Red Zmudzien

Tag: Marketing

  • Store Visits Tracking from Facebook Hits the Shelves

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    Unless you’re a big brand or agency, you probably haven’t gotten direct access yet to Store Visits tracking on Google or Facebook. It looks like Facebook is now rolling out their version of the metric with a new ad objective.

    “With over 90% of all transactions still taking place offline, driving customers into a store, restaurant, auto dealership or other place of business remains a primary marketing objective for any advertiser with brick-and-mortar locations.”

    Essentially the feature allows you to determine how many users visited your business location after clicking on a Facebook ad. While this is exciting news to anyone that advertises on Facebook, there are minimum thresholds that need to be met before FB will grant eligibility.

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    This has been something marketers have been craving for as long as digital has been driving sales. Everyone has micro-moments, everyone does research online and many people make purchases online, but what about the people that just go into a store to make the final purchase? If not attributed directly or proper expectations are not set, marketers can oftentimes be left out to dry by the gap in data. So while it remains to be seen how well this new ad type will work, it is quite exciting for any brick and mortar locations.

    “This objective has been specifically created for brick and mortar businesses who want to reach customers in the right location, with localized ad content and the ultimate goal of driving customers in-store. Additionally, over the next couple weeks, we are rolling out enhancements to the Store Visits objective which will allow you to not only report on store visits, but optimize your ads towards those most likely to visit.”

    Facebook is describing this as the “Evolution of Local Awareness on Facebook and Instagram.” They might be right.

  • How to Uncover (Direct/None) Referral Traffic in Google Analytics

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    Have you noticed in your client’s Google Analytics that certain sources are not being identified clearly in Source traffic? One of the best ways to alleviate this issue is to use URL Parameters modifiers to essentially call out where the traffic is coming from. This helps GA tag the traffic coming in and sorting it into its own specific source, which allows you to identify and confirm the referral source.

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    This is an issue I know most marketers are aware of as (Direct/None) traffic can be a number of things. It’s not very likely that every one of your customers is typing in the long, specific URL every single time though. What’s more likely is that Google doesn’t know exactly how to sort the traffic or identify where it’s coming from.

    I recently identified this issue for a website who’s Facebook tracking wasn’t firing and Analytics wasn’t reporting much referral traffic coming from Facebook, despite plenty of paid ad clicks. So looking through GA you’re likely to notice a large portion of traffic from Direct/None and while it’s unlikely to ever uncover 100% of the unknown traffic, you can tag URL’s from traffic that you know you’re driving, to help close the loop.

    So how do you accomplish this? Below are a few quick steps to use URL Parameters to tag your traffic for GA to more easily sort. Note, this specific example was for tagging Facebook referral traffic.

    1.) Identify that your ad traffic definitely isn’t being reported accurately in Google Analytics.

    2.) Pull the URL of wherever you are driving traffic (i.e. example.com/product)

    3.) In the case of Facebook, you’ll add the following URL Parameter at the end of the url:

    ?source=facebook (i.e. example.com/product?source=facebook)

    4.) Copy and paste that URL into your browser to make sure it doesn’t cause any errors or unexpected reroutes.

    5.) After sufficient clicks on your ad using this URL Parameter, go into your Google Analytics > Behavior > Content > All Pages. This will allow you to see what pages all of your users are landing on.

    6.) Using the URL Parameter you set up earlier you can identify that specific landing page (example.com/product?source=facebook), which you’ve tagged as coming from a specific source. In this case it’s a Facebook ad, so GA will sort out that traffic and label it with the new URL so you can easily identify this traffic is in fact coming from your Facebook ad — breaking it out of the ambiguous Direct distinction.

    You’ve now uncovered your referral traffic out of (Direct/None) in Google Analytics!

     

     

  • How to Create a Facebook Sales Funnel for Your Website

    Photo via BoostLikes.com
    Photo via BoostLikes.com

    With the insane level of targeting and reporting that advertisers can access on Facebook, it would be shortsighted to not take advantage of everything available. I’m going to give a quick breakdown of an easy and effective way to create a Sales Funnel from your Facebook ad campaigns, so you can track how users are interacting with your site, what’s drawing them in and what’s driving them to convert.

