30-second summary:

• Very few SMBs use multiple channels for their online advertising
• Facebook is the most effective channel based on the cost for CPM and CPC
• It’s important to remember that every business is unique when it comes to deciding on budget allocation

For any business in the software as a service (SaaS) space, data analysis and science are crucial to ensure they keep pushing ahead to reveal those insights that can really make a difference. With this in mind, the Cambridge MBA team looked to leverage Adzooma’s extensive data to identify new ways for SMBs to maximize their ad spend with cross-channel marketing.

For the team at Cambridge University, this was an exciting opportunity to produce some truly unique insights, given that even the big players such as Google and Microsoft only have data that pertains to their individual channels.  The project promised to provide a much broader view and deliver some new insights thanks to the access to anonymized data from thousands of accounts across the three big platforms via Adzooma.

A cross-channel approach

The findings immediately identified that very few SMB customers use multiple channels (Facebook, Google, and Microsoft).

Although this wasn’t part of the main project, it was a really interesting piece of analysis and it’s something we’ve stressed the importance of a lot. Most people just stick to Google, for example, as that’s where they think they should be but that’s not always the best case for everyone’s business, and being seen across multiple touchpoints – or at least trying out multiple channels – can be crucial to digital marketing success.

Our analysis found Facebook to be the most conducive channel for SMBs based on cost (CPM, CPC) as well as return (impressions, clicks), however, it was Microsoft that came out on top for reaching a more professional and affluent audience.

The research highlighted the importance of pre-determining your specific target audience. Hence, when it comes to choosing the channel – or channels – for your business it’s really worth thinking about what you are trying to achieve with your ad spend and who you’re truly trying to reach.

What are you really trying to achieve?

Right at the offset, it’s important to think about your end goal and ask yourself who are the customers you are looking to target and what is the most efficient way to get to them.

Existing research told us that for SMBs acquiring new customers was the most chased goal on the customer journey followed by ‘generating awareness’, ‘generating leads’, and ‘retaining customers’.

Taking this into account, the Cambridge team found that merging the traditional sales funnel with the customer lifecycle model would be the best way for an SMB to manage its overall marketing goals.

Overlapping resolution methodology then allowed the team to determine the impact of cost on different marketing channels. This way, SMBs would be able to effectively determine which platform is best to use when similarities occur.

We found through the research that it was the choice of the channel itself that had the most significant impact on both CPM and CPC. Having determined a connection between channel and cost KPIs, further research was conducted to find out the average CPM and CPC across Google, Facebook, and Microsoft Ads.

While it was Facebook that was the most cost-effective channel on average for SMBs overall, the recommendations were that businesses should still look at the click-through rates of other channels to determine whether other factors such as industry or geography could make a significant difference.

If you’re choosing between Google and Microsoft, the results suggest using Google due to its high reach and low cost, however, Microsoft could also be useful, particularly as it offers high-level targeting and demographics that can be suitable for specific business types.

What is your ad saying?

Another factor that perhaps many businesses don’t consider when deciding on a platform is the sentiment of their messaging.

When analyzing the data this was another area where the research team saw differentiation depending on the channel where the advert appeared.

Microsoft proved to be the most popular platform when it came to a positive sentiment with a CTR of 4.2 percent, compared to 3.6 percent for neutral and 3.3 percent for negative sentiment.

Interestingly, the opposite was true for Google ads where negative sentiment proved most popular with users, gaining a CTR rate of 6.5 percent compared to 5.7 percent for neutral and negative messaging.

Again, it highlights how important it is to take that time to tweak your ads for testing purposes and learn what works best for your target customers so you can capitalize on your spends.

Every business is unique

It’s no secret that the one size fits all approach doesn’t necessarily work. All businesses are different and therefore their ad spend and utilization will of course differ.

Some people, as we all do, want to go with the stats and what has proven to have worked historically for businesses, and whilst that can be taken into account, that’s not to stay that it will work for every business. Therefore, it’s always important to remember to take the time to consider where you are spending and who you are trying to reach.

Plus, it is worth remembering that although Google, Facebook, and Microsoft Ads are the most popular online advertising platforms, there are alternative (and less expensive) places to list your ads including Reddit, Amazon, and industry-specific sites such as Capterra. Despite having fewer users, these are still effective as it’s often easier to reach your exact target audience and could work as an addition to your primary platform.

Looking ahead

We hope that through this research we’ve provoked SMBs to think carefully about their target audience and specific objectives prior to ad spend allocation.  What we’ve showcased here is that the advertising platforms explored within this study work effectively in their own right depending on the end goal and we hope these insights will enable SMBs to achieve greater overall results.

These learnings help determine how cross-channel partnerships can be best leveraged for SMB customers. As Facebook seems to be the most used channel by 70 percent of SMBs, and data analysis suggests it is optimal in terms of cost and return, the data will be used to scale Facebook features and opportunities. A lot of the learnings we unearthed from this study will also go directly into the core technology of the Adzooma product.

Rob Wass is Co-founder and CEO of Adzooma.

Akanshaa Khare is currently pursuing an MBA at Cambridge University and has five years of Product Management experience and three years of Consulting experience, helping consulting firms such as BCG and ZS Associates.

30-second summary:

• The pandemic drove people inside their homes and onto social media like never before.
• Hootsuite has closely been monitoring the changing behaviors of consumers online since the beginning of 2020.
• We caught up with Henk Campher, VP of Corporate Marketing and Head of Social Impact at Hootsuite, to help you derive a cream level perspective for your digital strategies.
• Know how CMOs can find value in SMM efforts, conduct market analysis, and run social media campaigns that actually succeed in the eyes of top management.

From learning banana bread recipes to connecting with loved ones, hunting jobs, and now shopping holiday gifts, the pandemic drove people inside their homes and onto social media like never before. 2020 has shown us how people have resorted to Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and LinkedIn. While Hootsuite has closely been monitoring the changing behaviors of consumers online, we caught up with Henk Campher, VP of Corporate Marketing and Head of Social Impact at Hootsuite, to help you derive a cream level perspective for your digital strategies.

Q. Paid ads have their own cons like reduced page reach, how do you maintain an upward graph for organic page reach and boost relationships, engagement, and direct sales?

Henk Campher: Never take a one-size-fits-all approach to social media marketing, especially with organic content. To reach a large audience, organic posts need to be optimized. To do this, you need to understand the platform and audience you are optimizing for. Start by focusing on the platforms that make the most sense for your business. For example, if you’re a B2B company, you may find the most value on LinkedIn or Twitter whereas a B2C company may gravitate towards Snapchat, Instagram, or TikTok to reach a younger crowd. 

If you want organic content to perform well on social media, create engaging and personalized content that is fitting for the platform you are using. Give people a reason to follow and engage with your social posts. To better understand what content resonates with your audience, start by using social listening tools—at Hootsuite, we integrate directly with Brandwatch so our customers can navigate social intelligence capabilities directly from their dashboard.

Beyond creating the right content for the right platform, it’s essential to connect with people. Show your audience the human side of your brand. You can do this by lifting up your employees on social media and sharing their stories or connecting with the wider community through an employee advocacy tool, like Hootsuite’s Amplify tool. If you want to boost engagement on posts, ask your audience relevant and interesting questions. This is also a great opportunity to learn about what interests them. If you focus on value and creating the right content, you’ll be able to successfully develop relationships with your audience, boost engagement, and drive sales.

Q. What are the top social media metrics that can help CMOs see direct value in marketers’ social media marketing efforts?

Henk Campher: For both B2C and B2B brands, the key to successful social measurement is to keep your metrics simple. Trust classic cross-platform metrics like return-on-ad spend and lifetime value, as these measures also tie directly to your organization’s business goals. Once you choose the content you think will resonate with your audience, test your ideas to identify which posts generate the most engagement, shares, and impressions, and do this for each social platform. Continue to test, learn, and optimize. But when it comes to measuring your efforts on social, it is important to keep your business objectives in mind and develop KPIs that match the overall goals and expectations of your organization. Metrics such as impressions and reach should be analyzed consciously.

