Social Media Darwinism » Online Advertising

Use Facebook Data to Unlock Consumer Affinity

Paul Dunay — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 18:00:48 +0000

When I started this blog back in 2006 Facebook was just getting going but nobody had a clue on when it came to the volumes of valuable data that they would ultimately produce. Today we are talking about almost 1 billion posts on Facebook per day, the same happens on Twitter every 4 days.

When I first saw the way in which Facebook data could combine with Twitter data, blog, forum, search and web data to make a rich profile of your consumer – I was blown away by the possibilities of knowing your customer better and knowing what really makes them tick.

Check out me and Dr Manuel Aparicio from Saffron Technology discuss the possibilities of harnessing the power of Social Data on yBCtv!

Special thanks to George Barker, the man behind the video magic, over at yourBusinessChannel the people who love “telling business stories and getting them out via a network of networks” for producing this video. See yourBusinessChannel for more videos with key thought leaders on the topic of social media and beyond.

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Marketing needs to be more Adaptive!

Paul Dunay — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 18:00:42 +0000

Ok so this isn’t the newest concept you ever heard of – but hear me out – its time we really changed a few things in the marketing organization.

So its easy to see that today’s marketing teams are not that well equipped to handle “real time marketing” as David Meerman Scott defined it. We need better systems to take in data and analytics in order to make smarter better business decisions.

I would argue that you have to have several sensing mechanisms in place – one that is a data set that is always looking backward (like a rear view mirror) so see what has been said and is always listening and watching the conversations, in addition to that you need a forward looking data set (like a windshield) to help drive decision making on what new products or services to launch, what will be the effectiveness of this campaign, what new hyper customer segments can we go after, and then of course you need a dashboard that pulls all this together in one place so you can see across multiple forms of media.

With today’s fragmented media landscape no single individual can pull together all these media channels to orchestrate and master them. And as a result you get silos of sub-optimized media.

In a real time marketing world speed will be key. So how can you even think of making a yearlong media plan? But that’s what some media planners are doing when it comes to TV and Print. As marketers we need to be optimized for speed and rapidly effective decision-making. Having said that I know we have a long way to go but anything is better than making gut level decisions or worse taking advice from your CEO on a media plan!

Small Budget – Big Impact So let me ask you a question – if...

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Small Budget – Big Impact

Paul Dunay — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 18:00:03 +0000

So let me ask you a question – if you could get more mileage out of your existing car – would you do it? Of course you would! So if I could show you how to improve the “gas mileage of your existing marketing budget – would you do it? Same dollars just more effective. Of course you would!

Years ago John Wanamaker once said – 50% of my marketing budget is wasted I just don’t know which 50% – I would argue that right now that dynamic is even worse – with the fragmentation and choices available in media these days that has to be more like 75% of my budget is wasted!

So how do you make a marketing budget more effective without changing the dollar amount, it sounds almost like a magic trick. Well you take the program budget (non compensation dollars) and you rank order them by spending level. What you get is a list of media type, sponsorships, and events.

The kingpin of the spend is usually some sort of TV ad spend (if you are B2C) and print/online media spend (if you are B2B). It’s easy to see how social media data can be used to optimize major media spending like TV ad for B2C by aligning the shows you buy with the best fit for the audience you are trying to reach. Easily done now with the mounds of social data out there.

For B2B you certainly can use social data to optimize the effectiveness of your search spending by mining what words your ideal customers use to describe your products or services. Again easily done now with the reams of social data out there. You can also look at what sites your ideal customers go to online to better inform where you deploy your display ad budget and perhaps even what sites and events you sponsor.

With all this great data on what your ideal customer are actually doing online, saying online and spending time online, you can make better more informed and more effective decisions on ad spending. Now that’s how to make a Small Budget have Big Impact!

