The Basics of Social Media Advertising

February 17, 20101:00 PM – 2:00 PM (EDT)

Who We Are

Clickable is a platform that makes online advertising simple, instant and profitable. Our purpose is to help businesses survive and thrive by simplifying online advertising success.

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Max KalehoffClickable Search Marketing Guru & Vice President of Marketing

Ehren ReillyClickable Search Marketing Guru & Social Media Expert

Agenda

Our Goal Today: Introduce the Basics of Social Media Advertising.

1. The basics of social media advertising’s costs, ad copy restrictions and bidding procedures.

2. What you need to know to make an informed decision about whether to advertise on social media networks.

3. Strategies for “hyper-targeting” users on Facebook and MySpace.

4. Incorporating social media advertising into a larger social media strategy that includes Twitter feeds, Facebook fan pages and presence on MySpace pages.

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History of Social Media

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Social Media Today

• Online media that facilitates social interaction• Users of social media sites interact

and communicate with one another.

• Users have identities or profiles that contain information about themselves (social, cultural, demographic, psychographic).

• Users can create connections with one another by becoming “friends” or “following” one another.

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Social Media Advertising Audience

• Facebook: 350 million members, 80 million unique users each month.

• MySpace: 250 million members, 60 million unique users each month.

• Twitter: 75 million members, 55 million unique users each month.

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Where Does Social Media Advertising fit into Your Overall Advertising Plan?

• Branding: engaging your audience and fans:• Create a page with useful, current information.• Integrate social media features into your website.

• Direct Response: performance advertising:• Create a social PPC campaign.• Track performance against your other direct response channels (SEM,

email, etc.)• Spend more in whichever channels yield best results.

What is the purpose of your advertising?

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Advertising on Social Media Sites

Pages or Profiles Pay-per-click (PPC) ads

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Social Media Profile Pages

• Profile pages are like miniature Web pages within social media sites.• Any company, brand or organization can make an advertiser page

for free.• Customers and potential customers can become “friends” or “fans” or

your business or brand.• Can include information about your business, such as:

• Hours• Location• Website• Menu/list of services

• Can (and should) include other dynamic content, such as:• Your updates (e.g., “Sale this week only!”)• Comments left by your customers and fans• RSS feed of your blog

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Social Media Profile Pages

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Social Media Profile Pages

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Social Media Profile Pages

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Social Media Profile Pages

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Social Media Profile Pages

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Best Practices for Social Media Pages

• Include useful information about your business.• Take advantage of the ability to mass-message your

fans/friends/followers.• Status updates on Facebook appear in fans’ news feeds.• MySpace bulletins appear in friends’ inboxes. Status updates

appear in their news feeds.• Tweets on Twitter are read by your followers.

• Decide whether to display your customers’ comments.• If you do, you’ll need to moderate them.• If you don’t, you’ll need to fill that blank space somehow.

• Don’t create a page just because, and then leave it blank, out-of-date, or ugly. It’d be better to not have one at all.

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Who Should Create a Social Media Profile Page?• If you have real-world fans or members:

• Local pizza place, ice cream shop, coffee house• Consumer brands• Membership-based organization (church, club)

• If you have a service or product that people might search for on Facebook.

• Results are localized• Not a lot of competition

• If you want to provide your customers with a hip, casual way to interact with you and each other.

• If you want to be able to target advertising and messages specifically to your fans.

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Social Media Pay Per Click Ads

• Social PPC ads are like SEM content match ads• Auction-based, PPC pricing• Ads appear within content pages (not search results pages)• Typical click-through rates (CTR) are comparable• Ads are narrowly targeted to a niche audience

• Important differences from content match ads• Targeting: Social/demographic, not contextual.• Ad creative formats: 125 character descriptions, should

always include names.• Account structure: No ad groups.

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Social Media PPC Ads: Ad Targeting• Ads are targeted based on information in the

user’s profile

Geographic location

Age

Gender/sex

Language

Cultural interest / Hobby / Fan Status

Education level

Relationship / Marital Status

Occupation

Parental Status

Workplace / Employer

Sexual Orientation

College / Alma Mater

College Major

• Advertisers can define their target audience using any combination of these parameters.

• Best practice: Target your audience as narrowly as you can.

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Social Media Ads are not contextually based on page content. They are always targeted to the user’s profile data.

Ads are for a 30-year-old college-educated male in Baltimore.

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Social Media PPC Ads: Ad Creative

• Destination URL• Title (25 chars)• Body text (125 chars)• Image (optional)

• Best Practices• Everything that’s good writing practice for SEM still applies.• Include an image.• Directly address your target audience by age, gender, location

and interest.

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Social Media PPC Ads: Management, Structure & Optimization

• No groupings of ads into ad groups or campaigns• Each “ad” pairs targeting options with single ad copy

• Budgets and bids are set on individual ads

• Best Practices• Create many small, narrowly-targeted ads.

• Track conversion rates and ROI separately for each ad.

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SEM Account Structure

Campaign: Set budget (contains ad groups)

Ad Group: (contains targeting parameters & ads)

pizza

Keywords:

pizza delivery

order pizza

pizza online

cheap pizza

Ad Group 2keywords ↔ ads

Ad Group 3keywords ↔ ads

Ad Group 4keywords ↔ ads

Ads:

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Social Ad Account StructureAd: Set budget (contains targeting parameters and one ad)

Targeting Parameters:• NYU student• Manhattan• 18-22

Single ad creative

Ad 2Targeting Parameters ↔ Ad Creative

Ad 3Targeting Parameters ↔ Ad Creative

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Who Should Use Social Media PPC Ads?

Do try social media ads If you can describe your target

audience in terms of their social, cultural, demographic or psychographic characteristics.

Don’t try social media ads If your target audience cannot

be described by social ad targeting parameters.

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Who Should Use Social Media PPC Ads?

Do try social media ads If you have good enough

performance analytics to compare social PPC ads to your other media source and know if it works.

Don’t try social media ads If you won’t be able to tell

whether they’re working, or how high a bid is cost effective.

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Who Should Use Social Media PPC Ads?

Do try social media ads If you’ve had success with

search engines’ Content Network ads.

Don’t try social media ads If you’ve never tried the much

more user friendly SEM content match networks.

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Who Should Use Social Media PPC Ads?

Do try social media ads If you have some prior

experience with managing PPC ads.

Don’t try social media ads If you’re new to online PPC

advertising or you have limited experience.

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Who Should Use Social Media PPC Ads?

Do try social media ads If you have a specific

performance goal for your social PPC ads.

Don’t try social media ads If you think social media is the

next best thing, and your plan is simply to “be on Facebook.”

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Synergize Your Efforts• Make your PPC campaign, profile page and traditional website

complement one another.• Custom social network-specific landing pages for PPC.• Include content from your website on your page.• Interact with your customers on your Facebook or MySpace page, and

listen to their feedback.

• Provide tools to share content from your website on Facebook and MySpace.

• Use Facebook Connect to allow users to log into your site via their Facebook account.

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Getting Started Now

1. If you aren’t already a member, join Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Learn how they work.

2. Create a company profile page.

3. Create a single practice ad for a tiny niche.

4. Create a broad ad covering many customers.

5. Over time, refine your broad ad into many smaller niches with custom ad creatives.

6. Integrate Facebook, MySpace and Twitter sharing & connect features into your website.

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http://www.facebook.com/advertising/ http://advertisting.myspace.com

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