Download Social Advertising Techniques for Advanced Marketers

COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE
Social Advertising
Techniques for
Advanced Marketers
Contents
Introduction
3
Background: The Social Advertising Landscape
4
The Challenges of Driving and Defining Value
7
People Problems
12
Never-Ending Change
16
Conclusion
19
About Sprinklr
20
© 2016 Sprinklr, Inc. All rights reserved.
Social Advertising Techniques for Advanced Marketers | 2
Introduction
Introduction
Social advertising, a concept that barely existed five years ago, is now a line item
in almost every brand’s media budget. Sixty-five percent of marketers currently
advertise on social platforms.1 And nearly three out of four companies plan
to increase their budgets for social advertising next year.2
But while social advertising provides an opportunity to achieve unprecedented
scale, efficiency, and effectiveness, it’s a difficult strategy to master.
The models that worked for TV, print, and early digital advertising no longer
apply. What used to take months, like waiting to see campaign results, now
happens in real time. And tasks that used to be easy – such as telling a publisher
to run an ad for a certain time period – can be cumbersome and risky due to
the self-service nature of social advertising.
Now, plenty of brands – including yours, hopefully – are running successful
social advertising programs. But behind the success, there’s often a struggle.
It can be hard to replicate big wins and pinpoint where the challenges lie, let
alone update processes or allot resources to fix them.
Fortunately, we’ve identified several kinds of issues that affect many brands
across a wide spectrum of industries:
• Defining and Driving Value
• People Problems
• Never-Ending Change
1
Salesforce, 2016, https://secure2.sfdcstatic.com/assets/pdf/misc/state-of-marketing-report-2016.pdf
2
Ibid.
© 2016 Sprinklr, Inc. All rights reserved.
Social Advertising Techniques for Advanced Marketers | 3
Background: The Social Advertising Landscape
Background: The Social
Advertising Landscape
To conquer social advertising, you need to first
understand how the landscape has evolved.
Facebook’s official ad product has only been
around since 2012.3 In the same year, Facebook
purchased Instagram – and shortly after, unveiled
Instagram ads.4 Other players like Twitter, Pinterest,
and Snapchat have since then emerged with
their own placements, platforms, and unique
contributions to media plans.
The ascent of social media advertising has
been quick, yet rabid. And by next year, social
advertising will be a $36 billion industry.5
ESTIMATED MARKET VALUE
(in billions)
$350
Facebook
$16
Twitter
$25
Snapchat
$11
Pinterest
$26*
LinkedIn
*
Based on June 2016 acquisition.
Estimate based on if network was independent from Facebook.
***
Estimate based on if network was independent from Google.
$25-50**
Instagram
**
$70***
YouTube
POTENTIAL REACH
1.79
bil.
1.18
bil.
313
mil.
150
mil.
100
mil.
monthly active users
3
Business Insider, 2014, http://www.businessinsider.com/explaining-fbx-facebook-exchange-2013-12
4
Instagram, 2013, http://blog.instagram.com/post/63017560810/instagramasagrowingbusiness
5
eMarketer, 2015, http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Social-Network-Ad-Spending-Hit-2368-Billion-Worldwide-2015/1012357
© 2016 Sprinklr, Inc. All rights reserved.
106
mil.
500
mil. 300
mil.
1 bil.
daily active users
Social Advertising Techniques for Advanced Marketers | 4
DEMOGRAPHICS
Facebook
Twitter
56% men
30+70z
44% women
attended college
work in management
68%
37%
of people ages 30-49
of those who make over $75k
55+45z
of users are younger than 25
30% of college graduates
of adults 18-29
of people making over $75k
37%
38%
60% of smartphone users between
the ages of 18-34 are Snapchatters
of adult internet users
of people who make over $75k
31+69z
31%
30%
31% of people with
college degrees
YouTube
40
28%
million students and
There are
recent college graduates on LinkedIn.
26%
are 25-34 years old
55% of people
online ages 18-29
make more than $50k
71%
27%
LinkedIn
Instagram
Pinterest
Snapchat
are 35-54 years old
YouTube reaches more
18-49 year olds than any
cable network in the U.S.