    We’re going to utilize the Facebook pixel and the various Standard Events in the code to measure people coming through the funnel all the way to shopping cart abandonment and ultimately a purchase.

    So the 10 Standard Events in the Facebook Pixel allow us to identify and tag users based on what pages they’re visiting, how they’re using the site, as well as if they are bouncing out at a certain point or (hopefully) making a purchase on your site. These Standard Events are listed below:

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    Be sure to include the Standard Event line of code in your pixel for the corresponding landing page. If you want to double check or have any questions on how to edit and place the code you can refer to the Facebook Pixel Implementation Guide. The Facebook Pixel Helper is also a great Chrome extension that helps identify if your pixels are live and placed correctly on a page. Additional Pixel Troubleshooting from the Facebook developers.

    What you’ll want to do is map out the path to purchase on your website so you know which Standard Event to place on which page.
    • View Content: This is most useful if there is a specific page on your site that you identify as a key page view such as the product page, the additional info page, a landing page with more details that could lead to a purchase etc.
    • Search: This will help identify if users are getting to your site and performing searches in your search bar. If they are, but you’re still not seeing sales you may need to revisit your targeting as users may not be finding the relevant content/product that they thought they would.
    • Add to Cart: Key step to track how many people are starting the checkout process vs finishing an order. Drop offs are useful for measuring shopping cart abandonment and retargeting, but can also point out red flags in user experience if people are not converting after adding to cart.
    • Add to Wish List: A great way to track extremely interested users who maybe weren’t ready to pull the trigger yet.
    • Initiate Checkout: The strongest indicator of purchase intent and one of the main steps to measure the path to purchase.
    • Add Payment Info: Again measuring drop offs here will be key.
    • Purchase: The name of the game; tracking conversions and using that data to optimize your ads further. You can also identify the value of a sale if you have different Thank You pages for different products
    • Lead: This is useful if you are having users fill out a form, redeem a free trial etc. rather than making a purchase.
    • Complete Registration: Useful for identifying users that sign up for a service or a subscription through a registration form.
    • Other: Use this to track any other key actions on your website that aren’t listed above.

    Using these Standard Events as qualifiers, what you want to do is place the corresponding code on each page all the way from a Page View down to a Conversion. So you would have the standard pixel on the landing page, Add to Cart on the first step in the cart page, Initiate Checkout page gets its own pixel code, same for Add Payment Info and Purchase. Now if you have other relevant pages on the site then you’ll want to add the additional codes to those such as View Content for a key page view and the like.

    In the end this will help you identify how many people came into the funnel at the top, how many came out the bottom with a purchase and exactly how many dropped off and at what part of the process so you can re-engage or tweak your campaigns.

  • Use the Amount of Time a User Spends on Your Site to Create a Custom Facebook Audience!

    Facebook is now offering a brand new method of creating a Custom Audience and it should excite you if you’re using landing page content to generate leads. Time Spent on Your Website is the newest method Facebook has unveiled to craft a Custom Audience! This could be huge for businesses that are driving customers to a specific landing page to learn/read/view more.

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    *Note, that this option isn’t available to all advertisers yet as Facebook usually slowly rolls new features out before they’re widely available.

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    Businesses can drive users to their website and flag them for remarketing, but what good is one giant audience if it doesn’t take into account how engaged that customer actually was? Of course everyone knows this, but if your landing page is educational content that a customer may read/watch and they don’t make any additional actions on your website then you’re kind of up the creek when it comes to segmentation.

    Using this new Custom Audience segmentation though you can easily identify who actually spent the most time on your website reading/watching your content. Don’t waste any time, money or effort reengaging with users on Facebook who hit your page and bounced out or maybe stayed for a few seconds and decided they weren’t interested. Now you can actually identify the top percentiles of users based on Time Spent on Website, similar to how you can already do that with Facebook Video and percentage of a video viewed.

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    It opens doors for people producing one sheeters, white pages or any other tactic of capturing customers’ attention on a specific landing page to learn more. People may be interested, but not necessarily engaged. So identify who has devoted the most time to the content you produced and reengage. This is just the latest example of how you can narrow the funnel and sell on social.

  • Ambiguity is the Enemy of Attribution: Facebook to Roll Out Store Visits Tracking

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    We’re getting closer to closing the loop on digital marketing. Ambiguity is the enemy of attribution. Facebook just announced it will soon begin rolling out its own Store Visits tracking functionality for ad campaigns.

