Month: March 2016

28 Mar 2016

Reach and Frequency: New Buying Type option available for Facebook Ads and what it means for your Business.

by maikel | in English
Reach and Frequency: New Buying Type option available for Facebook Ads and what it means for your Business.

While creating a campaign a few days ago, we noticed a new buying option available for Facebook ads. Curiosity spiked and tried it right away to see what it was all about. This exciting new feature allows advertisers to promote content to a rather large audience 1.5 million or more, competing directly with Radio and TV. The Social Media giant is making it easier for advertisers to compare apples to apples and see the real value of Facebook advertising.

Reach and Frequency, the new ad buying option shows advertiser exactly how many people they will reach over time. Today’s blog post will help you understand what this means, who can benefit from it and how it compares to other media buys.

 

Understanding Reach and Frequency:

 

Reach indicates the size of the unduplicated audience. When considering reach, it’s important to remember that an individual viewing or being exposed to an advertisement more than once does not increase its reach, but rather frequency.

 

Frequency is how many times an individual is exposed to your ad in any medium. Frequency can be attained through repetition of ads during the campaign run dates, and/or by rotating advertisements between media types.

 

Who can benefit from this new feature?

PR agencies looking use social media for crisis management, can use this as an option to handle it quickly and efficiently using Facebook reaching over a million of engaged users over a selected amount of time.

For large companies doing a product launch: When you need to build buzz around your new product using these type of bidding will help gain much needed traction and help build awareness. If the campaign performs well you will most likely be rewarded with organic reach beyond the amount allotted or forecasted.

Agencies looking to offer more options to their clients: As an Agency that helps clients of all sizes Mapa Social is really excited about the reach and frequency ad buy feature. We can now offer our clients different options when it comes to ad buy and reach.

Reach and Frequency ad buy Best Practices

Reach_frequency_budget_graph

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One thing we noticed about using this ad buying type is that it forces you to use a broader category when targeting by interest or any other option on Facebook. Unless you have a huge email list or a web custom audience of over 1 Million, to be able to reach a targeted audience of 1-1.5 million the same way you do with other ad buying types will be very difficult.

One thing we would recommend is to use your lookalike audience to create a better baseline for your big “targeted audience”. In short, lookalike audiences are created from a copy of a relevant audience based on a goal or a profile or your website visitors. Facebook does all the matching for you automatically and it creates a list that can be from 2.1-21.1 million people. Few things to keep in mind with this is that the size range is based on the total audience in the country you choose. Facebook recommend using smaller audiences because is the one that most closely match your source audience. Creating a larger audience, they say – increases your potential reach, but reduces the level of similarity to your source.

Something that really caught my eye was the embedded budgeting tool that was quietly introduced by Facebook and something we would love to see rolled out soon, across the ad manager and power editor platform. The slick graph gives you great details about your budget, impressions and CPM over time, a text box lets you pick a budget and it will automatically re-calculate and change the graph with the new stats.

 

Facebook has already set up some ground rules around using this new buying option and they are listed below:

reach_frequency_reserve

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reach and Frequency Buying Policies

When you create a campaign using Facebook’s reach and frequency buying type you are agreeing to pay the proposed costs for the advertising inventory you reserve. If you want to change your audience size or frequency, then your costs will also change. You can make these changes any time before your campaign starts. You can edit your ad creative until your campaign starts.

Canceling Campaigns

Campaigns may be canceled and change requests can be made at any time. However, if you frequently cancel your campaigns you may be unable to use the reach and frequency buying type in the future.

Stopping an Active Campaign

Once a campaign starts, it can’t be paused and restarted. If you need to stop your active campaign because of unforeseen circumstances, then you can delete it. You’ll be charged for any impressions delivered.

What does this means for your business?

 

You don’t need to spend tens of thousands of dollars investing on a huge TV campaign to get your message across. With autoplay options and call to actions buttons, the fact that you can promote a Facebook video to millions of people is a great recipe for high ROI. If you compare the main competitor, YouTube where ads show up front and

Availability:

It seems this option is not yet available for everyone as some advertisers are reporting is not available for them.

 

Have you tried the new Reach and Frequency ad buy option yet? Tell us what you think.

 

 

02 Mar 2016

7 surefire ways to amplify your event using social media

by maikel | in English, Our Blog
7 surefire ways to amplify your event using social media

 

If you want to amplify your event’s reach, you should consider covering it live on social media. We’ve built a handy guide that will help you to take your next event even further, using the reach, engagement and power of social media.

