Advertising
What is GeoFencing? Powerful Location-Based Marketing [Infographic]
Geofencing marketing is a type of digital marketing where you put a virtual perimeter around a real-world location in order to serve targeted mobile ads.
It’s a way for your small business to reach people where they’re spending more and more time: their mobile devices. Location-based marketing is a powerful tool to attract nearby customers to your business, target your competitor’s customers, and even recruit local employees.
But how does geofencing marketing work, and why is location-based marketing important for your small business?
Take a look at our infographic below to learn more!
13 Scary Advertising Statistics You Need to Know
As consumers increasingly tune out advertising, marketers are left wondering how to effectively advertise their business. Done well, paid advertising can be highly effective. Done poorly, however, advertising can be a budget drain, as these scary – but true – statistics (and infographic!) prove.
Facebook Ad Targeting: What Do All These Changes Mean to You?
If you’ve been following the news recently, you’re probably aware that Facebook has been in a bit of trouble. Various scandals and investigations have exposed issues surrounding Facebook’s advertising targeting options and data privacy.
In response, Facebook has made a flurry of changes to their advertising options over the past year. Recent headlines are full of alarming news about the social media platform removing thousands of ad targeting options, but what does that really mean for your business?
First, let’s get to the bottom of how Facebook gets its targeting data, and why they’re making these changes in the first place.
Where Does Facebook’s Targeting Data Come From?
Facebook is known for having the most detailed targeting options of any online advertising platform. Especially when it comes to user interests and behaviors, Facebook’s targeting can be so detailed, it’s creepy.
Where does all this information come from?
Information from your use of Facebook
With over 2 billion daily active users who are reportedly spending upwards of 58 minutes per day on the app, Facebook gets a ton of information directly from us, their users. First, you probably share information on your profile like your age, gender, job, hometown, and friends. Facebook also tracks all your interactions with posts and pages, including what you post, click on, Like, or Share.
Information from advertisers
As a business, you probably have some information about your customers already, including things like their email addresses. If you want to reach those people on Facebook, you can upload your data, and Facebook will find accounts that match (without telling you exactly who matched). You get a targeted ad campaign, and Facebook gets even more data about its users that you provide.
Information from websites and apps that use Facebook services
Facebook can collect information about you even if you’re not on Facebook itself. Have you ever seen a Like or Share button on another website, or a blog (like this one?) Or maybe you’re signing up for a new software service, and you see a “Login with Facebook” option? Tools like that send data back to Facebook about your actions around the web.
Beyond that, businesses that advertise on Facebook often put a Facebook Pixel on their websites, which tells Facebook what pages you’re looking at on that website. For example, if an online retailer uses a Facebook Pixel, Facebook could tell if you looked at a particular shirt, or put a pair of shoes in your shopping cart.
Information from third-party data companies (discontinued)
Back in 2012, Facebook announced Partner Categories – targeting options enabled through partnerships with third-party data brokers like Acxiom, Experian, and Oracle Data Cloud. These Partner Categories provided enormous amounts of information on user behaviors beyond Facebook, such as purchase history, home ownership, or income level.
In the wake of growing criticism, Facebook announced in May of 2018 that they are shutting down Partner Categories.
Source: marketingland.com
A Brief Timeline of Recent Facebook Ad Targeting Changes
So why is Facebook making changes to their advertising options in the first place?
Between various scandals and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifying in front of Congress, Facebook’s data privacy and advertising practices have been under close scrutiny over the past couple years. We’ve assembled a brief timeline to explain the key controversies surrounding Facebook, and the major changes they’ve made to their ad targeting in response.
October 2016 – ProPublica reveals discriminatory housing ads & HUD initiates investigation
ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative journalism group, found that Facebook allowed advertisers to create ads that excluded users based on race, which goes against the federal Fair Housing Act. This prompted the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development to begin a preliminary investigation of Facebook’s advertising and targeting options.
November 2016 – Facebook announces updates to Ethnic Affinity Marketing
In response to the ProPublica report, Facebook announced that it was disabling Ethic Affinity categories for housing, employment, or credit-related ads. They also promised to update their advertising policies and provide more education to help advertisers in these categories avoid discriminatory ads.
