Presidential candidates, here’s how to win (at search marketing)

It’s the season of primaries, which means there’s a mad scramble by the American people to find answers to the following queries…

1. If they’re registered to vote
2. Where the nearest polling place is
3. What time the polling place is open

There’s nothing like a heated presidential election to spur some patriotic search behavior.

It appears that Hillary Clinton’s marketing team is tapping into our nation’s steadfast loyalty to Google in the hopes of earning some of that allegiance for herself.

Somewhere in the Hillary campaign office sits a search marketer, likely the graduate of a behemoth ad agency, who took her training on the zero moment of truth and made it work for Hillary.

As a Massachusetts resident, searches for ‘where to vote’ and all sorts of modifications (e.g. ‘where do I vote MA’, ‘voting in MA’, even ‘polling locations’) surfaced this handy little ad at the top of the Google search results page:

Here we see the beginnings of a clever and timely search campaign, courtesy of the marketing minds behind Hillary Clinton.

Through four simple steps, we see the pillars of search marketing come to life:

Step 1: Be where your audience is

Bidding on ‘where to vote’ keywords, which will generate more than 20,000 searches this month, will ensure that Hillary is the first result a searcher sees. You’ll notice that nobody else seems to be bidding on these terms.

Step 2: Focus on the searcher’s intent

Starting the ad with, ‘Find your voting location’, prioritizes the true intent of the search, leaving the ‘Hillary’ branding for the tail end.

Step 3: Provide an experience that is simple to use (and mobile friendly!)

Upon clicking the ad, you immediately get a handy piece of information: the date of your primary. And if somehow the ad got your location wrong, a dropdown on the top-right allows you to toggle to a different state.

A beaming Hillary faces the only object on the page: a simple address form awaiting your input. No crazy slogans, no campaign promises, just a form.

[Note: I tested this experience as a logged-in user to Gmail and then logged out. The only difference is that as a logged out user, the form includes a field requesting an email address. I don’t love this addition; mostly because it interrupts an experience that until this point had been purely focused on the user’s needs… but fair enough, Hillary.]

Step 4: Give the people what they want

What you get after submitting your email is a clean Google map of your polling location with the option to get directions and information about what times the polls are open.

You also have the option of emailing yourself all that good location information, looking up a new address and making a plan to vote (e.g. a message that says, “I will vote in the afternoon at XYZ location and will take public transit” will appear in your text messages).

For brands trying to understand how they can be relevant when it matters most, here’s a case study to emulate. Anticipating the moment that searches for voting information would peak in different states, Hillary’s campaign figured out a way to own a piece of the conversation.

But she could have stopped there.

Hillary could have bought that top paid ad and driven users to a simple landing page full of words of encouragement to get out and vote.

Instead, Hillary’s team created an experience that spoke to the true nature of what people came to Google for in the first place.

While the conversion rate of site visits to primary votes for Hillary is impossible to guess, she swept up in the presidential search marketing category. Judging by the MA presidential primary results, this may have been just the edge Hillary needed.

You can also learn how presidential candidates are now being given access to publish direct to Google SERPS here.

Special thanks to Cara Guappone for sharing her experience of figuring out where to vote.

Laurel Marcus is Sr. Manager of SEO & Digital Experience at Tank Design. You can follow Laurel on Twitter.

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Customer journey from search to landing page: UK supermarkets

In which we take a look at the experience of searching for a brand or product, looking at a brand’s organic and paid search reach and its subsequent landing page. All from the point of view of the customer.

This week let’s take a look at UK supermarkets.

How loyal are we to our regular supermarket?

First of all, I’d like to answer one related question: Just how loyal are people to their regularly used supermarket?

I used to live in Leytonstone, and despite my liberal pro independent-retailer leaning wooliness, my wife and I used to shop at Tesco. Why? Because it was the nearest. That’s all. Just pure laziness disguised as brand loyalty.

Now we’ve moved further east, we no longer have a  supermarket within walking distance to frequent. So we decided to brave the world of online grocery shopping. After all with home delivery, you’re no longer tied down to such trifling matters as distance, opening hours and having to change out of your pyjamas.

After some moderate research, we picked Ocado, and we’ve been getting our weekly online shop from the Waitress affiliated service ever since. And do you know why we chose Ocado? Because they offered us a £30 off our first shop and because all our settings, personal details, payment details and previously bought items were saved with them, we couldn’t be bothered to switch. Again, laziness disguised as brand loyalty.

But, there is one other very important thing at play here: Ocado’s customer service was very good. Or should I say, not so bad that it made us go through the rigmarole of signing up to another supermarket.

