Tag: Rachel Adams

- by Rachel Adams

Reblog: Social media measurement: Is Google Analytics getting it wrong?

This is a comment in response to a blog: Social media measurement: Is Google Analytics getting it wrong?

Is social ‘value’ being overlooked?

In our experience this can be for two reasons: firstly, there may still be limited understanding of the extent and value of a brand’s social channels (it’s amazing how many social media accounts a brand has, if you have the right tool to assess this); secondly, companies may not be effectively using social data to make strategic social media decisions and organisations can feel overwhelmed by social media listening data without the right help to effectively cut through the information.

Therefore perhaps we should not look at clicks in isolation but blend them with a wider view of social media analytics such as growth and engagements to ascertain and benchmark ROI.

 

 

- by Rachel Adams

Demystifying Facebook Advertising

Facebook has 845 million active monthly users and 2.7 billion daily likes and comments. Facebook is completely unprecedented, and let’s face it, a marketer’s dream. This you probably already know, but despite the capabilities and power of Facebook – people still seem to focus on Fan Pages and neglect the incredible power of Facebook advertising.

If you aren’t familiar with Facebook advertising already – now’s the time to get on board. Mobile advertising is coming as early as March 2012, and with 50% of Facebook users accessing the site with a mobile phone, it’s already being estimated Facebook is going to make a staggering $1.2 billion in just 12 months through mobile advertising alone.

So if Facebook provides brand pages that are free, why bother with paid for advertising? Well, Facebook advertising doesn’t stand alone and should be just one element of an integrated campaign. It supports the classic Facebook brand page and shouldn’t be considered a substitute.

What can be achieved with Facebook advertising?

When creating a Facebook advert there are two options – drive traffic to a Facebook page or an external touch point. When using Facebook advertising it is about 40% cheaper drive traffic to a Facebook page than an external website and so absolutely the route I’d recommend. If people are taken out of Facebook the bounce rate is likely to be higher.

Now here’s the key – most people use Facebook advertising as a way to get more fans/likes. This is where the problem lies. It should be used to achieve a business objective so the ROI is apparent. For example – we used it to drive downloads of our mobile application Bleat and our clients are using it to generate leads.

How Facebook advertising works

There are a few options when creating an advert:

Sponsored story:
when a user likes a page or post, it creates an advert using that person’s name, the action and the Facebook page then shows it to all their friends. The theory being that users are more likely to take action if there’s familiarity. This only works well if a page or post already has quite a large number of likes.

Source - facebook.com

Drive traffic to a Facebook page:
the title of an advert will automatically be the name of a page. You can either:

  • Promote a page: type in whatever text you like to support the advert, and pick an image if you don’t want to use your page’s profile picture.
  • Promote a post: if you have a particularly engaging wall post then this could be for you.

Drive traffic externally:choose a picture, headline and body copy.

Picking a target audience is where Facebook is brilliant. You can pick specific age, gender, country, city, marital status, workplace, education and most importantly – their likes and interests. You can even target specific fans of other Facebook pages.

Once that’s done a bit like Google Adwords you select your budget (daily or lifetime) and then pay for either clicks or impressions. Always go with clicks – this way you’re guaranteed results. It will automatically suggest a maximum bid (for the advert to appear in place of other ads) based on your target audience e.g. 66p per click, but often you’ll pay less than the max bid. A big factor in price difference is the target country, the UK and US are generally pretty expensive as you can see from this list from Social Bakers of the average cost per click by country.

Does it work?

Yes – if you do the legwork. If you just drive people to a Facebook wall, you’re not going to get a lot of likes. The user will be confused. You need to set the user’s expectations in the journey they’re about to take. Firstly give the user a reason to click on your advert in the copy and take them to a customised Facebook landing page. It should be related to the advert and shows something the user is expecting to see, but make sure it’s engaging.

The trick here is also to include a ‘like gate’. Tell the user to like the page to access the page/content/something special. This way you guarantee yourself a social opt-in. What’s behind the like gate should be related to your objectives – so if you’re generating leads maybe have an embedded form which they fill in to receive an incentive.

The Results

Without going into too much detail we’re currently running a client campaign. They’ve gained well over 3,000 likes at an average cost of 16p. A good percentage of those likes have converted into leads, and the average number of interactions per fan hasn’t dropped either. In a separate campaign we received 13% more likes than clicks – this means 100% of people who clicked actually liked the page and people who saw the advert but didn’t click went and found the Facebook page within 24 hours.

