Driving Sales From Your Facebook Followers

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It seems that just about every company has a Facebook page these days. Many companies are even devoting serious resources to develop new and fresh social content. From our perspective, it often seems that the motivation to join the Facebook fray is in itself ‘social.’ Companies need to have a Facebook page because their ‘competitors have one—and hey, everyone has one!’

All of these social efforts, whether strategic or not, have given many companies an impressive online following; it’s not uncommon for even small businesses to have upwards of 10,000 Facebook likes.

Facebook is, of course, a powerful communication tool. Companies can advertise their latest promotions, PR initiatives, and other relevant information to their followers vis-à-vis their Facebook page. But can Facebook pages be used outside of a communication function, and help to directly drive new sales?
First, let’s look at the composition of a typical Facebook audience. Facebook followers are predominately made up of existing customers. Facebook pages rarely rank organically for product/service level keywords, and product/service research is not something that is historically performed through social media. For these reasons, if a user has navigated to your Facebook page, it is most likely because they are already aware of your brand. Second, if a user has gone so far as to “like” your page, they are demonstrating some pretty serious enthusiasm in your company. So, we can infer that the majority of your Facebook audience will be comprised of enthusiastic existing or prospective customers. This is obviously good news to the sales-minded business owner, because an enthusiastic audience that has already qualified their interest in your business is certainly ripe for a well-timed direct marketing or remarketing campaign.

So, how does a business reach these customers? The issue with Facebook followers is that they are anonymous. There’s no name, email, or phone number to associate with a follower—just a digitized “like.” The obvious answer is to reach these customers through Facebook wall posts, but this is a very limited strategy for several reasons. Facebook wall posts cannot be personalized to speak to specific segments of your customer base. Also, wall posts are highly likely to be lost in the fodder of an active news feed.

The solution to these issues is to be able to relate a “like” to a unique customer. Fortunately, we have developed a strategy to address this dilemma. There are several Facebook apps on the market today that help recruit user information. For example, North Social’s “deal share” app is designed as a “gate” for a deal or promotion. The deal is advertised on the company’s Facebook page, and accessed through the North Social app. In order to qualify for the deal, the user is instructed to complete a set of customizable criteria. For example, you could require a customer to enter their name, email and phone number to gain access to the deal. Alternatively, you can “gate” a deal by making users have to like your page (if they haven’t already done so) or share the deal with their own friends. The user’s information is automatically logged into North Social’s interface, and data can be downloaded to an Excel report at any time. Logically, the more enticing the deal, the more interaction it will receive. Over time, a company can effectively build a customer contact list by acquiring the contact information of their Facebook followers.

Once user information is obtained, companies can relate customer names with specific demographic segments or even past purchase history. Customized email campaigns can be launched to push frequency of purchase or cross-selling opportunities.

This “deal share” strategy is a great way to unlock the sales potential of your Facebook page. By turning anonymous Facebook followers into identifiable and unique users, a company can grow what is otherwise a communication portal into a powerful direct marketing and remarketing tool.

Is Your Anchor Text Diversified?

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How to Evaluate Your Anchor Text Profile:
Google’s latest algorithmic update, dubbed “Penguin,” is carefully evaluating anchor text diversification when determining website rankings.  In this article we will demonstrate how to evaluate your anchor text profile.

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Making Optimization Signficant: The Role of Statistical Analysis

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Paul Benson and Mark Casali, co-founders of the online marketing firm Synapse SEM, LLC, have been published in the Search Marketing Standard Magazine.  Following an intensive research project with Babson College Professor Dessislava Pachamanova, Ph.D., Synapse SEM has developed a new suite of statistical applications and tools.  The corresponding article “Making Optimization Significant: The Role of Statistical Analysis,” co-authored with Dr. Pachamanova, explains how these tools can be introduced to help search marketers make better decisions and obtain deeper insights from the data they analyze every day.

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Paid Search Branded Campaigns: Effective or Excessive?

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Every paid search campaign we build seems to elicit the same response.  No matter who the client is—a small local business, or a fortune 500 company—every client questions whether our campaigns should include branded keywords and ads.  In other words, should the campaign target keywords that include the company name and similar iterations?

We understand the client’s skepticism because paid search is often being used as a vehicle to gain visibility on search terms that otherwise organically fail to rank.  Branded terms, of course, typically have the strongest organic visibility.  So, let us reiterate the age old question from our clients and ask, why add a paid advertisement to a search results page that is almost guaranteed to have a first position organic listing?

In our experience paid branded ads have multiple benefits:

  • Competition – Displaying branded ads can be viewed as a defensive mechanism to protect against competitors usurping prized positions on branded keywords.  Stated differently, a company should never be in a position where a competitor is the first ad/listing the user sees on the page.
  • Real Estate – With all of the ad extensions now available, paid search ads can take up some pretty impressive real estate on the results page.  Depending on the level of competition on branded keywords, it is entirely possible to dominate 100% of the above-the-fold results with a paid advertisement and first position organic listing.
  • Psychological Effects – There have been numerous studies performed showing that when search results contain both a paid listing and an organic listing a user is far more likely to click-through to your website.  The two channels are proven to work symbiotically, and enhance your site’s credibility.
  • Cost – Ultimately, the inclusion of branded terms in a paid search advertising campaign comes down to cost-benefit.  Cost-per-click bids on branded terms are typically very affordable.  Consequently, total cost incurred on branded terms should make-up only a small portion of an overall paid advertising budget.