31%
36%
YOUR TARGETING OPTIONS
Target by location, age, gender,
language, interest, behavior.
Target by language, gender, interest,
device, behavior, geography, keyword.
By creating custom “lookalike” audiences,
brands can target people who are similar
to their existing customers and contacts.
Brands can target the followers of
relevant accounts and created tailored
audiences based on their CRM lists.
Target by location, company size, industry, job function, seniority, company name, job
title, school, degree, skills, group membership, age, gender, field of study.
Additionally, LinkedIn will be unveiling Matched Audiences in early 2017. Matched
Audiences will offer website retargeting, contact targeting (email upload or integration
with marketing automation), and account targeting (uploading a list of target accounts).
© 2016 Sprinklr, Inc. All rights reserved.
Target by location, target specific email
addresses and mobile device IDs (Snap
Audience Match), target people who
consume certain types of video/content
(Snapchat Lifestyle Categories), target
consumers who exhibit characteristics
similiar to existing customers (Lookalikes).
Target existing customers using email or
mobile IDs; retarget people who’ve been
to the website; and create lookalike
audiences.
Same targeting options as Facebook –
ads are placed through Facebook’s ads
manager.
Target based on age, gender, interest
groups, location.
Social Advertising Techniques for Advanced Marketers | 5
AVAILABLE AD FORMATS
Facebook
Pinterest
Twitter
Carousel
Show up to 10 images and/or
videos, headlines, and links or
calls to action in a single ad unit.
Promoted
Tweets
Reach a wider group of followers
or spark engagement from
existing users.
Standard
Pins
Appear like regular pins, but
you pay to have them seen by
more people.
Dynamic Ads
Relevant and timely ads on
Facebook based on the products
people have visited on your
website/app.
Promoted
Accounts
Suggest accounts that people
don’t currently follow.
Rich Pins
Promoted
Trends
Suggest time-, context-, and
event-based trends to users.
These appear at the top of the
Trending Topics list.
Include extra information right
on the pin itself – such as app,
movie, recipe, article, product,
and place.
Cinematic
Pins
Seen in motion when the user
scrolls, but the motion stops
when the scrolling stops.
Canvas
Full-screen, mobile-optimized,
post-click experience with
images, videos, texts, and links.
Instagram
Snapchat
Photo
Photo-based ad that appears
in the feed of users.
Video
Video-based ad – up to
60 seconds long.
Carousel
A collection of images, plus a
call to action button that leads
to a website.
Sponsored
Lenses
Sponsored
GeoFilters
Snap Ads
YouTube
Any video uploaded to YouTube can be an ad.
Pre-roll video ads appear before other videos on
YouTube.
LinkedIn
A new take on brand activation,
offering “play time” – the time
people spend playing with the
interactive ad you’ve created.
Sponsored
Content
Allows you to deliver content into
the LinkedIn Feed of members
beyond those who are following
your company.
When Snapchatters in the
location(s) of your choice take a
snap, they’ll be able to see your
Geofilter and use it to explain
where, when, and why they took
the Snap.
Sponsored
InMail
Provides an effective way for
marketers to reach decision
makers through a personalized
and timely message on LinkedIn.
Text Ad
Allows you to get your business
in front of the right audience and
target potential customers on
LinkedIn.com desktop pages with
a budget that works for you.
A 10-second vertical, full screen
video ad that appears in the
context of other Snaps. You can
also give Snapchatters the choice
to swipe up and see more, like
a long form video, article, app
install ad, or mobile website.
Other video ads appear beside playing videos and in
search results.
Sources: Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, CNN Money, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Bloomberg, Fortune, VentureBeat. Pulled 11/30/2016.
© 2016 Sprinklr, Inc. All rights reserved.
Social Advertising Techniques for Advanced Marketers | 6
The Challenges of Driving and Defining Value
The Challenges of Driving and Defining Value
Paid social media advertising happens in real
time, and it is largely a self-service affair, working
with uninvolved third-party platforms rather than
publishers who bring their own expertise to the
table. In addition, customers expect constant,
consistent brand engagement across every
touchpoint, at every moment.