February 2017 – Facebook announces improvements to anti-discrimination advertising policies
Following up on their earlier promises, Facebook soon announced stronger enforcement of diversity practices, including algorithms to disapprove potentially discriminatory ads, and required self-certification for advertisers in housing, employment or credit categories.
September 2017 – ProPublica reveals anti-Semitic Facebook ads
A few months later, ProPublica published another article, this time revealing that Facebook allowed anti-Semitic ads based on topics like “Jew hater,” and “How to burn Jews.” These ad categories were likely automatically generated by Facebook, based on information that people listed on their profiles.
September 2017 – Facebook removes over 3 million self-reported fields from ad targeting
Because offensive ad categories were created from information on users’ profiles, Facebook removed more than 3 million self-reported terms from ad targeting. These included fields like school, field of study, employer, and job title.
November 2017 – Russian ads from 2016 U.S. election come to light
During their investigation of Russian influence in the 2016 presidential elections, Congress found that Russia-based advertisers had purchased political ads to polarize American voters.
March 2018 – Cambridge Analytica scandal sparks massive Facebook investigation
Amidst investigations of the 2016 elections, reports surfaced that Cambridge Analytica, a political data firm hired by the Trump campaign, gained access to personally identifiable information for more than 87 million Facebook users. This sparked public outcry and raised issues about Facebook’s data collection and privacy.
March 2018 – Facebook announces it is shutting down Partner Categories
In the wake of Cambridge Analytica, Facebook announced that they were shutting down Partner Categories. While not directly involved in the scandal, Partner Categories gave Facebook access to a huge amount of behavioral data, which could be seen as creepy or downright invasive of user privacy.
April 2018 – Mark Zuckerberg testifies before Congress
With all the scandals going on, CEO Mark Zuckerberg was called to testify before Congress. During his testimony, he re-affirmed the importance of privacy, and took responsibility for the misuse of Facebook tools for “fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy.”
April 2018 – Facebook announces removal of “thousands of targeting options”
Next, Facebook announced that they were reviewing their ad targeting options to keep advertising “safe and civil.” The result: removing thousands of targeting options, primarily exclusions related to race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and religion.
August 2018 – Facebook Developer blog announces reinstatement of professional targeting options
While Facebook’s official newsroom generally gets the media’s attention, their developer blog sometimes flies under the radar. In early August, the blog announced reinstated professional targeting options for job titles, employers, field of study, and education, as well as a new category for Facebook Page Admins.
August 2018 – HUD files official complaint and Facebook removes 5,000 targeting terms
Most recently, the Department of Housing and Urban Development filed an official complaint against Facebook, claiming discriminatory ad options violate the Fair Housing Act. This is the result of the same investigation that ProPublica sparked in 2016. In response, Facebook announced that they are removing over 5,000 targeting options.
So What’s Changed?
Many of Facebook’s announcements have been pretty vague about exactly what ad targeting options they’re removing. Plus, it takes time for them to roll-out major updates, so many of these changes are still in process.
However, Facebook is now flagging discontinued targeting options and requiring users to change them before ads can continue to run.
Here’s a list of some of the major targeting options that Facebook has changed or removed:
Demographics
- Limited options for Field of Study and Schools
- Financial categories (ex. Income, Net Worth)
- Home categories (ex. Home Ownership, Home Types, Home value)
- Generation
- Interested In
Third party behavioral data from Partner Categories
- Retail purchasing behavior (ex. frequent electronics or cosmetics buyers)
- Automotive shoppers (ex. people shopping for a new vehicle, or luxury car buyers)
- Charitable donations
- Business travelers
- Company size
- Likely to move, or in the market for a house
Job Titles
- Currently, options are limited for job titles
- You can’t target company executives like CEOs or Presidents
Exclusions based on gender, race, religion etc.
- Gender and ethnic affinity categories are still available for targeting, but you can’t exclude them
- For example, you can target women, but you can’t exclude men
What Do These Ad Targeting Changes Mean?
1. Don’t Panic
Despite all the doom and gloom headlines, Facebook still has an enormous amount of information about its users. Again, people spend a ton of time on Facebook (and Instagram). Think about how all your posts, clicks, comments, messages, groups, friends, and more. How much do they say about you and your interests? Probably a lot.
