Social ROI. What does it mean to your company? New followers and fans? Clicks and shares? Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but when it comes to social media success there isn’t an easy or free answer. With the decline in organic reach, algorithms now rule the social game. As the number of businesses and brands vying for the same audience’s attention continues to grow, no social channel can afford to give you a free ride. The cold fact is that there is a new name of the game – pay to play. Facebook. Twitter. LinkedIn. Instagram. YouTube. Pinterest. Snapchat. Discover which platforms your target audience is on, and determine where your social ad dollars should be spent for your greatest ROI.
2. Todd Bertsch
Owner/President
Creative and passionate about all things web, Todd Bertsch, Owner/President of
Evolve Creative Group, is a leader in web design and digital marketing with over 20
years of experience in these fields. Todd is also an award-winning web designer,
author, educator and lecturer. He speaks regularly throughout the region on
various web-related topics and serves on several nonprofit marketing committees.
Todd holds a BFA from The University of Akron in graphic design and is married with
two children. When he’s not busy working, you’ll find Todd challenging his son to a
ping pong match, lifting weights, grilling out or enjoying a campfire.
3. Malinda Shean
Lead Digital Marketing Strategist
Malinda Shean is a proud alumna of Nichols College in Dudley, Massachusetts.
Malinda holds a Bachelor’s of Business in Marketing from Nichols, as well as an
Associate’s of Science in Graphic Design from Springfield Technical Community
College. She brings over 19 years of marketing experience to Evolve and over 10
years of digital marketing expertise.
As the PPC Queen, Malinda loves the challenge of optimizing conversions and
enjoys all things marketing and design, including traditional and digital marketing.
4. PROBLEM: To Compete,
You Must Pay to Play
With a dramatic shift in the social
media landscape over the last few
years, it’s very clear that social media
marketing is no longer free.
$ $
5. Facebook - Decline of Organic Reach
Facebook has said that
the average user has
access to more than
1,500 posts per day but
only looks at 300.
https://blog.hootsuite.com/facebook-algorithm/#whatis
Endless amounts of content and algorithm changes
that favor paid social over organic are forcing
brands to pay to play.
6. Social PPC Trends
In 2017, social media marketing
ad spend is projected to top
$41 billion.
https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/social-media/stop-debating-death-organic-social-media/
7. SOLUTION: Pay Up and Create a
Strategy for Success
Squatty Potty’s CEO
ignored everyone,
made an insane
video and boosted
sales 600%
Whether organic or paid, content must
have a purpose, be engaging and
measurable.
50 million views on FB/YT, with some 70
percent watching entire three-minutes
http://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/squatty-pottys-ceo-ignored-
everyone-made-insane-video-and-boosted-sales-600-168526/
8. A successful social media PPC
marketing campaign is focused
on four key points:
1 Get in front of the RIGHT people
Define your target audience.
At the RIGHT time and place
Create a strategy.
With the RIGHT message
Craft engaging messaging and creative.
Data-driven decisions
Test. Measure. Learn. Repeat.
2
3
4
9. Get in front of
the RIGHT people
Define your target audience
• Demographics
• Personas
10. I have demographic data, why
do I need persona profiles?
Demographics include things like age, gender,
race and income bracket – pretty basic stuff.
Personas dig into the personality of the buyer,
focusing on what makes them who they are,
and what drives them to seek out the services
or products you offer.
Demographics vs. Personas
11. Summit Metro Parks – Fall
Hiking Spree Campaign
• 24 to 44+ years old
• Young parents/families
• Pet owners
• Have an interest in hiking
and fitness for fun
• History of being active based
on web browsing activity
• Summit County only
Define Your Target Audience - Demographics
12. Define Your Target Audience - Personas
Jenny – avid park user
(FICTIONAL USER)
About Jenny
Jenny visits the parks several times a
week. She enjoys walking her dog in
the morning and hikes with her child
on the weekends.
Jenny’s Needs
- Jenny is very busy and needs
constant reminders about events
and park closures.
Our Goals for Jenny
- Make sure Jenny is aware of all
events, park closures and remind
her to register for hiking spree.
Jenny’s Profile
- Manager of local hotel
- 35 years old
- High school diploma
- Makes $55k annually
- Married with one child
- Has a dog named “spot”
- Works a typical 40-hour week
“I love our
Summit Metro
Parks and
could not
survive without
them!”
13. Choose the RIGHT
Time and place
Create a strategy for success
• Choose platforms
• Types of marketing/sales funnel
• User flow and goals
14. Create a Strategy – Choose Platforms
Are you reaching the right people?
Knowing your target audience and which platforms
they are most likely engaging with allows you to:
target effectively and use
ad dollars wisely.