It’s clear that extracting the most value from
your campaigns is up to you – and it ain’t
easy. Effective social advertising requires a
sophisticated approach to planning, executing,
and optimizing your media investment. Even
defining what “value” means can be a challenge,
as social media’s flexibility and pervasiveness
are appealing to multiple business units.
Here are the major sticking points we’ve identified
when it comes to driving and defining value,
along with suggestions on how marketers can
proactively address them.
© 2016 Sprinklr, Inc. All rights reserved.
PROBLEM: TARGETING IS
EASIER SAID THAN DONE.
It’s axiomatic that to achieve maximum impact
from social advertising, you need perfect targeting:
getting the right message delivered to the right
person at the right time.
But even getting close to this ideal is challenging.
You need a deep understanding of your customer
profile, from demographics to psychographics to
any number of other metrics. Then you need to
personalize your marketing message, and, because
of how the platforms operate, you need to actively
manage the media investment, down to the user
or segment. Your ability to perceive, measure, and
act on every level of consumer response – from
the most holistic to the most specific – will directly
affect every campaign’s performance.
Social Advertising Techniques for Advanced Marketers | 7
The Challenges of Driving and Defining Value
WHY THIS IS A CHALLENGE:
Sophisticated analysis and marketing practices
are required to divide your total audience into
relevant segments, craft strong messaging for
each segment, and then determine how much to
invest in each segment. Since social advertising is
new, there are few rules, so there’s a fair amount
of “spaghetti on the wall” experimentation. Even
if a campaign is a hit, it can be tricky to interpret
what drove the success, and how to repeat it.
This is made even more complicated when overall
budgets come into play, because incorporating
customized ad targeting doesn’t come free. And
there may be limits of scale imposed by the size
or makeup of your audience. Finally, you have
to acknowledge that in some cases or for certain
products, less targeting is more and casting the
widest net is the best investment.
SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS:
1 | There’s no way around it: you have to make
a one-time, up-front investment in:
• Deploying channel and platform pixels.
• Connecting CRM / DMP systems.
• Aligning media planning strategies
across social, programmatic, and search
advertising where possible.
© 2016 Sprinklr, Inc. All rights reserved.
These core systems are vital to efficiently
running the analytics you need. Once these
core systems are in place, it’s much easier
2 | With your core systems in place, calculate
the “sweet spot” for each segment through
ongoing testing (A/B testing is ideal and
to ensure that your audience segments are
correctly matched to their personalized
messaging and creative variations, as well
as other variables such as psychographics,
general behavior (shopper, influencer,
lookalike), relationship to your brand
(prospect, customer, lapsed), language
and cultural preferences, etc.
should be used in every campaign if possible).
Be sure to firmly define your KPIs; it’s
generally better to select data points that
quantify true business impact rather than
just clicks or engagements. If you’re not
doing it yet, upload your conversion files
to your ad-buying platform so that your
reporting and automation mechanisms can
identify which ads are driving the highest
conversion value for each segment. Armed
with this information, you can perform bid
optimization to maximize your ROAS.
Since social advertising is
new, there are few rules,
so there’s a fair amount
of “spaghetti on the wall”
experimentation. Even if
a campaign is a hit, it can
be tricky to interpret what
drove the success, and
how to repeat it.
3 | As your social advertising programs develop,
be sure to perform central, cross-segment
analysis of your messaging and investment
plans. This will clarify which tactics maximize
impact per segment and for the brand
overall. Winning strategies should then
be distributed to all parties responsible
for media execution, including agencies,
platform service arms, individual markets,
etc., to ensure enterprise alignment.
Social Advertising Techniques for Advanced Marketers | 8
The Challenges of Driving and Defining Value
Take Down
Your Data Siloes
The key to successful social advertising – really,
advertising in general – is to reduce data and
strategy silos. Collecting device IDs, emails,
cookies, etc. and linking them into a larger CRM
profile will allow you to reach new and existing
customers in a multi-tasking, cross-device world.
