebook Pages to leverage the social network, but Facebook has made this pretty difficult for brands to do successfully. On average, less than 16% of a brand’s fans actually see content from the Facebook Page when it is posted. Facebook advertising allows brands to boost the reach of those posts through a paid feature called Reach Generator. With GM only using portion of what Facebook offers, it shouldn’t expect the engagement it was seeing previously.

Facebook’s taken a stand, and it isn’t just telling brands that paid advertising is a best practice. It’s practically mandating it if a brand wants to truly unlock the full potential of a Facebook presence, and as users continue to create user profiles and prove brand value, marketers are hard pressed to go another direction.

Facebook Can’t Be Ignored

Facebook’s built an incredibly powerful platform, and for now, most marketers can’t ignore it.

Facebook fans are more likely to purchase, consider and recommend brands (Forrester) with Fans generating 2x higher sales than non-fans (comScore).
Sponsored Stories increase ad recall by 50% (Nielsen).
Facebook offers 90% narrow targeting capability vs. industry average of 35% (Nielsen)
Facebook fans are more likely to recommend a brand than non-fans as a Facebook Page provides a powerful channel to influence conversations and drive word of mouth (Forrester).

Using Facebook Ads Effectively

Every brand is different. GM is still working on its bailout comeback and is targeting $2 billion in marketing expense reductions over the next 5 years, and cutting $10 million in Facebook ads as well as announcing that it will not advertise in the 2013 Super Bowl puts it on its way. Facebook wasn’t delivering the direct sales lift GM was looking for, and that shouldn’t come as a surprise. That’s not where Facebook ads excel.

Ford is seeing the benefits because it’s focused on what Facebook ads do well, build community and develop brands by closely targeting users who are likely to connect and share Ford content. Facebook ads aren’t in a silo for Ford. They’re part of an ecosystem that leverages paid, earned and owned marketing efforts. Facebook offers categories with long purchase cycles ,like the auto industry, the ability to keep engagement going before, during and after purchase, instead of only focusing on immediate calls to action, which is where Ford sees the benefit.

Brands that want to truly leverage Facebook need to incorporate a paid, owned and earned approach. This means using paid ads to fuel community participation to drive engagement that’s then shared across the social network. Each piece builds upon the other, and neither stands on its own.

GM claimed that Facebook ads weren’t delivering results, and that’s because they were expecting the wrong things (e.g., clicks, web site traffic and sales). Ford, on the other hand, is focusing on what Facebook ads can deliver (e.g., new fans, higher engagement, etc.).

Paid, Owned and Earned Success Stories

Ben and Jerry’s:

Increased sales in a slow period for ice cream without running other programs
Saw a 4X increase in reach to 98% of all fans during a 28 day period
Experienced a 3 point increase in brand favorability
Received a 2x increase in engagement

Burberry:

Saw over 500,000 Burberry Body Samples sent out via Facebook
Experienced a 96% increase in fragrance sales
Acquired 6 million fans in 2011

Dr. Pepper:

Reached 83% of all US fans in a 28 day period
Increased People Talking About This by 140%
Increased engagement by 80%

Getting Social Media Marketing Out of the Petri Dish

2012-05-22T14:18:40Z

Social media marketing too often finds itself stuck in a silo. The question of ‘who owns social’ has led it to be relegated to internal experts and/or small teams. That’s understandable because that’s often where social media marketing has to get its start within an organization, but that should be by no means where it stays.

The Social Petri Dish

One of the biggest issues that putting social media into a silo is that it leads to isolated results. Marketers demand results and find it frustrating when social media results appear unintegrated. What else did we expect?

Real success comes when social media is part of the larger marketing plan and tied back to overarching business objectives, not just the number of followers or views. Those may serve as KPIs, but the overarching objectives for social media should tie back to business objectives. Get social media out of the Petri dish and see a real impact on business.