15. Create a Strategy – Choose Platforms
http://sproutsocial.com/insights/new-social-media-demographics
16. Create a Strategy – Timing/Sales Funnel
Where are your customers at in
the sales funnel?
Jenny
“I love our Summit
Metro Parks and
could not survive
without them!”
Awareness
Interest
Decision
Action
17. Create a Strategy – Timing/Sales Funnel
Should you implement Front End
Advertising, Retargeting or Both?
• Engage with people who have already
visited your site and shown interest
• Deliver a message to visitors based on
content they did or didn’t view to re-
engage them and encourage a
conversion
21. Promoted content must lead
back to content that converts.
Creative – Engaging Content
1.Do you have engaging content?
2.Do you have a measurable conversion and a
clear call-to-action (CTA)?
• Form
• Download
• Purchase
• Video view
3. Does your message/creative match your
landing page?
4. Is your landing page mobile friendly?
25. Creative – Testing
Don’t be afraid to fail. Failure is
good. It’s the best way to learn.
Failure is the byproduct of
good testing.
26. Test. Measure. Learn. Repeat. Track the
performance of your paid advertising
and make data-driven decisions.
Test. Test. And then test again. Always be testing!
• Image – Unsure of which image may resonate or convert the
highest? Test them. This is your opportunity to evaluate which
images garner the highest click-through rate in each platform.
• Message – Minor copy changes can produce big results. Just
changing your headline may help increase your CTR, giving
you a better opportunity to convert.
• Landing page – A/B split testing.
Creative – Testing and Tracking
28. Making Data-Driven Decisions
Consistently measure the results of your
advertising campaigns and track the
changes. This will help your team make
data-driven decisions.
• Each platform has metrics
• Utilize an analytics platform, such as
Google Analytics
• Use tracking URLS to track performance
• Use tools such as Crazy Egg and
Mouseflow
34. Making Data-Driven Decisions
After reviewing and analyzing the data from the 2015
Fall Hiking Spree, we determined our strategy for the
2016 Fall Hiking Spree. We used the data to set our
digital placements and ad spends.
We were able to decrease the
cost per sign up for all digital
placements by over 78%.
36. FINAL SUMMARY
Marketing efforts today
need to be sophisticated
and much more creative
than ever before.
You can’t afford to simply create
your ad based on trends and forget
about it.
You have likes or followers, you have well crafted posts that are specific to your platform and your target audience…you push your post anticipating that you will have an influx of new likes, followers, retweets, shares, etc. You don’t. Unless you’re investing in quality video content, it’s unlikely that you’re content is going to get much reach or engagement. Unless you pay.
Your audience has access to over 1,500 posts a day. Access to. That means there may be more that they’re missing and they only view around 300. That’s 20%, so 80% of the content they’re exposed to goes unseen.
There’s a reason why this figure is so high. Because paid social media works. It’s highly targeted so you determine who sees your content. The cost is relatively low. Your efforts are measurable.
Personas let you take a hard look at who your target customer really is. You’re creating a clear picture of who your ideal customer/client is. This allows you to create more targeted information, instead of creating content with the hopes that someone will connect with your message, you’re tailoring a message that appeals directly to the people you want to read it.
Facebook – biggest network with nearly 1.8 billion active users. Great for sharing photos, videos, company updates and promotions.
Twitter – short text updates of 140 characters or less, videos, images, links, polls and promotions. Very easy to interact with users and an effective channel for handling customer service.
Pinterest – Very heavily visually oriented. Predominately used by women. Most popular categories are DIY projects, fashion, exercise, beauty, photography and food. Rich pins, promoted pins.
Instagram – Photos and videos. More than 600 minion active users. Mainly food, art, travel and fashion. Almost entirely mobile.
Where is your customer in your sales funnel? How are they engaging with your content? Are they ready to take action or just looking for information to help form a decision?
Optimizely
Content Experiments – formerly Google Website Optimizer
Experiments require:
Different versions of your web pages to serve to your users.
Goals that you've set up in Analytics.
Ecommerce tracking if you want to use those metrics as objectives.
Page Elements You can Test - Create different versions of your web pages to test:
Headlines and headers
Images and icons
Text
Calls to action
Page layout
This data shows that we decreased sessions but increased the conversion rate and conversions for our primary goal of sign ups.
By using the data from the previous year, we were able to make decisions about the messaging, placements and targeting.
This is an example of some of the reporting that is available within the Facebook Ads platform. This shows the impressions, social reach and link clicks. There are several reports to look at and each can be modified, or you can create a view that contains the columns of data that are most beneficial for you. By looking at this particular report you could jump to the conclusion that the “Hike 8 Trails” ad is the top performing. However, this doesn’t tell the whole story. What was the click-through-rate (CTR), were there conversions, what was the cost per conversion?