Leo Polanowski
GM & VP EMERGING MARKETS, AMERICAS
YAHOO
© 2016 Sprinklr, Inc. All rights reserved.
To do so, it’s vital to invest in data infrastructure
that can ingest and organize those touchpoints.
Consider that 57% of the time TV ads are on
the screen during prime time, viewers are
looking at another device such as their phone
or a tablet. And odds are they’re within an app
environment. As an advertiser, you have to be
ready to serve relevant messages to prospective
customers across any screen. So focus your data
infrastructure on creating a customer profile
that can capture insights across the entire
customer journey, and one that’s nimble enough
to leverage marketing efforts throughout the
purchase funnel.
Social Advertising Techniques for Advanced Marketers | 9
The Challenges of Driving and Defining Value
PROBLEM: TOO MANY COOKS, AND
THEY ALL WANT SOMETHING DIFFERENT.
From customer service to sales to corporate
communications, there are multiple business
units (with key stakeholders in each) across the
organization interested in reaching audiences
through social advertising – and they each
define “value” in a different way.
Organic and paid posts are typically owned
by separate groups, but only through careful
coordination can you recognize opportunities
to boost owned media with paid budgets, or
to use paid campaigns as a testing ground for
organic activities. Creative assets necessary to
run campaigns come from several parties such as
agencies, owned media managers, and paid media
buyers. These are just a few examples of the
collaborative nature of social advertising, and the
potential hiccups that can occur along the way.
WHY THIS IS A CHALLENGE:
Inefficiency arises when cross-team collaboration
doesn’t happen as seamlessly as it should – or
worse, when teams are looking for opposing
outcomes. Without clear understanding of goals
and KPIs, campaigns cannot be optimized in
real time. Less obviously, the brand is open
to significant risk if ads – created by multiple
departments, owned by “not me, maybe sales
knows” – cannot be easily shut off during a crisis.
© 2016 Sprinklr, Inc. All rights reserved.
SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS:
1 | Formalize your media execution process
at the enterprise level. The process should
incorporate all stakeholders and should set
down clear responsibilities, covering division
of labor, documentation, and safeguards.
Where possible, the process could include
divided ownership in the platforms.
A key part of the process will be defining
value for each campaign and for the overall
program, and communicating those goals
to all stakeholders. Getting and keeping
everyone on the same page is a huge part
of maintaining efficiency, even when other
areas are still works in progress.
2 | Don’t shy away from complex programs.
Your program planning should allow for
multiple campaigns reaching overlapping
segments, and should embrace message
sequencing, retargeting, multi-message ad
units, and controlled media bidding.
3 | Build in a backup plan when establishing your
media execution process. One way to do this
is to create a “kill switch” through your social
advertising platform. If events start to spiral
out of your control, this function will help
you know exactly where to turn to shut off
a campaign or make other fast adjustments.
It may not resolve the issue, but it will stop
fueling the fire.
Social Advertising Techniques for Advanced Marketers | 10
The Challenges of Driving and Defining Value
PROBLEM: OPTIMIZING
IS A 24/7/365 JOB.
Campaign performance fluctuates in real
time, and opportunities to launch a new ad
can present themselves at any time. Because
responsibility for success is focused on the
marketer or a small team, late nights and
weekend work become the norm. Burnout
swiftly follows.
WHY THIS IS A CHALLENGE:
Social media is always on, and trending “moments”
can happen any time, anywhere around the world.
In addition, as each new time zone starts waking
up, the number of impressions available surges.
Furthermore, your own campaign delivery and
performance can fluctuate significantly, and A/B
test results will also reveal changing opportunity.
If you aren’t capitalizing on these constant
shifts, you are leaving value on the table.
But due to inefficient processes and a lack
of automation, human intervention is
typically required to recognize and act on
these opportunities.
© 2016 Sprinklr, Inc. All rights reserved.
POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS:
1 | While campaign planning (including decisions
about segmentation, bid strategy, and
campaign coordination) should happen
through a centralized process, campaign
execution should be as distributed as
possible, even to the level of team members
who already own community management,
local markets, customer service, etc.
