Patrick Toland of OptimalA live blog of a presentation by Patrick Toland at the Internet Summit Conference, Raleigh NC, November 7, 2012. Mr. Toland is Chief Revenue Officer at Optimal, a social media advertising, and analytics agency.

The presentation is scheduled to begin at 10:30 a.m. EST

The presentation will focus on Facebook and include free resources and a preview of Otpimal’s tools.

Community sites used to be a site category, now social media outlets like Facebook ARE that category. Facebook has hockey stuck in growth since 2009. Huge online advertising budget has shifted to Facebook.

The evolution of social advertising: Facebook ads have gone from being tiny banner ads to much more sophisticated ads with social context. Latest: adding Open Graph actions to ads.

“Advertisers want more data, and more ways to act on that data.” – Tom Medicare.

Facebook is more and more about collecting user data for ad targeting.

  • rich data on more than a billion users
  • and more than 600 million mobile MAUs
  • Open graph integration with over 70% of top retailers
What’s involved in Facebook Advertising?
  1. Decide What to Promote
  2. Target the Right People
  3. Design engaging ads
  4. Manage budget
  5. Review and Improve.
Standard Facebook Targeting. You can go to the ad interface and play with it by building a fake ad to see what audience is out there. Will give you as suggested bid range, but don’t feel you have to use that.
Targeting on Facebook
  1. Age gender location
  2. Broad v. narrow
  3. Interests
  4. Social Context
  5. Different ads for different people.
The narrower you target, the more expensive it gets.

Lastest targeting options:

  1. Mobile newsfeed ads: not yet for massive scale, but growing fast. 14% of overall ad revenue is now mobile.
  2. Custom Audiences: leverage your CRM (email or other contacts you can upload and match to FB profiles).
  3. FBX Facebook Exchange: put a pixel on your site and track people from FB to your site and back again for retargeted ads. Initial testing by Optimal shows this to be more effective than other retargeting campaigns.
  4. Open Graph Sponsored Stories and Action Spec Targeting: target based on actions that people are taking. For example, target people who say they’re listening to a certain band or buying a certain product.
  5. Coming: real-time mobile targeting – target someone at a location at a certain time.
Measuring Success on Facebook
  • Establish desired outcomes
  • Intelligent design (campaigns designed for specific outcome goals, then adjust ad designs as you monitor metrics)
  • Forecast
  • Measure results (post-campaign, compare before and after results)
  • Expect the unexpected!
Don’t have the same ROI expectation you have for AdWords.
A few measurement tools
  • Facebook Insights – have started including things your fans also like beside you
  • SocialBakers.com – macro vertical info for Facebook
  • PageLever – make Insights easier to digest
  • Monitor.wildfireapps.com – recently bought by Google. Check daily fan acquisition rates of competitors.
  • Your own existing capabilities
The Optimal Approach
  • Optimal Index (free service). Ranking of FB pages based on fan numbers and engagement levels.
  • Optimal Keyword Expander: put in KW and find out what other things your audience might be interested in.
  • Optimal Audience Matrix: profiling of your fans.
Who can help you with all this?
  • Facebook blogs (not going to get much direct attention unless your a big brand)
  • Ad agencies
  • Facebook Preferred Marketing Developers (PMD) – about 300 of them currently.
END OF PRESENTATION
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