The Death of Facebook Advertising

in /by

OK, so we’re being a bit dramatic with the headline, but reports over the last week or so have not been kind to the beloved social media giant. Take the eMarketer report where they estimate usage to fall 3.4% year-over-year with the 12-17 age group. Or perhaps you saw the BuzzSumo article about Facebook engagement falling 20% year-over-year. Or, just take my own usage patterns and the fact that I rarely logon to Facebook but my 65-year-old mother does daily.

How To Target Customers on Facebook

So is Facebook really dead? Absolutely not. In fact that same eMarketer article points out that despite that 3.4% drop in usage the 12-17 age group still makes up 14.5 million people. As a marketer I feel like I could use 14.5 million customers. While usage and engagement will absolutely fluctuate over time as a marketer you must understand WHERE your customers are and HOW they want to receive messaging. Facebook provides amazing targeting capabilities, but remember that you are competing with baby photos and the latest political gaff.

  • Choose your messaging wisely : Brand reinforcement & passive voice may be better as opposed to the “Buy Now” message.
  • Be visual : There’s a reason Instagram is getting more popular as the younger generation is incredibly visual and seems to prefer scanning over reading, so what imagery can your brand leverage?
  • Please don’t get political : First off you might get blocked, but secondly no matter the issue there are always opposing views and they spread like wildfire via social media channels.
  • Target & Specify : The targeting capabilities are nearly endless on Facebook so use them to your advantage and craft messaging and imagery that speaks to that consumer

So How Do I Target Millennials?

Remember that the baby boomers and generation X seemed impossible to target at first. Take a moment to map out your target audiences and jot down their wants and needs. Remember that “Millennials” is a very vague term and within that population there are several sub-segments. Then evaluate where they spend their time and craft messaging specific to those wants and needs for the particular channel.

Facebook is not dead, but how the audience uses it has changed a lot over the years and thus your marketing needs to change right along with it!

Why Analytics Projects Fail

in /by

“Hey, we’re launching this Commerce site and we need to know if we made more money, can we track that?” I’m paraphrasing, but seriously, this happened. The first ‘shake my head’ moment would be that a site is nearly ready to launch without fully understanding HOW to track it. The second is looking at this project in a vacuum, assuming this is a piece of a larger strategy. There I go again, assuming.

How to win at web analytics

Ready for the simplest answer in the world? Plan! It’s really that easy. You don’t need a data analyst to tell you what the business goals are. You may need them to uncover deep metrics that lead to better sales, but your overall goals should be about the business as a whole. So when you start discussing a new project YOU should be the person that says:

  1. What metrics will we look at to deem this project a success?
  2. What is our plan for ensuring we can track those metrics?

We always like to do analytics tagging guides during the wireframe or design phase of website redesigns. This is because often one of those ‘necessary metrics’ will require some level of development assistance. Better the developer team knows about this before they get too far down the line. It also helps to understand what kind of advanced tracking you may need, such as events or custom dimensions.

Don’t do piece-meal analytics

It is a minimal effort to apply Google Tag Manager code across the entire site as it is to do it on a single page. Yet I have been approached numerous times to implement GTM on simply the order confirmation page for commerce tracking. This is reason number two of why a lot of analytics projects fail because it often is never thought of as a whole. Do yourself a favor, even if you are only implementing a new site section make sure to revisit your analytics strategy to ensure all of the pieces fit together nicely!

If you need help with this we are happy to help, but just by keeping the two simple questions listed above you will be lightyears ahead of many of your competitors!

Don’t Bother Me, I’m At Work

in /by

Targeting can be so granular these days. A lot of marketers we talk to use “targeting” as a sort of new buzzword to show how cutting edge they are. Big data didn’t help that conversation because now you’re almost forced into some level of hyper-targeting. The problem is that being too specific can really backfire on your marketing efforts.

I Know Where You Live

As a previous customer of yours you may have my home address and thus can target me in some very specific ways. Lets say you live in Arvada, CO with a zip code of 80001. If I target the Denver DMA I will reach you, but what if I want to hype up a new store opening in your city? Maybe I target all customers in the city of Arvada. Or even more granular, maybe I target by zip code. This is all possible of course, but what if you are a restaurant hyping your lunch specials?

But Are You Home?

In the above example I might send that customer a message about our great lunch special, but alas, they aren’t home. Instead they are at work, in an office out in downtown Denver and absolutely not willing to drive home for a simple lunch special. Thus my efforts would be wasted because even though that message may reach that customer it is absolutely not the right time nor is it the right message.

What Am I To Do?

When you strategize your marketing plan you must consider these things. Instead of using a zipcode database maybe you use geo-targeting by text or mobile display ads? Or, maybe you push a breakfast or dinner special instead? If you don’t think through when and how your message will be received you are risking A) wasted efforts/money and B) making your customer mad and unsubscribing. So target wisely and remember that just because you CAN doesn’t always mean you SHOULD.

Getting Twitter Engagement

in /by

Ever followed someone Live-Tweeting at a conference? Worse, ever followed someone Live-Tweeting and actually been at the same conference? Twitter is a great vehicle to push out content, but the biggest mistake we see people making is simply re-hashing of previously available content. The Re-Tweet feature is a great way to let your followers know you think something is important, but always make sure to add your own little spin on the why! Recently our thoughts on Twitter engagement were confirmed when we added our own spin to a Live-Tweet. Instead of simply pushing out verbatim what speakers were saying our own Brandon Hess decided to doodle away and cover the main themes of each presentation in a creative way. We both weren’t sure if people would think it was stupid or not, but hey, why not. It was something different, something creative, and something more interesting than the simple Live-Tweet. Apparently this resonated with our Twitter audience because we were able to increase our Tweet Impressions by 30,000% (seriously, those 0’s are real) because several different influencers found this more interesting than the myriad of other mundane tweets coming out of MozCon. So let this be a reminder to stand out in the crowd, don’t just do what everyone else is doing, be weird, be noticed, get exposure!