We even abandoned our Tesco Clubcard and all its totted up, vaguely meaningless points, which we thought we cared about… but it turns out we don’t.

And this lack of loyalty is reflected around the UK. According to The Grocer 40% of families with children under the age of 10 have switched supermarkets in the last year.

The main reason for the switch is down to cheaper prices (42%) the second is the promise of a better loyalty scheme elsewhere (36%).

In terms of price, it’s an increasingly level playing field. With many stores offering price-matching and competitor aware discounts, gone are the days when you would consider one to be cheaper than the other (I’m referring to the bigger brands here, rather than Aldi or Lidl).

And again, with distance and opening hours meaningless, if one was to make the leap to online shopping, there’s very little reason why you would necessarily stick with the digital version of your previously favoured bricks and mortar store.

So this means that supermarkets have to differentiate in different ways, and not to hammer home a point that you will have heard many times on this site already, that differentiator is customer experience. How is a supermarket going to make it as pleasurable and convenient as possible to shop with them?

Make sure your website is as easy to use and navigate as possible, have a super quick checkout process, add your customer’s purchased items automatically into a favourites list that’s simple to edit, offer a wealth of delivery options and times, and stick to them!

Great customer service can be invisible; working behind the scenes to retain a person’s loyalty. But in order to be even get to that point, a supermarket has to cut through the competition with as much visibility as possible…

And of course this begins where almost every online journey begins…

Search

Let’s assume you’re brand new to online grocery shopping and you’re taking your first steps to find out which supermarket is for you. What do you type into the search box?

Well using a little keyword research I’ve found a few popular terms. Let’s start with…

‘supermarkets near me’

If you’re searching for an online grocery experience, you’re probably not going to look for ‘supermarkets near me’, but the search term has an average of 18,000 monthly searches so it’s definitely a query to optimise for.

A supermarket won’t have much control over this SERP when it comes to organic results, save for making sure its Google My Business page is up to date with local opening hours and location. This is certainly important for smaller grocers who wish to be seen next to the bigger guns.

However there are no paid search ads here, and perhaps this could be an easy win for a supermarket to make an impact with a relevantly tweaked PPC ad.

‘online supermarkets’

The organic space for ‘online supermarkets’ is dominated by comparison sites, or news publisher articles comparing various online supermarkets. So it makes sense for any supermarket to take out paid ads here, as they’re otherwise not going to make an impact on the SERP.

So here you can see three ads from three of the biggest UK supermarkets offering home delivery. You’ll also notice the word ‘groceries’ highlighted as a search term, which is a testament to Google’s improved handling of synonyms.

Although there’s very little to differentiate these three (especially with the aggregated customer scores), there are a few minor ‘persuasive differences’…

Ocado probably has the least practical info, but it makes up for it with attractive, white-space-creating sitelinks each promoting a different money saving opportunity. But most obviously of all is the fact that Ocado is the only one here offering cold-hard discount on your first shop.

It’s difficult to argue with this, and you may as well take advantage of the opportunity even if you never use Ocado again.

The key to succeeding with this strategy though is offering exceptional customer service with this first shop to ensure customer’s think twice about going elsewhere.

As for the landing page the ad leads to, it’s a winner…

As well as the bid amount, Google uses a quality score to gauge which adverts are shown in the most prominent position, and a fundamental part of this is whether the linked-to landing page is relevant to the ad itself.

Ocado’s does the job perfectly with its prominent discount message. Ocado has also included simple steps to how to use the voucher and a clear ‘start shopping’ CTA.

Iceland offers a strong ad here, especially in terms of detail and an impressively low free delivery threshold. Perhaps this would be better placed in the blue linked headline though.

Where Iceland’s ad excels and the others do not is remembering that searchers may not necessarily be looking to do an online shop right away and maybe just want some store details. Iceland therefore offers details on its nearest store, with an address, opening hours and phone number (which is click-to-call from mobile results).

The landing page is fairly functional, but clearly laid out and unfussy…

It could perhaps do with using a single clear CTA, as it’s indistinct what I should do first, register or sign in?

There’s also an argument to suggest that ‘register or sign in’ isn’t the best messaging either, as it feels like its presenting an immediate barrier. Would ‘begin shopping’ or ‘let’s get started’ be far more persuasive?

Tesco has the weakest ad of the three. Choosing not to offer a discount, detail a free delivery threshold or offer info on a nearest store. In fact the text of the ad itself offers four fairly boring, meaningless proposals (1hr Delivery Slots – how is this different to the competition?).

