Paid Social Media to Promote Your Brand

Transcription

1 PAID SOCIAL MEDIA TO PROMOTE YOUR BRAND Sarah Griffis and Jess Jenkins May 2015

2 LYONSCG White Paper: Paid Social Media to Promote Your Brand 1 Why Invest in Social Media? Whether you're a local business or a global brand, your audience is active on one or more social media platforms. Over a quarter of the world are active social media users. That s 2.03 billion people! Social media is a major influencer on top of the funnel demand, playing a part in three-quarters of total purchasing decisions. Many marketers, however, struggle with this channel. Thirteen percent say they can't show the impact of social on their business. No surprise there - that s been a problem since the time of radio, TV and print. Few retailers see many sales directly from social networks. On average, sales from social account for less than 2% of direct sales for most retailers. So the question is, does social really matter to your bottom-line and the answer to that is absolutely yes! Consider this: users who come to a site through social or shared content spend an average $ versus $ for users who don t engage via social. You could be making almost $10 more for each customer who interacts with you through social media if you approach it the right way! Changing Landscape of Social Media For a long time, brands were able to get traction through building an organic presence on social. Many newcomers to ecommerce like Warby Parker ( Everlane ( and BarkBox ( built most of their awareness through social media. While building out your organic presence is still incredibly important, social has evolved into a Pay-to-Play environment as platforms look to new revenue streams. Now, on average, your audience will only see 6% of your organic posts. At the same time, Facebook has seen a 50% decrease in organic posts appearing in news feeds, largely due to their paid programs. Brands and marketers have to step up their social media game. With so many different social platforms out there, how do you know which are right for you? What should you spend on paid social? If you're like most of the brands we work with, you don't have a large enough team to support all these channels. So the question becomes where should you look to invest your time and money for the greatest impact? What is the best way to track and attribute demand so you can optimize future paid search? Before we address these questions and walk you through the basics of a paid campaign, we d like to take a few moments to review what underlies any good social media program.

3 LYONSCG White Paper: Paid Social Media to Promote Your Brand 2 Planning for Social Media Building your social media presence through organic or paid efforts requires time and resources to get it right. Before you even post, tweet or pin, you should consider: Business Goals: Social media is just another marketing channel and, as you would do with any communication program, you have to analyze how its use aligns with your business goals. Budgeting: In 2014, 9% of total marketing budgets were dedicated to social efforts. We expect this to rise to as much as 13% in Audience Research: You need to know how your business and brand work online. Uncover how your audience views you through social listening, as well as engaging with them. You can also see what s working by identifying posts that are performing well organically. Competitor Research: Identify how your competitors are leveraging social and if you are competing for the attention of the same audience, devise a way to diversify your content and presentation. Gathering the numbers (follower count, engagement, posting schedule) through a free web application or paid tracking service will help you understand how you stack up to your competition so you can borrow from their strategies. Tools: A planning and scheduling platform is essential to free up the time to actively listen to your audience and plan campaigns that work. Usually these programs give you the tools to monitor the conversation and automate reports so you can spend your time building out this channel as one that works/converts Metrics/KPIs: Finally, track success of different metrics and make sure you're aligning that with your web tracking. It s good to make it a regular habit as well as get a picture over time. Create a reporting template based on KPIs your stakeholders are interested in so you can keep track of how things are doing and where the opportunities are. Technical Development: Your technical team will need to help with these items. Facebook conversion pixel Template, Product Catalog for Facebook Dynamic Product Ads Pinterest Rich Pin meta tags Facebook open graph markup

4 LYONSCG White Paper: Paid Social Media to Promote Your Brand 3 Where to Focus Social Media Efforts? So Many Channels, So Little Time So where should you look to invest your time and money for the greatest impact? The answer for that is really going to depend on your business goals (i.e. add to your mailing list, attract more site visitors, increase conversions) and what your audience looks like (where they hang out). So let s take a closer look at your social media budget. Earlier when we referenced 9% of your marketing budget should be spent on social, this assumed your company had at least built out an organic base. If you have an established marketing budget and you re investing in other channels, then we d recommend diverting between one and two percent of your paid efforts since it represents a more lucrative channel. If you are in growth mode, then we say go with 9% of your overall marketing budget. Based on our experience, Facebook is the best platform for direct monetization. That s no surprise since they ve the longest established advertising features. Polyvore ( is also an excellent choice, especially if you re in fashion, accessories or home goods. Most of the clients we ve worked with on Polyvore see about a three-to-one return on their investment. Pinterest now has Promoted Pins. Instagram is also emerging as a place to invest your social media spend with several third-party apps launching the ability to shop your feed such as Like2Buy ( Google+ ( works well for growing your organic presence. If you have brick-and-mortar stores, you should take steps to optimize local search by creating individual pages for each location. YouTube ( which seems to straddle both visibility and optimization, is also a monetization channel. Videos are highly shareable and can influence other channels. They can work well but the content needs to be strong and the call-to-action has to be clear and visible. We recommend tutorials and highlighting other information your users want to hear. Remember not to treat social media videos as branded commercials.