Don’t believe it? You can actually view and download all of your Facebook data, so you can see just how much Facebook knows about you. It’s a little scary, but remember that you can adjust your privacy settings.
So yes, targeting options are changing, but at the end of the day, Facebook still has plenty of data for advertisers to focus in on a specific audience.
2. Review and update any current ads
Some of these ad changes were announced months ago, but they’re still rolling out. So if you’re actively using Facebook advertising, review your current ads to make sure your targeting options are still valid.
Facebook has gradually been removing discontinued options from campaign creation and editing, but as of October 1, 2018, they will no longer deliver campaigns using Partner Categories.
3. Get more creative with your targeting
If you relied on Partner Categories or other targeting options that are no longer available, you still have other options. Advertisers just need to get more creative about how they’re identifying and reaching their target audience.
For example, let’s say you were targeting new homeowners – a category that is no longer available. Instead, you could look for people with interests like “buying a house,” “starter homes,” or “realtor.com.” Then look for a life event called “Recent Moved.”
4. Expect change
This isn’t the first time Facebook has changed its ad targeting, and it definitely won’t be the last. Facebook is constantly changing, and whoever is managing your Facebook account needs to stay up-to-date on the latest updates and continually make adjustments along the way.
If your business is struggling to keep up with everything going on with Facebook, we’d love to help. Our social media experts have gained even more experience lately from updating ad campaigns after all these changes (thanks, Facebook). Let’s talk about how our Facebook marketing services can take the headache out of managing your social media presence.
Let’s get social!
5 Advertising Myths That are Hurting Small Businesses
When it comes to digital advertising, small businesses especially often struggle with where to focus their limited advertising dollars. The debate often centers on the two giants: Google Adwords and Facebook. Let’s take a look at a few of the biggest myths about advertising on these platforms.
5 Lessons From INBOUND That Will Change Your Business
When you go to an educational conference, you probably expect to learn a couple new tips, hear some new ideas, and meet a few new people. It’s rare that a conference is so jam-packed with valuable knowledge that it impacts how you do business. That’s exactly what happened to us at INBOUND 2017.
PPC Advertising: What Is It and How Does It Work?
If you’re new to PPC marketing, it can be confusing to figure out exactly what someone means when they say “PPC.” Even if you’re already doing PPC marketing, knowing how the process works helps you understand your costs and how to get the most out of your investment. Let’s dive in!
What is PPC Marketing?
Pay-per-click is an online advertising model where, like it sounds, you pay every time someone clicks on one of your ads. PPC marketing is a paid alternative you can use to drive more traffic to your site, versus relying only on organic traffic.
Many different sites use a PPC marketing model, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Bing, Yelp, Amazon and more. But when most people think of PPC advertising, they think of Google display ads, which is the most common platform.
In fact, Google captures a whopping 78% of the US search ad revenue. Each PPC marketing platform works slightly differently, but we’ll focus on the biggest fish and talk about how Google AdWords works.
PPC MARKETING on Google Adwords
Google didn’t become the largest PPC marketing system in the world by accident. Adwords gives you an incredible amount of control over where, when, how, and to who your display ads are presented. Not only that, but they have two powerful networks you can use:
The Search Network
PPC advertising displays on Google’s search engine results page when a user searches for a related topic. Top paid results appear above the normal organic links. (Of the two networks, the search network is normally what people think of first when you say, “Google Adwords.”)
The Display Network
Through the Display Network, you can place banner ads on millions of websites, news pages, and blogs across the internet. According to Google, the network includes over 2 million sites, reaching 90% of global internet users.
Both networks fall under the Adwords umbrella, but you shouldn’t assume that the same ad will work equally on both networks. On the Search Network, users have a need and they are actively searching for information, products, or services to meet that need. They’re likely further along in the buying cycle.
In contrast, Display Network ads are reaching people who are on other sites and may not be looking for your product or service at all. Banner ads are by nature interruptive. They succeed when they are relevant enough and compelling enough to get someone to stop doing what they’re doing to click the ad.
How DoES PPC ADVERTISING Work?
While there are some variations between the Search and Display networks, both work essentially the same way.
First, you determine relevant keywords related to your product or service. Then, you determine a cost-per-click that you bid on those keywords.