The only thing in its favour is the ‘Free Next Day Click + Collect’ offer, but if I’m looking for online shopping, I’m probably not interested in physically visiting your store any time soon.

Tesco’s landing page is the most functional of the lot. But it doesn’t matter as long as it works properly and is easy to navigate…

The text here could be much larger and darker to help with readability, and the multiple blue CTAs don’t help to ease navigation. But the ‘how to get started’ instructions offer clarity for any newcomers. Perhaps this could be much higher on the page, and have more navigation options integrated into each step, in case anyone landing here isn’t a first-timer.

‘best online supermarkets/grocery shopping’

Let’s wrap this up by checking if any supermarkets have been savvy enough to bid for search queries that are used by people actively trying to seek advice from third party sites…

And yes, as expected the organic results are dominated by comparison sites and ‘Which’-type publications, but Ocado, Asda, Tesco and Iceland have all taken out ads here too.

In fact, Google has decreed this search term as particularly ‘lucrative’ because it has served four PPC ads here, as it stated it would since the removal of Right Hand Side Ads.

Now that the paid search space completely dominates the fold here, is there any point in supermarkets bothering to rank organically for this or similar search terms using SEO or content marketing? Probably not.

Better get your cheque book out then supermarkets.

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14 KPIs and metrics Google can use to measure the purge of Right Hand Side Ads

You’ll have no doubt read about Google’s recent jettisoning of its sidebar ads, in favour of more ads placed at the top of the page. This is going to have a number of effects that search marketers will need to contend with.

It’s also going to affect users, as people may adjust to the ad-heavy new look. I thought it might be interesting to think about how Google might measure the changes.

Here are 14 KPIs and metrics that will reveal how the new layout – and the demoted organic results – impacts on revenue and user behaviour.

No doubt there are some others that I’ve missed, so do leave a comment below if you have anything to add.

1. Total revenue

This is the big one, the primary KPI, and I dare say the reason for the change.

Google continually tests all manner of tweaks and changes to its algorithm, its page layouts and its user interface. As a commercially-focused entity it will only willingly release changes that generate more revenue for its shareholders to marvel at.

Presumably this KPI has increased. Fewer ads on the page, but more prominent ads, and more competition among advertisers. That probably means more clicks, and higher keyword prices.

In 2015 Google generated a whopping $67bn in ad revenue. It is facing some big challenges with regards to protecting and growing mobile ad revenues. Let’s see how 2016 shapes up…

2. Average revenue per user

Is Google generating more money across the board?

I’d have thought that ARPU would also have increased, at least initially, but longer term I wonder about how much additional revenue Google can squeeze out of its search users, especially those who know the difference between an ad and an organic result.

3. Conversion rate

This can be a dangerous metric to focus on, for a number of reasons. It’s pretty simple to boost your conversion rate, but it needs to be done in a meaningful way.

We might assume that four big ads at the top of the page result in a higher click rate on ads. I think that’s probably the case. Mission accomplished, for Google.

But then again four ads might not be as good as 10-13, as far as the volume of clicks is concerned. Conversion rate will have dropped, if total ad clicks have reduced.

Google won’t be too bothered about this so long as the additional competition and keyword inflation results in revenue growth.

4. Total ad clicks

Following on from above, exactly how many ads are being clicked on?

This is where Google makes its money, and it will want this number to increase, but the supercombo of in your face ads and higher PPC fees might offset a decline in clicks.

I’m keen to see whether there is an overall decline in click quality for poorly-targeted ads, not that it will affect Google in the short term. Advertisers will need to keep their wits about them.

5. Total clicks on organic results

Are users chasing the organic listings down the page, or are they blindly clicking the ads instead? This is the one billion dollar question (at least!).

A couple of weeks ago Moz reported that more than a third of the SERPs had four ads. Many of these pages require the user to scroll in order to see any organic results.

For non-commercial queries that return four top ads, the user experience is going to start to suck. The irony is that if this were another website Google might give it a page quality penalty (too many ads, not enough visible content).

Anyway, something’s got to give. Either the user needs to get into the habit of delving deeper into Google in order to find what they are looking for, or, simply click on one of the links in the paid ads.

6. Clicks per search query

In theory, one quick post-query click is the ideal. That indicates that the algorithm is doing its job by presenting the most relevant result at the top of the page.

The trouble is that Google is allowing advertisers to control what appears top for many queries. More paid results means less algorithmically-determined relevancy. Relevancy appears to have taken a back seat.

I’m inclined to suggest that users trust the algorithm more than they trust advertisers (not that they always know the difference between the two things).
If users dive in and out of the top ads (as they often do with organic results, yo-yoing in and out of websites) then average clicks per query are going to rise, and advertisers may become dissatisfied.

