Resource Recommendations:
SEO Book (@SEOBook)—www.seobook.com
WordTracker (@WordTracker)—www.wordtracker.com/academy
Tactic #16: Facebook, Twitter, & Other Social Advertising
As social media usage expands rapidly, so too do your opportunities to advertise to social media users. If you want to build FANS and FOLLOWERS on a specific social network, first look to see if it offers a Paid Media option to do just that:
Facebook lets you promote pages to gain new FANS.
Twitter lets you promote profiles to gain new FOLLOWERS.
LinkedIn ads can be used to gain new FOLLOWERS.
You can also use these same channels to build email, SMS, or mobile app SUBSCRIBERS through sponsored stories, posts, and—in some cases—more traditional banner or sidebar ads.
Social advertising really shines through when the creative leverages organic posts. Facebook Sponsored Stories and Twitter Sponsored Posts are two such examples. Each permits advertisers to amplify preexisting post or tweet content to paid audiences based on demographics, interests, location, profession, and more. The depth of data that you can leverage for ad targeting on Facebook, in particular, boggles the mind—and creates tremendous opportunities to capture SEEKERS, create AMPLIFIERS, and build JOINERS.
LinkedIn also deserves mention here because of its depth of professional data. No other site maps business connections like LinkedIn, and this affords marketers the ability to build their proprietary audiences through ads targeted by company, profession, education, and more. As other social networks carve out their niche audiences, rest assured that you’ll find more ways to build and engage yours.
Resource Recommendations:
All Facebook (@AllFacebook)—www.allfacebook.com
We Are Social (@WeAreSocial)—www.wearesocial.com
Tactic #17: In-App Mobile Advertising
At a recent conference, the CMO of a major online retailer shared the following bit of insight with me, provided it would be unattributed:
Over two years, we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to boost downloads of our mobile app. Two months into running a Facebook Mobile Ads for Apps campaign, we generated 10 times the downloads at a fraction of the cost.
Wow, right? As one of Facebook’s newest ad units, Mobile Ads for Apps appear in your Facebook app news feed and put you just two clicks away from download—one for the ad, and one in your phone’s App Store. It’s a near-frictionless example of perfect advertising placement: smack dab in front of mobile consumers while they’re using their mobile devices.
But that’s just one of the many mobile advertising options available today. Google, Facebook, and other advertising networks offer search, banner, overlay, video, and other ad units increasingly tailored to the mobile experience. Your challenge? To find ad units that work seamlessly to help build and engage your SEEKERS, AMPLIFIERS, and JOINERS. Great examples include:
Google AdWords within Google Mobile Maps: Ads that take SEEKERS straight to your site and enable one-click to call.
YouTube TrueView ads: Ads that promote your video next to other video content. You only pay when SEEKERS click and become VIEWERS.
Twitter Cards: Allow you to supercharge your tweets with email opt-in forms, mobile app downloads, deep links into previously installed apps, video, and more. They entice SEEKERS, inspire AMPLIFIERS, and enable the development of SUBSCRIBERS, FANS, and FOLLOWERS.
With mobile usage only set to grow, the efficacy of mobile advertising as a PAD Tactic will only increase. As with any Paid Media in The Hybrid Marketing Era, you should design it to both sell and build audiences or engagement. Where smaller, mobile ad formats don’t allow for dual CTAs, make sure your landing page or post-click process accommodates your Proprietary Audience Development needs.
Resource Recommendations:
Interactive Advertising Association (@IAB)—www.iab.net
Mobile Marketing Association (@MMAGlobal)—www.mmaglobal.com
Tactic #18: Television, Video, & Radio Advertising
You hear a lot of marketers disparage television advertising these days. Certainly channel-skipping DVR users, commercial-free streaming services, and the fragmentation of VIEWER attention create legitimate cause for concern. According to eMarketer (@eMarketer), however, the average American spends 278 minutes a day watching TV—up 11 minutes since 2009.9 This finding (combined with YouTube’s growing viewership) certainly suggests television isn’t dying—the way we consume it is just evolving.
Accordingly, if you’re going to spend precious dollars to produce and run a TV, YouTube, or any other video advertisement, you need to make sure it advances your Proprietary Audience Development efforts by doing any number of these things: