Why Most Online Advertisers Are Still Socially Awkward
Elodie Bouneau, Marketing Intern
Is it just me, or are Americans spending more time than ever on social networks?
As it turns out, it’s not just me. In June 2009, Americans were spending 16% of their total online time on social networks. By June 2010, that number had risen to 23%. (For reference, Americans spend just 8% of their online time reading and writing emails.)
Advertisers are gradually waking up to this rapid growth. Between 2009 and 2010, they increased their social advertising spend by 20%.
But even their current budget of $1.68 billion represents only 6.7% of their total online advertising spend.
In other words, online advertisers are still, well, socially awkward.
Why?
The Challenges of Breaking Into Social Networks
It’s not that advertisers don’t want to socialize. It’s not that they don’t realize people are spending more and more time on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter.
It’s just that breaking into these networks is more difficult than making a splash in other types of online advertising.
When you want to run a banner ad, for example, you create your ad, pay your fee, and voila’ – you’re getting your message in front of people.
But to break into a social network, you must figure out how to become part of the conversations people are having within that network.
As I said, this can be difficult – but it’s not impossible. To guide your efforts, try using what I call the Three T’s.
The Three T’s of Social Advertising
If you really want your products and services to become part of the conversations people are having online, just remember: Target, Test, Tweak.
1. Target. Social networks are all about communities and groups. This can play in your favor – if you’re willing to do the up-front work.
You can target your ads to a very specific audience that’s defined by gender, age, locality, and interests. But beware: social networkers have become spoiled by an environment that’s tailored to their precise wants and needs. If you’re not ultra-specific about how your product or service is relevant to this audience, they’ll ignore your messages.
2. Test. As soon as you begin investing in social media advertising, be sure to set reasonable daily budgets for testing your ads.
When placing your social media ads, make sure you put tracking tags on your ads to measure your important metrics. Depending on your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), you will be interested in testing and optimizing for different metrics. For example, if your KPI is to drive registrations for a newsletter, you want to track the click through rate from your social media ad to your sign up landing page, and your registration conversion rate for newsletter signups. You can then look at your cost/registration for each of your ad placements as a measure of performance. If your KPI is brand awareness, you can optimize your banner cost/click, since you want as many people clicking to your website as possible.
3. Tweak. Once your ads have been up for a while and you’ve gathered data in the form of metrics related to your key performance indicators, analyze and adjust your overall campaign to trim the fat and maximize your results. Bring your best-performing creative to the forefront, find the social media placements that give the best results, and always continue to test new approaches.
As you can see, there’s no shortcut to social advertising success. But by taking the time to craft messages that appeal to specific groups and continuing to optimize, you can dramatically boost your results.
Categories:
- Best Practices
- Blogging
- Trends
- Social Media
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Elodie Bouneau, Ozone Marketing Intern Elodie is excited to join the Ozone Online Marketing Team for a year long internship as part of her curriculum at Sciences Po (IEP Paris, France) where she is majoring in Marketing. Elodie seeks to learn more about branding and web-based advertising campaigns. Email Elodie. |