Advertisers certainly need to be on top of their targeting game to avoid curiosity clicks, where users casually click on the results.

7. Average time to click

How long are people hanging around for?

For a lot of websites it pays to have a sticky site, but for a search engine the opposite is true. A sign of quality on a search engine is a short average browse time, assuming the user clicks on a result. Ideally, the first result you’re shown would be the one you want to see, and the one you click on. Good search engines are somewhat automagic in this respect.

But if people are spending longer on Google it could be a sign of confusion (“why is Google showing me all these ads?”), or maybe the paid results at the top of the page are not perceived as being relevant.

Forcing the user to scroll down the page to see the organic results will also cause a short delay.

Any which way you look at it, if average time to click rises it would indicate that the user experience has worsened. Google is not immune to people feeling that things have changed for the worse. Here be dragons.

8. Pages per session

How many people are clicking to the next page to see relevant results?

This is linked to browse time, and as Google skews search results towards commercial pages, we may see more people wading into page two to find what they’re looking for.

Indeed, it is said that the second page of Baidu has become a new battleground for SEOs, after it loaded up its first page with ads.

@lakey @danbarker I have read somewhere that click through rates are much higher on the second page of Baidu, as users have adapted to ads.

— Manley (@LordManley) February 28, 2016

It makes sense. Users may become conditioned to clicking beyond page one to see organic results. That could prove to be an opportunity for search marketers. Imagine having to de-optimise your pages to achieve positions #11-15!

It’s also worth saying that additional clicks to discover the content is a pain in the ass for users.

9. Bounce rate

Still haven’t found what you’re looking for?

I suspect most people stick around to unearth the right kind of links. It’s the nature of search, after all: find and seek. But if the top results are all ads then the immediacy vanishes, and perhaps, over time, people will start to tune out, or look elsewhere for pointers.

Immediacy is a big deal. The instantaneous ‘here’s what you’re looking for’ factor should not be underplayed: it’s a big reason why people use Google. It’s also mirrored in the interface, as Google proudly displays the time it took to return the results.

Maybe the interface needs a flashing arrow pointing down the page, or a jump link…

10. Average searches per session

Users may start to finesse their queries to try to see the organic results, or just to make the ads vanish.

It’s a bit like ‘time to click’ – this is a not something a search engine wants see go up.

For most sites, an increase in usage is a good thing, but for a search engine the goal is to help people find what they need with the minimum amount of friction.

11. Average monthly searches per user

If this starts to fall it could be a sign that users are bailing out. Warning bells should sound at Google HQ.

12. Visitor loyalty

Say hello, wave goodbye?

If monthly searches per user starts to dip then is it linked to loyalty? Trouble, if so.

Will users react unfavourably to a visible page of ads? I guess it depends on what they’re looking for. But certainly this is something that could hurt Google in the long run.

Also, where do we go next? What’s the natural extension of a full screen of ads? A full page of ads? Two pages? Pop-ups? Autoplay video ads?
Users will run for their lives…

It seems crass to suggest that Google, which is synonymous with search, would fade into irrelevance as a search engine. Consumers can be fickle, and they may feel that Google is becoming a smarter version of the Yellow Pages.

Weirder things have happened in business, and certainly in tech.

13. Clicks by device

What’s the breakdown of clicks for desktop users, mobile users, etc?

The single column lends itself to mobile, and perhaps Google wants to unify the search experience. Will desktop clicks fall or rise?
I have a big monitor, and there’s a hell of a lot of white space on my desktop. Might we expect to see an upwardly-responsive multi-column layout soon?

14. Satisfaction

A firm as big as Google must surely measure user satisfaction. It’s rather different to measuring customer satisfaction, which is somewhat easier, but there are implicit and explicit metrics (including some of the above) that will help it figure out sentiment. No doubt it runs focus groups and audience surveys too.

So then, what did I miss? Does Google actually have anything to worry about or is it too big to fail? Do let me know in the comments below…

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Facebook Celebrates 3 Million Advertisers, Launches Your Business Story Video Tool

More than 50 million small businesses have an active presence on Facebook, using the free Pages product to help raise awareness and attract more customers. Of those 50 million businesses, over three million are active advertisers on Facebook, up 50% in one year. This is good news!

Clearly, with an increase in active advertisers, businesses are seeing meaningful results by placing paid promotions on Facebook. Facebook ads is by far the most targeted traffic your advertising dollars can buy.