    Google started the trend when it launched a very similar program nearly two years ago to track Store Visits after a user saw or clicked a business’ ad. However, this is still something that requires a very large threshold of clicks and quite frankly geographical footprint. It’s not accurate enough yet for small business owners to take advantage of. It looks like Facebook may be identifying an opportunity to strike while the iron is hot.

    Ask any digital marketer working with a brick-and-mortar business what the biggest challenge is and they will tell you attribution. I hear it all the time from clients that understand they need to run digital and social campaigns and may even acknowledge they are performing well, but what does that really mean to them? Without any real data on how much foot traffic these campaigns are driving there will always be that question mark. Unless of course you have a client where you can tie in with their in-house Point-Of-Sales (POS) system to track purchases, but that’s not always available.

    So over the next few months Facebook will begin rolling out its own Store Visits tracking, which makes a ton of sense considering that its Local Awareness Ads are designed to drive this exact action. I think we saw the early glimpses of this with Local Insights, which can be found in your Facebook business page’s Insights and then under Local. An incredibly effective tool that can tell you loads of information about which kind of people your ads are reaching nearby your location, what their demographics are, what times are most popular etc. to help optimize your local ads. You can actually narrow the radius down to as tight as 165 feet around the location!

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    Screenshot 2016-06-16 at 4.03.56 PM
    The No. 1 biggest regret for Google in my opinion was the failure to launch of Google+. For any Store Visits tracking to work Google requires people to have their Location Tracking on their phone enabled, as does Facebook but so many more people allow it because as a social platform it provides that additional value (check-ins, local reviews etc.). If Google could have gotten G+ to take off like it hoped, combined with its treasure trove of data on user intent, they would have ran the world. So utilizing that location tracking information along with wi-fi signals, Facebook will be able to coordinate when a user sees or clicks and ad and goes within that business’ geo-fenced area.

    If you tell a client that his Local Awareness ad got 850 Clicks and drove 100 Calls he may say that’s great, but if you’re able to tell a client this campaign specifically drove 250 people directly into their store? Now that is valuable data.

    Facebook will also be rolling out the ability to connect Ads Reporting with a location’s POS system to track sales via the Offline Conversions API.

    “Advertisers now have a way to connect transactions that take place in store or over the phone to their ads. The Offline Conversions API allows businesses to match transaction data from their customer database or point-of-sale system to Ads Reporting, helping them better understand the effectiveness of their ads in real-time. Businesses can work with partners such as IBM, Index, Invoca, Lightspeed, LiveRamp, Marketo and Square or with Facebook directly.”

    Facebook says these functionalities will be rolling out to all advertisers globally in the coming months so start getting your clients prepared now.

  • Facebook Video Updates Include Split Screen; Could Be a Boon for Advertisers

    A new update to Video Ads on Facebook could be a boon for advertisers. The more and more content, ads, options that get pushed out there the less and less time and attention your stuff will get. Opportunity is constantly shrinking so it’s up to the advertiser to find new and different ways to engage the customer. We’re day trading in attention here so the key is to find out what will grab a user and what will keep them the longest because that’s going to give you the best opportunity to drive a conversion and make a sale.

    This new update to Facebook Video will essentially allow users to watch a video and click through to view your website without waiting until the video ends or having to leave Facebook at all. It opens up a split screen option so users can view your website while still watching the video in their browser, uninterrupted.

    I’m predicting this will have a huge positive effect on the percentage of videos viewed. People don’t have to interrupt what their doing or wait any extra time to learn more, they can watch the entire video all while multi-tasking on the brand’s website to find what they need quickly. Keep in mind this is only for clicking on a video link ad on iOS. Facebook is also saying that “In early testing, advertisers have seen a significant decrease in cost per click and cost per conversion.” So initial results are looking good at least.

    The same experience goes for Mobile App Install Ads, rather than waiting for the video to end and/or sending a user to a separate experience, they will be able to watch the video in split screen while (on iPhone only) opening up the App Store to download the app, all while still watching the video simultaneously. Efficiency at its finest.

