Interview with Dennis Yu

After having some great experiences of working at some of the most prestigious companies, Dennis Yu is presently working with BlitzMetrics, a social media analytics company as a Chief Technology Officer. Over the last 4 years, Dennis has guided the development of an ad serving platform that garners PPC, SEO, email, and Facebook advertising, optimizing campaigns to online and offline conversions via phone, lead generation, online ordering, and coupon redemption.

Dennis has helped brands grow and measure their Facebook presence and is an internationally recognized lecturer in Facebook marketing, having been featured on National Public Radio, TechCrunch, Fox News, AllFacebook, CBS Evening News, and KTLA-TV. He belongs to that influential lot which have said and done a lot of social media marketing and all his strategies have worked very well for the respective brands.

Dennis has helped companies such as Yahoo, American Airlines, JC Penney, Equifax, March of Dimes, and other enterprises maximize online leads and revenue. Lets get to know this Facebook Marketing expert better;

Apoorva: Dennis, you have run a number of successful Facebook campaigns in the past. How has Facebook marketing changed from then to now?

Dennis: It's all about custom audiences, whether via website remarketing or emails. The lookalikes you can generate from these custom audiences, which include lookalikes based on people who have converted is truly remarkable. The shift has gone from fans to engagement to real-world conversions that occur in other channels. Social affects your SEO, email conversions, in-store traffic, and every other type of marketing. Social marketers now need to grow up. You can't be just an ads expert any longer. You can get quite sophisticated with custom audiences now:  http://bit.ly/1i3qFBV

Apoorva: Are various brands still using the platform to promote their products with the same zeal and confidence?

Dennis: Ever more so, especially for direct marketers-- folks like e-commerce and B2B lead gen. We help companies like Rosetta Stone, Marketo, and Infusionsoft drive revenue, largely by getting their content amplified into Facebook. We call it "amplification", not advertising, since it's about getting reach for organic content.Social marketing is now synonymous with marketing automation, since social is a great mid-funnel engagement technique. In other words, use social to collect email and then have your email programs do most of the conversions.Here's how some folks do it: http://bit.ly/1hCQzQD

Apoorva: Would you suggest small media businesses to go ahead with Facebook marketing? What should they be careful about?

Dennis: If you're a small business, make sure you have an email list and steady flow of content before you do Facebook marketing. If you don't have these items, you won't have an existing base to generate social trust, nor will you have enough content to engage and convert.Set real-world ROI goals in this 3 step funnel of audience-engagement-conversion:  http://bit.ly/1i3qKW9

Apoorva: With the passage of time, Facebook has revamped its design/ad platform a number of times. Has that been of any help from a brand’s perspective?

Dennis: Each time Facebook makes a change, they thoroughly test it to make sure brands and their fans are getting a better experience. Case in point-- the single column newsfeed. Or consider how the ads products have gone from 29 different ad units to just 9. While change can be frustrating, the overall goal is simplification and tying to business results. And these changes generate more business for firms like us that drive social leads. The more powerful the platform gets, the easier for us to show ROI. For those who complain about organic newsfeed reach decreasing, it has always been low. Brands have to invest to get strong reach, anyway, just like on Google or any other channel.

Apoorva: Initially, all campaigns were focussed on generating likes, later on it became engagement which was measured using PTA. Is that still the case for your brands? If not, which metrics do brands and SMBs should care about?

Dennis: Of course you want to still look at fans and PTAT. But there are counterbalanced metrics of quality and quantity. For example, you might have a lot of fans, but you can use engagement to assess fan quality. You might a high PTAT, but is that traffic converting? Look at the 3 campaign funnels system we've mentioned earlier to troubleshoot your engagement funnel.

Apoorva: Can you share campaigns where there was a direct impact to bottom line vs feel good metrics?

Dennis: I'd recommend that you read alexhoug.com, which has dozens of examples, mostly small businesses with small budgets, that are driving leads with Facebook marketing. Word of mouth is critical. So if you have a strong product/service with good reviews, then it's much easier to drive business results.There is something about vanity (or "feel good") metrics that please executives and can affect initial consumer perception. But beyond that, invest in engagement and conversion by producing amazing, helpful content that isn't overly sales-ish.

Apoorva: In lieu of facebook marketing and upcoming mobile apps, don’t you think that the latter has better marketing and advertising opportunities?

Dennis: Facebook on mobile is fantastic-- it's about half of their traffic. But you don't need to build a mobile app to get mobile traffic. Your page's newsfeed is already designed to work on mobile. And your ads should work on mobile. If you do mobile anything, just make sure your website is mobile-friendly/responsive.

Apoorva: Is BlitzMetrics doing something in the mobile app marketing field? If so, can you share some examples?

Dennis: We run mobile app install ads mostly and sometimes we'll build apps.There are so many players building apps that it's a commodity now.It's traffic and conversions that count, anyway.

Apoorva: A lot of companies that use Facebook marketing do not get it right even after a number of tries. What are the most common pitfalls companies that plague these efforts?

Dennis: The most common mistakes are over-selling instead of engaging, not having clear business goals, and not integrating other marketing channels. Social is an amplifier of the success of other marketing efforts. It doesn't stand alone.

Apoorva: Any kind of advice that you would like to give to SMBs that would help them in their endeavors?

Dennis: It takes time-- social success doesn't happen overnight. It's like growing a garden, as opposed to buying veggies at the store. You can go to facebook-studio.com for wonderful tools that Facebook has created for all of us. Here is a 10 module course that cover the advanced topics: http://bit.ly/1lDb96o And we have a program for $3,000 that we provide to small businesses, where we implement all of this, too. The bottom line is that we have to be smart marketers that understand how to combine content strategy with re-marketing, search engine marketing, creative copywriting, landing page optimization, video production, and a wide range of skills. Keep learning!

Rajat Garg (CEO)rajat@socialappshq.com+91 995 808 3052http://www.socialappshq.com