Ideally, all end users should be empowered
with platform access to monitor and engage
consumers. For example, if a community
manager sees consumer activity, he could
respond with an ad buy (perhaps boosting
a post, delivering targeted customer
messaging, or sharing brand tags). More
typically, customer service agents actively
respond to consumers’ comments on
organic and paid posts.
Set proper guidelines through strategic
thinking, testing, and learning – and then
train teams in the guidelines. Then ensure
ongoing monitoring by a central team of
seasoned practitioners.
With these steps in place, teams can
work autonomously, with flexible work
hours to allow for response when timing
is optimal – even late at night or on
weekends. Further support can come from
offshore vendors or international offices
to continue optimization around the clock.
As your skills and understanding deepen,
platform automation can enable nearreal-time optimization, shifting budgets
and targeting of campaigns to highperformance posts and segments.
Campaign execution should be as
distributed as possible, even to the
level of team members who already
own community management, local
markets, customer service, etc.
Social Advertising Techniques for Advanced Marketers | 11
People Problems
People Problems
While so much of your social advertising program
is driven by technology, it requires a significant
investment of human resources as well.
Continuous planning and re-planning of media
programs exhausts marketing resources quickly.
IT organizations have to deploy and maintain
evolving pixel strategies. Data and analytics
experts have to keep up with demand for more,
better, specific insights. Creative agencies and
regulatory bodies have their own established
processes, which may or may not jibe with the
speed of social.
Without proper organization, running social
advertising can come with significant risks of
inefficiency and exposure to crisis. Innocent
mistakes can lead to accidental and wasteful
spending of marketing budgets. Here are some
ways to manage these variables.
PROBLEM: THE TALENT POOL
IS SMALL. AND YOUNG.
WHY THIS IS A CHALLENGE:
You need social media experts who can handle
the responsibility of running millions of dollars
of media through a self-service platform. Yet
as social advertising grows in importance
to marketers, these rare individuals are in
increasingly high demand. As a result, they
command high salaries compared to their peers
in traditional marketing organizations. This is
compounded by the fact that they need a high
level of access to the rest of the enterprise and
commensurate autonomy to deploy budgets
fluidly. Top it off with the fact that they are
typically millennials in their 20s or early 30s.
This tends to make them young for their level of
seniority (and salary), which can rile existing team
members and even confuse senior management.
These are all the background issues that you
simply have to deal with: find the budget, do the
recruiting, make the hire, and introduce them to
the team with positivity and understanding.
Now that you have them, though, you need them
to do the job – and we’ve all heard the unsettling
stories about millennials and their work ethic
or lack thereof. They’re unmotivated. Disloyal.
Unwilling to follow direction. It’s all generalizations,
but most employers find they really do need new
approaches to managing them.
Without proper organization, running
social advertising can come with
significant risks of inefficiency and
exposure to crisis. Innocent mistakes
can lead to accidental and wasteful
spending of marketing budgets.
Most social advertising experts are millennials.
The talented ones are hard to find, and therefore
expensive. Once you’ve hired them, it’s equally
difficult to manage and engage them.
© 2016 Sprinklr, Inc. All rights reserved.
Social Advertising Techniques for Advanced Marketers | 12
People Problems
SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS:
WHY THIS IS A CHALLENGE:
1 | Millennials tend to respond well to autonomy,
specifically when it’s paired with clear direction
and a feeling of belonging to the larger
enterprise. As long as parameters for their
success are well-established, and their actions
are reviewed and rewarded accordingly, they
can very quickly prove their worth.
Great targeting of social ads relies on pixels
deployed across web properties, and changes
to these pixel strategies are frequent. This can
cause friction with IT organizations that are
accustomed to working at a much slower pace
(or are resentful at a perceived incursion into
their area of expertise).
2 | Collaboration is also an effective style,
and can both motivate teams and provide
executional safeguards. A great tack is to
assign overlapping responsibility between
team members. Encourage them to discuss
their campaigns actively and check each
other’s work. The collaboration will minimize
errors and spark innovation as well.