So, to offer a conclusive answer to our clients—we include branded keywords in your campaigns because it is the best thing for your campaigns.  Bidding on branded queries allows us to protect against competition, dominate above-the-fold results, and improve the credibility of your site; and all this can be accomplished within a very affordable budget.

Is Your Bid Op Tool Worth The Cost?

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By Paul Benson
Thousands of online advertisers in the U.S. rely on bid optimization tools (BOTs) to make their paid search campaigns more efficient.  These software “solutions” or “platforms” which typically leverage rule-based or algorithmic bidding, claim the upper hand against manual bidding strategies.  While it’s certainly true that in some cases these tools vastly outperform manual bidding, the challenge for advertisers is determining whether a BOT will prove cost-effective for their particular campaigns.

BOTs are perceived as superior to manual bidding because they are able to leverage historical data and automatically update bids based on the day of week, time of day, and other factors.  They also save time as advertisers no longer need to analyze performance and make bid changes on a relatively routine basis.  Unfortunately, just as BOTs create many efficiencies, they also generate significant costs.

On average, advertisers pay 5% of spend for BOTs.  For an advertiser spending $100,000 a month, this equates to $60,000 per year.  Some providers also charge a one-time implementation or launch fee up to $10,000.  At this cost, a company could hire a new specialist simply to handle bidding for the account..  It is also true that BOTs require integration with existing platforms, which may cause on-going frustration among advertisers looking for a truly “automated” solution.  This frustration is intensified when advertisers learn that BOTs will require consistent manual oversight, and sometimes intervention.  On a past account audit it was determined that the advertiser’s automated tool had spent nearly $6,000 in two months on a single keyword that generated an ROAS of just 27% (significantly below the ROAS goal).  Neither the tool, nor the keyword, was a new addition to the campaign, which made this gross oversight on the part of the BOT even more perplexing.

For this same advertiser, we noticed over the course of several days that only 4% of converting terms, on average, received a daily bid change, and 88% of converting keywords didn’t receive a single bid change throughout the monitored time period.  Furthermore, keywords that comprised nearly 80% of all conversions were displayed in a position of 1.7 or better.  Nearly 94% of these terms had a CPA at or below goal, signifying that little optimization could be done from a bidding standpoint to improve performance on these terms.  After analyzing the number of bid changes, and the size of each bid change, it was concluded that this particular bid tool saved the client between $500 and $1,000 per month; the bid tool alone cost more than four times that amount to run.
Innovations within the primary advertising platforms, AdWords and AdCenter, make manual bidding all the more attractive.   For example, marketers formerly relied on BOTs to factor in day of week and time of day when making bid changes.  However, now Google AdWords’ Ad Scheduling functionality allows advertisers to adjust bids (up or down) during specified days or times of day.  AdWords also gives insight into performance by time of day or day of week (as long as you have a Google Conversion Pixel in place).  As a result, advertisers can leverage day parting to effectively change bids by time of day and day of week, just like a BOT can.  All of this functionality is available for free directly within the AdWords interface; you don’t need to access, pay for, or become familiar with a 3rd party interface.

Despite the aforementioned challenges, there are certainly scenarios where a BOT is still a valuable and unrivaled tool.  Ultimately, the decision to implement a BOT should be evaluated on a case by case basis.  Fortunately, there are three criteria that will help point you in the right direction.  First and foremost, consider your industry.  Advertisers in the retail space, especially those with thousands of SKUs, are more likely to benefit from a BOT.  This is true simply because a BOT’s value increases as the number of keywords increases.  Sophisticated BOTS can accurately determine the right CPC based on not only historical performance of a particular keyword, but also on historical performance of related keywords.  This insight, although small on an individual keyword basis, can add up to thousands of dollars across an account.

The second consideration can be referred to as the PPC Gini Coefficient.  A variant from its economic definition, the PPC Gini Coefficient can be calculated by dividing the number of converting keywords that are meeting or exceeding your goal and are in an average position better than 2 (1.9, 1.8, etc.) by the number of total converting keywords.  The higher your PPC Gini coefficient, the less opportunity there is for bid optimizations, and therefore the less useful a BOT will be.  A coefficient of 70% is considered high, while 50% is considered relatively normal.  It’s possible that your campaigns contain keywords that are exceeding your goal, but are in a position below 2 (2.1, 2.2, etc.) simply because the CPCs haven’t been properly adjusted.  If this is the case, these terms should be removed from the calculation.

Finally, if you’re currently using a BOT, you should also consider the frequency and size of bid changes.  This data, along with click volume, can give you a reasonable sense for how much money the BOT is saving you every month.  Keep in mind, however, that every time a BOT decreases a CPC to gain efficiency, it may be also sacrificing conversions.  It’s also important to understand whether the bid changes are more commonly max CPC increases or decreases.  Surprisingly, out of all the bid changes implemented for the advertiser mentioned earlier, 94% were decreases in max CPCs.  Therefore, in this particular case, only cost savings were considered; potential revenue generated from increased CPCs was ignored.

If you’re still struggling with the decision of whether to implement a BOT, consider contacting one of the providers to request an estimate.  Marin Software has an internal tool that estimates your increased ROAS if you were to adopt their software.  While these estimates are commonly ‘optimistic,’ this additional information may aid in your decision.  It’s difficult to test a BOT, since significant upfront work is required to integrate the software with your account.  Therefore, you should collaborate with an experienced SEM expert or agency to conduct a thorough analysis based on historical campaign performance.  If you’re already using a BOT, don’t fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy.  Carefully evaluating the efficacy of your bid tool could save you thousands.