Marketers can start by:

Improving customer service by integrating social channels into their existing approaches to customer service and see customer satisfaction improve and a cost savings from making customer service more efficient.
Encouraging referrals and driving trial by offering an incentive that gets better each time it’s shared with someone else.
Generating earned impressions to support a campaign by working with online influencers and giving them the reasons and means to share brand efforts.
Gaining additional consumer insights by forming an online, social media focus group of passionate advocates who offer advice and insights for new products and services.

These are just a start, but each of them will only be stronger when they break free from the Petri dish and are both supporting and being supported by other marketing initiatives. Social media shouldn’t be forced to stand on its own. Just like other marketing channels, it’s stronger when it’s working with other parts of the overall plan. That’s where integrated execution delivers on overarching business objectives, and that’s the secret to taking social media marketing to the next level.

Integration Only Happens When We Push.

It’s on us as social media marketers to tell others within the organization how social can help them, not vice versa. We can’t expect colleagues to come to us. Instead, we’ll be more integrated when we make it a point to visit others at their desks and ask them what they’re up to and what their challenges are. That allows us to opportunity-spot and offer ways social media can make everyone’s job easier and more successful.

It’s on us to prove the value of social media marketing, so don’t hesitate to reach out and not just tell how social media can support the business but show it, too.

Brave Ad World - Episode 68

2012-05-21T04:00:36Z

Social media dominated all aspects of the news this week as a little start-up by the name of Facebook made it's stock market debut. Twitter also made news with an email digest. There's a lot to cover, and we hit what you need to know on the latest episode of Brave Ad World.

This week’s headlines: Twitter Launches Email Digest, The Auto Industry Raises Questions around Facebook Ads, and Facebook’s IPOs and Makes Another Acquisition.

The week’s news quick hits cover: Facebook’s Mobile News Feed Gets More Timeline Updates, Apple Working on Photo-Sharing iCloud Feature, Google Makes Significant Changes by Bringing the Knowledge Graph to Search, Facebook Tests Promoted User Posts and Twitter Joins ‘Do Not Track.’

You can find the podcast on iTunes or you can visit the podcast section to subscribe through your preferred podcast player.

However you choose to listen, let us know what you think! Leave a review, contact us on Twitter or send us an email to braveadworld [at] gmail [dot] com.

A Following or a Community

2012-05-16T00:45:48Z

Marketers that create a brand presence on social media platforms lack one very important thing in the beginning: an audience, and that is what marketers and their bosses constantly hunger for. From Facebook fans to YouTube subscribers to Twitter followers and so on, marketers want more of them and often they have no idea why. They just want them.

An audience is one thing, but it’s another thing to define what kind of audience will best serve business objectives. Do you want a following or do you want a community?

We want a following.

A following is essentially a body of people that has subscribed to your brand's content by clicking 'like,' follow, subscribe and so on. This group has seen something from the brand that they'd like to see more of in one way or another in their social streams, but beyond that, they may not want more.

Marketers are often after a following. They don't care who it is or why. They just want to see the number go up. That number, for better or worse, is one way that marketers can easily point to in company meetings or hold up to a competitor's number and say, "See. We're doing it."

But the number is only cosmetic. A following is great, and it's important for a brand to build an audience in the social space, but efforts can't stop there. Any brand can get a following and for much less time and energy just by buying a traditional ad and getting its content in front of millions of people. Social media isn't made for just building followings. It's made to take them a step further.

We really want a community.

A community is a group of people living together and practicing common ownership. Now, that's powerful. A community is a following that's evolved to a more invested and more valuable long-term group of consumers invested in a brand. They want to spread the word and help the brand succeed by sharing their personal thoughts and opinions.

A following is about quantity and growing the numbers, but the number means nothing if the following isn't invested. They can hide posts from their News Feeds and ignore tweets. A community is on the lookout for more content.

While a following can be bought, a community must be earned by proving value over the long-term to those who have chosen to follow.