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Social Lift is the Ultimate Rate of Change

Paul Dunay — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 18:00:19 +0000

You have a killer piece of original content that starts rippling out from its source. The two things social lift analysis can tell you are how far and how fast those ripples move. If the content ripples 900 times, but that takes 10 years, you won’t see much benefit. If it ripples 900 times in 28 days, that can be really valuable information. Those rapid ripples are an indicator of what’s happening to the things that you’re doing. They help identify valuable, highly efficient venues in which to place your brand.

Celebrities can be one good source of social lift. In using celebrities, it’s not just about the number of followers or fans someone has. That’s just a point in time.

Instead, you want to know how likely that number is to grow. The best celebrities for delivering social lift are those whose following has increased and will continue to do so over a period of time. In thinking about whether to select a celebrity, a key indicator of his or her potential is, when other types of content feature this person, how far does it reach and how fast does it get there?

Another source of social lift is TV shows. There are two types that exist today, those that are currently on the air and those that are in development. For the ones on the air today, you have to determine what happens when certain types of content, celebrities and advertising appear on that show. What does the overall social lift look like?

In considering shows that are yet to air, you should assess the overall reach of the show concept by finding corollaries to it. What is the overall reach of this type of content? What is the overall reach of celebrities that appear in those shows?

Want to learn more? Read: “Social Lift: How to make your media plan go further.”

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Facebook Advertising Tricks for B2B Marketers

Paul Dunay — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 18:00:01 +0000

If I could offer you a billboard in the middle of Times Square for little to no cost for you to advertise your company would you do it? One of the great things about the Facebook is that it provides you access to a large audience of over 550 Million people worldwide at a very low cost so why not take advantage of it.

After 9 years of Search Engine Marketing – I think it is safe to say any keyword you are going to buy is maxed out when it comes to the Google AdWords auction process. In 2001 when Google AdWords was just announced – I was buying and converting potential prospects into leads for pennies on the dollar with keywords like Globalization, eCommerce, Interactive Marketing (I was in a consulting firm at the time). This is why today on Facebook seems so familiar to me – while the buying process is less about keywords and more about precise targeting – the costs seem awfully familiar.

So let’s go through 3 Tricks to Maximize a Facebook Advertising purchase for B2B Marketers

Trick 1) Place specific Job Titles into the Likes and Interest field. This way anyone who has mentioned their job title in their profile is now a potential recipient of your ad. Go big and go broad with the Job Titles. Facebook doesn’t care how many you put in there; they will go find you the profiles that contain them nonetheless.
Trick 2) Put the 20 top companies you want to target into the Workplaces field. Facebook unlike Google works off of the “or” operand not the “and” operand so you can use this to your advantage by placing as many of the companies you want to target into the Workplaces field and thereby target the employees of all of those firms.
Trick 3) Run your Facebook Ads using Friends of your Page – if you want to widen your fan base why not try targeting friends of the people who already like your Page. If they are friends perhaps they share a common interest and one of those interests could be your company. Best of all when appears; inside the ad it will personally name your friends who already like your Page giving it the credibility and hopefully the “like” ability you are looking for.

There are tons of ways to target folks on Facebook. I have even seen people target down to the single individual level – “NanoTargeting” as it is called. I suggest you get your feet wet with Facebook Ads by building your Fan base on your company Page. This will give you a feeling for how the self service system works and perhaps even try some of the tricks above for your initial ad buy.

Also pay special attention to the metrics that Facebook is providing to you from your advertising buy because you can compile a buyer persona by running an ad for 30 days and a minimal investment. A persona will tell you what their favorite movie was, what their favorite music was, what their favorite TV show was, what their favorite books were, even their average age, gender and marital status. Great stuff to know and great data you can use to refine you next Facebook Advertising buy!

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11 B2B Marketing Predictions for 2011

Paul Dunay — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 18:00:43 +0000

Around this time last year I wrote about the 10 B2B Marketing Predictions for 2010 and while I would say 7 out of 10 have already materialized and the others are on their way. So that begs the question – what’s on the horizon specifically for B2B Marketers next year?