“Your Business Story” Movie Maker

To celebrate this exciting milestone, Facebook created a fun new tool designed to help business Page owners create a video that showcases what your business is all about. Here’s my own:

My business storyWe’re in the business of helping you achieve your business goals using Facebook!

Posted by Mari Smith on Wednesday, March 2, 2016

This new video tool uses technology similar to the Friends Day and Year In Review videos that you’ve likely seen on personal profiles. With the “Your Business Story” video tool, Page admins choose 8 photos (from any of your Page photo albums, including your most popular), then fill in the blank “We’re in the business of ________________,” choose your music track, and voila!

Video credit: Facebook

Facebook states:

We know it’s not easy for many businesses to create ads and content, so we created a simple tool that helps them tell their business story to their customers. As part of the tool, businesses are able to upload their photos from their page, overlay with music (licensed by Facebook) and share “what they are in the business of” doing. “We (at Facebook) are in the business of helping your business grow” and we hope that all of the businesses on Facebook will create their stories and post them to their Pages.

Your Business Story is a free tool from Facebook that allows you to create a short video celebrating what your business brings to the world. Only you can see the Your Business Story video, unless you choose to share it.

Small Businesses are International

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has stated in the past that the next billion users will come from regions outside North America. In fact, the company recently restructured the Facebook Awards to better emphasize work from beyond America’s borders.

To that end, it’s no surprise that more than 70% of the 3 million active advertisers on Facebook are outside of the US. The fastest growing region is South East Asia.

Image credit: campaignlive.com

The fastest growing countries are Vietnam, Egypt, Indonesia, Peru, and Turkey (% growth 2015 vs. 2014, as of Dec. 12, 2015).

And, the top five countries based on Y/Y growth: U.S., Brazil, UK, Italy, and Australia (# growth 2015 vs. 2014, as of Dec. 12, 2015).

In today’s announcement, I love that Facebook features small business success stories from Brazil, India, Germany, Indonesia, Melbourne, England, Kenya, Colombia, Argentina, Mexico …and California!

Small Businesses Use Facebook’s Mobile Apps

Do you use the Pages Manager App? If not, you should! Over 20 million Facebook Page owners use the Pages Manager App to create and schedule posts, check stats, and reply to private messages.

Plus, to create and manage ads, you can use any of these three apps: 1) the dedicated Facebook Ads app (recommended), 2) the regular Facebook mobile app, or 3) Pages Manager App. More than 1 million advertisers create an ad directly from a mobile device.

To access your ads on the Pages Manager App, tap the three horizontal bars at the top left, then scroll down the left menu to the bottom and tap Manage Ads, then review campaigns and ads or tap Create Ad.

3 Steps To Access Ads Using Pages Manager App

Challenges Small Businesses Face on Facebook 

Whilst on tour last year with Facebook to present at the Boost Your Business series of events, I was heartened to see how eager and receptive small business owners are to get a better understanding of the array of ad products.

I also sat down with over 200 individual small business owners to provide 1:1 consultations and answer their #1 question about growing their business on Facebook. The most popular challenges small business owners face is what to post: why types of content, how often, what day, what time of day, what mix of personal vs business, how to generate more business as a result.

Other questions I got asked both on the Boost Your Business tour and often in my community include:

• Which posts should I boost?
• Should I use the Boost button or Ads Manager? Does it make a difference?
• Why is organic reach so low?
• How much should I allocate for a realistic advertising budget?
• What size target audience is optimal?
• What is a good conversion rate?
• What is a pixel?
• How do you create a Custom Audience?
• Is it safe to upload your email database to Facebook?
• What is a Lookalike Audience?
• I own a spa (hair salon, bakery, antique store), I just want to get more people coming in – how do I do that?
• I tried Facebook ads and spent a fortune – it didn’t work for me. What did I do wrong?
• And much more.

Get the answers to all the above questions and more in my Facebook program:

Facebook Success for Small Business – Online Training

If you’re ready to ramp up your Facebook marketing results, I’d love to help you! We’re currently running a special on my signature training program FACEBOOK BUSINESS BREAKTHROUGHS that includes one full year membership in my Inner Circle program!

In this six-part online training program, I walk you through the exact process that thousands of businesses just like yours are using to generate millions of dollars in sales using Facebook.

The post Facebook Celebrates 3 Million Advertisers, Launches Your Business Story Video Tool appeared first on MariSmith.com.

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A comprehensive guide to advertising on Facebook

Social media introduced a brand new world of advertising to brands and they’ve enjoyed exploring this affordable and highly targeted solution.

Facebook is the perfect example to showcase the success of social advertising, in a way that makes both advertisers and consumers happy.