Multiple technology platforms must be purchased
for media buying, ad serving, analysis, and
coordination of campaigns and audiences, so
procurement departments – rarely at the forefront
of organization-wide change – have to research,
source, and negotiate, again and again.
PROBLEM: THE REST OF THE
ORGANIZATION IS PLAYING CATCH-UP
(OR SIMPLY NOT PLAYING).
Many contributors are needed to coordinate a
major social advertising program and maximize
the business impact. But too often, those outside
of marketing are unfamiliar with how social
advertising works.
© 2016 Sprinklr, Inc. All rights reserved.
Social advertising creates a rich, invaluable trove
of data. Great – except it now requires many
departments to collaborate on coordinated testing
and learning, data sourcing, creative development
and strategy, planning, and analysis. And while
some teams will be familiar with these practices,
it’s common that many teams are not. Education
becomes yet another vital step.
Social Advertising Techniques for Advanced Marketers | 13
People Problems
Technology Can’t Do It All;
You Need Good People
Misty Locke
GLOBAL CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER
iPROSPECT
© 2016 Sprinklr, Inc. All rights reserved.
Brands think they know their customers;
however, they cannot truly know who their
customers are on a personal level until they
fully understand them and their intentions.
No piece of technology can help them to do this
fully. Machines can collect, store, and manage
data, but it’s individuals who must add human
understanding and perspective to a world that
hasn’t been turned to 0s and 1s – just yet anyway.
By leveraging agencies and tools that understand
customers at their motivational level, and matching
that to true site customer data, brands will be
able to understand their customers at exact and
personal levels, which will help create relevant
experiences. In essence, it is only man, with the
help of machine, who can provide truly relevant
and personal customer experiences.
At iProspect, we lean on technology for the
collection, management, and execution of data.
But it is our strategists and data analysts who
provide true understanding for our clients.
Both are crucial pieces of the puzzle.
Social Advertising Techniques for Advanced Marketers | 14
People Problems
SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS:
1 | To get everyone in the organization on board,
start at the top. A clear demonstration of
the business potential of social advertising,
including its positive effect on go-to-market
strategies, is important to ensure the alignment
of your C-Suite (CEO, CMO, and CTO at least),
and to keep social advertising as a top priority.
With a mandate from above, departmental
leaders can more effectively guide their
groups and can escalate issues as needed.
2 | Start educating. Keep educating. Always
be educating. All maturing social advertising
programs require a concerted effort to
educate the enterprise on the social landscape,
best practices, unique processes, and risks
to be considered during the deployment of
campaigns and beyond.
Team members will need to spend a fair
share of their time – up to 25%, depending
on the needs of the organization and their
level of seniority – preparing presentations,
quantifying results, identifying opportunities,
and reviewing with stakeholders. Leaning on
platform services or other partners such as
agencies can relieve a lot of the burden, but
their input should be considered with a grain
of salt.
© 2016 Sprinklr, Inc. All rights reserved.
PROBLEM: MISTAKES ARE
NOT EASILY FORGIVEN.
When it comes to implementing a major social
advertising program, mistakes are easy to make
and can be VERY costly. Many organizations
try to deter mistakes by implementing harsh
penalties, including termination.
WHY THIS IS A CHALLENGE:
In other channels, there are additional
safeguards built into the process, and risk is
spread. For example, in a traditional print media
buy, the publisher accepts the risk of delivering
a campaign accurately, and will manage its own
delivery of impressions to the right dates and
volumes. In social advertising, this is all controlled
by you, via a self-service platform. Even a small
typo in a date or bid form can mean a premature
delivery or an error potentially costing tens
of thousands of dollars. The most innocuousseeming photos can sometimes create social
media backlash.
SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS:
1 | The best media buying platforms will warn
users when they are about to make significant
changes to their campaigns, and can also
be set up to monitor campaigns and flag
abnormal behavior of any type. Take full
advantage of these services when available.
