An Analysis of Facebook Promotion and Marketing

Over the past few months since Facebook released the ‘Promote’ option for posts we have been studying it. The option is a one-click ‘Promote’ this link listed on each post for a simple $7 fee to ‘expand’ the post into a wider audience.  In terms of marketing this seems like a no-brainer since anyone can post an ad, article, news or information and reach more people without having to setup a pay per click account.  Initially the fee was $5 but once it proved to be a success the fee was raised to $7.

When anyone makes an update on a ‘Page’ or ‘Profile’ the option will show on the lower right side to ‘Promote’ this post with an estimated reach listed. We used this option to ‘Promote’ several posts from August 2012 to February 2013 and tracked the results.  Using Google Analytics, each post was tracked by the number of views and referrers it received naturally versus the ‘Promote’ option.

We expected the ‘Promote’ option to deliver a significantly higher return but were surprised when it was nearly the same as a regular post nearly every single time.  The ‘Promote’ option was used on the example below showed 331 views on the first ‘Promoted’ post while the second post had 296 views without any paid promotion.  There was a significant spike in views every time a post was shared on Facebook but the difference between a paid post and a normal one was usually around 10%.

The next thing we tried was posting the same link and information on other social networks such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+.  The Twitter post has no noticeable difference in traffic over a normal day similar to a post made on Google+.  The LinkedIn post, without promotion had a significant spike in traffic as you can see in the chart below showing the 3 times a post was made on LinkedIn.  The increase in visits from LinkedIn were significant but only 10% of the total traffic delivered from Facebook on either a paid or normal post.

The idea of paid promotion or ‘Pay Per Click’ on Facebook may seem like an easy way to reach a wider audience but the results show it has no real value…yet.  In an earlier article I wrote about Facebook Pay Per Click (PPC) options we tested last year.  The PPC marketing on Facebook produced zero results over a 12 month study using multiple accounts.  If a company is looking for ‘Branding’ alone then Facebook PPC ads are a viable option but there are too many problems with the tracking, click fraud and service to be effective for most users today.  If your company needs a BETTER Website, SEO or Social Marketing be sure to contact the experts at Internet Builder Consulting and let us know how we can help!

Robert ‘Dot Com’ Jackson

Internet & Technology Expert

Internet Builder Consulting – Building BETTER Websites, SEO and Social Marketing Solutions

816-842-7774 Office

Facebook Algorithms Demystified – Why You See What You See

Facebook REQUIRES users to agree with the ‘Terms of Use’ to create an account.  It does not matter what you do, post or say after that since you already agreed to the Terms of Use.  Everything on Facebook is tracked, recorded and used to determine advertisements  direct email marketing to users, what content shows up in the main ‘News Feed’ and even what ‘friends’ are displayed.

There are some ‘rumors’ going around pertaining to ‘your top Facebook Stalkers’ using the following trick to locate Facebook OrderedFriendsList data:

1. Log into Facebook.com 
2. Right click anywhere on the page (not on a photo or text area, click somewhere on the white space)
3. Select “view page source”
4. Press Ctrl + F
5. Search for ” orderedfriends “
6. Copy + paste the first set of numbers below to facebook.com/numbers   (ie. if the first set is 123456789 go to facebook.com/123456789)
7. This shows the top ‘friends’ (or stalkers) that Facebook considers to have the most ‘connections’ which can mean a wide variety of things including who is looking at your profile, updates and photos the most!

The top factors Facebook uses to generate the orderedfriends list include:

1. How many friends you have in common with the other person
2. Length of time and number of interactions of all types you have together
3. Friends of common friends (think multi-level marketing)
4. The number of times he or she visited your profile or photos
5. The number of times you visited his or her profile or photos
6. Amount of times you’ve viewed profile of people related to him or her
7. Games you play that he or she also plays
8. Recent interaction including likes, comments, shared posts, messages, wall posts
9. Whether you’re in the same school, company or groups
10. The number of common ‘Pages’ you both ‘Like’ on Facebook

There are additional items Facebook take into account into generating your profile and who or what they show when you login to Facebook.  

The OrderedFriendsList places the most emphasis on recent interactions you have with a person. Another major factor is the searches you do, so it actually details more about your online Facebook habits than it does about the people who may be ‘stalking’ you.  