Here are 11 concrete ways I think the environment in which B2B Marketers operate will evolve in 2011.

Enjoy!

Facebook Advertising – will continue to improve and unfortunately get more expensive. After 9 years of Search Engine Marketing – I think it is safe to say any keyword you are going to buy is maxed out when it comes to the Google AdWords auction process. So people are looking for an alternative and that’s Facebook Advertising. I even wrote a book this year on just this topic called Facebook Advertising for Dummies (Wiley). And as more people find out about this gem of an advertising experience CPC and CPM prices will continue to march upward – I have already begun to see this in my own ad buys!
Mobile Marketing – I know I said last year was the year of mobile marketing but I just saw a stat from a Mary Meeker presentation that smart phones will eclipse PC sales in 2012 (that’s just a year away) which will lead us to more mobile usage than PC usage so you better start your Mobile Marketing program now. Keep in mind we all start in the same place and that’s at ZERO! Mobile it totally optin and you need to start building your mobile optin list now.
Facebook will move into Mobile Ads – having said what I just did about us marketers not having a good mobile optin list – its just so natural for Facebook to ask you (you will ask us first Mark right?) if he can extend his advertising into your mobile device which he already has (if you put it on your profile). I have been thinking about this play for Facebook for a while – glad I am getting it down on virtual paper for my grandkids to see!
Social Media Strategists will become Chief Customer Officers – ok so you know I am also @Avaya_Support on Twitter so perhaps this is a closet fantasy for me but it may just come true – perhaps not this coming year but in years to come. Think about it marketers have been given this gift of Social Media which is reinventing areas of your company on the fly. In my company alone we have seen it touch Product Development and R&D, to Billing and Finance, to HR and Recruiting, to Customer Service and the Contact Center. You need someone to own the customer experience now in all those external channels and your internal channels as well!
Ecommerce will hit Facebook – Next year the deal that Facebook has with oodle.com for the Facebook Marketplace will be over. My predication would be they cut the cord there and open up a marketplace of their own. Startups like Payvment, and Alvenda will help companies large and small to open up shop in Facebook. Delta, Levis and 1800 Flowers are already there – can Victoria Secret, Brooks Brothers, and Godiva be far behind?
NFO is the new SEO – that’s News Feed Optimization on Facebook. Basically .2% of fans return to a fan page and in some cases it’s more like .02% (hat tip BrandGlue) So people on Facebook who “like” your Fan page basically never go back to it. So stop thinking of it as a micro site and making it all fancy. What you need to focus on is the content and optimizing the content to get comments and likes which will help you drive amount of people that Facebook will show your page to. It’s all based on Facebook’s algorithm called EdgeRank.
Advocate Marketing comes into Focus – you know all those people we are delighting with great customer service using Twitter – well they have become a strong voice for our brand. Now we are looking at ways of collecting and harnessing them. Tools like Zuberance are helping to do just that and allowing firms to do special things with their advocate base like provide them special events, invites to live events etc. We are just scratching the surface on this one but I can tell you its going to be big!
Reputation Management emerges in organizations – Toyota, United Breaks Guitars, Dominos Pizza, Motrin Moms, Dell Hell – we have had some major disasters all brought on my lack of speed in this market. Many firms are listening now for their brand (I know I spoke to 50 of them this year about this issue) but I don’t think they are ready for a crisis. I did a Reputation study on this topic two years ago and it proved how many companies lack the infrastructure then – we have come a long way since but do you really have a process to react quickly?
Real Time Marketing makes headlines – ok so I am reading David Meerman Scott’s latest book called Real Time Marketing but you know what – he’s right! He’s got tons of examples of firms that capitalized or failed to capitalize on Real Time issues (United Breaks Guitars!) We all need a lesson on how to be more real time – it’s a great book, I can’t put it down – I have read every book David has published and I can tell you – you need to read this one!
Someone better win the SmartPhone Application race soon – I can’t keep building 4 versions of the same application in order to cover the SmartPhone market – Blackberry aps, iPhone aps, Android aps (what the growth rate on Android) and Windows aps. Ok yes HTML5 should help this but throw in iPad and various other tablet aps and marketers are starting to look like Technologist which brings me to my next prediction.
The Rise of the Marketing Technologist – Marketers for the last few years have been closet techno geeks and its time for them to rise up – companies need digitally fluent marketers who can apply technologies to help make marketing more measurable and scientific. Then we can really change the dynamic from marketing as a cost center to marketing as a profit center!