If your goal is to build brand awareness, focus on overall engagement and how long visitors are staying on your website. This will help evaluate if your content isn’t just “content-for-content-sake” but is actually resonating with your audience and driving conversions. 

Q. What are the typical touchpoints/aspects marketers must include in their social media campaigns to reflect value for the brand and meet CMO expectations?

Henk Campher: One of the most important aspects of a social media campaign is social listening. A robust social listening tool allows you access to real-time insights into consumer sentiment, shifting trends, and competitive intelligence. These insights are key to helping a brand better understand how consumers feel about a campaign and what they want from your brand.  

The best social media campaigns also have specific goals in mind and are purpose-driven. You must understand the customer segment you’re trying to reach through a specific campaign. To achieve this, create profiles or personas for your core constituencies that integrate data and insights from marketing channels (including social) and CRM. Understanding how, where, and when to engage with your constituents requires a clear picture of their motivations and their needs.

Another important aspect is social data integration. Our ‘Social Transformation Report‘ uncovered that only 10% of marketers feel they have mature practices around integrating social data into enterprise systems like Adobe, Microsoft, Marketo, or Salesforce. However, according to our ‘2021 Social Trends Report‘, 85% of organizations that integrate social data into their other systems have the confidence to accurately quantify the ROI of social media. While data integration is a complex process, a much more accessible entry point that can help marketers better connect social engagement to customer identity and measurable ROI is integrating paid and organic social media activity.  We found that mature organizations with completely integrated paid and organic social strategies are 32% more confident in quantifying the ROI of social media. 

Q. How important is it for any brand to have involvement in social matters and social investments?

Henk Campher: The most successful brands this year didn’t put themselves front and center of the conversation—they decided to listen instead. After taking the time to listen, brands must find creative and empathetic ways of adding value to the conversation instead of trying to lead it. Brands should stay true to their identities and their audience by asking:

• “What is my role?”
• “What conversations make sense for me to weigh in on and why?”
• “How can social media contribute to my business objectives?”

Having a voice in important conversations is powerful for a brand. However, if a brand is posting about topics that don’t align with the brand’s personality and identity, customers will notice. As a wealth of different conversations are taking place across social media at all times, it’s important to create a blueprint for how to comment on a conversation, if at all. 

Q. What methods can CMOs implement to use social media like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn for effective market analysis?

Henk Campher: There are various tried-and-true methods CMOs can implement when using social media platforms for market analysis. Before you begin your analysis, always have a clear goal in mind. It’s important to look at what exactly you want to analyze whether it’s your brand, product, or competitors. Doing a quantitative content analysis by assessing the engagement rate of your social posts can give companies an idea of if a message or product is resonating with your followers. Social listening is another incredibly powerful tool for analysis. Through social listening, you can zero in on how people are talking about your brand.  It’s also important to not be shy. Be empowered as a brand to implement tactics like polls and surveys on social to get in touch with customers and glean informative insights into how your audience is thinking about your brand. 

Q. How would you push an online event that involves employee referral on social media for a maximum turnaround?

Henk Campher: Develop an effective social media strategy in advance and provide your employees with the right resources and tools to promote the event. You can do this by crafting the content and social platform guidelines in advance so it is easy for employees to spread the word on social media. At Hootsuite our Amplify tool allows brands to extend their social reach and increase employee engagement. Using platforms that are suited for employee advocacy will garner the most successful results. 

Q. What are your expert tips on the most effective ways to run a social media campaign, especially during the holiday season 2020?

Henk Campher: The holidays are a great opportunity for brands to increase engagement and drive sales on social media. Here are my four tips to create an effective social media campaign and stand out from the competition: 

1. Tweak your social media posting schedule to accommodate changing workdays or times. B2B businesses often have higher engagement rates during the day, as employees are leaving early and working less in the evening. B2C companies generally have a better reach when it’s not during typical work hours. 
2. Continue to curate content over the holidays, even if there might be a downturn of activity on social channels across the board. If you go quiet on social, your customers will notice. 
3. Maintain community engagement as relationships, connections and engagement are key to any successful social media campaign. Always respond to customer issues or comments promptly.
4. The holidays are a great time to showcase the ‘human’ side of your business. Take advantage of platforms like Instagram to showcase the company, employees, and interact with the community at large. 

Q. What are the most common mistakes you see brands making in their social media pushes?

Henk Campher: The most common mistake brands make is thinking of social media merely as a broadcast medium. With nearly three billion people on Facebook every month, more than one million on Instagram, and hundreds of millions more on Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok, and Snapchat, it’s tempting to think that way. While social media started with organic posts and later turned to paid social advertising, brands should never lose sight of social media’s core value: establishing and maintaining relationships. Take the time to invest in relationship building, as this helps brands build strong bonds with their audiences and boost customer loyalty, which ultimately benefits their business. Rather than pump out promotional content, take the time to establish your brand’s personality, and connect with customers by taking on an empathetic “human-first” approach.

How is your brand making the most of social media marketing this holiday season? Are there challenges you’re facing with regards to creating value from a board room perspective? Feel free to share your thoughts on our interview, drop a comment!

30-second summary:

• A marketing strategy that focuses on a unique target market is called a niche-hub strategy. Create a niche website and document its progress.
• Use content formats that boost audience engagement and are easy to produce, such as blog posts, videos, lists, webinars, etc.
• People engage more with a site that loads fast. Therefore, improve site speed by using affordable options such as cloud storage and AMP.
• User-generated content makes your brand more personable. Engage with your audience by embedding their comments into your article, running contests, giveaways, or using a hashtag.
• Country of origin affects consumer behavior. Consider a country-specific blog content strategy to acquire traffic from specific countries.
• Make use of reverse content Pyramid strategy. Create one piece of “pillar content” and repurpose it into other pieces of content. Finally, distribute them on relevant social media platforms.
• Invest in dynamic Facebook ads and use the IGTV feature of Instagram to engage with your audience and convert them into consumers.

One of the best ways for ecommerce businesses to enhance their business presence is via content marketing. Around 92% of businesses consider content as their business asset. It’s no wonder that content marketing can offer up to three times more ROI as compared to paid search. However, a majority of ecommerce companies fail at content marketing. Here are the top seven ways to upgrade your ecommerce content marketing strategy:

1. Use the most popular content formats

The easiest way to identify the success of ecommerce content marketing is by measuring user engagement.

Every human thinks differently. Hence, you should create different content formats for the various needs of the users.

The below content formats have been proven to be most successful in enhancing user engagement:

• Blog posts: Companies that blog regularly produce 67% more leads. Create relevant, engaging, and comprehensive blog posts by targeting long-tail keywords that match the exact intent of the user.
• Videos: 82% of all internet traffic will be videos by 2022. Hence, text-based blogging will slowly be replaced by text+video blogging. Create videos for every blog post and prepare transcripts for every video.
• Research articles: Content related to original research that offers new and actionable insights for the audiences are the most linked. Conduct research by taking surveys or running tests and share the results with your audience.
• Images and infographics: People rarely share blog content without images. The scope of engagement is also limited. Hence, you should always create high-quality and customized images for your blog. Content with images receives 97% more views. Similarly, infographics are a great content choice because they cover heavy topics in an easy to understand way. People share them on social media leading to high engagement.
• Webinars: The average registration number of a webinar is around 260. You can run webinars by inviting popular influencers in your niche to increase the flow of registrations. Webinars are educational, and they help to convert viewers into customers.
• Lists: People love lists. Create listicles like top 10 or best ways and share them on social media. Listicles are psychologically seductive because it condenses the information into several points.

To have an idea about the best content format for your website, you can take the help of Google Analytics. Here is a guide to add GA on your WordPress blog. Once installed, you can start tracking the traffic, bounce rate, and time on the top pages of your site. The information provided by Google Analytics can be used to identify and optimize the content on your site.

2. Adopt the niche-hub blog strategy

The niche-hub strategy focuses on making your ecommerce blog a resource for a niche topic.

The first step is adding a blog to your online store. WordPress is the best platform to start your blog because it offers different plugins to manage all your tasks.

Next step is choosing a web host to store all your blogging files. It is crucial to choose a web host that offers a strong uptime. Providers like GoDaddy are considered highly reliable, with more than 99% uptime.

For instance, if you are selling mugs online, then your blog can become a resource containing articles, videos, whitepapers, podcasts related to mugs.

For example, HubSpot is a niche for anything related to marketing, sales, support, and website. They create content that is relevant to the audiences of HubSpot.

Leveraging this strategy, they can acquire millions of traffic to their site. You can create a niche blog and start nurturing traffic to gain more customers.

3. Improve site speed for better UX

Site speed is a crucial ranking factor. If you are looking for a hack to raise the organic rankings of your content, then take steps to improve your site speed.

Google Page Experience will be launched in May 2021. The update focuses on improving UX and site speed is an important factor under Page Experience.

The best way to improve site speed is to use a CDN. However, for small business owners, it becomes difficult to host content on a CDN because they are costly.

If you do not have great website traffic flow, your cost of CDN won’t be justified.

In such a case, emulating the working of a CDN with cloud storage can be an affordable option.

All you need to do is to choose a cloud storage provider like Sync, Google Drive or P Drive and make all your files available for direct public access (leaving the confidential ones that are blocked by robots.txt).

Another great way to increase page speed is to create AMP versions of your content. AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages. Here is a great guide to creating your first AMP page.

4. Involve your audience to create UGC (user-generated content)

UGC (user-generated content) is one of the best ways to generate buzz for your ecommerce brand.

85% of people are influenced by user-generated content (UGC) as compared to brand content.

You can start a photo or video contest on social media and ask audiences to share their best pic with your product.

You can get audiences to interact with your brand via branded hashtags, and the added visibility will help you to capture more audiences.

For instance, the Sudbury Wolves hockey team ran a contest on Instagram to persuade people to share a caption for a photo to win two tickets for the opening match of the Ontario Hockey League. This is a great way to enhance brand visibility and consumer engagement.

Similarly, Adobe ran a campaign called the ArtMaker Series where they invited designers and artists to share their artwork created using any of the Adobe products. They used the UG content for product promotions and expert endorsements.

You can use UG content to upgrade your ecommerce content strategy. You only need to think of some innovative ideas and apply them to your main strategy.

5. Create country-specific blog content

Cross-border B2C ecommerce is expected to reach $4820 billion by 2026.

If you are an international seller, you should consider adopting a country-specific blog content strategy.

Country of origin affects consumer behavior. Here are some of the ways to make this happen:

• Share content that is locally relevant to your audience.
• Create articles written by local authors.
• Promote local products produced by local manufacturers.
• Target local events and reap in local influencers to market your content.

For example, Shopify creates country-specific blog content to target customers. Here is an example content piece that was written to target consumers during the IPL season in India, which is considered to be a big event. The content was targeted for sellers and helped them gain insights on how they can increase their sales on their Shopify store during the IPL season.

6. Leverage the reverse content pyramid strategy

The Reverse content pyramid strategy is suggested by Gary Vaynerchuk. This strategy is useful to repurpose content to different channels.

You create a pillar content and distribute it on several channels by revising it according to the theme of the platform. For example, you can create video content and convert it into other content formats like an article or a podcast.

Besides, you should create lots of ‘micro-content’ to drive traffic to your pillar content piece. These micro-content pieces should be shared on social media platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other channels where your target audiences are present.

For example, if you are a pet store owner, then you can create a long-form pillar content piece related to ‘small dog breeds’. After that, you can create several micro-content pieces on every dog breed mentioned in your pillar article. Micro-content can take the form of memes, quotes, or stories. All these micro-content pieces should link to your pillar content.

Now, you should share all these micro-content pieces on your social channels. Get insights from the community and create community-driven micro-content that your audiences would love to see. Redistribute the second round of micro-content. The reverse content pyramid model is a great way to strengthen the popularity of your pillar content, which would help it to rank for several related search queries to reach customers during their buyer journey.

7. Elevate social engagement and reach

Ecommerce businesses present on social media platforms have, on average, 32% more sales than businesses without one.

The key to social media is visual content such as infographics, images, and videos. For ecommerce businesses, social media is not just a destination for posting content but a powerful means of converting followers into consumers.

As per Sprout Social, 89% of marketers use Facebook in their brand marketing efforts. And, more than 80% of people say Instagram helps them discover, research, and decide to purchase new products and services.

Use the following latest Facebook and Instagram marketing strategies to elevate engagement and reach.

• Invest in Facebook Dynamic Ads: Dynamic ads allow merchants to reignite interest in consumers who visited your website, checked items, or added items to their cart. It utilizes the information provided through the tracking pixel to show those visitors the exact items they checked to pull them back in and earn a conversion.
• Use Sales options on the Facebook Business page: Create a “Shop” button on your Facebook business page to list several products that allow consumers to purchase merchandise directly from Facebook.
• Start Using Shoppable Posts on Instagram: Shoppable Instagram posts allow you to showcase your storefront within the social network. You can tag the products shown in your images.
• Use IGTV feature: IGTV gives you the ability to share videos that are up to an hour-long. It also notifies your followers when you share a new video. IGTV allows viewers to tap items they see in videos and complete their purchase through Instagram’s direct checkout feature or the seller’s website.

Conclusion

Ecommerce businesses should use content marketing to their advantage because it is one of the most ROI-friendly channels to attract relevant customers. Follow the strategies discussed in this article to upgrade your content strategy and grow your brand awareness, traffic, and eventually, profits.

Joydeep Bhattacharya is a digital marketing evangelist and author of the SEO Sandwitch blog.

30-second summary:

• Due to the rise of online shopping and the amount of time people spend on social media, social media impacts consumer buying decisions.
• Consumers who are influenced by social media are four times more likely to spend more on purchases.
• There are four ways in which social media has a direct influence on purchase decisions.
• Social media and online shopping shortened the customer journey.
• Social media amplified the impact of social proof or word-of-mouth.
• Social media influencer marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach your audience.
• Stories and ephemeral content are a new way to connect to your audience.
• Every social media platform is different and can be useful for different goals.

A large share of purchases are made online nowadays and in 2020 this number has grown significantly thanks to the lockdown. As the number of internet users increases and tech companies develop more ways to integrate the online world into shopping, online retail is expected to grow exponentially. Logically, many consumer buying decisions are made online as well, and where do people spend most of their online time — on social media.

According to GlobalWebIndex, 54% of social media users use social media to research products and 71% are more likely to purchase products and services based on social media referrals. I bet you yourself made a purchase decision based on what you saw in your feed at least once, be it a post from a friend or an ad that convinced you.

It’s hard to say exactly how much social media influences customers, not just what they buy, but their consumer habits in general. Social networks changed the way we promote products and even gave us new ways to advertise. Let’s talk about some factors that impact customers nowadays.

How social media influences consumer buying decisions

1. The shortened customer journey

The first thing that you notice when it comes to customers on social media is the shortened customer journey. It used to be that people found out about a product, saw an ad on TV multiple times, and next week they may have gone shopping and finally bought the product. Now, this process can take minutes.

According to the Deloitte report, 29% of social media users are more likely to make a purchase on the same day of using social media. That means that once they see a product, they simply click on the link and buy it: there’s no need to wait before they go shopping. Moreover, the same report states that consumers who are influenced by social media are four times more likely to spend more on purchases.