Facebook isn’t new to advertising, but it seems to be moving in a very interesting direction by launching many new features that would benefit both brands and of course, its own revenue.

According to its latest report, Facebook now counts 1.59 billion monthly active users, which is exactly the reason that brands experiment with Facebook advertising to reach a wider audience.

How News Feed ads changed Facebook

Facebook loves tweaking the News Feed experience, but up to now, it was clear that advertising is not disrupting the user’s experience. Facebook wanted to make sure that loyal users remain active on the site as much as possible, and this also extended to advertising.

Native ads started appearing on the News Feed, but always balancing the users’ needs with its advertising model. The fact that the ads didn’t necessarily annoy the users helped the brands realise that Facebook is becoming a very interesting platform to explore and its latest features indicate that it’s more serious than ever to create an even more profitable model.

What makes Facebook advertising special

• Targeted ads: Facebook excels in helping a brand reach the right audience, with many targeting options that appeal to a selective audience. This means that if you know how to create the perfect ad, you are reducing the chances of simply wasting your money with the wrong audience.
• Affordability: Social advertising is cost-effective compared to other advertising types and many brands were initially tempted to try it out due to this factor.
• Receptive audience: Facebook managed to integrate advertising in a way that isn’t annoying for the audience, by “training” them to be more receptive to ads, provided that they’re appealing and relevant to them.
• Numerous advertising options: In order to make an ad appealing and relevant, Facebook offers several advertising options, depending on the brand’s goal, the audience’s needs and the formats that tend to be more successful.

If we had to pick the most interesting trends in Facebook advertising, both from a brand’s and a user’s point of view, we would focus on the following ones:

Canvas is the future of Facebook advertising

Facebook launched Canvas as a new type of full-screen mobile format, which aims to show more engaging ads that load 10 times faster than a standard mobile website.

The concept is similar to Instant Articles, allowing advertisers to feel creative and embrace an interactive experience, without missing their initial goals.

Canvas ads look like a typical Facebook post and once you click them the screen turns into a full-screen display ad, which can be a mix of images, text, videos, or CTA buttons.

The idea of it was to win the mobile users’ attention through an immersive experience, with the brands having the creative freedom to narrate their stories or promote their products in the most appealing way.

Apparently Facebook considered the idea of full-screen mobile ads in a vertical format from Snapchat and its full-screen experience, which turned out to be a success lately. After all, a brand cannot ignore Snapchat’s stats on vertical videos that have a nine time bigger completion rate compared to horizontal mobile videos.

Moreover, the News Feed algorithm remains as it is, which means that Canvas ads will be displayed as the usual ads, with no priority on the users’ News Feeds. The focus is still on the user experience and ads will still be served depending on the user’s interests and the level of engagement.

Thus, Canvas ads remind us of a micro site, providing useful information to the user (by reducing the needed clicks this time), while they focus on:

• mobile appeal
• relevance
• flexibility
• loading speed
• engagement

If you are interested in trying them out for your business, Canvas ads are now available for everyone through Power Editor and several brands have already created their first ads.

According to early results, Canvas ads have an average view time of 31 seconds, with the most successful ads reaching a view time of 70 seconds.

Coca-Cola and Burberry were among the first brands to experiment with the Canvas ads, while Wendy’s took its creativity to the next level by encouraging users to swipe the images to discover all the ingredients of their popular cheeseburger.

ASUS also decided to create a Canvas ad for the Christmas period, which led to an increase of 42% in ad clicks and an average view time of 12 seconds, with 70% of users clicking at the ad to visit the brand’s site.  

The success of native video ads and the automatic captions

Facebook users watch more than 100 million hours of videos on Facebook every day, while it numbers 8 billion daily video views, which is double the views it had last April.

As Facebook seems to favour videos in our news feeds, brands understand how important it is to embrace native video advertising on the platform, as a way to use an interactive format to tell their story.

According to Quintly, 65% of all the brand video posts are native videos and they seem to perform 4 times better than any other video format.

Facebook’s dedication to boost video ad formats by maintaining the user engagement and the relevance led to a significant ad revenue growth, which isn’t expected to slow down this year.

Facebook adds automatic video captions

It’s common for Facebook users to be annoyed by the sudden sound a mobile video may play and according to Facebook’s own research, 80% of users react negatively on such ads and even blame the brands for it.

Facebook has decided to find a solution to this problem, without reducing a video’s effectiveness, by introducing automatic video ad captioning, in order to maintain a brand’s message without annoying the users.

As 41% of videos are meaningless without sound, this solution may keep the user engaged enough to keep watching a video, which will ultimately make the user decide whether to use the sound or not.

