GoPro’s objective on Facebook is simple: The maker of wearable, mountable HD cameras wants to build brand awareness. It starts by posting jaw-dropping photos and videos of all the moments every-day people are capturing with it cameras—the gazelle charging a mountain biker in Africa, the toy robot launching into space. With more than 4 million fans by the end of 2012, that means there’s more than 433 millions friends of these fans globally who are learning about the brand through their Facebook friends.
To continue to grow the audience for its products and content, GoPro’s advertising on Facebook is always on. It targets sponsored stories to friends of fans, enabling it to reach the people most likely to be its next customers and content producers. And to keep its growing fan base engaged, GoPro uses media to increase the reach of its Page posts in news feed.
Facebook is now the No. 1 photo-sharing site for GoPro. It drives more than 9% of the traffic to the brand’s e-commerce site, helping generate direct sales on GoPro.com. Now the world’s fastest growing camera company, GoPro credits Facebook for being an “integral part” of that success. Check out the case study video case study to learn more.
Since launching last April, the Preferred Marketing Developer (PMD) program has made it possible for any brand or company to build a comprehensive Facebook presence. The program is a growing ecosystem – with more than 260 members in over 35 countries – of best-in-class developers who make social marketing easier and more effective.
Today, we’re launching a new PMD Center so marketers can more easily find the companies they need to build enterprise tools and apps – all in one place.
Built by the PMD Gamaroff Digital, the PMD Centeris itself an app, and it replaces the original PMD directory launched with the PMD program earlier this year. Its key feature is the ability for marketers to submit RFPs directly via an integrated form.
We hope this new resource makes it even easier for marketers to get started doing business with PMDs.
For its 51st anniversary in business, Domino’s Pizza wanted to do something really special: serve up 50% off online pizza orders in 20 different countries. To run its first campaign aligned behind a single global offer, it turned to the one platform it believed could make this happen in an easy and exciting way.
On Facebook, Domino’s made its Pages in 20 different countries the center of its Global Domino’s Day campaign. A teaser tab launched three days before the one-day offer went live allowed fans to share the offer message to their friends in 14 languages. To increase awareness and reach ahead of the big day, Domino’s turned Page posts about the event into ads. And to drive orders on the day, it used ads on the homepage to drive people to the ordering app, while sponsored stories displayed to people whenever their friends had used the app to order pizzas.
What came out of the oven for the company? A record week of online orders and sales in the U.S. Globally, the campaign drove over 540,000 people to local Domino’s Pizza ordering sites. And the United Kingdom saw an over 30% increase in sales on the day of the offer, with 17% of those sales coming from new customers. To learn more about the campaign, watch the video case study.
We’ve heard questions from brands and businesses around how News Feed works; how to get distribution for Pages’ messages; and how Promoted Posts can reach more of their intended audiences.
Our goal in news feed is always to show someone the most relevant information from the things they are connected to on Facebook. We think about Page content similarly to how we think about content from friends: We want to show people the things that are most meaningful to them from their connections. A really good Page post, like a friend’s photo or status update, that gets a lot of engagement, has a better chance of being shown in news feed. In this way, we can keep news feed an engaging service where people come to get the information that is most interesting to them.
Below we try to offer even more clarity on how this all works.
How does news feed distribute my messages organically and with ads?
Facebook’s news feed makes the most of the time a person spends on Facebook by serving up information that is most meaningful to them. It ranks information from people, apps, and Pages based on what that person interacts with the most (i.e. the level of engagement certain posts get), and how frequently the person visits Facebook. That way, they see a customized “home page” that’s tailored to the things that are most relevant to them each time they log in – whether that be every few hours or every few weeks.
To address the fact that not everyone sees every single message from a friend or a Page, Facebook offers ads to businesses to help them increase the likelihood that people will see their message in their news feed when they log in. As a business, you may have a really great sale going on, or a new item in store that you want to promote far and wide, so that more people are aware of it. Tools like promoted posts are simple ways to turn those important Page posts into ads.
Is Facebook “gaming” news feed so I pay for more ads to extend my messages’ reach?
While we make changes to news feed occasionally, the fundamental way it works has not changed. We mentioned earlier that news feed works to serve up messages – organic and paid – that people are most likely to interact with. Level of engagement with a message or ad is an important signal as to whether the message should be shown in more people’s news feeds.
It’s important to note that we constantly monitor signals from people in news feed, not only when they engage with a story or ad, but also when they hide a person’s story or a Page’s ad that they might not want to see or report a story as spam. Taking these signals into account, from time to time we make adjustments to the ranking system of news feed to ensure that news feed stories continue to be as engaging as possible. We have done this in the past and will continue to make adjustments so that people see the most relevant stories to them, every time they log in.