The customer journey is not just shorter but it’s also more complicated now. Social media has made product research more accessible to users. For example, if your customer sees a product on Instagram, they can immediately search the hashtag to look up other reviews and decide whether they should buy it or not. As a result, customers spend more time on research and check more sources for reviews.

62% of customers say they share bad customer experiences with other people. Thus it’s extremely important to keep an eye on your online reputation and seek out reviews on social media. Remember that every review on social media is important — and that fits nicely with my next point.

2. The influence of social proof

Admittedly, social proof is not a new concept: man is a social animal, and we’ve been giving each other recommendations for centuries. The thing is, these recommendations and anti-recommendations can now be heard by hundreds of people.

Every time you tweet or post about this amazing cafe or the shampoo that did wonders to your hair, your social media followers see it and might be moved to try it as well. The same goes for negative opinions and rants. As per Forbes, 81% of consumers’ purchasing choices are influenced by their friends’ posts on social media.

Moreover, people proactively ask for recommendations on social media (and brands unfortunately often ignore them). According to this study by Awario, only 9% of brand conversations are answers to customer questions, however, depending on the industry, there can be more than 100 people asking for recommendations on social media in one month.

As I mentioned above, social proof mostly impacts your friends and the people you know. But more and more people on social media don’t just follow their friends — they also follow influencers. That’s where influencer marketing comes into play.

3. The power of influencers on consumer buying decisions

Influencers are the social media users that have a robust loyal audience that often shares the same interests. Their opinions are naturally seen by a bigger number of people, people that trust them.

According to a study by the Influencer Marketing Hub, almost 50% of Twitter users have made purchases as a direct result of a Tweet from an influencer.

Micro-Influencers are especially effective in persuading their audience since they are usually experts in some niche and specific topic, which makes them a natural source of recommendations for this topic. If you’re selling a niche product, finding social media influencers in your niche — Instagram bloggers, vloggers, TikTokers, or Facebook group admins — is a great way to reach your audience.

Gen Z and Millenials are more likely to be influenced, with 84% of millennials saying user-generated content from strangers has at least some influence on how they spend their money.

The influence of Stories on consumer buying decisions

Ephemeral content is a relatively recent trend but it’s already winning over social media users and brands alike. Snapchat was the first to use Stories as a format, but it’s Instagram that popularized it and now boasts more than 500 million daily active users.

The content shared via Instagram Stories is typically more raw and unfiltered, which allows brands to create a more genuine image. It enables companies to take people behind the scenes and show how they operate, their work culture, and the team behind the products. All this helps to foster an authentic connection to a brand.

So these are the features exclusive to social media that shape customer behavior today. But as you probably know, every social media platform is a little different. Oftentimes, brands wonder which social media platform they should focus on. Let’s go through a list of most popular platforms and see what differentiates them from one another.

Most popular social media platforms

1. Facebook

Facebook remains the biggest social media platform in the world (with almost 1.7 billion users), even though it had its fair share of scandals and controversies in recent years.

The sheer size of the network means that you’ll be able to reach more people on there but be careful — Facebook is not as popular as it used to be. Edison Research’s Infinite Dial study from early 2019 showed that 62% of U.S. 12–34 year-olds are Facebook users, down from 67% in 2018 and 79% in 2017. This decrease is particularly notable as 35–54 and 55+ age group usage has been constant or even increased.

Still, Facebook accounts for 50% of total social referrals and a further 64% of overall social revenue, shows Business Insider.

In 2015, Facebook was responsible for influencing more than half, 52% of consumers’ online and offline purchases, shows DigitasLBi Commerce.

Lately, the company has been trying to fix its reputation by introducing more control over advertising and data management.

2. Instagram

Instagram is an amazing platform for brands since it gives you so many opportunities to show off your product: photos, videos, Stories, galleries, filters, and more. It now boasts more than one billion monthly active users.

What’s great about the platform is that it’s popular among all generations in all countries. 80% of Instagram users follow a business account. 73% of U.S. teens say Instagram is the best way for brands to reach them with new products or promotions.

Moreover, the platform itself facilitates shopping by adding shopping tags and checkout options to the posts. 130 million Instagram accounts tap on a shopping post to learn more about products every month.

3. TikTok

Although TikTok is a relatively new platform, its rapid growth made it an important source of brand awareness for social media users, especially Gen Z.

TikTok now has 800 million active users worldwide, and 41 percent of these users are aged between 16 and 24. So, if you want to reach a younger audience, TikTok is the place to be.

TikTok’s algorithm is also amazing for niche and specific products since it curates your feed based on your interests. It makes your job of finding new followers easier — the algorithm will push your content into the feeds of your potential audience.

Moreover, TikTok recently launched new ways to advertise on the app, giving brands more opportunities to attract customers.

4. Twitter

According to Hubspot, Twitter is a source of product discoveries for many people.

Because of its quick nature and ability to connect to basically anyone, it’s a perfect place to ask for recommendations. SproutSocial shows that 53% of consumers recommend businesses or products in tweets while a further 48% follow through to purchase those products or services.

5. YouTube

There’s a debate on whether YouTube is actually a social media platform or more of a streaming platform or content platform. Nevertheless, it’s one of the most popular platforms out there.

More and more people are looking up product reviews on the platform. Keep in mind that 80% of people who said that they watched a YouTube video related to a product they want to buy said that they did so at the beginning of their buying process.

If you’re ready to invest your time in creating content for YouTube, it can be a highly rewarding task. Just look at the BonAppetit channel that belongs to the magazine of the same name. It has almost 6 million subscribers and more than 1,3 billion views when the total circulation for the magazine doesn’t exceed 1,600,000 copies in a year.

Conclusion

As you see, the data and our daily experience on the Internet show that it’s hard to argue that social media influence purchase decisions. The impact of social media on customer purchase decisions can be explained by many factors: social proof, the penetration of social media, and the availability of online retail.

However, it’s getting more and more difficult to make your brand stand out on social media. Focusing on the right platform, building creative social media marketing campaigns, and using up-to-date technologies will help you with that.

30-second summary:

• Video marketing is more than a trend; it’s a must. But most companies are leaving out a key ingredient to ensure customers engage with their videos: captions and subtitles.
• Captioning videos in English or subtitling them in other languages has been proven to greatly boost the success and accessibility of online video content.
• Adding captions, subtitles or a transcript to videos allows Google to index the entirety of video content, rather than just indexing the video title.
• Captions and subtitles ensure videos are accessible by all: those who don’t have their volume on and the 37.5 million Americans who are deaf or hearing impaired.

No matter what industry you’re in, video content is likely part of your marketing strategy. And if it’s not, it should be. According to a report by Cisco, online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic by 2022. And 72% of customers would rather learn about a product or service by video. Even still, videos aren’t some magic token that’ll get you to the next realm of marketing success and customer engagement. The online landscape is crowded, competitive, and moving at lightning speed. You don’t just need users to slow their scroll, you need them to engage. And when it comes to video content, the solution is quite simple, but often overlooked: closed captions.

Captioning your videos in English or subtitling them in other languages will greatly boost the success of your online video content. As a professional captioner and subtitler, I’m here to help you understand why:

1. Google can’t watch videos, but it can crawl captions

If you’re looking to improve your video’s SEO, adding captions is a quick and easy way to do it. Search engines like Google can’t watch your video content, but they can crawl your captions or transcripts and rank your video based on the keywords they find. Although your video will also be indexed for SEO by its title, description, and tags, captions will increase your keyword density and diversity even further. 

Next time you’ve got video content creation on the horizon, make sure you incorporate keywords into the script with this tip in mind, as it will pay off when it comes to video performance and SEO results in the long run.