And now mobile advertising is coming. Customisable Facebook landing pages don’t work on a mobile phone so best practice will differ, but first get on board and start using it and you’ll no doubt reap the benefits.

If you have any queries about social and integrated campaigns, contact us: info@volume.co.uk

- by Rachel Adams

Print ain’t Dead (honest)

In a digital age, full of digital communications and digital conversations – it’s sometimes easy to forget the joy of a simple letter or package through the post. Stored in an over-stuffed drawer I have birthday, valentines and congratulations cards spanning back to 1999. I keep them for sentimental reasons, but I don’t keep sentimental emails in a special ‘memories’ folder.

That’s the beauty of print or what we now call ‘tactile communications’. They can give us a sense of excitement, bring back memories and make us feel special. That’s why it’s so disappointing when spam fills up our letterboxes with ill-considered and badly designed mails that don’t consider our needs, wants and preferences.

Print isn’t dead, it’s just often misused and abused. Here at Volume we have the capability to create completely personalised direct mail material… and no, this doesn’t just mean adding the customer’s name at the top of the letter.
So, let’s put this into practice. I’m guessing at some point you’ve probably ordered a pizza from your local take away. Having once ordered a pizza, subsequently you probably received their latest menu through the post. With personalised print, why send a whole menu when the pizza company could send a personalised voucher for your favourite pizza? This not only potentially reduces postage costs, but also means you’re more likely to react to the menu or voucher because it means something to you!

Our clients are already seeing the benefit of this, and personalised print campaigns are hot off the printing press (quite literally) with more coming through the pipeline. Those customers are using it to retrain loyalty, improve open rates and make sure that customers are reacting to their content.

The best print campaigns are not only personal but they can also be fun too! That’s why for a client we recently created this ‘dress up’ direct mail (pictured below). This allowed people to ‘pop out’ the clothes and attach them to Fred as they pleased.

So when people tell you print is dead, think about how much you value print. On Tuesday if you receive an e-card instead of a Valentines card, tell us then that print is dead. Print is moving with the times: becoming more fun, more personal and more competitive. It sits in a support role for digital – not to compete against it.

To find out why print ain’t dead, visit our website or follow our print Twitter feed.

- by Rachel Adams

Is training the answer to the social dilemma?

This week Volume’s Key Accounts Team has been busy running a series of social media workshops! Our social media ‘bibles’ are hot off the printing press, having hosted our latest workshop just yesterday with more planned for the future.

So why are we telling you this? Most of us now accept that social media is rapidly changing the way we interact and communicate. Many of us want our businesses to be ‘social’ just like our personal lives. However, there’s still a gap between what businesses know about social media, what they want from it – and the practicalities of implementing it as a tangible and credible part of the marketing mix.

So what are the options to fill that gap? You can hire a specialist social agency to develop your social media strategy and implement it but in reality, precious budget isn’t that readily available for something still deemed intangible. This is where the social media workshop comes in.

Empowering employees

Empower employees to act as the voice of the organisation? By this we’re not suggesting you offer everyone in your company the login to your Twitter account and ‘let loose’. Instead, utilising effective training enables employees to understand the social process and how they can take part.

We suggest training your workforce to be ‘social’ – and it doesn’t just involve ‘how to tweet’. Social is something to be implemented internally and externally. Internally involves opening up the channels of communication between teams and departments amongst other things. Once a business is social, internally, it makes it easier to be social towards customers, partners and other external stakeholders. You just need to select your key people to spread the social philosophy.

So how should you go about planning your social strategy?

1. Bring in the right expertise. Trust in the right social business consultant to understand your business and advise on internal social processes.

2. Pick key stakeholders who will represent your business internally and on external social profiles, then offer them the training they need to get going.

3. Using insights and lessons learned from the training, start working out the best way for your business to communicate socially.

4. Integration. Ensure the social elements of your business integrate into other areas, whether that’s integration with the marketing mix or integration into current company processes.

All of these stages require a starting point in training and expertise. This initial outlay will save you money over time through potential mistakes and ineffective processes. The only thing worse than no social profiles at all, are ones which are badly managed – this can end up being more detrimental to your brand.

We run a range of bespoke training courses to help you get going – either in the comfort of your office or in our own digital theatre. If you want more information please contact suki.johal@volume.co.uk