This doesn’t change the fundamental goal of what Pages should optimize for and what news feed surfaces: engaging stories, organic and paid. Regardless of whether you’re paying to promote a story or just posting one to your Page, the news feed will always optimize for stories that generate high levels of user engagement and filter out ones that don’t. So in Page Insights you may see that the organic reach of not-so-engaging posts is lower. Posts that get good organic engagement, however, should continue to achieve healthy reach.
What this means for businesses is that monitoring what types of posts are getting good responses is key, and always has been. Use Page Insights to determine what types of content – videos, posts, questions, etc. – are getting good engagement versus what types aren’t. Take a look at our Page Publishing Guide for posting best practices, and make sure to use our Page post targeting features (more info below) so that you reach the audiences most likely to respond to your messages. And for posts that you see are getting a lot of responses, you can promote them to extend your reach to more news feeds.
How do I ensure that my ads get to my intended audience?
Campaigns for ads like promoted posts are set up so that they can receive the most engagement possible – liking, commenting, sharing, etc. This means that Pages can get some international responses, because the cost of showing an ad varies by country (and so some posts could get shown to people in places where the cost per engagement is lower).
The best way to address this is by refining the audience that is eligible to see your posts. This can be done by either targeting your Page post to specific locations and audiences - e.g. People in Chicago who are married (more info on how to do this here) - or by selecting “People who like your Page” under Audience options in promoted posts.
We are also exploring ways to make ad targeting capabilities more built into the ad creation process by default, so that when you promote a post the delivery takes into account the right audience more often.
We want to help businesses of all sizes not only get more of their messages to the right people, but also give them insight into what messages are engaging to people so they can create more of them. We think that if businesses can increase interactions with their customers, it’s a win-win situation.
How does Facebook advertising add value for my brand? Isn’t earned media enough? Am I reaching the right customers with Facebook ads?
These are commonly asked questions that we wanted to help answer in our most recent joint study with comScore. The study focused on understanding how paid and earned media work together to help brands reach the right people on Facebook.
The comScore study Power of a Like II, published in June 2012, uncovered that fans and friends of fans are not only high value customers to brands in terms of likelihood to purchase, but also that their purchasing behaviors can be increased by reaching them with both paid and organic brand messages.
In partnership with comScore, we then sought to answer how paid media augments reach and, ultimately, purchase behavior.
The answer? Our most recent paper, Understanding Paid and Earned Reach on Facebook, demonstrates that paid media maximizes the reach and value that brands are generating on Facebook: Even brands with some of the largest fan bases can reach on average 5x more people using paid media in addition to organic publishing. Furthermore, the audience reached with paid media exhibited greater shopping and buying frequency for those brands than the online average.
And why is maximizing reach so important for marketers? Because reach is a significant driver of ROI. As announced at Advertising Week, campaigns that maximize for reach have on average a 70 percent higher return-on-investment.
In a selection of the 100 top brand Pages on Facebook (selected for having large fan bases and high levels of organic reach), those Pages using paid media reached 5.4 times more people on average than those who did not use paid media.
In a case study of 3 major brands: Samsung Mobile, a major financial services company, and a major retailer, using paid media extended their reach by five times over their organic audience in a single week.
In the case of those 3 major brands, paid media was able to extend the reach of a single piece of content by more than 100x.
comScore found that the audience reached via paid media for those 3 brands showed greater shopping and buying behavior than the Internet average.
As marketers look to build digital campaigns to connect with and influence consumers, many are asking how best to measure success and optimize the impact of their ad campaigns. Since the early days of digital advertising, online marketing has been focused on optimizing ad campaigns for the click. But while clicks are an effective way to measure campaigns designed to drive traffic and fulfill direct response goals, increasingly, research from firms like Nielsen suggest that clicks aren’t the right metric for the broader set of marketing objectives beyond direct response.
So how can marketers with goals like driving in-store purchase or branding objectives – those similar to TV – build and measure their campaigns? Today at IAB MIXX, Brad Smallwood, Facebook’s Head of Measurement and Insights, discussed findings from a study conducted in partnership with Datalogix—using a new tool that connects ad exposure (seeing a brand’s ad) on Facebook with in-store purchases (buying the brand’s product). This tool enables marketers who have offline sales objectives to measure and optimize their digital campaigns, and this research represents a first look at the key conclusions from a study of nearly 50 digital campaigns:
Impressions create value. 99 percent of sales generated from online branding ad campaigns were from people that saw, but did not interact with, ads— proof that it is the delivery of the marketing message to the right consumer, not the click, that creates real value for brand advertisers.
Reach drives revenue for online brand marketers. This is a concept very familiar to TV marketers, who often start with a reach objective—but until now hadn’t been proven for online. When applied to digital brand campaigns, the study demonstrated that campaigns that maximized reach had on average a 70 percent higher return-on-investment.