2. Video captions drive more social engagement 

Adding captions to your videos is almost guaranteed to boost engagement, interaction, and conversion. According to a case study by Instapage, call-to-action clicks increased by 25% after they added captions to their Facebook videos. Another study found that captions increase the time viewers spend watching a video by almost 40% and make viewers 80 percent more likely to watch a video through the end. Simply adding captions to video content drives up clicks, overall view time, and view longevity.

3. A lot of people don’t (or can’t) turn on video sound

Have you ever insomnia-scrolled through Facebook for some entertainment while your partner slept soundly next to you? Or decided to take a peek at your feed during a boring class lecture? Or what about when you’re riding the public bus, having a cup of joe at your favorite coffee shop, or dining out solo? In all cases, playing a video aloud is not ideal… or socially acceptable.

As much as 85% of Facebook videos are played without sound. That means, if you don’t have captions on your video, it’ll be skipped by anyone watching with the mute button on, which could be a sizable chunk of your target audience. If you want to ensure your followers can view your content no matter where they are when they watch it, then do your part by adding captions. 

4. Captions boost comprehension, memory, and attention

Hundreds of studies have proven that captions improve comprehension of, attention to, and memory of video content. I’m a native English speaker, but my husband is Spanish. To improve his comprehension while watching TV shows and movies in English, we always watch content with the captions on. I was surprised to find that this also improved my comprehension and understanding of the content, and I now watch all video content with subtitles, whether or not my husband is sitting next to me on the couch. Including captions is the best way to ensure your takeaway hits home and leaves its mark on your viewers.  

5. Captions make videos more inclusive and accessible

Over 37.5 million Americans are deaf or have trouble hearing, so video audio serves little to no purpose to this group. And, only 36% of organizations caption all their video content. So why not get on the right side of that number? Without captions, you’re missing out on connecting with a huge audience. But remember, it’s not all about business and money, ensuring your video content is inclusive of all viewers is simply the right thing to do.

6. Most of your viewers likely live outside of your country of origin 

Making your content available worldwide is another way to grow your reach and the impact of your video content. According to YouTube, approximately “two-thirds of a channel’s views come from outside the creator’s home country.” Think about that: a huge portion of your audience might not fully understand your message or recognize your call to action. That’s a deep pool of potential customers you are missing out on.

Look at your analytics, figure out where your viewers live and consider creating subtitles in other languages to reach new markets. Make this a very strategic decision. Quality translation and subtitling are an investment, so you’ll want to make sure you choose the right language(s) to reach the target markets you’re able to serve. 

A word of caution: Resist the urge to DIY your captions and subtitles

While there are free machine translation, transcription, and captioning tools available on the market, take it from me: you don’t want to DIY your video captions. Leave this task to the experts. 

Captioning and subtitling are skills unto themselves, and without training and experience, can be time-consuming and delicate tasks. Captions and subtitles must follow strict rules, including character limits, reading speed, and cue-in and -out times (when the text appears on-screen and when it’s taken off the screen). Poorly timed captions and subtitles are difficult or impossible to read, which defeats the purpose of captioning or subtitling in the first place. 

Use resources such as the American Translators Association Directory (go to “Translation Service(s)” and choose “Dubbing/Subtitling” from the dropdown list) or visit GoSub’s job board to find a professional subtitler or captioner.

Don’t spend tons of time, money, and effort on creating the perfect video and leave out the key ingredient to ensuring your message reaches as many people as possible. Well-captioned and -subtitled content will increase your views, boost engagement and comprehension, and improve the overall success of your social media video content. Plus, for once, this is a quick and easy marketing fix that can make a big impact!

Molly Yurick is a Spanish to English translator, professional captioner, and subtitler. She is also Deputy Chair of Public Relations for the American Translators Association (ATA), which represents more than 10,000 translators and interpreters across 103 countries. 

30-second summary:

• With sponsor deals shutting down, trips cancelled and events postponed, the Coronavirus has given influencer marketing a huge hit.
• Travel influencers suffered while fitness influencers thrived in a world of social distancing.
• Twitch, which is a top live streaming platform, saw a 10% rise in viewership.
• Be it self-help or DIY tutorials, social media figures are finding new ways to help their followers. 
• As audiences trusting influencers more than faceless brands, they’re collaborating to raise funds from people affected by the coronavirus pandemic as well as to pay tribute to doctors who are on the front-line.
• Social media personalities are proving themselves to be flexible enough to create content that still resonates with a quarantined population. Dive in for more details.

No one predicted that a virus that emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan would take the world into its grip. All around the world, life is on standstill and most economic and social activities have come to a halt.  

Influencer marketing is among many industries that have been disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. With sponsor deals shutting down, trips cancelled and events postponed—the once-booming influencer industry is going through a curious time.

In December of last year, Business Insider estimated that brands will invest up to $15 billion on influencer marketing by 2022. Among other things, this estimate was based on the fact that influencers proved themselves to be highly effective promotional tools. Individuals with a significant following on platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook became important voices for brands that were seeking to spread their word.   

But under the current crisis, influencers are not seeing money flowing into their bank accounts.  

Travel influencers, the worst hit 

Travelling from country to country and getting paid to do so is a dream life for many. But those who have been living this dream have been struck by a harsh reality. With countries suspending air travel and companies reluctant to invest in anything new, business isn’t exactly booming for vloggers and influencers who made a living travelling around the world.  

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_KwF0tgY3T/

Source: Zornitsa Shahanska’s Instagram 

Zornitsa Shahanska, whose Instagram page usually features captivating images of fashion and travel is feeling the impact of the pandemic. Speaking to the Wired, she exclaimed,

“In the travel sector, the future seems uncertain.”

The influencer further informed that most of her trips and contracts have been either cancelled or postponed indefinitely.  

Travellers who are shut off from beautiful tourists hotspot that previously dominated their Instagram feed are the worst hit in the influencer community.  

Fitness influencers are thriving 

People who made arguments against lockdowns felt they would devastate every section of the economy. While this is proving to be true for many industries, some businesses are thriving in a socially distant world. 

Fitness creators are seeing spikes in traffic to their pages. Videos of home workouts have already garnered millions of views on Youtube. With gyms closed, people are flocking to fitness influencers on sites like Instagram and Youtube so they might stay fit during the pandemic.  

Source: YouTube

Since fitness influencers often promote their own programs rather than relying on advertisements for revenue, they are surprisingly safe from the adverse effect on the lockdowns. 

Live streaming is extremely popular 

Influencers have always used live streams to interact with their followers in real-time and generate community engagement. Social isolation has made this form of content even more popular as people are seeking connections digitally.  

Twitch, which is a top live streaming platform, saw a 10% rise in viewership during the weekend of March 14th. A similar rise was seen on Instagram as celebrities and influencers conducted live sessions. Musicians, in particular, are using Instagram to perform virtual concerts, raising relief money for charity.  

Live streams are currently the only source of back-and-forth conversations between influencers and those who enjoy their content.  

A new kind of content is in demand 

Brands realize that these are sensitive times. Any campaign that comes off as tone-deaf and opportunistic would be a PR disaster that will haunt them for a time to come. This is why businesses are turning towards influencers for more purpose-driven campaigns.  

With audiences trusting influencers more than faceless brands, they are more effective in promoting philanthropic messages. Brands and influencers are working together to raise funds from people affected by the coronavirus pandemic as well as to pay tribute to doctors who are on the front-line.

Governments and private institutions alike are enlisting influencers to promote social distancing and other precautionary measures.  

Many brands are taking the page out of Ford’s book which was quick to replace its scheduled March Madness ads with car payment relief programs. Gestures like these might be the only way brands will be able to win hearts and continue to earn goodwill in this uncertain period.  

Meanwhile, influencers themselves are shifting towards more solution-based content. Be it self-help or DIY tutorials, social media figures are finding new ways to help their followers.  