Another key indicator Facebook uses the above information for is advertising.  Ads and marketing are targeted to you based upon what YOU post, share and comment on Facebook.  An example is when I posted about wanting to go see the new James Bond movie the very next advertisement Facebook showed was for a local theater playing the James Bond movie.  The next day my email address associated with the Facebook account received two emails from theaters marketing the James Bond movie. 

 

Another example, shown below, highlights a simple update on my profile about playing ‘pool’ with a friend and going to CVS Pharmacy.  The instant this update was posted, advertisements and content identically matching those words was displayed by Facebook!

 

 

The display ads on the side of Facebook are also manipulated based upon the same criteria above.  The secondary determination is the advertisers in the local area or that have your specific details set as part of the Facebook Ad Campaign.  The latest Facebook advertising permits marketers to specify details such as the company someone works for, a group they belong to, age range, levels of education, geographic locations and even specific hobbies or interests Facebook users have listed on their profiles.

The targeting methodology is exceptional although the results do not match since there is a significant amount of ‘Click Fraud’ taking place on Facebook.  We setup some test accounts paying $2.86-$6.93 PER CLICK and then tracked the traffic coming to the website from Facebook ads.  The shocking result was that ALL of the clicks came from two specific locations within 5 minutes of the ads going live until the daily spending budget was reached every single day.  From the perspective of an Ad Agency they would consider this a success because the Facebook ad delivered ‘Likes’ and ‘Clicks’ to the customer’s website.

From the perspective of an Internet Expert this was a complete waste of money since the clicks and ‘Likes’ were clearly coming from one location repeatedly which was a waste of money.  There are some free valuable metrics and data available for Facebook Pages showing how many people viewed each individual update, which posts reached the widest audience and options to ‘Promote’ an update, photo or status for a flat rate.  If you hover over any photo, update or post on a page you are an Administer of you can see details such as the Organic (people directly connected to your page who ‘Like’ it) or Viral (people who shared the post with friends).

Facebook remains the #1 destination on the Internet today with more than 1 Billion users.  The potential for proper marketing, optimization, branding and sales through Facebook is unlimited when done properly.  Pay Per Click ads are best focused on Google, Yahoo and Bing while an active, engaging social marketing campaign on Facebook can convert ‘Likes’ to ‘Leads’ when done properly.  For expert SEO, Social Marketing, training or consulting for your business contact the Internet Experts at Internet Builder Consulting and Social Marketing Builders today for a complimentary consultation 816-842-7774.

Robert ‘Dot Com’ Jackson

Internet & Technology Expert

Internet Builder Consulting – Building BETTER Websites, SEO and Social Marketing Solutions 

 

Internet Advertising Continues to Grow

Internet advertising in the US has hit new highs reaching $7.88 billion in the 3rd quarter of 2011, a 22% growth from the 3rd quarter of 2010.  Although Internet Advertising has increased significantly and remains the fastest growing segment of advertising it still has a relatively small portion of overall advertising at 15.9%.  The December 2011 report from Zenith Optimedia shows Internet Advertising will increase its share of the global ad market from 15.9% in 2011 to 21.2% in 2014. 

The leading Internet Advertising categories are: search (49%); display related (37%) – including banner ads (23%), digital video (6%), rich media (5%), and sponsorship (3%); classifieds (8%); referrals/lead generation (5%); and email (1%).

Top Internet Advertising Category Leaders

Search Engines

Google is the dominant leader in the search market with 83% of US total Internet Advertising spending and 82% of US pay per click share.  Google has 65.5% of overall US search volumes, according to  a July 2011 report from Marin Software. Data from eMarketer illustrates that Google’s search revenues reached $8.83 billion in the US in 2010, representing a 71.4% share of the $12.37 billion market. Yahoo 10.4%, Microsoft 10.2%, and AOL 2.3% followed, meaning that the top 4 web properties controlled 94.3% of all search advertising revenue in 2010. This year, eMarketer projects search revenue to grow almost 10% and hit $13.59 billion.

Display Ads

Facebook will bypass Yahoo in US display revenues in 2011 to become the largest seller of display ads, with Google remaining in the #3 spot, according to June 2011 analysis from eMarketer, which estimates Facebook’s share of US online display ad revenues to grow to 17.7%, up from 12.2% in 2010. Together, the top 5 ad-selling companies are projected to control almost half of the $12.33 billion display ad market this year, up from 45.1% in 2010 and 38.3% in 2009.