The instant when a user performs a search, Google decides if your keywords are relevant to the search query. If so, the Ad Auction begins, where Google compares your ad against similar ads from your competitors.
The Ad Auction
The Ad Auction decides your Ad Rank, which determines where (or if) each ad appears. The advertiser with the highest ad rank gets placed first.
Ad Rank = Max CPC Bid x Quality Score
Ad rank is determined by multiplying your maximum cost-per-click bid by your ad’s Quality Score. Quality Score is Google’s rating (on a scale of 1-10) of how relevant and valuable your ad is. Google keeps the exact formula a mystery, but we know the key factors include:
- Click-through rate
- Landing Page quality
- Relevant keywords
- Relevant ad text
- Historical Adwords account performance
Thankfully, PPC advertising isn’t just a pay-to-win system. By factoring in quality, you don’t necessarily have to be the highest bidder to grab the top spot. This is good news for small businesses, who can actually out-rank large corporations without paying a fortune.
Let’s say, for example, your CPC bid is $2.00. Your ad Quality Score is 8.
Your Ad Rank = $2.00 x 8 = 16
You’re competing a big corporation who bid $5.00, but their quality score is only 3.
Competitor’s Ad Rank = $5.00 x 3 = 15
Your Ad Rank is higher, so you will rank first, despite the fact that they bid more than twice as much as you. Take that, mega-corporation!
Your Actual CPC
After the Ad Auction, Google compares your Ad Rank with your competitors to determine your actual cost per click.
Image Source: Wordstream
Good news: your actual cost per click is often less than your maximum bid.
Let’s say you’re Advertiser 1. Even though you’re willing to pay $2.00 for each click, you’ll only be charged $1.61. That’s even less than your competitor is paying for the spot below you!
What’s the lesson here? Your Quality Score is critical to getting a good ROI on your PPC marketing. A better Quality Score will boost your Ad Rank and reduce your cost per click. Increasing your bid will only improve your Ad Rank. So invest the time in developing quality ads and great landing pages – it’s the best way to ensure your PPC marketing is a success.
Want to Know How PPC marketing Can Help Your Business?
Check out our free e-Book: Using PPC to Improve Your Bottom Line. We go into more depth about the benefits of PPC advertising and how to put together a successful PPC marketing campaign. You can always talk to our PPC agency in Lancaster to get even more insights.
Facebook Ads – Are They For You?
Facebook is like the social media elephant in the living room: it’s too big to ignore. According to Social Media Examiner’s latest report, a commanding 93% of social marketers regularly use Facebook ads. Despite this, marketers are often unsure if their Facebook efforts are effective or not. When considering how to spend their precious advertising dollars, many businesses are still asking if Facebook ads are a good fit. Here are a few questions and common objections that will help you decide if you should be doing Facebook ads.
Are your customers on Facebook?
This is an objection we hear mostly from B2B businesses. “Facebook is great for B2C,” they say, “but my customers just aren’t on Facebook.” Is that really true?
As of Q1 2017, there are 1.9 billion monthly active users on Facebook. Think about that for a minute. There are only about 3.7 billion Internet users worldwide, which means more than half of them are on Facebook. This number dwarfs the user count for any other social media platform. As you can see from the chart below, some of the closest competitors include WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, both Facebook products.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/Not only is Facebook’s audience huge, it’s also highly active. The company reported that users spend an average of 50 minutes per day on their apps (Facebook, Messenger and Instagram). When you think about people’s fragmented attention spans, that’s an enormous amount of time. In fact, Facebook accounts for one in every six minutes spent online.
With an audience that big and that active, it’s hard to believe that your customers just aren’t on the platform. Statistically speaking, unless you have an unusually niche audience who hates the Internet, your audience is probably on Facebook.
Can you reach your specific audience?
The great thing about Facebook is its astounding 1.9 billion users. The problem is that 1.9 billion is a pretty big haystack when your audience is a much smaller pile of needles. Thankfully, Facebook has highly advanced targeting capabilities so you can really hone in on your precise target audience.
Through partnerships with big data companies, Facebook provides sophisticated targeting that goes well beyond standard demographic and geographic criteria. You can reach audiences based on life events like getting married, having a baby or getting a new job. You can also target based on people’s behaviors, like buying a new car, travelling frequently or donating to charitable causes.