2 | Many platforms also allow the implementation
of approval flows, preventing ads from going
live before all decision-making authorities
have had a chance to review and approve the
ad and its parameters. Some also allow for
tracking of changes and approvals by user for
later review. Again, these services can be vital
to catch errors before it’s too late, so use them.
3 | Even with safeguards in place, errors are
always possible. A proven best practice to
cultivate attention and minimize mistakes
is to create a culture of rewarding precision.
This is the opposite of a harsh, unforgiving,
penalty-driven approach. Firing staff for making
mistakes is demoralizing and expensive for the
enterprise (think of the investment needed to
recruit and train a replacement, for example).
It is often an overreaction that prevents an
otherwise talented individual from learning
from her mistake and continuing on to
great performance.
Of course, you need to be able to weed
out those who simply aren’t up to the task,
but focusing on the positive is imperative.
Teams in fear for their jobs won’t bring the
innovation, creativity, and independence
you need to efficiently run your social
advertising program.
Social Advertising Techniques for Advanced Marketers | 15
Never-Ending Change
Never-Ending Change
Social media as an industry is continuously
evolving. New publishers appear all the time, and
the best of them amass huge user counts in very
short amounts of time. To maintain relevance,
existing publishers must innovate and fight for
every user – so they change ad placements,
switch up algorithms, and develop new targeting
options. As a brand using their platform, you’re
lucky to get a few months’ notice of even the
most significant changes, and you certainly don’t
have any input on when, how, or where the
updates occur. Not surprisingly (you’ve probably
experienced this personally), the constant change
is a major challenge for marketers.
PROBLEM: UPDATES,
UPDATES EVERYWHERE.
Publisher platforms like Facebook and Twitter
control everything – targeting, optimization
algorithms, bidding, placements, etc. – and can
change any or all of these elements at any time
(remember FBX?).
© 2016 Sprinklr, Inc. All rights reserved.
WHY THIS IS A CHALLENGE:
When you’re advertising across multiple social
channels, it’s hard enough to keep up with just
the copy specs for each, let alone the nuances
of different audience behaviors, best practices
for advertising, and specific ad parameters.
The challenge is compounded when publishers
unveil new products or ad updates.
SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS:
1 | Simple but often overlooked: be sure to pay
active attention to all communication from
your publisher partners, whether it looks like
a marketing email or a system notification.
Rely on them to convey changes before
they happen. Of course, this can become
overwhelming very quickly due to the number
of channels and platforms involved and the
frequency of their product release cycles
(and, sometimes, lack of transparency).
Social Advertising Techniques for Advanced Marketers | 16
Never-Ending Change
2 | Many of the main publishers assign a client
partnership lead to provide personalized
recommendations and notifications. Use
them. The more information you can share
about your business, the more they can help.
However, be aware that publisher-supplied
recommendations may err on the side of
larger budgets. Nothing wrong with that,
but worth remembering.
3 | Create and support a properly staffed buying
team, either internally or with an agency
or another service partner. Keeping up an
active survey of the social landscape takes
time, which costs overhead, but the value
of planning for changes – and recognizing
opportunities in new targeting and ad
units – can drive measurable impact on the
business. It’s also the most effective way to
reduce the amount of noise coming at you
and help focus your social advertising efforts
where they’ll deliver the best bang.
PROBLEM: SHIFTING NEEDS
CLASH WITH PRE-SET BUDGETS.
Unexpected changes are just the frosting on
the cake. Different channels, different objectives,
different placements require channel-specific
strategies, creative development, and flexibility
in copy. It all takes time – and costs money. Trouble
is, annual budget plans made 18 months previously
simply can’t keep up.
© 2016 Sprinklr, Inc. All rights reserved.
WHY THIS IS A CHALLENGE:
Budgets for social advertising should stay very
fluid to allow for testing, responsive post boosting,
and jumping on sudden opportunities. And no
one knows when the next big thing will come
along, or how fast your customers will expect to
see you there. Yet enterprise-level brands have
existing annual budget planning and adjustment
processes that are often incompatible with this
level of flexibility.
shifted budget (you probably refer to it as a
“slush fund”) and can mean significant return
on investment as each channel’s performance
fluctuates, platform changes are introduced,
and new publishers come to the fore.