Yahoo had the highest display revenue of all search engine companies in 2009 and 2010, has a small decline in 2011 along with AOL which remained the fifth place. Facebook and Google have both more than doubled their market share since 2009.

Internet Advertising continues to be the #1 source for reaching more customers, expanding or maintaining brands and ‘networking’ with others.  If your company needs expert Social Network Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or websites contact the Internet Builder Consulting team at 816-842-7774.

Internet Builder Consulting – Websites, SEO, Consulting & Social Marketing

Social Marketing Builders – Building BETTER Social Networking & Social Media Marketing

Understanding Pay Per Click PPC Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing through use of Pay Per Click (PPC) ads is an effective method of placing any website in front of prospective clients without having to optimize or market the website. Companies with new websites, extremely old websites or websites which offer multiple services in multiple locations are best serviced through use of pay per click marketing. Search Engine pay per click marketing (Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsoft bCentral) is typically setup with a daily and/or monthly budget for the marketing campaign.

In traditional advertising marketers charge for a specific location in a magazine or newspaper in hopes that someone saw the advertisment based on a distribution number created by the company selling the advertising. This left much to be desired since the company selling the advertising was the same company providing the customers with the ‘distribution numbers’ estimating how many people might see the magazine or newspaper and hopefully view the advertisment inside of it. There was no true way to judge how many people saw the advertisment or what the return on investment was for the ad campaign. Online advertising, specifically pay per click (PPC) changed things with the pay for performance method of costs.

With PPC advertising a company only pays when the advertisment they show on the search engine is clicked on and a prospective customer is taken to the website to view the customer. When a customer simply views the ad on a search engine, without clicking, then there is no cost to anyone. Advertisers may setup a daily and monthly budget to spend for ads in addition to individual bids (yes bidding similar to ebay) for each search term or keyword phrase. A company or individual may bid for a particular phrase or set of keywords to have their advertisment show up when a search was done for those words on a search engine. The benefit is that advertisers pay for exactly what they receive while the detraction of bidding on keywords is that competitors can instantly outbid each other driving the costs up dramatically.

This means that ten companies may bid for the keyword phrase ‘Kansas City Website Companies’ all spending $1 per click to show up in the first ten advertising locations on a search engine. When ten more companies decided to bid on the same set of keywords they outbid the first companies for $1.50 per click or 50% higher cost per click. When the first set of companies see they have been outbid and their ads are no longer showing then they bid $2 a click or 100% more for the same traffic. Bidding sometimes becomes extremely competative when people or companies target a specific keyword phrase with no limit on how high the bidding goes for each click.

The benefit of Pay Per Click is that companies never pay for the branding/marketing aspects of having online users view the ad unless the online user actually clicks on the ad (thus pay per click). Online marketers sometimes neglect taking the time to search for the best ‘bang for the buck’ when setting up PPC accounts for clients. Builder Consulting spends several hours consulting with the customer to determine the top keywords and phrases then sets a specific budget for each term based upon the overall monthly goals and cost per click likelyhood of a return on investment. Keep in mind that any account setup with a daily and monthly budget will not show all ads all of the time.

The rate at which ads are shown is based upon budgets, likelyhood of the ad delivering a click (more effective ads are shown more often), the number of advertisers paying for each search term and the remaining balance of a budget for each advertiser. Any individual or company can setup pay per click advertising in a matter of minutes, setting it up properly to requires experiance and an understanding of the overall concepts, goals and technical aspects of the systems to provide a true return on investment.

Robert ‘Dot Com’ Jackson
BuilderConsulting.com
913-814-8844 Offices

Understanding Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

The expansion of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) companies who charge an ongoing fee to manage Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing designed to bring traffic to a website has led to more confusion for customers. Recently a prospective customer in Florida was told by a Search Engine Marketing salesperson from another company that their 5 year old website should not be upgraded because they would be able to get more traffic to the website through a 6 month contract for pay per click advertising. The current website is not listed on any of the search engines with a HUGE FLASH SPASH page, out of date information, difficult navigation and little opportunity for buyers to make a buying decision online.

The salesperson went further in telling the customer that they were ‘putting the cart before the horse’ by fixing the website before obtaing more traffic to the website. The salesperson is either uninformed or dishonest in his proposal and claims to the customer since driving more traffic without an effective website will not generate any more sales nor provide the website with any chance of being listed on a search engine without having to pay for the listing. Since the Search Engine Marketing company is paid by managing the ongoing paid advertising it makes sense for them to advise the customer not to invest on an effective website that would begin showing up online without having to pay for clicks. Pay Per Click (PPC) is an effective short term solution for new websites to bring traffic, visits and inform the search engines of the website content.