5 LYONSCG White Paper: Paid Social Media to Promote Your Brand 4 Optimizing Social Media Campaigns for Monetization FACEBOOK CAMPAIGN Targeting Your Audience We get the most questions about how to define and target your audience since matching your content to your audience is key to a successful campaign. You want to be able to deliver that personalized, customized content that everyone s buzzing about. Facebook offers a Custom Audience feature that enables you to create a lookalike audience based on their vast database. You supply your list or a segment you wish to target (i.e. a list of users who've made a purchase in the last six months; people who've downloaded your app; or have attended an event). Facebook will then one-to-one match those people to their twins - people who have similar behaviors and interests, and are not already connected to your brand. It's a really efficient way to get a good solid list of people who re going to respond to your content right off the bat. This feature can pay off for fan acquisition, site registration, off-facebook purchases, coupon claims and brand awareness. Let s take a look at two examples of how to optimize for audience. ClassPass was able to take their standard ad, but by targeting only people in the Baltimore and Annapolis area, they can really capture more attention. They increase the chances a viewer will see the ad and explore the offer because of its relevancy. The West Elm ad illustrates another simple way to target an audience to deliver personalized content. By focusing on.edu addresses, they can extend an offer to college students looking to decorate their dorm room or apartment. Another very important item to remember is to optimize your mobile and your desktop ads separately. The best rule is to optimize for mobile first; but keep the creative separate so you can make sure they both work.

6 LYONSCG White Paper: Paid Social Media to Promote Your Brand 5 FACEBOOK CAMPAIGN Images The main thing to remember is that even though this is paid social media, your post isn t a stand-alone ad. It s part of a larger campaign that employs different media channels, content and messages. In social media, optimize content for the platform it's appearing on it should fit in with the content that surrounds it. You can incorporate user-generated content from your site or third-party providers. That's an easy way to make things seem natural within your audience's feed. Because your post will be seen repeatedly, it offers an excellent opportunity to tell your story, and to appeal to the emotional and aspirational parts of your brand. So strike a balance between promotional and non-promotional content. Take a look at those two examples that catch the reader s eye without overtly selling. They create a mood or situation hanging out with girlfriends or escaping to a favorite place that draws the visitor in. Another content tip is to slim down on copy to let your image and headline do the talking. But remember, Facebook s Ad Manager has strict image guidelines, no more than 20% of your image can be comprised of text, so make sure you are always messaging visually. Remember to test multiple visuals or approaches. Images with real people, pets and locations that put your product in context work especially well. To make it easier for you to determine what works best, there are services like AdEspresso ( which let you upload five different text sets, images, and headers. From those 15 different assets they ll create 125 different variations which you can then automatically rotate in your ad program to see which one(s) convert the best for each segment.

7 LYONSCG White Paper: Paid Social Media to Promote Your Brand 6 FACEBOOK CAMPAIGN Video Last year, video views on Facebook exceeded YouTube by one billion. (Keep in mind, however, that not all of those views were complete.) A YouTube video is not the same as a Facebook video. One way they re markedly different is they re much shorter, in keeping with the scrolling nature of the platform. 45% of viewers stop watching a video after a minute. 65% of them are gone after two minutes. So if you don t want to lose eyeballs, keep video to between seconds in length. Successful videos are how-to's, sneak peeks, animations, or behind-the-scene footage. Good video doesn t have to be expensive, just easy to relate to. The takeaway is not to treat video content like a commercial. To make sure a visitor associates your brand with the content as soon as possible, brand your video within the first ten seconds. Upload your video directly to Facebook to be able to use the auto-play function which counts views. Auto-play is muted by default. You ll need to open with a strong visual punch so a viewer will want to unmute your video. Your other option is to create a video that works without sound (voice or music) to make sure you get your message across. PINTEREST What does a great Promoted Pin look like? We can t say it any better than Pinterest who advises making them beautiful, helpful and actionable. That s one reason this platform, which is all about inspiration and helping visitors carry out their vision, is especially great for retailers in fashion, home goods and beauty verticals. Pins that work very well include DIYs, outfits of the day, recipes and tips. The Makeup.com tutorial "3 Clever Crafts You Can Do with Nail Polish" ties in the content that users expect and want from the platform, but also push their brand and product offerings. We ve seen many retailers re-pin their entire product line. This won t engage as a promoted pin or organically. Instead, we suggest you use pins from your board you already know are popular. The number of downloads indicates how relevant they are to your audience. If you re creating original content remember not to use a lot of logos. Again, the idea is to not make it look like an ad. You want visitors to feel that it s organic content.

8 LYONSCG White Paper: Paid Social Media to Promote Your Brand 7 You can also reach out to influential bloggers in your industry and ask them to create a Pinterest board featuring your products. Merchandise can be used as an incentive. You ll be able to take advantage of their reach with members of your audience to build a base. We want to share a few technical pointers about images that work well on Pinterest based on findings from early test campaigns. Images without faces receive more 23% more re-pins than those with faces Dark images don t do well. Red-orange images are pinned twice as often as blue images Close-up images (those with 10% or less background showing) perform 4x better Behind Your Social Media Campaigns Like any other marketing campaign, you ll want to pay attention to feedback as well as measure the results of your efforts. Armed with this knowledge, you ll be able to leverage this channel like a pro. SOCIAL LISTENING/ENGAGEMENT Social media is a two-way street. Your ultimate goal is to create engagement with your audience. The first step to achieving the best level of engagement with your customers and potential customers (through organic or paid efforts) is understanding the real-time conversation around your brand, product or vertical. You can keep your finger on the conversational pulse by tracking tweets, comments, mentions or keywords relevant to you or your competitors. Take advantage of your existing social media management tool or look into free options like Feedly ( which consolidates news sources, or Social Mention ( social media search engine that searches user-generated content. Social listening (and responding) enables you to strengthen your bond with your audience and improve your brand reputation by: Posting timely and relevant content Asking and answering questions Solving problems positively and publicly Sharing customer s stories Keep in mind that social creates the expectation in your audience s mind that you can respond quickly and authoritatively. One survey estimated that 25% of consumers who complain on social media, expect a response within an hour. And they ll likely continue to complain until they get an answer. On the positive side, 71% of those people will probably recommend your brand to a friend if their issue is resolved fast enough.

9 LYONSCG White Paper: Paid Social Media to Promote Your Brand 8 MONITOR CAMPAIGN PERFORMANCE Don't set it and forget it. Monitoring campaign performance will help you determine what s working and how well. Figuring out how a paid social program is paying off is definitely an area that most retailers find difficult. Attributing demand to social is problematic for several reasons. First, direct channel value does not always equal ROI. We know from available user data that social influences a significant portion of purchasing decisions. However, it doesn t directly lead to a click or purchase from an ad. (Can you remember the last time you clicked through a video and bought an item?) Most consumers interact with at least two communication channels, if not four to five. This makes last attribution tracking just about impossible. If you re only focusing on investing in what that last touch point is (for example, affiliate), then you wouldn t see growth because you re not driving new leads or filling the top of the funnel. How can you began to understand influence and value driven by social? One way is to assign values based upon historic data. Similar to the classic scientific method, you start by figuring out what question you want to answer. Say you want to find out the value driven by a video ad. If you know that 1 in 100 people viewed your ads and made a purchase (known as view through conversion) then you have a base conversion rate for calculation. Look at the overall value of that customer. In this instance, we look at annual value. If I know that on average, this customer shops twice a year at $150 AOV, then we assign an annual value of $300. (We assume a customer tends to leave after a year.) The value per video view is $3 ($300 x.01%). Based upon projecting 10,000 views for my video and knowing my cost were $3,000, then I estimate a return of $10 to for each dollar I spent to make the video. Note that this method isn t perfect and it depends on how good your data is. Another aspect to consider is how could the demand generated by the video have been attributed to other models in a last click environment. For social, we always recommend tracking how direct traffic fluctuates with investment in social spend. Instead of going through the effort and calculating all of the assumed values for different social initiatives, you can review other attribution models. In Google Analytics you have an opportunity to review assisted conversions as well as first-click conversions. Based upon these reports, you can better understand social s role in your overall funnel.

10 LYONSCG White Paper: Paid Social Media to Promote Your Brand 9 In the screenshot above, Polyvore has the most assisted conversions and the highest transaction value. However, Facebook plays a larger role in first-click conversions, so this might be a better place to invest marketing dollars if your goal is bringing the brand to prospective customers. Often, ecommerce managers and senior executives are not eager to invest in social media because they can t directly associate dollars with clicks. However, everyone needs to realize it s really not possible to separate out the effect of social media since it touches all of your channels in some way. Whether you look at first interactions or assisted demand, you should look at them within the context of your overall traffic volume. When testing campaigns, you should always track conversions using more than one KPI to evaluate where social media played a role in cross-channel attribution. One way is to examine the conversion funnel to determine where customers are interacting with you via social media even if they didn t end up converting. They key idea here is to look for patterns of engagement.

11 LYONSCG White Paper: Paid Social Media to Promote Your Brand 10 WHAT GOOD AD CONTENT LOOKS LIKE Images and photos are the most important tactic in optimizing social media posts. So let s look at what kinds of content performs well and how best to execute design. Average Retail Daily Posts by Type Source: 2015 Brandwatch Retail Report A big takeaway here is don t over engineer Graphics that do well often pair a simple image with graphics or text overlay If you are optimizing for conversions show your product multiple times with multiple views like a good product detail page It is all about context. Strike a balance between graphic excellence and natural content. Place your products with relatable people in places that speak to your audience Bright and bold are naturally eye catching if your brand has a distinct look and feel curate and share that with content to bolster your identity and stand out from competitors Readability is key!!! Watch the font size if you are including a call to action, value prop or promo code in your image too small is frustrating and will fall flat this is why we segment mobile and desktop view ads too. When in doubt optimize for mobile first. This should not be difficult services like Canva ( and user-generated content or repurposed images from your look-book make this fast, cheap and easy.

12 LYONSCG White Paper: Paid Social Media to Promote Your Brand 11 Focus for the Rest of 2015 In the spirit of the truly real-time nature of social media, here are a few new trends and opportunities to think about for the rest of Local Facebook Ads If you re a business with a brick-and-mortar location, take a look at what Facebook could do for driving in-store traffic through digital marketing. This product enables you to present offers to people that are only available in-store. Facebook Dynamic Product Ads As these become more generally available, you can make top items in your product catalog shoppable. They ll be a handy way to immediately lift conversion. Relevance Score This is a quick way from within the ads manager on Facebook, to track the health of your individual ads based on CPM/CPC engagement and competitor performance. Instagram Again, Instagram is poised to be a really important ecommerce channel with new shoppable programs - Shopseen, Soldsie and Like2Buy - that make your feed more merchandised. Snapchat, Periscope and Meerkat Depending on your brand/vertical, these new platforms offer niche marketing which can provide very personalized and customized content. Twitter Universal direct messaging makes customer service easier since you now don't need to ask for a follow to solve a problem anymore. Group messaging enables you to start parties or build conversations around specific hashtag campaigns or keywords. Quikly Third-party programs like Quikly ( that leverage your social reach for acquisition and quick revenue through gamification. CONCLUSION Build campaigns intelligently and authentically by learning about your customers and serving them highly customized content. Build an internal reporting and listening strategy now that centers around a process to test, analyze, modify and repeat. Understand that social media permeates all of your channels, you should be measuring its impact holistically and constantly evaluate opportunities to make this channel work for you.

13 LYONSCG White Paper: Paid Social Media to Promote Your Brand 12 Thank You LYONSCG appreciates the opportunity to present our solutions for ecommerce to you. We believe that our extensive experience with strategy, creative services and technical implementation of solutions for many leading ecommerce sites will translate into a solution for you that will enable desired growth. We would be happy to review some current live sites we ve worked on with you, and provide a detailed ecommerce demonstration. About LYONSCG LYONSCG is the industry s premier ecommerce Digital Agency, serving brand, retail, and B2B organizations with tailored ecommerce solutions that maximize online potential. Headquartered in Chicago, the firm offers a full range of services beginning with Digital Strategy and Digital Marketing and extending through Experience Design, Platform Implementation, Application Development, Hosting and Support. The approach is holistic to provide every client with a creative, robust and increasingly profitable ecommerce website. LYONSCG is ecommerce Realized! LYONSCG 20 N. Wacker Drive, Suite 1750 Chicago, IL P: F: W: