1
Thank you all so much for having me, today Paid Social media is a topic that I m passionate about, and that I m immersed in every day in my role at SocialCode. SocialCode is a marketing partner for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram and Pinterest. We are a technology and services company that help Fortune 100 companies make the most out of every dollar they spend on Paid Social. And while we help companies like Walmart, Chrysler, Macys and others spend 10 s of millions of dollars a year, it s very clear from our perspective that paid social media is no longer just for the Fortune 500. It s for every company. And success through social media no longer comes from just creating great, relevant content for your so called owned audiences. The game has changed, and not just for Visa but for small to medium sized businesses as well. Paid social is no longer a nice to have, it has become a significant part of the marketing mix for brands and companies the world over. 2
3
4
No presentation on paid social media would be complete with out the pre requisite big numbers you see here. Some of the most important ones that I d like to call out here would be: 1 Million small and medium sized businesses advertising on Faacebook 59% of FB s revenue that came from Mobile 82% of Twitter s revenue that came from Mobile Through these numbers, you start to see the trends validated that you know to be true. 5
A few more trends are highlighted here that I ll dig into a bit later today; 200MM Instagram users 600 MM Whatsapp users both on track for 1B users 703MM use Facebook mobile each day (40% growth) And as Facebook s largest advertiser, Samsung is currently on track to spend about 100MM on Facebook this year. And it helps bring into focus one of the more important trends we ve seen over the last few years Paid Social drives business results. Measurable ROI. 6
Another important way to look at the landscape is through the lens of audience reach and audience segmentation which you see here. Facebook is leading the way on both with a staggering 1.3B users, and an equally impressive amount of targeting options. If you re a business that wants to generate reach, and be really specific about it. Facebook should be your first destination. LinkedIn is in the process of transforming itself into the primary source of business content on the web. A much different proposition than just job searching which it has been known for. And while it s not complete, the wealth of targeting they have makes the platform a potential powerhouse in the space of paid social. One to watch out for. Twitter is steadily growing in both audience and segmentation and this quarter their add revenue doubled from Q3 last year. Advertisers are still aggressively spending on the platform, and Twitter is working hard to better monetize their audiences. Being the real time place to find news and information and the place where audiences come to talk up the television and entertainment content they re watching gives Twitter an important differentiation. The case study I ll share later from Six Flags gives you a peak into how the platform is helping brands drive business results and will continue to get better there. Instagram. Boasting amazing numbers, but not yet differentiated audiences for advertising. The industry estimates that Instragram will become a 400MM ad revenue driving force when it becomes more available next year. They have changed consumer behavior and driven photo sharing through the roof and it s an amazing opportunity for brands. And while advertising isn t ready for prime time yet, now s the time to figure out your voice, how your content can best perform organically and what role, particularly at the top of the funnel, Instagram can play for you. 2015 is going to be a massive year for Pinterest. And it s absolutely a platform to keep on your radar. 7
Promoted Pins became a thing in 2014, with brands having the opportunity to leverage gender, device and keyword targeting to place their pins in front of potential audiences. Promoted pins are monetized on a cpc basis, and brands are only paying for clicks through to their web properties. Discover. Save. Do. Help people discover things they love and inspire them to go d 7
8
Probably the most important trend I ve been able to witness over the last years is the ability for social, and now paid social, to drive measurable business results. Over 40% of our advertisers are now using both platforms to directly impact online sales and are measuring the success of their advertising dollars through Return on Ad Spend. Dollar for dollar, we re seeing returns up to 10 15x for brands that are totally set up to drive online revenue. Partnerships with Datalogix, Epsilon and Nielsen are taking the ability to measure business success one step further. Datalogix has become the digital leader in connecting online activity to offline purchase. Facebook and twitter have an ability to match customers through their emails with DLX who can leverage over $2Trillion dollars of purchase information to show brands which of their targeted audiences completed purchases offline. Equally as powerful in terms of measurement are partnerships that FB and Twitter have created with Nielsen around a product called BrandLift. BrandLift product uses surveys to measure consumer attitudes, brand awareness and purchase intent. Through these tools, marketers are finding out exactly what their social media advertising impact is having. 9
Another important trend that continues to impact marketers and paid social is the decline in organic distribution your content reaches on Facebook. It was only a few years back when the brand average was hovering around 16%. Today, that number is closer to 1%. So of your 1,000,000 fans that you ve generated on your Facebook page, close to 10,000 will see every organic post. Why is it happening? More and more content is being created every day. Competition in News Feed is increasing. Newsfeed is designed to show you the most relevant content possible. So the algorithm needs to weed through potentially 15000 stories to show you the 150 that you will look at each time you log on. What are the implications? Most importantly, that you need to re consider the amount and type of content you post on your pages. Use the tools at your disposal to figure out which posts will perform the best and focus on those. And equally as important, how do you bring paid media into your approach. Thinking about your business goals for the social platforms, will allow you to dtermine the right 10
amount of reach you will need to succeed. 10
I could spend our entire hour together talking about targeting opportunities. And for the purpose of today I m going to focus on Facebook. The intricacies and opportunities for your business are massive today. Start with Fans, and friends of your fans. With organic reach declining, you might question whether or not fans are valuable to your brand. They absolutely are. When a person sees their friend likes your business your ads drive, on average, 50% more recall and 35% higher online sales lift. Now start to layer on platform native targeting; Age & Gender, Demographics, and broad interests i.e. Amusement Parks, Six Flags, Magic Mountain, Coca Cola, Roller Coaster Working with DLX or other third parties, now I can layer on: HHIncome, category spend, frequency of spending behaviour; i.e. Coca Cola drinkers, or people that buy multiple coca cola s per month Massive reach comes from creating Look a likes of any of those groups And all of this is just scratching the surface of what is possible. So far all we ve really talked about is platform side information + third parties. Working ourselves around your specific audience. 11
Two years ago, Custom Audiences rolled out allowing us to create audience targets based on your email addresses. With one simple upload, we re able to match your audience on Facebook through their email addresses and create custom audience buckets. And where this gets really interesting is when your CRM database is clearly set up to maximize this potential. We re working with retailers to target users that signed up with them this year, last year, two years ago and three years ago to continuosly narrow down the audiences that work best against specific objectives and content. 12
Then last year, custom audiences on facebook were upgraded to leverage the website custom audience retargeting opportunity. FBX was the first attempt at re targeting, but WCA is the next level and has become much more important for brands. Twitter has done the same with Tailored Audiences which was updated in June to follow the success of WCA pixels. And results are through the roof with these options; giving us the ability to continue to target the right people with the right message at the right time. 13
Much has been made over recent months about Facebook s aggressive moves into video content and the numbers don t lie. Looking at the number of video views coming from YouTube we are seeing a declne on YouTube since the middle of the year and a significant incline on Facebook. You can see the specific moment in August when FB videos viewed per month actually beat YouTube s. You wlll notice an incredible up tick starting in March which is when auto play videos started entering your newsfeed. This is definitely a space to watch closely for marketers. 14
And even more importantly, one to take advantage of now. Retargeting to video viewers is now a really successful tactic on Facebook. Studies have shown a 2x lift in conversions on users that were given an awareness message video and then a conversion focused ad unit. And we re able to create audience buckets based on partial viewers as well. Great example of sequential messaging which is another trend that is going to continue gaining steam in 2015. 15
16
So what are the implications of these trends on your business. The first implication that we like to talk about is thinking about a full funnel strategy for your social efforts. Brands have a large opportunity to drive impact upper funnel by maximizing reach against qualified audiences driving them down the funnel. Use reach to build your audience, targeting messages based on your core objectives. Engage that audience with the best and most engaging content that increases affinity, and familiarity and takes advantage of sharing and virality to continue building your audience. Close the loop by taking advantage of re targeting and very specific call to action messaging to drive the deeper action you are looking for. 17
Another important implication is to re think the breadth of content you generate. For most effective planning, build one fixed audience (or several fixed audiences to test) to reach with strong messages built to answer core objectives and shift behavior vs. one-off always on messaging. Optimizing for reach allows each message to penetrate a larger portion of the intended audience 18
The shift to reach goal involves a need to re think your KPIS. Campaigns built to hit maximum audience penetration at optimal frequency drive business results, but change the way campaigns should be evaluated shift away from efficient engagement to efficient reach. 19
20
Content developed should be intended for distribution in order to maximize impact of that content - fewer, more purposeful messages Build more proactive campaign plans vs. reactive or real-time content taking advantage of pre-planned real-time when possible If content is related to timely event or promotion, plan budget significant enough to drive impact among intended audience(s) Leverage engagement to indicate top performing content to promote, but ensure ample reach and budget planned to have greatest impact 21
22
What s the priority objective of the campaign? Increase awareness, consideration, purchase intent among an audience? Increase in-store sales with a new campaign concept? Define an audience that is most relevant to reach, while ensuring audience allows for broad scale. If measurement study is in place, consider that no other message can run to this audience during the test. Brief content to deliver on primary objective building a cohesive set of posts that answer the objective. Opportunity to pre-test messages to validate which are most resonant with audience, or user two-tiered approach.. Plan campaigns against media principles that factor in audience penetration and frequency and leverage ocpm bidding models to drive greatest business impact. 23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
Ialso wanted to look briefly at some of the work that Six Flags has done on Twitter, which is leading the way on how brands are leveraging the platform to drive business results. The campaign was focused on selling 2015 season passes, across all of the various parks. Starting with Promoted Tweets, Six Flags geo targeted audiences in each market with awareness messages. Days later, they moved sequentially to Twitter Cards to help drive the specific sale. 33
The success is in the numbers! 34
35
36
37
38
39
What Happened You can now buy Twitter media according to goals beyond engagement like offsite clicks or app installs Why It Matters Engagements are not the best proxy for all business results Allows advertisers to pay for the most relevant results Custom workflow 40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48