Though Ad revenue is down, engagement has spiked 

While campaigns are currently on a pause, influencers are reporting more engagement than ever before. Social media usage has increased exponentially with people staying indoors resulting in a dramatic traffic increase for many influencers.  

Apps like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok serve as distractions for individuals who are practising social distancing. In the early days, the same platform saw decreased engagement with Twitter dominating the online world. However, people are back on their favourite social media sites and are showing great interest in organic and non-sponsored content. 

Marketing firm Influence Central conducted a survey involving 389 digital creators. All of these individuals reported an increase in engagement on different social media outlets. The report analyzed the period when states and local governments first gave out the stay-at-home orders.  

Content creators are adapting to the new normal 

Influencers put in a great effort to have a carefully curated feed. Generally, their social media depicts a dream lifestyle that prominently features designer dresses, fancy meals, and breathtaking scenery from exotic locations.  

But given that people are not interested in this content at the moment, influencers are thinking out of the box. Instead of stylish halter tops from famous retailers, they can be seen in more casual clothing.  

https://www.instagram.com/p/B921G2jJuOe/

Some have taken this opportunity to discuss issues like mental health and anxiety. Others are going down the memory lane, posting images from events they attended or locations they visited years before the pandemic gripped the world.  

Time are tough but there’s influencing to be done 

For influencers, the primary source of income exists via brand partnership and affiliate revenue they earn through tools like exclusive digital coupon codes. Currently, both of these revenue streams are under threat. 

But rest assured, influencers aren’t going anywhere and neither are the millions of their loyal followers. While the circumstances have changed around their work, what hasn’t changed is the power influencers wield over big sections of the internet.  

Social media personalities are proving themselves to be flexible enough to create content that still resonates with a quarantined population. Companies are taking note of this as many brands are still going ahead with their scheduled campaigns. 

Inevitably, when things go back to normal, brands would need these important voices to amplify their message on the digital realm. 

Evelyn Johnson is a full-time cat lady and a part-time blogger. I write about money-saving, technology, social issues and pretty much anything that’s in the now. She can be found on Twitter @EvelynJohns0n.

Most social media predictions stand on the existing trends and research, which makes them highly likely to actually be accurate. It’s a common truth that social media platforms are constantly changing, they come up with new features, change algorithms, review their respective policies, and it all affects the way we do marketing on social. But it’s not like these changes come out of nowhere — they are all the results of social media company’s vision and business model or external circumstances. 

To identify trends that will dominate social media this year we need to consider all of these internal and external circumstances. And that’s exactly what I did to make up this list of five major trends that will be prominent in 2020. In addition to simply describing what to expect in 2020, I also give some recommendations on how to use these trends to your brand’s advantage.

1. Let data analysis lead your strategy

Source: Screenshot from social listening tool, Awario

Knowledge is power, and social media companies want to empower their users and brands, or rather attract more investments. That’s why they are giving social media managers more and more access to insights and data analytics. Facebook is constantly expanding Creator Studio’s and Facebook Insights’ functionality, Twitter is adding more insights to Media Studio, and Pinterest is adding Pinterest Trends to inform brands on user behavior. 

This year we are likely to see more ways to access user trends on different platforms and tap into this data for marketing and social media research. At the same time, due to trend number three on this list, brands might have to change the way they used to do social media marketing, especially with targeted advertising. There are ethical and unethical ways to use data, and the upcoming year will probably be the time to rethink these terms. That may encourage brands to get more involved in the research of the publicly available data with the help of social listening, for example.

How to be on-trend

• Make sure your social media strategy is based on insights gained through data research, not a blind guess. Use the insights provided by platforms like Facebook and Instagram Insights, Twitter Analytics, and so on to find what content performs best, when you should post, and what resonates with your audience. Your KPIs should respond to your goals – if you are raising brand awareness, pay attention to the number of followers, if you’re focusing on community building, keep track of the engagement metrics. 
• Collect and analyze publicly available data, this is the most ethical way to conduct marketing research without invading anyone’s privacy. Social monitoring and listening tools such as Awario or Brandwatch break down the sentiment, reach, demographics, and user behavior trends behind any phenomenon you want to research on social media. 

2. Make your communication more private

In 2019 Mark Zuckerberg claimed that “the future is private”. This was a surprising turn of events for the company which started out as a service to meet people and connect strangers. Facebook’s CEO announced that from now own the platform will prioritize ways to build and sustain smaller communities and tet-a-tet communication meaning more focus on Groups and Messenger as well as WhatsApp. And it’s not just Facebook, social media apps have been introducing more privacy-driven features lately including Instagram’s “Close Friends” list, various updates to DMs functionality for Twitter and Instagram, more ways for brands to manage social messaging. With the upcoming redesign of Facebook feed (expected to be fully rolled out in Q1 and the new ability to limit replies to your tweets, it’s obvious that 2020 will be the year of private social media. 

The turn to private communication is, of course, motivated by user behavior. People simply got much more into messaging their friends and interacting in small interest-based communities. Social media companies took notice of that and are now giving people what they want. However, taking into consideration how many privacy scandals we had in the last couple of years, it’s easy to imagine that the turn to privacy was also prompted by the intent to improve ones’ reputation, especially when we are talking about Facebook. 

How to be on-trend

• If you don’t have a Facebook group for your customers yet, it’s high time you start one. 
• Use the “Close Friends” list on your Instagram account to share exclusive content with your most engaged followers. 
• Go beyond the big three by looking into smaller communities on Reddit and Quora for better opportunities to engage with the audience.

3. Take up more social responsibility

Source: Twitter

This will probably be the most prominent theme in the news coverage of social media companies for 2020. Once again, it’s not a new trend — the pressure to sort out the issues with spamming, misinformation, manipulation of the algorithm, and the social media impact on users’ mental health has been there for a while. 

In 2020 we can expect more regulations on ads, more sophisticated algorithms for discovering spammers and bots, and more ways for users to control what they are seeing on the timeline. In 2019 we saw some actions taken not just by the platforms themselves but also by the state — there were several court cases around creating fake engagement and selling followers and likes that could become precedents for creating legislation around this matter. 

Both Facebook and Twitter CEOs publicly stated that the ultimate framework for dealing with misleading ads and handling users’ data should come from the governmental actors and independent expert committees, not the social media companies. California Consumer Privacy Act is the first attempt at such legislation. This will certainly affect the way brands advertise on social and conduct marketing research (see trend number one).

Social media companies also face a bigger challenge – how to avoid locking people in their own social media bubbles and creating echo-chambers that skew their view of the world? Admittedly, this is a broader challenge for our society in general. However, we can’t ignore the fact that social media contributes to exacerbating the political and social divide between people, and it might be the time for platforms to rethink the core functionality and algorithms behind them.

Another area where social media companies are encouraged to take on more responsibility is mental health. By now it is obvious (and confirmed by research) that social media can have a negative effect on users’ self-esteem and mental health, especially among teenagers, and social media companies need to take notice of that. Some platforms have already made steps in the right direction by informing users about how much time they are spending on the app. The next big change will concern vanity metrics (see below). In 2020, it’s expected that there will be more platform regulations that aim to protect users from abuse and bullying and more ways for users to filter the information they don’t want to consume.

How to be on-trend

• Make sure your ads comply with the platform regulations.
• Discard sketchy growth hacks such as buying followers or using third-party tools for follow-unfollow tactics in favor of genuine engagement and community building.
• To make interactions with your audience actually genuine, understand when those interactions are welcome. The best way to start engaging with people on the internet is by commenting and replying to their public posts: and of course, your comments should be meaningful and relevant. You can find people and posts to engage through social media monitoring — simply monitor keywords and phrases appropriate for your niche.
• Use social listening, competitor and hashtag research to find accounts related to your niche and engage them in the comments. Offer your expertise or start conversations discussing relevant topics. 

