Friends Don’t Let Friends Ignore Facebook

by Andrea Beltran on March 10, 2010

Are you promoting a product or service? Have you produced a marketing plan for it? Then you must have already identified your target audience … right?

Once you know who your target is, you’ll need the right tools to get their attention. There are countless platforms and networks that can target users by location, demographics, behavior, network, price and bid options. But what if you wanted to target someone who is attending Stanford University in their sophomore year, on their birthday, without needing a robust customer database? The answer is Facebook.

Facebook is one of the fastest growing websites with 400 million active members, and growing. Whether your target audience consists of 213 people or 3,812,010 people, they are on Facebook.

Any company can start advertising on Facebook for any price, there is no minimum. Advertisers can promote a Page or Event by driving visitors back to the Facebook entity or choose to drive visitors to a separate website. Facebook ads are a combination of Pay Per Click ads and image display ads offering 25 title characters, 135 characters of ad copy and an image upload. The advertiser can schedule ad flights, choose daily budgets and select CPM or CPC pricing.

But most importantly, the targeting features are extremely refined:

  • Location
  • City and state
  • Radius around city (in miles)
  • Age: 13 to Any
  • Birthday
  • Sex
  • Keywords: Found in user’s profile updates, info tab and interests
  • Education
  • High School
  • College: Name of college, major, graduation year
  • College Grad: Name of college, major
  • Workplace
  • Relationship Status
  • Interested in men/women
  • Language

If you run a Facebook Page or are an admin for a Page, you can also target Facebook users by their connections:

  • Users who are connected to your Page, Event, Group or Application
  • Users who are not already connected to your Page, Event, Group or Application
  • Users whose friends are connected to your Page, Event, Group or Application

With every targeting restriction you choose, Facebook will calculate the estimated number of people expected to see your ads along with the suggested bid. The more specific you get with your target audience, you will find the number of people estimated to see your ad start to dwindle, but they will be exactly who you want to see your ads.

Facebook provides detailed reporting for your ads:

  • Advertising Performance: Total and Unique Impressions, Clicks and CTR along with CPC, CPM and Cost. Conversion tracking is now in Beta and expected to roll out to all advertisers in Q1 of 2010.
  • Responder Demographics: Provides valuable demographic information about users who are seeing and clicking on your ads.
  • Responder Profiles: Provides information about the types of users who see or click on your ads such as interests that they have listed in their personal profiles.

This re reporting allows us to identify the best performing ads and recommend ways to improve them on a regular basis through testing and experience. For more robust reporting and management, we utilize Omniture’s Search Center to manage Facebook media buying and advanced analytics. This could potentially allow advertisers to effectively manage Facebook campaigns and enhance reporting on cross-channel campaigns.

Connect with us to develop a strategic Facebook advertising strategy that integrates with your current marketing plan.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Bookmark and Share

{ 1 comment }

Almost Everything You Need to Know About 2D Codes

by Sean Bartlett on March 8, 2010

In two recent talks that I led about the state of mobile marketing, the issue of 2D codes generated a great deal of questions and confusion. Like many things in the mobile industry, competing proprietary solutions and a lack of standards are impeding the potential as marketers grapple with the overly convoluted ecosystem.

What is a 2D Code?

2D codes are an evolution of the 1D code (e.g. UPC code) and use symbols to house data in order to initiate a specific action upon being scanned by a mobile device. QR (Quick Response) codes are the most widely known type of 2D code, but competition amongst providers is heated as each races to market their specific format as the new industry standard.

What can a 2D Code do?

2D codes can be used to encode a variety of data, including:

  • URLs
  • Phone Numbers
  • Text Messages
  • Email Addresses
  • Maps
  • Contact Information
  • Social Networking Details
  • Videos

What are the Different Formats?

As previously mentioned, QR codes are the most pervasive form of 2D codes but there is no shortage of competing formats. Here are several to consider:

  • QR Code: These codes are based on a standard and enjoy widespread support by marketers worldwide. Free QR code readers are readily available in the respective mobile application stores and QR codes were recently used by Google in an effort to mobilize 100,000 small businesses throughout the United States.
  • Microsoft Tag: Officially still in beta, the Tag technology is similar in functionality to a QR code but uses what’s known as HCCBs (High Capacity Color Barcodes) to provide more data in fewer symbols. As this is a proprietary technology and can’t be read with a standard QR code reader, users will need to download the Microsoft Tag Reader to their phone.
  • ScanLife: Using EZCodes, Scanlife utilizes what’s known as indirect codes. These codes don’t hold the content data, but rather a unique identifier which is then sent to the ScanLife servers to initiate the intended action. If, for some reason, ScanLife ceases to exist, so does your marketing platform.
  • JagTag: Similar to other 2D providers, JagTag relies on a unique identifier on marketing materials but rather than scanning the code with an application, the user is instructed to snap a picture with their camera and then send it to JagTag via a short code or email (depending on the carrier). In trying the demo on their homepage, it took me 2:02 to start the camera on my phone, snap the picture, send the picture, wait for the response, and then view the video and ad.

These are just a few of the codes available but represent the majority of the major players in the space.

Who’s using 2D Codes?

The list of companies using 2D codes is lengthy and includes such well known brands as Google, Nike, VW, Sports Illustrated, American Airlines, and many more. Placements include print, outdoor, television, and just about anywhere you can display the code.

What are the implementation hurdles?

Conceptually, integrating a 2D code into current marketing initiatives is straightforward enough. Just slap the code on your creative and consumers will flock to your fancy marketing message. Well, not so fast.

It is vitally important that marketers think through the entire campaign, from creative integration, messaging (not everyone knows what the code is for), tracking, technology, media, and fulfillment.

Are you using 2D codes in your marketing?

*Photo Credit: Clevercupcakes (Flickr)

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Bookmark and Share

{ 0 comments }

To Compete or not to Compete – How Best to Leverage Competitive Business Intelligence?

by Katie McNally March 5, 2010

For as long as I have been doing online marketing consulting a key consideration in driving business strategy has been related to what competitors are doing. Generally there is some really valuable information that can be ascertained from assessing competitors interactive marketing strategies and there are also some common pit falls.
The most common pit fall [...]

Read the full article →

Google Steps Up Their Support of Location-Specific Content

by Travis Unwin March 3, 2010

Google knows where you are. Google can find you. And Google is coming to get you!
OK, that last part is speculation on my part, and not very good speculation at that. But the first two parts are quite true, and have been for some time. Users have been adding location-specific terms to their queries for [...]

Read the full article →

Cure Online Schizophrenia by Crafting a Consistent Voice

by Dustin Diehl March 1, 2010

What if you had a friend who, every time you talked with them, sounded different? You call them in the morning and they greet you with a crisp British accent. You text them at lunch and they respond in leetspeak. You meet them for after-work drinks and they ramble on like a Texas auctioneer. How [...]

Read the full article →

Domino’s reinvented themselves… how would you?

by Jeff Moriarty February 26, 2010

Recently Domino’s Pizza went through a very public campaign where they admitted their pizza wasn’t very good, and recreated it from bottom to topping. They posted very interesting and blunt excerpts from customers and focus groups that said what many people knew, and then explained what they were going to do about it. Talking about [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries