creating an effective and sustainable facebook marketing ...€¦ · facebook offers a robust suite...

!2000 M STREET NW, SUITE 750 WASHINGTON DC 20036 USA T:202.419.3420 F:202.419.1448 www.advocatesforyouth.org

Creating an Effective and Sustainable Facebook Marketing Program

Lessons for the Global Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights Community

With more than 900 million monthly active users and more than 500 million daily users, Facebook represents an unprecedented marketing opportunity for nonprofits.

INTRODUCTION Facebook offers a robust suite of marketing and communications tools to organizations, including Facebook Pages, Facebook Groups, the Facebook Open Graph and application platform, and various forms of paid targeted advertising. When used thoughtfully, all of these tools can help nonprofits meet their new media and offline goals — whether this means attracting petition signatures, building an email list, or inspiring supporters to attend a grassroots event. Facebook provides a unique opportunity to nonprofits that work on global sexual and reproductive health and rights issues; it constitutes an unprecedented platform for engaging and mobilizing U.S. and international youth on these issues. However, Facebook is also an ecosystem of constant distraction and competing content. The average Facebook user logs in regularly to catch up with friends and family, read short-form news, play games, and negotiate a torrent of marketing messages from brands among other activities. For nonprofits, the key task is to rise above this noise and identify, engage, and secure the long-term attention of new and existing constituents on Facebook. Therefore, organizations will need to develop an overall strategy in addition to fine-tuning individual tactics: because Facebook changes the functionality and design of its main products so frequently — Facebook profiles and Pages, for instance, were completely overhauled in 2011 and 2012 — narrow tactical recommendations are likely to become dated quickly.

Left: Facebook’s 2006 profile design. Right: A photo shared using Facebook’s

new visual-heavy “Timeline” profile.

2

2000 M STREET NW, SUITE 750 WASHINGTON DC 20036 USA T:202.419.3420 F:202.419.1448 www.advocatesforyouth.org

EXPERIMENT DESIGN AND OBJECTIVES The following guidelines are meant to help nonprofits — especially those in the global sexual and reproductive health and rights community — establish a high-performing and sustainable Facebook marketing program. They are based in part on Advocates’ Facebook advertising testing, which educated and activated young people on various global sexual and reproductive health and rights issues (including international family planning, maternal mortality, and contraceptive access). Social networks can be a challenging marketing environment given their severely constrained and short-form features: in trying to convey an urgent need for international family planning funding, for instance, it might seem difficult to generate action on this issue when one’s primary marketing levers include a tiny photo (placed in an altogether small Facebook ad), a thirty-character call-to-action (shared on a friend’s already busy Facebook profile), and someone else’s fleeting consumption (which is arguably a fair description for what happens when someone “likes” a Facebook Page but never interacts with that Page again). Ultimately, though, Advocates’ testing indicates that Facebook can be a powerful tool for reaching and motivating young people on global sexual and reproductive health and rights issues. Facebook paid ads and user-generated stories might not look and feel as substantial as any form of traditional advertising (e.g., a magazine spread), but the results (including results that will be reported later on in this guide) stand on their own: more and more people are engaging with this kind of social content. In its experiments, Advocates disseminated more than 80 Facebook ads, which in turn gauged how young Facebook users (ages 16 to 29) responded to different kinds of visuals, text, ad formatting, placement timing, and messaging tones. Advocates tested these different variables one-by-one to establish true controls, and purchased its ads on a cost-per-thousand (CPM) basis. (See the footnote on this page for further explanation.) Advocates also tested more than ten different kinds of landing pages, including petitions and email list sign-up forms. These pages were seen right after one clicked on a Facebook ad link; testing variations on this last part of the “conversion funnel” allowed Advocates to measure the value of sourcing readers and visitors from Facebook specifically.

LESSONS LEARNED 1) Use small advertising tests. If we wanted to compare the performance of two different Facebook advertisements (in terms of the numbers of clicks they generate), which option would provide us the better measure of statistical validity? Which option would provide the better strategic advice? Option 1

- Test Ad #1: Spend $100 for 500,000 Facebook ad impressions. Reach about 100,000 people. - Test Ad #2: Spend $100 for 500,000 Facebook ad impressions. Reach about 100,000 people.

Option 2 - Test Ad #1: Spend $1,000 for 5,000,000 Facebook ad impressions. Reach about 1 million people - Test Ad #2: Spend $1,000 for 5,000,000 Facebook ad impressions. Reach about 1 million people.1

1 Note: On the Facebook advertising platform, ads are purchased in an online auction on either a cost per thousand (CPM) or cost per click (CPC) basis: - In a CPM auction, the advertiser bids a desired price for 1,000 impressions. Individual impressions are effectively equal to individual exposures: if one sees an ad on Facebook, refreshes their browser, and sees the ad again, this is counted as two impressions. - In a CPC auction, the advertiser pays for each click of a link. Typically, CPC ads are significantly more expensive than CPM ads – in testing both kinds of ads, Advocates often paid four to five times more for a CPC ad targeted at the same audience.