4. Focus less on vanity metrics

This trend is partly related to the previous one. In 2019, we saw several experiments around hiding vanity metrics, mainly like count, on Facebook and Instagram. Twitter’s CEO has also been vocal about his desire to move away from vanity metrics. Moreover, both Instagram and Twitter have slightly tweaked their design to put less emphasis on the number of followers an account has. The rejection of like count is probably motivated both by moral and practical reasons, comparing your number of likes to someone else’s is proven to damage one’s self-esteem.

Hiding vanity metrics from anyone could eliminate the pressure of competition people feel and make social media less stressful. Instagram has also revealed that during the tests they discovered that discarding like count leads to more content on the platform and that’s what any social media company wants. 

That’s the logical outcome of the previous point, if people feel less pressure to get the most likes, they will feel more at ease with posting. All in all, prepare to say goodbye to like counts in 2020.

How to be on-trend

• For social media managers, discarding vanity metrics means new ways of doing competitor and influencer research. You can use Facebook’s native functionality (Brand Collabs Manager, Insights) or social media analytics tools to compare your brand with your competitors or find and evaluate influencers relevant to your niche. 
• Track the number of followers, engagement rate, and ads placed on Facebook through “Pages to Watch” and “Ad Library”.
• Use social listening to compare your social media Share of Voice with your competitors.

Source: Screenshot from social listening tool, Awario

5. Try TikTok

In 2019 TikTok became one of the most downloaded apps in the app store. The swift rise of the social media app drew a lot of attention from social media marketers, and will surely draw even more attention this year. The greatest thing about TikTok is its feed algorithm which allows you to reach a significant number of users right from the get-go, without having to gain followers for a long time. 

The platform is tailored for viral content: easy sharing, trends, and challenges enable you to easily create videos with a huge potential reach. Moreover, the platform is constantly developing its business capabilities, just recently TikTok rolled out the ability to run ads on the platform for everyone. 

TikTok is the app to keep an eye on, as it is one of the fastest-growing social media networks, it surely has bigger plans for the upcoming year.

How to be on-trend

• If you’re not TikTok yet, create an account right now.
• See what trends could be useful for your industry, check out what your competitors are doing, examine the latest trends. A lot of TikTok’s content is focused on viral songs, dance challenges, and certain editing techniques. So you should research those if you want to create popular content.
• Try advertising on TikTok! TikTok Ads is not the only way to promote your product, you can also partner up with TikTok creators to reach new audiences.  

In conclusion

Social media trends don’t just pop out of nowhere and it’s not difficult to predict what will happen in the upcoming year. However, knowing something is only half the battle — you need to actually adjust your social media strategy to the ever-changing circumstances to get the best results. 

In this article, I tried to demonstrate the broader trends but also shared actionable tips to implement in your work. Some of the trends that will play out in 2020 may seem like an impediment for social media marketers, you can’t use targeting, you can’t see how many likes an influencer gets, and people are getting harder to reach since they are all hanging out in private communities. But it’s actually a chance for building genuine and trusting relationships with your audience — and you can do it by using these trends to your advantage.

Aleh is the Founder and CMO at SEO PowerSuite and Awario. He can be found on Twitter at @ab80.

As the data shows, Facebook is only a narrow second-place to YouTube in terms of popularity among US audiences, and the world-renowned social network is twice as popular as its nearest like-for-like competitor. 

(Image: LYFE Marketing)

Naturally, this means that your PPC campaigns will be accessible for more users if utilized on the pages of Facebook. If your business has serious ambitions focused on attaining more customers or scaling as efficiently as possible, it’s certainly worth looking at building some PPC campaigns to go on Facebook.

But how exactly can users optimize their PPC campaigns? And just how effective could Facebook PPC actually be? Let’s delve into how businesses can optimized their Facebook PPC campaigns in a way that drives conversions and generates growth: 

Optimize your sales funnel

Facebook ads perform a little differently to Google ads, for example.

In the case of PPC advertisements placed via Google, it’s clear that audiences will be actively looking to buy the products or services in question, whereas with Facebook, it’s far more likely to be the case that you’re appealing to audiences who are simply browsing with little intention of making an immediate purchase.

This could potentially be problematic if you’re looking to operate on a smaller budget for advertising. 

With this in mind, it could be more useful to create a Facebook campaign that’s more focused away from the act of making an immediate purchase. Through using Facebook as your platform, it’s potentially most useful if you run a series of campaigns at the same time, all with different goals which could lead to creating your own social sales funnel. 

One of the most purposeful funnels you could create as part of your Facebook PPC campaign could focus on engagement. This helps to lure new customers in and is perhaps most effective when undertaken through the medium of video. 

It’s worth taking a moment to consider exactly who your target audience are before focusing on crafting a campaign that builds meaningful connections with them. 

Be sure to build engaging content for prospective customers and optimize your campaigns. When an uploaded piece of media has attained a healthy number of views – say, over 2,500 – create a new conversion campaign that targets users who viewed around 25% of your video.

By targeting audiences who have already engaged in viewing your campaign, it’s possible to yield much higher conversion rates as opposed to marketing in a more unfocused manner. 

Build exposure through frequency

It’s possible to monitor the number of times one specific user views your advertising campaign through ad frequency. This is an important metric because audiences that witness your ad repeatedly are more likely to recall it.

It’s important to leave your mark within campaigns – but be careful of overdoing your frequency – if your ad appears too often, it’ll only lead to users ignoring your branding. 

To help you take control of your exposure, be sure to place a frequency cap on your advertising report. Once the audience is saturated, your PPC costs will slowly begin to increase.

If you notice sharp increases in your costs, it could be worth duplicating your ad set and re-launching it for new targets – thus helping to realign your campaign for new audiences. 

Make your budget go further

A/B testing is always a great way of checking which type of campaign is best for your business.

When you first create your PPC setup for Facebook, you’ll likely be running two-to-three ad sets with multiple adverts within each set. To pick which ad set is more effective, it’s important to study the metrics available to see which campaign is best helping you accomplish your goals. 

When you’ve determined which ad is performing best, gently allocate more budget towards the set – a steady boost of about 10-20% will help to optimize the money you’re using without taking too many dangerous risks. 

If you continue to see encouraging results, repeat the process each day until you see signs of diminished returns on your investment. 

To help to study your ad performance more forensically, Google Analytics has a reliable platform for gaining insights into campaigns, while external platforms like Finteza can provide rich insights into your overall website performance as well as deep traffic quality checks. 

Fine tune your target market

Proper placements bring perfection to PPC campaigns. It’s possible to use automatic placements here as well as edit your settings. There’s no right or wrong answer here, but different options will benefit different types of campaign. 

For example, if you decide to incorporate Instagram into your ad reach, it’s reasonable to expect far greater engagement, but it’s likely that you’ll see far fewer comments or likes if you choose to place your ad as a Facebook page post.

Another effective add-on comes in the form of Facebook Messenger, which generally performs well when it comes to conversions. Audience Network placements can often increase a brand’s reach but it’s important to constantly monitor your metrics to ensure that no budgeting is being wasted. 

Get the right bidding option

Facebook uses an auction-based system when running advertising campaigns. Simply put, the social network chooses the most appropriate ad for audiences based on the level of money bid by a company and its performance on the website. 

The bidding system utilized by Facebook is becoming more complex than earlier in the 2010s however, and now users need to choose how they want to optimize their ads. Advertisers need to pick the type of campaign they want to run – whether it’s based on conversions in the form of link clicks, landing page views, or certain on-site interactions. 

Naturally, this will require some introspection and businesses will need to have a clear idea of their respective advertising goals before determining the bidding option that best suits them. 

Recycle ads to preserve engagement figures

It’s vital that your advertisements go down well with their intended audiences. More popular ads will be viewed widely as more favorable among users, and will likely receive considerably more engagements from targets.

