Spring 2017


07


Q: For those who haven’t been paying close attention, take us through the latest offerings businesses can leverage in their Facebook marketing strategy.


Mari Smith: The first for me is Facebook Live, which is now going mainstream, and businesses are integrating it. A new shift is that Facebook is building a separate video news feed, which has already rolled out in most English-speaking countries. You’ll see the “play” icon at the bottom of the app. They are building this because they will run out of ad inventory in the main news feed this summer. Essentially, demand is exceeding supply on mobile as people figure out Facebook ads and use up that supply. This is all driven by a huge play for TV-style broadcasting, which has been fully embraced by celebs and media companies. The second area is direct messenger apps, and China’s WeChat is a big player here. It’s a mobile operating system with which the user can do everything without ever leaving the app, including order groceries and do their banking. The only apps poised to compete are Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. WeChat is what Facebook is driving toward—an all-in-one app with commerce integrated and calls to action in direct-messaging.


Q: So, is Facebook Live now a must for marketers going forward? And how can they tell if it’s working for them?


MS: The acid test for all marketing is this: Does it result in lead generation and, ultimately, sales? It’s a bit early now to determine whether businesses are really going to embrace Facebook Live and benefit from it. I’m not seeing really great, standout content yet. It can work well delivering live, behind-the-scenes, backstage-pass types of things. People love the informality of it. Whether it’s working for you is determined by whether it’s building an audience of the right people and moving those people to an action such as buying, downloading, or signing up for your emails.


Q: Social media managers are constantly asked about ROI. How should companies be measuring their Facebook marketing efforts?


MS: We consult with small businesses daily, and one of the first things we do is identify what a Facebook interaction is worth to them. For some, it could be $5. For others, maybe it’s $100. Businesses ought to know their cost per customer acquisition plus the


lifetime value of a customer before spending a dime on Facebook ads. Let’s say a company knows their typical customer spends a total of $5,000 over time, and it costs them $50 to acquire a new


customer. So, it’s worth it to spend as little as $5 per lead or even as much as $100 on Facebook. A Facebook interaction might be a video view (the longer the view, the higher the value), a click to a website, or a private message (worth much more than a video view). Start with that and refine your campaign as you go. Facebook’s ad algorithm can tell if it’s dealing with a novice advertiser or a seasoned veteran. The best-performing Facebook ads drive people to a fast-loading, mobile-optimized landing page. That tells Facebook that this advertiser knows what he or she is doing. We will see more Instant Articles, Facebook’s fast-loading posts consisting of things such as branded blog posts that are housed inside Facebook. You can have a one-click lead ad integrated in those. That’s the name of the game. A lot of major content publishers, however, are weighing the pros and cons of keeping people on Facebook or sending them to other content of theirs outside the app. Facebook certainly wants to keep people inside the app.


Q: Will Instant Articles change content-posting habits on Facebook?


MS: With Instant Articles, you just need to create a special feed for your blog that meets the required formatting. When you publish on your blog, your post is essentially syndicated on Facebook, where it will load instantly—10 times faster than on the mobile web. You are reducing the friction and letting people


consume that content in a reader- friendly format. You can have all kinds of content there. The challenge is you don’t get the traffic measurements, so that’s where the resistance is, though you can serve your own ads, keep the revenue, and track


readership.


People say, “I want people to come to my content on my


platform (website, blog, etc.).” And it’s a big discussion in boardrooms


around the world, but statistics tell us that people share Instant Articles


30 percent more often than articles that require linking to a location outside the Facebook app.


Q: You have written that video on Facebook gets the best organic reach and engagement, and that you can remarket that content to people who watch it. Can you explain to our readers how that works?


MS: BuzzSumo recently studied 800 million Facebook posts from 2016 and confirmed that video is at the top of the list in terms of organic reach and engagement. But look at your insights per post or per video and see how many people are watching them for 10 or more seconds. Let’s say you do a six-minute video and you want to create an audience out of the people who watched half of it. Ezra Firestone (founder of a company called Smart Marketer) has been able to create retargeted video ads that cost around 36 cents each to reach people who watched four minutes of a six-minute video. That’s where marketers and businesses are missing the mark. They put up a video, but they don’t take advantage of reaching multiple audiences. I might do a different type of ad for people who watched 50 or 75 percent of my video, because they are a much hotter


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