Personally, I’ve been covering events on social media since 2011. The first event I covered was the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. Ever since then, covering events online has been fascinating to me. The last event I covered was #OGIgnite for our client ORGANO™ and the hashtag reached millions of people from about 50 different countries! Today’s blog will cover some of the basics you’ll need to make sure your event is memorable both off and online.

Use a unique hashtag to measure reach and engagement

Hashtags are key for event coverage on social media. They main purpose of the hashtag is to help you group conversations from around the topic regarding your event, making it easier for everyone attending to connect and engage with each other and with you online. Using a unique hashtag will help you measure the reach and total engagement of your event. Since no one else is using it, you will be able to get metrics that belong only to you.

What should you keep in mind when creating your hashtag?

  • Print the hashtag on offline marketing material and event banners.
  • Engage with people using the hashtag inside and outside of the event.
  • Reach out to influencers attending the event ahead of time to tweet using the hashtag.
  • Use a unique hashtag to get an exact measurement of your analytics.
  • Check the hashtag ahead of time to make sure it’s not in use.

Promote hashtag engagement by running a contest or giveaways

You should almost always run a contest to motivate people to use the event hashtag. It’s a sure-fire way to get more people to engage with the event hashtag. However, don’t just run a contest for the sake of having more engagement! Your main objectives should be collecting leads and/or growing your followers. Make sure that you are rewarding your event attendees and not just anyone tweeting. Use geo-targeted searches, these are searches that are limited by geographical location. Use a tool such as Hootsuite to organize the searches by name and separated by column in order to make it easier to find and prioritize.

Quick giveaways are great to increase loyalty and get people tweeting at the event. The prize doesn’t have to be big. A small gesture can go a long way.

Add a Photo Booth

Using a photo booth is a great way to know who was at your event. With your own custom wall background, it will be easy to identify who was there. Make sure that the event hashtag is clearly visible on the wall.

To make sure they upload their photos using the hashtag, consider showing Tweets, Instagram and other social media posts on the big screen, whenever they use it. Tools like Tagboard, provides solutions for your event, that allow you to filter by hashtags and searches the most popular social media channels.

Reach out to influencers

Influencers can help you jumpstart your contest and give you some engagement from the offset. If you have outside speakers attending your event, try to engage with them online, before, during and after. Go outside of the box and send the influencers personalized invitation and custom made packages to encourage them to give you a shout out online.

Don’t have any speakers at your event? Reach out to local bloggers to help you reach and engage the local audience. They can be great influencers, but their services will come at a cost. Use either a product or some reciprocal gesture to return the favor. A few tickets for the blogger and for her/him to giveaway may do the trick depending on the event and the blogger. You should do your research in advance and do some blogger outreach.

Scheduling posts in advanced

Use Hootsuite to schedule posts on twitter, Facebook and even Instagram! Scheduling your content in advance saves you a lot of time. If you have big announcements during keynotes and you know about them in advance, you should schedule the posts and save them as drafts. That way, you don’t post them ahead of schedule but already have the approved post ready to go.

It’s all about the Content:

The success of your hashtag entirely depends on the content you’re sending out and of course, your event itself. Have a content plan in advance to help you during your live coverage. Not everything needs to be tweeted out, but just don’t miss the really important stuff!

  • What content are you posting live?
  • Do you have a cross channel social media strategy?
  • Are you capturing the moments of people experiencing the events? Video works great for that!
  • Make content exclusive to certain channels.
  • Go behind the scenes.
  • Interview influencers and speakers.
  • Use a live video streaming such as Periscope, Blab, Facebook Live or Meerkat.

Using streaming services like Periscope or Meerkat are great for transmitting live, but they don’t allow you to charge to view the livestream. If you have a separate livestream service, consider only broadcasting small portions of the event to retain the value of the livestream for paying customers.

Run a social media ad campaign.

You should be running an ad campaign before, during and after all of your events. If you are constantly doing these types of events and you want them to be memorable, you need to keep at the forefront of your audience’s mind. Your ads don’t have to be boring and promoting all the time. They should also provide value to the reader and maybe given a sneak preview or some exclusive material.

Always rewards your social media audience with freebies. Do random giveaways to fans that engage with your brand, as well as the big influencers.

There are many things you can do to make your event more memorable online. The examples listed above are just some of the few things you should be doing. Think outside of the box and constantly ask yourself: how do I use social media to amplify my event’s reach? What is the main message I want people to take away from the event?