View the full infographic here.Even better, Facebook allows you to create Custom Audiences based on people who have visited your website, or email and phone lists that you already have in your database. Layer in demographics like age, job function or geographic location to get hyper-focused. You can also use Custom Audiences to send retargeted messages to people who already know you, which helps increase conversions. Lastly, Facebook can create Lookalike audiences that have similar traits to your custom audience, allowing you to reach more people just like your Custom Audience.
Remember, there are great options here for B2B too. You can target based on job title, employer, company size, industry and more. The behavioral filters also let you narrow by business purchasing behavior, such as people who have purchased business repair/maintenance services. Of course, Custom and Lookalike audiences are a powerful tool for B2B as well as B2C.
Can you afford Facebook ads?
Budget is always a factor as businesses debate how to best spend their advertising dollars. Facebook ads are a popular choice in part because they are so affordable.
The average cost per click (CPC) for Facebook ads in the U.S. is about $0.28. This is significantly lower than the average CPC for Google search or display ads, which are $2.32 or $0.58, respectively.
Compared to other advertising methods, Facebook provides an immense opportunity at an extremely affordable price. In fact, the minimum ad spend on Facebook is just $1 per day. A recent blog article from Moz makes the case for Facebook ads, showing how just $1 can get your business in front of 4,000 people per day.
Of course, many businesses will want to invest more than $1 per day in order to drive more significant results. Regardless, as the author says, “If you can’t spare $30 a month, you shouldn’t be in business.”
Do you really need them?
If you already have a great Facebook business page with tons of followers and engaging posts, maybe you’re thinking you don’t need Facebook ads. Or, perhaps you’re investing in other social channels and don’t want to add Facebook into the mix. Think again.
Facebook has become notoriously “pay to play,” with organic reach plummeting to as low as 2% and continuing to drop. Businesses can no longer count on only regular posts on their business pages to reach their audience. Like it or not, paid promotion is now a necessity to drive results on Facebook.
If you don’t like “pay to play,” why not avoid Facebook entirely? The problem is that Facebook is the gateway to the ever-growing mobile audience. Facebook boasts 1.5 billion mobile users, of whom almost 900,000 log in exclusively via mobile. This gives Facebook one of the largest mobile-exclusive audiences in the world. So if your customers are browsing on mobile, you should definitely be considering Facebook ads.
Do Facebook ads work?
This is the ongoing debate. Despite the number of businesses who use Facebook ads, many don’t feel like their ads are working. There are a variety of reasons for this.
Remember that Facebook is a social network, and advertising there is fundamentally different than AdWords. People aren’t on Facebook to buy your products or download your new e-book. They’re there to see photos from friends, to keep up with news, to share what’s important to them. Bottom line: they’re not necessarily in a buying mood.
So what does that mean for you? First, make sure your approach is focused on promoting content that is truly compelling, entertaining, or shareable, not just pushing your sales message. Your message needs to be highly compelling and highly clickable to compete with funny cat videos.
Second, make sure your goals are realistic. If you have an e-commerce business, direct sales ads may work for you. For many others, Facebook is more effective for uses like brand awareness, engagement or lead generation.
Lastly, many Facebook ads fail because they are not properly targeted. Facebook has such immensely powerful targeting capabilities, they’re almost creepy. (If you don’t believe me, check out this example of a guy who used Facebook ads to prank his roommate). Make sure you’re taking advantage of these powerful tools.
Implemented correctly, Facebook ads can be extremely successful and highly cost effective. Facebook has a ton of case studies to prove it.
Wrap up: should you advertise on Facebook?
Simple answer: probably. Even if Facebook isn’t a core part of your business strategy, it offers enormous potential benefits with an extremely low cost of entry. Of course, there are always variables an exceptions to the rule, but overall if you can spend a couple dollars a day to leverage an audience of billions to get in front of your precise targeted audience, why wouldn’t you?
Next Steps
Need help getting started? We’d be happy to sit down with you for a free no-risk, no-obligation Facebook review.
Schedule your FREE Facebook Audit, which includes:
- Review of your current Facebook business page
- Suggestions to improve your posting strategy
- Review of your current ad strategy (budget, targeting, content, etc)
- Research of potential target audiences & reach