Building a following is a short-term objective, but marketers shouldn't be short-sighted. The true value that social media can deliver like nothing else is the ability to build a community. Don't get caught up in the numbers associated with building a following. Gauge the quality of that following and the potential for it to turn into a community of invested advocates eager to spread online word of mouth related to the brand.

Brave Ad World - Episode 67

2012-05-14T04:00:52Z

After a brief hiatus, the podcast is back and not a moment too soon! This week was huge with big news and opportunities for marketers.

This week’s headlines: Facebook Lays the IPO Groundwork, Google+’s Hangouts on Air Coming to All Users, The App Center is Coming to Facebook , Bing Offers Next Evolution of Social Search and Foursquare Introduces Promoted Specials.

The week’s news quick hits cover: The Government Recommends Creating a Social Media Will, MySpace Faces 20 Years of Privacy Scrutiny, Twitter Debunks Claims of Massive Security Breach, Google+ for iPhone Gets an Update, Facebook Rolling Out File Sharing for Groups, Twitter Acquires Personalized Email Team and Facebook Launches a Policy Hub.

You can find the podcast on iTunes or you can visit the podcast section to subscribe through your preferred podcast player.

However you choose to listen, let us know what you think! Leave a review, contact us on Twitter or send us an email to braveadworld [at] gmail [dot] com.

Thanks for sticking around during the break.

Does Your Content Work for You or Is It Just Noise?

2012-05-08T12:13:40Z

Facebook recently released the findings of a study that analyzed 1,200 posts from 23 brand pages, according to AdAge. The findings of the study provide insight regarding what is and isn’t working in terms of posts to Facebook pages.

Stay On-Brand

Brands have seen a great deal of feedback and what, at the surface level, appears to be impressive results from seemingly completely unrelated content like asking fans what their favorite colors are, getting predictions on Super Bowl winners and so on.

That kind of content may generate likes and comments, but it doesn’t do much for the brand. Facebook’s findings revealed that producing brand-related content is one of the “most important things a brand can do.” That’s why people subscribe. That’s why people like. The brand can provide something they can’t get anywhere else—insight into the brand and what makes it tick.

Give What People Crave

Loyal customers crave valuable content. Producing photos, videos and exclusive posts they can’t get anywhere else is how brands can set themselves apart in the more and more crowded Facebook ecosystem.

It’s a matter of working to create content that works for the brand and helps to build brand affinity or producing content that simply adds noise to an already loud social network. Have something to say, and make it valuable.

What If Your Page Disappeared?

Marketers should always be looking at their content and asking themselves what their fans would say if they went away. Would they care? Would they even notice? These questions can be answered with a ‘yes’ if brands produce content they can’t get anywhere else. Likes and comments are nice. Likes and comments related to your business are great. Focus on the brand and where it intersects with consumer interests versus talking about what others can and already do talk about. Brands are competing for consumer attention on Facebook. Leverage your competitive advantage.

Brave Ad World - Episode 66

2012-04-23T04:00:13Z

The constant evolution of the social media ecosystem continues, and this week we're discussing the biggest stories.

This week’s headlines: Twitter Moves Forward Without Instagram, Tumblr Makes Moves Toward Monetization, Twitter Makes Moves to End Patent Wars and Foursquare Ads are Coming.

The week’s news quick hits cover: Facebook Profile Photos Get Bigger, More Retailers Promote Pinterest Presence, Facebook Ad Analytics Get Smarter and Storify Integrates GetGlue.

As always, you can find the podcast on iTunes or you can visit the podcast section to subscribe through your preferred podcast player.

However you choose to listen, let us know what you think! Leave a review, contact us on Twitter or send us an email to braveadworld [at] gmail [dot] com.

One Quick Reminder: This will be the last episode until May 14 while I get moved into a new house and travel for family obligations. Once we come back on May 14, we'll be back on track with our regular schedule.

Enjoy the next couple weeks!

The Age of Platform Stacking

2012-04-20T19:34:47Z

“What’s next?” is on the tip of everyone’s tongue in this industry. People are always hungry for what’s going to replace what exists now, but from a social platform perspective, we’re not in a here today, gone tomorrow ecosystem. Instead, platforms are “stacking” on top of each other. They’re not being replaced, just added to.

Facebook has, at least for the time being, established itself as the social networking leader. Its dominance has been in place for some time, and despite the predictions that Facebook will be replaced by a “counter-point” (a.k.a. The Facebook Killer), Facebook’s dominance has continued.

Instead, Facebook is being stacked upon. Facebook took what other social networks like MySpace and Friendster were doing and solidified the social graph trend, which is essentially people building, maintaining and managing their personal relationships through technological channels. Facebook unleashed the social graph to the world. Today, more than 900 million users are maintaining their personal connections through the platform, and this shows no signs of going away.

Instead, Facebook’s social graph only continues to grow stronger. We’ve seen the introduction of the location-graph through social platforms like Foursquare. These platforms can feed into social-graph focused networks like Facebook to add geographical context to what the social graph already provided—a platform stacking onto but not replacing another platform.

Now we’re seeing the next evolution with platforms like Highlight and Glancee bringing the interest and location graphs together to create offline experiences. Things seem to be coming full circle Relationships moved online with Facebook, translated themselves into something more real-world through geo-location platforms like Foursquare and are now moving offline again through Highlight, but all of this is happening together. Not a single platform has replaced the other. They’ve simply stacked on what others were doing.

However, a hiccup does exist. As online moves offline the digital courage that existed before goes away, and a permission disconnect occurs. Connecting online brings a sense of comfort because of its seemingly transactional nature. Highlight makes the transition from online to offline very abrupt, which can be off-putting. Without the right permission controls in place, the stacking in this form, at least, might end.

It’s interesting to see all of this occurring. Will we see something go away to be replaced by something else, or are we heading into an age in which social media moves from being a set of separate platforms to being a sum of its parts?

Monitoring to Inform Content Strategy

2012-04-17T14:49:18Z

Social media monitoring is becoming less of a question and more of a necessity for businesses. Whether it’s using a combination of free DIY solutions like Google Alerts and Twitter Search or more enterprise-level solutions like Sysomos or Radian6, brands accept that they need the right tools to listen effectively. But the most common reasons for investing include threat tracking and opportunity spotting, but the benefits go deeper than that.

The ability to tap consumer conversations at any given moment gives brands an opportunity to inform what they’re doing and make it better. This plays out most of all through the use of content.

Social media monitoring allows brands to do a couple things:

Identify conversation whitespace and opportunities to provide information consumers are seeking
Evaluate the “virality” of brand-generated content for optimization purposes

Identify Conversation Whitespace

Marketers can use a combination of tools to track where relevant conversations are taking place related to their brands, competitors or categories. Consumers turn to social media for information.

What questions are people asking? Is this existing information accurate? Can we do better? Content allows brands to deliver ongoing value to social customers. Fulfilling a need that has been identified makes a brand presence that much stronger.

Looking at what isn’t being said is just as important as evaluating what is. It can inform a brand’s approach to content generation and direct what needs to be created next.

Evaluate “Virality”

Marketers should absolutely be identifying how original content spreads (virality) and who is spreading it, but these findings can also inform how the brand moves forward.

Let’s be clear “virality” doesn’t mean the same thing as a “viral” video. Virality has to do with how content spreads.

Virality findings can include:

The channels people are distributing the information to (Does it go/stay on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, forums, etc.?)
What form of content spreads best (e.g., text, video, photos)
What type of customer consumes certain types of content (Is there an opportunity to invest more in talking to a different group?)

Monitoring delivers far too many insights to be limited to listening. It can make what a brand is already doing better by helping to develop the right content in the right form for the right audience.