What’s more, as brands started wondering how they can measure the exact number of people that were genuinely interested in their ad, Facebook has stated that it will provide them with the percentage of people that watched their ad with the sound on, in order to analyse the ad’s success.

Sedal Sunsilk created a series of video tutorials to promote its brand to the Brazilian audience and the use of text was clever enough to make the audience watch more of it. In fact, the average view duration was 21 seconds and the campaign met the expectations of boosting the brand awareness.

The rising trend of carousel format ads

Facebook ads in carousel format are a flexible way to promote your business or your products, by showing multiple images and links in one ad.

It was just a few months ago when Facebook announced the introduction of videos to carousel ads, which means that you can now create a mix of images, videos, and links, in order to showcase your products and services in the most creative way.

Carousel format is a growing trend in Facebook advertising and according to Kinetic Social, it drives 10 times more traffic to a brand’s site comparing to other types of ads.

An effective ad with a series of images and links helps to:

• Lower the cost-per-click (CPC)
• Increase the click-through rate (CTR)
• Boost engagement
• Provide more information about the brand’s products
• Lead traffic to the site

Foodpanda used the carousel format to promote its app and measured an increase of CTR by 180% and reduced the cost per install by 39%.

How lead ads bring quality leads

Lead ads were introduced only a few months ago as a more effective way for a brand to collect relevant leads.

A lead ad is a great choice for a business that wants to reach a target audience and provide them with more information about a product, hoping to keep them engaged and eventually sign up. Although it may require extensive testing, in order to approach the audience in the best possible way, it still brings high quality leads at a low cost, which makes it ideal.

It’s been observed that people are more willing to sign up when they are learning more about the service, and of course, nobody likes to click from one page to another to obtain the desired information. Thus, Facebook introduced the context card, an additional card in lead ads which provides the users more details on what they are about to sign up to.

This helps both users and brands, as they both maintain their desired relevance, both at a personal and professional level.

Mazda was happy to try out Facebook lead ads, as they brought five times more leads to the site, with a cost per lead dropping by 85%.

Moreover, The Skimm tried the idea of the context card when it was encouraging users to sign up to its daily newsletter and it led to a lead quality increase of 22%.

Ads coming to Messenger?

According to the latest rumours, Facebook is considering ads for Messenger, the popular messaging app which now counts more than 800 million monthly active users.

Techcrunch reports that a leaked document indicates that ads are expected in Messenger during Q2 2016 and this would be an important change both for Facebook, but also for any business trying to reach its audience.

Facebook is not directly commenting on this rumour, but it wants to reassure users that they won’t be disrupted by annoying ads while chatting with their friends. However, this doesn’t mean that it’s not considering creative ways to bring the business opportunities into the popular app.

Understanding the challenges of Facebook advertising

All the advertising types mentioned above may be very effective for a brand, but success is not always guaranteed.

There are several complaints regarding the effectiveness of a Facebook ad and this concern is increased when an ad is created without the proper optimisation.

It is very important to target the right audience, as this is the best way to see a successful return to any effort.

Yes, Facebook has a big audience, but this is not necessarily positive when you want to narrow it down.

In order to stand out from the crowd you need to use creativity and data testing to create the perfect formula that will help you reach your desired goals.

After all, according to Facebook, the virality of the ads (and the criteria for displaying them to a larger audience on their news feed), depends on the relevance, the visual appeal and the engagement it creates with each user.

This is probably the best advice we need to keep in mind when creating the next Facebook ad.

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Choosing the right Content Management System (CMS) for your Business

I’ve been a developer for a number of years now and, although it’s great to be able to write your own code and build an application from scratch, in reality it’s not something you can do every time you start a new website. I know this from personal experience, when […]

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10 Facebook Updates + Live Facebook Marketing Workshop, San Diego

It’s been a big year with many Facebook updates already, for users and especially for businesses. Are you managing to keep up with the fast moving changes?

Here’s a look at just some recent Facebook updates that you should know about:

Facebook Reactions

Facebook launches Reactions globally – a new way for users to express empathy (like, love, haha, wow, sad, angry) in the form of emoticons. Businesses will have access to new insights at some point to dive in to more granular analysis of how their audience is responding to content. 

Facebook Live Video

Facebook Live video is rolling out to all users globally. Facebook wants to become the ‘live television in your pocket’ and one of the best tools for doing so is to broadcast Live video to your friends, fans and followers. This ‘instant TV’ tool lets you break news, share behind the scenes situations, do product demos, host Q&A sessions, conduct interviews, showcase unboxing and much more. 