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Facebook can’t be stopped and here’s why!

Paul Dunay — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 15:00:32 +0000

I am just putting the finishing touches on the 2nd Edition of Facebook Marketing for Dummies (Wiley) with my co-author Rich Krueger (and BTW we have sold over 20,000 copies in less than a year!). We also just completed Facebook Advertising for Dummies (Wiley) which is due to ship in November. And a question I get asked in every meeting when I present social media is – “so who is going to become the next Facebook?” and I am here to tell you – No one and here why …

Facebook has currently grown to over 550 million members which is one out of every 3 internet users! Mark Zuckerberg is calling for 1 billion member mark and I believe they will hit that mark sometime before the end next year (you heard it here first people!). Facebook also overtook Google in page views just recently. In my Top 10 B2B Marketing Predictions for 2010 blog post last year I called that day to be February 14, 2010 (betting on the social activity that the holiday brings) but I was actually 2 months late – the first time Facebook surpassed Google was on Christmas day 2009. It took until this August for them to sustain the page view count and surpass Google for good.

Ok so that is a look at membership and traffic but the part that I think really closes the door on any up and comer is their Business Model. Facebook is currently running 3 business models – any one of which you or I would die for and they happen to have them all under one roof.

Ads – Facebook Ads is a business model similar to Google AdWords (which is one of the best ad models out there) but it takes that ad platform to the next level. You can target behaviors and explicit likes from a member’s profile. It can be 1:1 advertising or it can be one to many who share common likes for example – Male, Married, lives in CT, likes to Sail, likes to eat Sushi, and listen to Dave Matthews – and bingo your ad would appear on my page.
Applications – Facebook Applications is a business model similar to Apple App Store (which is a pretty darn good business model too!). Like Apple, Facebook takes a percent of the revenue for each application which if they are correct – there will be tremendous upside in this model as developers build applications specifically for their platform.
Commerce – Facebook has been flirting with a business model similar to eBay (yet another killer business model). They are currently locked into a 3 year agreement with oodle.com that runs their marketplace but once that is up next year – I believe – they will ditch them for a more “store front” model similar to Yahoo Shopping or eBay.

Much like Lycos or Altavista or even Yahoo there were search engines that came before Google but Google closed the door on them. I am here to tell you that Facebook is in the same position as they make everything more social by sticking the “like” button on everything and adding mobile features. There is no challenger on the market right now that can take on Facebook (yes, not even Google) for the front runner in the social networking space. I believe they have left the realm of social networking long ago and they are now working on a social operating system for the web. So if you haven’t opened your Facebook account personally or for your business yet – what are you waiting for – like it or not Facebook isn’t going away anytime soon!

(Written on the eve of the launch of the movie The Social Network)

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iPad saves the Page Advertising Business

Paul Dunay — Tue, 04 May 2010 16:44:34 +0000

I was just reading BtoB Magazine’s latest issue and an article called Publishers pin hopes on iPad caught my attention enough to blog about it. According to the article Jason Snell the editor of IDG’s Macworld – is building an iPad application for his magazine with the promise of a digital version of his magazine on the iPad.

What’s really interesting about this is idea is – could it save the Page Advertising business and Magazine industry which has been in a long steady decline?

Answer – Yes I think it could!

The numbers coming in about the iPad is already staggering (The iPad already has sold over 500000 units since it went on sale April 3) without what some would consider being key features (no camera, no phone, no flash, no multi-tasking etc)

But what Jason sees is a device with a vertical orientation like the print magazine, a much more elegant design than the Kindle, and most importantly with the interactivity of the web. So as a publisher I would be gearing up my sales force to sell rich media page advertising on the iPad.

Totally awesome concept – as an advertiser I finally have the option to have a page ad that actually clicks through to my website directly and that can be totally tracked like all my other media, digitally!

The future of the iPad for as an advertising medium via any publisher is an outstanding idea. Right now we can barely imagine the possibilities of this medium but the promise could really revolutionize the Page advertisement which is long overdue for some innovation.

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Social Media Budget Ratio in B2B Marketing

Paul Dunay — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:29:36 +0000

In my new advisory role for the members of MENG I have been getting a bunch of questions from the members that are making great fodder for blog posts. One question has popped up a few times to I thought it was worthy of some research and comparative analysis to give you a very clear answer.

The question is – What is the appropriate level of budget to support social media for a B2B company?

I actually tried to tackle this question a few times on my blog before. First was the post on the Media Budget Ratio (MBR) for a B2B company. Which prompted a question by Scott Zosel about how much should you allocate for Social Media in your budget – and so I created the Social Media Budget Ratio (SMBR) post back in 2008 which was good but it lacked historical data like I have now.

So here is my take …

According to the IT Services Marketing Association (ITSMA) which, full disclosure, I am a member and an avid fan of their work. They recently put out a 2010 Budget and Allocations trends document which surveyed the membership to gave you the chart above.

If you blow up the chart you can see that Social Media as a percentage of your overall interactive spend has grown from 13 percent of budget to 14 percent of budget for B2B Technology Marketers. Which I found interesting so I decided to dig into my own spreadsheets and I was able to verify that I currently have 15% of my interactive spend going toward Social Media – right in line and, as you might expect, at the higher end of their range because of my fascination with this particular channel. As far as the rest of the percentages in the survey I can say I go much heavier on things like webinars and flash demos (which I am counting under corporate website spend).

But don’t forget one of the most important costs associated with Social Media and that is Content Creation which can be a small incremental cost if you do it right. Take for example your classic white paper. Why not create a blog post, Twitter tweet and even a podcast or video on it to help promote it and activate the social spheres on your latest content at a fraction above your content marketing spend.

Social Media done right should help you amplify what you already do as well as listen and engage in those conversations about your brand that you want to take part in. A healthy piece of my SMBR is devoted to listening which will be the topic of the next blog post.

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Why is Google Scared and What it means for B2B Marketing!

Paul Dunay — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 16:23:21 +0000

At a recent dinner with a buddy of mine from Microsoft (who helped launch Bing) – I learned a lot more about the search market and a very important trend that can effect the future of B2B Marketing.

When you think about the search behavior of the average person online – we are mostly conditioned to search in very routine ways like pulling up a Google search page, using the toolbar in your browser etc. And we tend not to stray from that behavior now. It’s almost an unconscious choice for most of us.

But when it comes to search on a mobile device we mostly use very specific apps, like Yelp for Restaurants or Flixter for Movies – where the search result is much much richer – you not only get results that are more relevant but you also get a chance to make a reservation, get directions, buy a movie ticket right there within the application.

If you look at the share of mobile search that the Google app has it is minuscule compared to their share of the browser based search market. This is why Google is so interested in buying apps like Yelp or launching their own phone like Nexus One since they realize this is the year mobile search really takes off and if they just stick to browser based search their overall share will diminish.

OK so what does this mean to B2B Marketers?

While there is no app yet for finding and reading Thought Leadership on your iPhone or an app for finding advice from an Expert in a particularly difficult technology topic (business idea?) perhaps there will be shortly. Maybe apps like foursquare could have a business to business version in the near future. I think as B2B Marketers we need to be open to and looking for those types of opportunities – because one thing is for sure – the devices we have in our hands are going to only get better and traditional search while it may always be around in some form – new avenues on mobile devices are going to open up for us.

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