    Full release from Facebook below:

    Updates to Video Link Ads and Mobile App Install Ads

    We recently launched a new experience for video link ads in the website click and website conversion objectives that creates a more engaging experience for people when completing lower-funnel objectives. When people click on a video link ad on iOS, they can now browse your business’ website while watching the video from the ad, uninterrupted. People no longer have to stop a video mid-way or wait for the video to end to visit your website. In early testing, advertisers have seen a significant decrease in cost per click and cost per conversion.

    Additionally, we have made improvements to the video experience for mobile app ads. In the past, when people tapped on your video mobile app install ad, the video would play in full screen. To improve the experience both for people and our advertisers, we have updated this design. Now on iPhone only, when people tap on your mobile app ad with video creative, they will be taken to the Apple App Store with your video creative still playing in a split screen.

  • Facebook is Changing the Game with New Messenger Updates

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    Facebook made some big announcements today during it’s Messenger webinar, which introduced some new features as well as hinting at potential functionalities coming down the line.

    Messenger Codes were announced and my first reaction was “QR Codes are BACK!” These are custom images unique to each Facebook business (and personal) page that, when scanned in the Messenger app will automatically open up a private message with the business page. This is a huge opportunity for engagement and customer service! Imagine the Messenger Code on the side of product packages? Get a package in the mail, but something’s not the right size? Scan the code that’s slapped on the side of the box and start having a conversation with return instructions from the business page directly in seconds. Messenger Codes may finally achieve what QR Codes so valiantly attempted in the past. These are available for download in your page’s message inbox now.

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    Then there is also the recently introduced Messenger Links that use a page’s username to create a short link (think Bit.ly) that when clicked, automatically opens a private message within Messenger with the business. Try it out with your business, brand or personal page. The universal format is: m.me/PageName to get your own username.

    You can also encourage conversations by being quick to respond as a corresponding badge will appear on your page while helping establish response time guidelines. You may have seen these badges popping up on more and more Facebook pages recently. The requirements consist of responding to 90% of messages within 15 minutes to receive the badge and meet the threshold of “Very Responsive.” Just remember that this threshold is only for the previous 7 day period, so if you have done this one week, but then don’t the next week, you will lose your badge.

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    You can also set an automatic greeting reply for when a user messages your page to set expectations and provide a link to some FAQ’s or anything else for people who start a conversation with you.

    Use the “Message” button to automatically open up a private conversation to respond to sensitive or private questions in a private message. This is a tool of unparalleled value for anyone who has ever been tasked with handling responding for a large company. Oftentimes best practices call for responding to a disgruntled customer in a private message so this helps take care of that, keeping the page drama free while also creating improved customer service.

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    You can also turn on Away Messages! Viva la AOL Instant Messenger! So if you’re away from the computer for a while or the business just won’t have anyone available to respond at certain hours just set this up and let your customers know exactly when you’ll get back to them. You can enable away messages even if you don’t have specific business hours too.

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    Another cool feature are Context Cards within the message inbox, which are actually a snapshot, or a trading card if you will, of the person who messaged you. These Context Cards allow a business to get more personal info on users such as where they live, where they work etc. to provide a more personalized and custom message.

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    One thing to note for advertisers is that you can’t reach out to a customer unsolicited. So you can’t message a person who hasn’t reached out to you directly via messenger — yet. Facebook specifically said they will look into features like this in the future, but currently want to “empower customers to take the first step.” But once a person messages a page, then you can interact with them, send them special offers etc. all through Messenger.

    The best part is all of these new Facebook features are available globally right now!

  • Lower the Barrier of Entry to Drive More Conversions

    Currently the average conversion on mobile takes 24 taps. This is why it is crucial to lower the barrier of entry to complete a conversion, whether that be an e-commerce purchase, a sign-up or a form fill. Making things simpler and quicker for your consumers will help improve conversion rates and total conversions. Whether it’s eliminating unnecessary steps in a shopping cart checkout process or enabling users to check out as guests, the easier the process is, the more likely consumers are to complete the desired action.

    If form fills to gather customer information is your goal, consider running a Facebook Lead Ad as it definitely lowers the barrier of entry. Rather than displaying an ad, requiring a click, sending a user to your website, waiting for it to load, manually filling out a form and then submitting it — a Lead Ad is a Two Tap process.