Facebook Updates for Business Owners & Marketers

Posted by Mari Smith on Sunday, February 7, 2016

360 Video + Virtual Reality

Along with 360 video available on Facebook and in ads, Facebook recently announced 360 streaming video in the Samsung Gear VR (virtual reality). Virtual reality is Facebook’s ‘next big thing’ with much emphasis and investment in this growing area. Forward-thinking businesses need to stay up to speed with these advancements. 

A glimpse into the future of Facebook!

Canvas

Facebook launches Canvas – a full screen ad to help bring products to life on mobile. Approximately 90% of all Facebook users access the platform primarily via mobile. Therefore, you’ll want to make your content more immersive and fast-loading using features such as Canvas and Instant Articles.

Instant Articles

Instant Articles is coming to all publishers of all sizes, around the world on April 12th. (This Facebook update to be officially announced at Facebook’s f8 annual developer conference). Instant Articles loads 10x faster on mobile and is a more immersive way for users to consume your content. Plus, content owners can monetize through direct sold ads and keep 100% of the revenue. Or advertise through the Facebook Audience Network (a Google AdSense competitor).

Video Captions

Automated captions are coming to Facebook video ads. (With the sound-off autoplay feature on all videos, captions can help draw viewers in and encourage them to consume more of your video content. So far, captions are proving to get a 12% increase in views.)

Carousel Ads

Carousel Ads offer more advanced features for savvy Facebook marketers, including using a mix of photos and videos and directing traffic to multiple links. Facebook recently allowed business Page Admins the ability to post organic, native carousel posts which can then be turned into an ad by boosting the post. 

Instagram Video Ads

Instagram now offers 60-second video ads, and video views are coming to Instagram. (The max length videos for users is 15 seconds. Previously, Instagram allowed up to 30-second video ads. This new longer 60-second ad brings us closer to television style ads.)

Messenger for Business

Facebook Page Admins have much improved features for responding to messages. Plus, Pages can now respond to any comment through a private message, allowing sensitive or difficult situations to be taken offline quickly and effectively. Messenger for Business is the new 1-800 number. Businesses will need to deploy more highly trained, social customer care experts to properly handle the incoming private messages and dramatically improve i) customer care, ii) lead generation, and iii) sales! There’s a fine art to all this and it’s an area that is very close to my heart. Stay tuned for more. 

Search + Local Directories

There’s also the new search feature on Facebook Pages, and the quiet roll out of local Professional Services and Places directories.

As Facebook continues to ramp up Messenger for Business and seeks to roll out plans to monetize both Messenger and WhatsApp, you’ll need to make sure your business is poised to take advantage of these features. Social customer care, using Facebook’s tools in particular, should be a critical part of your plans this year onwards.

Facebook Workshop, San Diego, CA: April 20th

Are your Facebook marketing efforts helping you generate a consistent flow of leads and customers?

With the constant moving landscape of marketing effectively on Facebook, it’s crucial that you get proper education. Come attend my live Facebook Marketing Workshop in San Diego on April 20th. You’ll learn the very best practices for growing your business on Facebook and get hands-on help from me and my team of professionals.

Meet me in America’s finest city, San Diego, California, and get the BEST Facebook marketing + ads + campaigns + social media marketing techniques from the biggest names and brands in the industry.

By popular demand, I’m bringing back my exclusive live event – designed to immediately follow Social Media Marketing World.

After attending the big social media conference with 3,000 attendees, you’ll get to connect with a much smaller group in an intimate setting, learn the latest Facebook marketing best practices, mastermind ideas together, discuss highlights of SMMW16, and leave with the exact Facebook and Instagram marketing methods you need to skyrocket your 2016 social media results.

This highly interactive event includes a delicious, healthy lunch for all attendees. Our workshop will be at the Marriott Marquis San Diego Marina hotel.

You’ll learn how to increase your Facebook and Instagram ad conversions, get a much better ROI and boost your sales!

Video created by Mari using Animoto. Check out Animoto for Business! 

This dynamic one-day event is scheduled for the day immediately following Social Media Marketing World (SMMW16): Wednesday, April 20th, 2016.

Whether you have already purchased your ticket to SMMW16 or not (or you’re not planning to go), you’re invited to join me and my team for this intimate gathering as we drill deep into Facebook (and Instagram) marketing and advertising.

You’ll walk away with a proven step-by-step process used by some of the top businesses on Facebook today, and a clear plan of action. Find out more here. We’d love to see you there. Space is limited to just 45 attendees, including 12 VIPs. Any questions, let us know.

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