PROBLEM: POINT-SOLUTION OVERLOAD.
With endless opportunities for innovation, point
solution technologies are sprouting up all the time.
Once you factor in open APIs for customization,
the benefits are tempting – until the unwieldy setup comes crashing down.
WHY THIS IS A CHALLENGE:
Budgets for social advertising
should stay very fluid – no
one knows when the next
big thing will come along, or
how fast your customers will
expect to see you there.
The pace of innovation in social advertising is
astonishing – and exciting. But like a kid in a candy
store, it’s easy to get tempted by the latest shiny
wrapper. For many marketers this takes the form
of new “best in breed” point solution technologies
that promise to generate a key analytic or crack
the algorithm of a new hot property. Pile them up,
though, and suddenly those “must-have” point
solutions, each helpful enough individually, will
give you a big tummy ache.
SUGGESTED SOLUTION:
1 | Procure your budgets at the highest, most
general level with which your company is
comfortable. This will allow for a more easily
Social Advertising Techniques for Advanced Marketers | 17
Never-Ending Change
SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS:
1 | Give service teams responsibility for
maximizing their own efficiency, including
finding the right technology for the job.
Building a process for efficiently recognizing
new platforms or point solutions and their
potential value to the business is paramount
for continued growth and performance.
2 | Consider outsourcing this research and
ongoing industry monitoring. Consultants
who continually engage with the social media
scene, and who understand the evolving
needs of the buying teams, can survey the
landscape on behalf of the brand and issue
recommendations. This is a great alternative
to an internal, bespoke process.
© 2016 Sprinklr, Inc. All rights reserved.
3 | Evaluate all stand-alone point solutions with
skepticism. Weigh the impact each proposed
solution will bring to your social advertising
program against the incremental effort
of learning, integrating, and paying for it
– especially when other platforms already
integrated have similar functionality and
will be more beneficial for your brand in
the long term.
Social Advertising Techniques for Advanced Marketers | 18
Conclusion
Conclusion
Even the most sophisticated, purpose-built organizations agree that staying
“on top of it all” in social advertising is nearly impossible, and the work of
running and optimizing campaigns never really stops. But they almost all
agree: it works. What’s more, we’re just witnessing the beginning. The advent
of social advertising has brought with it many new challenges, pitfalls, and
unknowns for today’s marketers, who are (of course) being asked to do more
with less. It’s a truly challenging period. But for brands that can find ways
to execute social advertising efficiently and effectively, this is a very exciting
time to be alive.
© 2016 Sprinklr, Inc. All rights reserved.
Social Advertising Techniques for Advanced Marketers | 19
Sprinklr HQ
29 W 35th Street
7th Floor
New York, NY 10001 USA
[email protected]
About Sprinklr
AN EXPERIENCE CLOUD™
In the age of the connected and empowered customer, we know that the customer’s experience
matters...a lot.
That’s why Sprinklr offers the world’s only enterprise SMMS Experience Cloud technology platform,
purpose-built to help large brands create, manage, and optimize valuable social experiences that
customers will love, across 20+ social channels and brand websites.
Unlike point solutions or disconnected cloud services, only an Experience Cloud allows brands
to consistently deliver valuable customer experiences at every social touchpoint.
Sprinklr:
• Helps enterprise brands connect with an exploding number of social customer touchpoints
• Is channel-agnostic with a social core
• Provides a complete, integrated, and collaborative set of social capabilities for managing social
media, brand websites, content, paid advertising, and listening
• Enables employees of large brands to collaborate across silos in a secure and scalable way
• Integrates with and extends existing IT investments
• Is purpose-built to put the customer experience at the center of the enterprise, where it belongs
With more than 1,100 employees in 10 countries, serving more than 1,000 brands, we help the world’s
largest companies create valuable experiences for their customers every day.
www.sprinklr.com
[email protected]
© 2016 Sprinklr, Inc. All rights reserved.