3


In a world of unlimited budgets and unlimited time, we would readily choose Option 2: all other things being equal, the larger sample size affords us more statistical confidence. But during the beginning of any Facebook ad experiment, we would actually be remiss to adopt Option 2 as our default. Evaluating Facebook advertising means learning from illustrative extremes. If one is testing ads to find out which photos generate the most clicks, for example, often times inexpensive "microtests" (costing anywhere from $25 to $100) will yield obvious high performers as well as obvious low performers. See the graphic below for an example.

One might conduct the same microtest a few times to confirm the same result, but all along the way the same method is applied: it is better to spend cheaply at first to uncover obvious results than spend a significant amount and risk not seeing any significant results at all. In measuring social advertising, it is important to move quickly, in large part because there are so many variables that need to be tracked and validated. Besides photos, the typical Facebook ad is made up of a headline, body text, external links, and optional social actions (e.g., "Click here to ‘like’ the Advocates for Youth Facebook Page.") Because no platform exists yet to do simultaneous multivariate testing of Facebook ads, organizations must use a learning system that allows them to rapidly test different variables one-by-one in a live environment. The system described above — which privileges small tests over larger-spend "eggs-in-one-basket” tests to quickly test the impact of different ad elements — represents the current optimal method for arriving at one or a few useable and high-performing Facebook advertisements. 2) Question assumptions based on traditional marketing. While there is no Authoritative and Universal Marketing Language, many nonprofits seem to consult the same marketing playbook in planning and executing their advocacy and fundraising campaigns. Think about the use of evocative and powerful imagery in international humanitarian organizations’ direct fundraising mailers. Or consider the ways in which we use powerful stories — instead of numbers alone — to inspire others to spread the word on our behalf.

Image of a mother and child from the International Rescue Committee. In its marketing materials, the IRC uses this photo alongside a simple, direct appeal: “Give her a gift that can rescue lives.”

CLICKTHROUGH RESULTS – EACH AD ABOVE RECEIVED ABOUT 500,000 IMPRESSIONS

CPM Ad #1: Why Block the Condoms? – 121 clicks CPM Ad# 2: Her rights. Their rights. – 27 clicks

CPM Ad# 3: Did you know? – 38 clicks

4


Arguably, the image above seems to be a good expression of a core marketing principle: In order to make an immediate impression, share compelling faces and stories, not dry facts. Use images instead of long-form text. In social media, however, such principles do not necessarily provide any kind of guarantee. And as for the guiding assumptions that often underpin our traditional marketing efforts (e.g., "to attract young supporters, we need to create 'edgy' graphics for our marketing materials"), these too do not amount to a foolproof strategy for engaging targeted audiences on social networks like Facebook. Indeed, if followed too strictly, the lessons of traditional marketing can lead us astray. Advocates for Youth witnessed this firsthand while running Facebook ads that were designed to raise awareness about global sexual and reproductive health and rights issues. In finding images that could be used for ads, Advocates collected some that seemed to align with our understanding of what works well in traditional marketing: However, when Advocates actually tested the photos above against others that might be deemed ordinary or even outright boring (e.g., stock images of condoms), the results challenged our preconceptions:

Note that the above results are for ads that were shown to a defined audience segment (in this case, U.S. Facebook users, ages 16 to 29). For global sexual and reproductive health and rights organizations, these results may be useful: as organizations that strive often to humanize their issues and initiatives — by using compelling stories, images, and videos — it is arguably surprising to see that visuals which at first look run-of-the-mill can perform effectively on Facebook. The discovery that Facebook ads containing faces did not perform relatively well might simply be explained by the Facebook ecosystem itself: faces (as displayed on individual profiles, Facebook homepages/News Feeds, etc.) represent the most popular type of image on Facebook, so it makes sense that a face contained in an advertisement would not stand out.

Two ads that Advocates tested: faces are used to draw the viewer’s eye and attention.

CLICKTHROUGH RESULTS – EACH AD ABOVE RECEIVED ABOUT 500,000 IMPRESSIONS

Note: In this test, all other variables (headline, body text, and ad link were kept constant).

CPM Ad #1: Condom Image – 97 clicks CPM Ad# 2: Photo of Young Woman – 21 clicks

CPM Ad# 3: Photo of Child – 30 clicks

5


Ultimately, though, the lesson here is not so much about the supposed universal efficacy of a particular form of content, as it is about the need to always validate assumptions. There are no facts inside of the building, so get outside; your social marketing hypotheses must withstand real-world testing. 3) Become an expert in your own unique social media context. A number of Facebook marketing guides focus on the messaging-specific and temporal aspects of effective Facebook outreach. For instance:

- Tone: Should the status updates on my Facebook Page adopt a serious, informational, and matter-of-fact tone? Or should they be snarky and sarcastic?