Finding the right message frequency is key. The study revealed that for online brand campaigns, if you reallocated high frequency impressions to people seeing too few impressions, you would see a 40 percent increase in ROI with the same budget. What this means is that for every online campaign there is a “sweetspot” of effective frequency that maximizes return on investment, and that the DataLogix tool can help marketers empirically isolate that sweetspot for each brand and campaign.
These findings demonstrate a clear roadmap to success for digital marketers, focused on reaching the right consumers at the right frequency. And while these conclusions might seem familiar to traditional marketers who use TV, they represent a substantial shift from the focus on click-optimization that is more typical of digital campaign planning. Products like Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings measurement solution can help brands optimize for reach and effective frequency for their digital campaigns, and Datalogix’s new tool can measure real return on investment by connecting those brand digital ad exposures to in-store sales. This is something that has never been done before at this scale.
This week, the industry will gather in New York for one of the largest advertising events in the world—Advertising Week.
Facebook is a proud Advertising Week sponsor, and we're excited to share how our latest products, research and partnerships are enabling businesses to connect with people across platforms. Please join us in person or via live stream at the events below.
Monday, October 1, 2012
Tom Arrix, VP, US Marketing Solutions, Facebook
Wired Innovation Roundtable
11:30 am, Nederlander Theater
Brad Smallwood, Head of Measurement and Insights, Facebook
Insights for Marketers: Using Measurement to Build a Better Ecosystem for Brand Campaigns at IAB MIXX
11:45 am, Broadway Ballroom in The Crowne Plaza Hotel
The designation is reserved for a small group of PMDs that are driving outstanding results in the Facebook marketing developer ecosystem and is earned through a rigorous selection process that considers each company’s impact and commitment. Strategic PMDs will receive our highest level of support, and will be reevaluated every six months.
Agencies and brands looking to take their Facebook marketing to the next level can select a Strategic PMD knowing that they are in the hands of experienced partners that will receive priority product and business support, in-depth training, and access to alpha and beta product trials.
For more information and a list of Strategic PMDs, please visit Facebook Developers.
We launched Offers in limited release at fMC earlier this year. Since then, we’ve heard from businesses of all kinds that Offers has helped them drive business results. Today we are happy to announce that Offers will be available globally, and that we’ve added some new features that will make Offers even better for people and for businesses.
Starting this week, businesses with more than 400 fans can create online Offers directly from their Facebook Pages. This means that all businesses—from large brands to local retailers— can use Offers to drive sales, traffic and reach in news feed.
Businesses can also includebar codes and unique codes in their Offers. This has been a top request, and will help businesses measure the effectiveness of their campaigns.
We’re also making it easier for people to find the Offers that are most relevant to them. Over the months since the beta launch, we’ve seen that targeting and advertising help get the right Offers in front of the right people, resulting in more happy customers sharing your offer with friends and better sales. Therefore, starting this week, we will require that businesses include advertising and targeting as part of using Offers. More advertising budget will lead to greater distribution to your audience, and will put more power in your hands as a marketer to control delivery and targeting. Offers will remain free for people to claim and easily sharable with friends. These changes will help businesses reach the right people more effectively, and will create a better experience for users.
Check out the Facebook Help Center to get started and stay tuned to the Facebook Studio blog for Offers tips and case studies.
We recently launched an update to Facebook’s iPhone and iPad apps for iOS. The update makes keeping up with friends faster and easier, and enables brands to engage with people on mobile in richer ways than ever before. Here are three things marketers should know:
You can reach your customers at scale with Facebook on mobile
It’s hard to miss the rapid growth of mobile. With 75 percent of the world’s population now on mobile devices and almost 50 percent of US phone subscriptions being for smartphones, reaching your customers on mobile devices has never been more important, and Facebook is a key place people are spending time. More than 540 million people access Facebook on mobile every month. And in the US, Facebook’s mobile users spend over eight hours a month on Facebook, which represents 30 percent of the time spent on the top 10 mobile properties.
Facebook targeting options are the same across desktop and mobile
In addition to leveraging Facebook’s scale to reach people on mobile, you can reach people in highly efficient ways using Facebook’s rich targeting options. Standard demographic targeting is available, but, like on Facebook desktop, Facebook mobile, offers targeting based on likes and interests, connections, activity, education, workplace, relationship status and more. When you set up campaigns on Facebook that are eligible for news feed, some of these impressions will automatically be delivered to mobile if your target audience is logging-on via mobile. You can also target a mobile-only audience with mobile news feed placement using Power Editor and API tools.
Your brand can be front and center in mobile news feed
The news feed is the best place for brands to reach people on Facebook on desktop or mobile because people spend 40 percent of their time on Facebook in news feed and are 40-150x more likely to consume branded content in news feed than on brand Pages. As on desktop, Brand Page posts appear prominently in the mobile news feed, just like updates from people’s friends.
Creating content that is brand-relevant, visual, and will enhance someone’s experience as they scroll through all of the stories in their news feed is essential to engaging people in news feed. For more information, check out last week’s blog post and webinar.
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