    Originally created as a quick way to optimize form fills for mobile users, these ads have a person click once on the ad, which will automatically fill various fields in the form based on information from their Facebook profile, and then a second click to approve and send this info to the advertiser. And with the ability to integrate these Lead Ads with CRM systems like Salesforce, this eliminates the need for a lengthy process and helps quickly grab the relevant information advertisers crave.

  • Micro Moments: Be Present, Be Personal, Be Persuasive

    “People are 2x as likely to feel a personal connection to brands on mobile.”

    Micro Moments  are changing the way users are searching, particularly in mobile. With the omnipresence of smartphones, users are able to search for anything when an impulse strikes, creating these “I Want to Learn, I Want to Find, I Want to Do, I Want to Buy” moments. Taking advantage of the omnipresence of mobile, users decide on the fly what they want to look up, research and purchase in the spur of the moment.

    These Micro Moments create a demand for relevance, which establishes a higher level of expectations.

    “When we act on our needs in-the-moment, our expectations are high and our patience is low. This makes the quality, relevance, and usefulness of marketing more important than ever.” – Think With Google

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    • Be Present, Be Personal, Be Persuasive
      • In mobile it’s all about serving the right message to the right person at the right time. Crafting a highly relevant message, that is present at the right time and optimized for the channel and device will win.
    • ⅓ of mobile usage occurs in the home so we aren’t necessarily targeting someone “on-the-go” which is why Cross Device Conversions become such a huge metric.
      • Cross Device Conversions help campaigns follow the users along the path to a conversion, regardless of where they started. If a user has a Micro Moment, performs a mobile search to learn more, but then converts later via desktop, without tracking Cross Device, we would not be able to properly attribute that.

  • Facebook Bidding Strategies: Engagement vs CPM vs CPC

    As Facebook continues to develop new ad types, selecting the right bidding strategy for each becomes even more critical. This slight adjustment in bidding strategy, whether bidding for Engagement, CPM, CPC etc. will have a huge impact on ad performance. So instead of defaulting to running a Promoted Post simply because it reaches a large number of people, it’s important to identify what the goals of an ad campaign are and act accordingly.

    A lot of times people will run Promoted Posts for sale offers and simply bid on Post Engagement (it’s the default option), which will optimize ad delivery for people most likely to engage with the post. The only problem is that this doesn’t necessarily correlate with sales as it will optimize to display ads to users most likely to comment, like, share etc. Facebook reps describe these as “clicky” users, who are more likely to comment, like or share, but not necessarily hit your website and make a purchase.

     

    Below are a few quick tips for your Facebook ad campaigns, depending on the goal of the ad:

    Goal: Reach a large number of users and drive Impressions

    Ad Type: Promoted Post

    Bid Strategy: CPM or Daily Unique Reach/Reach & Frequency (if you’re concerned with delivery/frequency) to blast the ad out

     

    Goal: Clicks to a Website

    Ad Type: Website Clicks

    Bid Strategy: CPC ­ optimized for Link Clicks

    *Note: If the audience size isn’t that large you can bid on CPC and optimize for Impressions, but Link Clicks will be the most effective way of driving results if applicable.

     

    ”Engagement doesn’t necessarily correlate to sales anymore.”

    • As with most things, take this with a grain of salt, but the underlying point here is that bidding on Post Engagement may not be the most effective way to drive sales. Think of it this way, if bidding on engagement you’re telling Facebook to bid on users most likely to like, comment and share where in the end what you ultimately want is people to go to the website and convert/make a purchase instead. So a Website Clicks campaign makes more sense for specific sales/offers.
      Using the Best Bid Strategy w/ Each Ad Objective
    • A Promoted Post bidding on Post Engagement would be more effective bidding for CPM if your goal is brand awareness/getting the ad in front of as many people as possible, not necessarily bidding for users who will engage on the post itself.
    • Promoted posts probably should not be used if the campaign goal is to get people to click through to the website, unless you are altering the bid strategy on that campaign to CPC (specifically Link Clicks)
    • “90% of offline sales come from people who don’t interact with the ads (likes, comments etc.)”
    • *Note: If you’re still using the old Facebook conversion tracking code, the best practice is to place the new Facebook pixel on the client website and give it 30 days to build data before switching from the old code to the new pixel.