- Timing and Frequency: Is it best to post on my Facebook Page multiple times a day, or just once a day? Is it better to post on Monday (the beginning of the work week), or on Saturday (when my audience has more time to leisurely browse Facebook)?

- Types of Content: Does my Facebook audience find original content (e.g., videos featuring

exclusive interviews) more engaging than my simpler sharing of news articles, partner organizations' campaigns, etc.?

These are very important considerations, but it is difficult to generalize any one organization's results for the sake of developing best practices. In other words, your Facebook community might respond well to acerbic original commentary delivered via short videos that are published every Saturday — but that is your audience and how your audience behaves. For nonprofits, then, it is vital to test variables rigorously to determine which advertising combinations work best for their own unique social media context. As mentioned earlier, this is best done via rapid, variable-by-variable experiments. Testing for tone, for instance, might compare ad headlines that are meant to elicit empathy against ad headlines that are designed to generate moral outrage. (In comparing this advertising element, all other variables are held constant.) 4) Provide continuity and simplicity across the entire engagement ladder. Advocates' Facebook testing revealed two factors that appear to affect the performance of one's marketing efforts — across all kinds of Facebook outreach and paid advertising. Continuity: Landing pages that contained the exact same words as the concomitant Facebook ad title performed significantly better than more disjunctive experiences. To explain:

- Petition Y: The Facebook ad title was "Protect Our Access to Birth Control." Clicking on this ad brought one to a petition with the echoing headline "Protect Our Access to Birth Control." Of the people who visited this page, 8% signed the petition.

- Petition Z: The Facebook ad title was "Protect our Access to Birth Control." Clicking on this ad

brought one to a petition with the headline "Tell Congress: Stop Attacking Women's Rights." Of the people who visited this page, <2% signed the petition.

Similar results were seen comparing different Facebook ad title, landing page headline, and subject matter combinations. All of these results seem to indicate that providing continuity to the user is important. Putting it another way, if you do not provide the user a clear heuristic that what they are seeing is what they intended to seek out in the first place, you risk them dropping off completely.

6


Simplicity: A number of psychology studies on new media have underlined the claim that we are all "cognitive misers" when it comes to spending time online: the smallest barrier can make us leave a webpage, dissuade us from signing a petition, and convince us that it would be too prohibitive — i.e., too mentally taxing — to click a button and share a piece of content with friends. In Advocates' tests, we saw this in the results of our different landing page designs: The petition landing page on the left is simple and spare. The page on the right contains additional graphical touts that link to Advocates’ other grassroots activism campaigns. In a test comparing the performance of these two designs – in which 200 randomly sampled people visited the landing pages after clicking on the exact same Facebook ad – the results were substantially different:

Left landing page: 28 petition signatures // Right landing page: 5 petition signatures In social design, never underestimate the effect of simple formatting changes on any part of the conversion funnel (e.g., clicks on ads and visits to web forms) — this includes optimizing elements outside of Facebook. Likewise, never underestimate the negative impact that clutter (whether in the form of too much text, too many images, or not enough whitespace) can have on the end-user experience.

CONCLUSION These lessons are meant to help nonprofits and in particular global sexual and reproductive health and rights organizations strengthen their Facebook marketing plans and strategy. As a next step, here are three things that you can do right now to apply these lessons to your own work: 1) Draft and gather the content for three sample Facebook advertisements, but control all of the variables except one — this is the variable (photos, ad title, or something else) that you will test first. 2) List three traditional marketing assumptions that you would like to test on Facebook. For instance, "I know that our membership responds to fundraising appeals about contraceptive access more than any other issue — let's compare the performance of Facebook ads about contraceptive access with ads about another issue." 3) Scrutinize the design of one of your online landing pages. This can be an action alert page, a donation page, an email sign-up page, or something else entirely. What can you do (e.g., incorporate text from an advertisement that is supposed to lead to this page, remove an extraneous image or text, etc.) to make things clearer for your readers and viewers?

7


For global sexual and reproductive health and rights organizations, the bottom-line benefits of creating a Facebook marketing program outweigh the costs in terms of time and mastering new technical skills. As mentioned above, Facebook has been evolving at a breakneck pace. As it releases new products and features (including new paid advertising formats), organizations will have to play catch-up to some degree. Fortunately, the challenge here is not so much technological. It is rather organizational; the important thing is to cultivate the right habits. If organizations make sure to systematically question their key assumptions about their audiences, conduct simple experiments that validate or revise these assumptions, and look out for simple changes that often turn into big wins (e.g., designing for simplicity and immediate readability), they will already have the right mindset to take advantage of any kind of social marketing and conquer any learning curve — however technologically simple or technologically complex. PUBLICATION DATE: MAY 2012

creating an effective and sustainable facebook marketing ...€¦ · facebook offers a robust suite...

Documents