PPC works similar to an online auction (think ebay) where each company or marketing firm out bids the competitors for the top spots. This means that the cost will ALWAYS increase while the results will continue to decrease. The focus of marketing companies sell paid listings and search engine marketing is to ensure the customer always has to pay them to obtain traffic on the website rather than having an effective website that reaches customers through Search Engine Optimization. What most website and online marketing companies are missing is that they will not lose money by helping the customers reach more buyers on a search engine without PPC. If the website is developed properly with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) it will reduce the monthly costs for customers delivering a more effective long term reach. The initial loss of advertising income will be offset by the long term relationship and business from the customer who will need another website or related services in the future.

The other EXTREMELY BAD affect of search engine marketing and PPC management companies is the lack of understanding or accountability to the customer. The marketing companies usually have little to no understanding of the customers business or target audience. A builder in Kansas has been paying the website company that built the current website for search engine marketing each month. The builder only builds homes in Kansas City Metro (KS/MO) yet the website company setup paid marketing nationwide so that anyone looking for new homes or a builder for any city in the country will see the paid listing for the Kansas City builder. Specifically the builder who ONLY builds in Kansas and Missouri is paying for advertising in Georgia, Oklahoma, California and all 50 states because the search engine marketing was setup wrong by the website company!

The website company also has a link on the HOME PAGE of the customer’s website to the website traffic reports for all of his competitors to see. When reviewing the reports they only show the number of visits and overall traffic to the website not where the traffic is coming from. This means the customer will never know that they are being charged to market homes in California or Georgia because the report does not include this information and the marketing company either does not know or does not care. To see this specific example visit www.AtlantaNewHomesandBuilders.com then view the GOOGLE ads rotating at the bottom of the page often showing a builder in Oklahoma and a builder in Kansas City along with the local Atlanta ads.

When marketing online consider the long term goals, what opportunity is being presented to buyers when they reach the website and what common sense tells you.

Robert ‘Dot Com’ Jackson
http://www.BuilderConsulting.com
Building Better Websites Since 1995
913-814-8844

Return on Investment (ROI) from Online Marketing

In 1999 Yahoo went public and quickly became the top Search Engine used by millions of Internet Buyers worldwide. Microsoft Network (MSN) and America Online (AOL) were the top competitors with little heard about Google. Move forward to 2008 and Google has become an adjective “Do You Google?” or “Google it” commanding 60% of the online searches. Naturally businesses and Internet Marketing companies spend the majority of online budgets on Google AdWords pay per click advertising. Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft bCentral are often overlooked or ignored missing millions of potential buyers.

The largest is not always the best and marketing dollars should be invested where the best Return on Investment will be accomplished. Advertisments for ‘Kansas City New Homes’ on Google AdWords can cost up to $3.85 per click reaching 60% of the online users. The same advertisment on Yahoo averages $1.31 per click with 18% of online users. with a mere 14% of online users Microsoft bCentral advertising will cost $1.12 per click. A monthly budget of $500 would give:

• 129 clicks (potential buyers) from Google
• 381 clicks (potential buyers) from Yahoo
• 446 clicks (potential buyers) from Microsoft bCentral

Others considerations for online marketing are demographics and usage – consider that Yahoo became the top Search Engine 8 years ago and remains the top destination for finance and business users. Google has the largest porportion of teenage users making it perfect for marketers wanting to sell IPOD’s, concert tickets or Teen Magazine. Researching the demographics to ensure your marketing dollars are reaching the proper audience is more important than the total number of users on a specific search engine. Pay Per Click alone is not an effective long term marketing solution. Pay Per Click is effective for targeted traffic with a set budget yet will constantly cost more for less results or traffic as others bid against you for the top spots.

Developing a professional website incorporating the key aspects of design, Search Engine Optimization, navigation, usability, content, purpose and one-click call to action opportunities is the best overall solution. Investing more in expert website services will reduce the costs required for constant paid listings when your website shows up naturally online. Websites listed through pay per click that are poorly designed or ineffective are PAYING to exclude themselves from buyers!

Robert ‘Dot Com’ Jackson
http://www.BuilderConsulting.com