However, many of the ad tests that you’ll perform to optimize your PPC campaigns will remove your comments and restart your engagement stats for each post. 

This can be a nuisance because of the value of likes and comments to advertisers, however, it’s possible to utilize the technique of ‘social stacking’ in a way that helps to keep all interactions in tact for all to see online. 

To perform social stacking, go to the ad preview page for the existing advertisement you’re aiming to keep. Click on the drop down menu to the top right of the preview and select the option ‘Facebook Post With Comments’. Copy the end of the existing URL for your ad and then choose to ‘Use Existing Post’ when setting up a new campaign. Paste the copied Post ID from the previous step and voila – a brand new PPC ad with all the relevant likes and comments carried over.

Peter Jobes is the Content Marketing Manager at Solvid, a digital marketing agency who specializes in SEO, paid advertising and website designing.

“The new year is a time to refocus and energize your strategies for the year ahead,”

says ​Hootsuite VP Corporate Marketing Henk Campher​.

“The social trends we’ve identified at Hootsuite provide the sharpest tools needed to create the most exceptional and meaningful employee and customer experiences in 2020 and beyond.”

Brands are starting to act more like people on social, sometimes interacting one-on-one and sometimes in groups. The key is for organizations to make the experience seamless across both worlds.

Brands are also taking a stand on the most important issues facing our planet, becoming beacons of trust to their employees, who in turn are using social to amplify their company purpose.

And TikTok, the short-format video sharing platform, is shaking up the social media landscape in unexpected and delightful ways. Even if TikTok’s Gen-Z user base isn’t your target, marketers should think about diversifying their audience targeting beyond just the major social platforms.

Campher further added,

“Combined, these trends represent tremendous new opportunities for brands to establish deeper, more authentic, and longer-lasting connections with customers, with social at the center of everything they do,”

Hootsuite’s 2020 social trends for businesses large and small

1. Brands strike a balance between public and private engagement

The rise of private behaviors like 1:1 and group messaging has not diminished the importance of public social media feeds, which remain a critical space for brand discovery and customer acquisition. The key is ​creating multi-touch, personalized, and ​seamless experiences across both worlds, while balancing automation at scale and human connection to build deeper customer relationships.

2. Employers take center stage in a divided world

As our world becomes increasingly divided, employees are looking to their organizations to take a stand. Globally, employers are significantly more trusted than NGOs, businesses, government, and the media. Progressive organizations will take advantage of this new role, building strong internal cultures while amplifying their company’s purpose with employee and customer advocacy.

3. TikTok shakes up the status quo

With more than 800 million monthly active users and a median age of 16-24, TikTok continues its incredible rise. Whether or not it lasts, TikTok’s popularity brings valuable insight into the future of social culture, content, and collaboration. Social marketers should keep an eye on TikTok while using these insights to adapt their strategies on established networks for the next generation on social.

4. Social marketing and performance marketing collide

As social marketers face pressure to expand the scope of their skill sets, established champions of brand awareness and community building must also become fluent in performance marketing, finding a balance between driving short-term conversions and long-term strategies to build brand equity, customer happiness, and differentiation.

5. The social proof gap closes

New social commerce features are bridging the top and bottom of the sales funnel, creating a wealth of data around the conversion side of the customer journey. This bottom-of-the-funnel data can now be added to brand awareness activities, giving an invaluable holistic view of how people move through the entire buying journey.

Conducted in the third quarter of 2019, Hootsuite’s ​’Social Media Trends 2020‘ report is based on a survey of more than 3,100 marketers and interviews with industry specialists. The research report includes not only the trends but also Hootsuite’s recommendations for seizing the opportunities that the trends represent, along with comprehensive examples of best-in-class brands getting it right. Hootsuite’s 2020 Social Trends report can be found ​here​.

Hootsuite is the leader in social media management, trusted by more than 18 million customers and employees at more than 80 percent of the Fortune 1000.

If you are using an API tool like AdRules, you have until September 2020 before it is mandatory.

If you do any advertising on Facebook, you will be affected by this change. It will apply to both new and existing ad campaigns.

If you don’t want a rude awakening on September 1 when CBO activates in Ads Manager and your Facebook campaigns start to behave very differently, you need to start testing campaign budget optimization now.

While nobody likes mandatory, sudden changes, this is not all doom and gloom. There are some considerable upsides to CBO. You will have to give up some control over your campaigns after September first, but with CBO:

1. You’ll have less to manage

If you spend hours adjusting bids every week, or if you pay someone else to adjust bids every week, much of that bid optimization work will be over.

When campaign budget optimization is activated in Ads Manager, Facebook automatically shifts the ad budget to whichever ad set in a campaign is most effective. You get to control the definition of what “effective” means by specifying a goal for each campaign. Goals that are fairly late in your sales funnel, like a purchase or a download, tend to work best with CBO.

Because all that bid management work will be done by the Facebook algorithm, you may be able to hire less expensive people to manage your campaigns or have your team members work on more networks or accounts. Or, if you’ve been doing those bid edits yourself, you may find you suddenly have extra hours free every week. We recommend using those free hours to develop better creative, to study your competitors’ creative, or to set up a more efficient creative testing machine.

2. You’ll get a better return on ad spend (ROAS)

While there were some early reports of CBO not working as well as human-managed campaigns, the algorithm has gotten considerably smarter than when it first launched.

We’ve found that if a campaign is set up properly and the bids are high enough, CBO generally can get better results than a human can get.

CBO will also reduce how often your campaigns are put into “learning mode”. That means you won’t get penalized when Facebook’s algorithm reassesses your campaigns.

But you do need to give campaign budget optimization time to work. The algorithm needs about 50 conversions per ad set, per week, before it accrues enough data to ramp up your campaigns. And speaking of ramping up campaigns if you want to scale your campaigns, CBO is extremely effective. Especially if you keep feeding it new, high-quality audiences.

3. You will still be able to control spending (to an extent) with ad set spending limits

If you set a minimum spend for an ad set, Facebook will dutifully spend at least that amount. And if you set a maximum ad set spending limit, Facebook will not go over that limit.

This is a way to set a “governor” of sorts on your spending. It will force Facebook to run ad sets perhaps longer than it might otherwise have, but if you’re not quite ready to relinquish control, ad set spending limits are a way to ease into this new campaign management approach.

Those of you who also advertise with Google’s App Campaigns may have an edge already. Facebook is in some ways following Google’s lead by requiring advertisers to shift over to automated budget optimization.

You could, potentially, get around CBO by creating dozens or even hundreds of campaigns, each with on single ad set. But that would be working against the algorithm. And besides, CBO works well. There aren’t many good reasons to try to circumvent it. Especially when you use it along with other Facebook best practices and Facebook’s simplified campaign structure recommendation.

Start testing campaign budget optimization now

The benefits of CBO are proven, but you need to start testing now to see how to make it work well for your accounts. We still have a couple of months until the change in Ads Manager, but you may need to run multiple week-long tests to get the hang of this new budgeting strategy.

You may also need to shift how you’ve been defining goals. Using CBO for clicks is a waste of potential. Instead, look towards the end of the buyers’ journey. We like to optimize not just for app installs, but for specific app events like purchases. And not for just two-dollar purchases, we target people who are likely to spend $20 or more.

As you begin to test and measure CBO, don’t get too attached to the results of individual ad sets. Look at the campaign level, as this graphic illustrates:

Also, get ready to bump up your creatives. For CBO to work, it often needs several creative assets for each ad set. Including a few videos and elements for dynamic creatives helps too.

Pay close attention to your audiences, too. Many advertisers have found that CBO works best for them if they create separate campaigns for different audiences like one campaign for cold audiences and another campaign for a “warm” audience, like a retargeting audience.

Get ready for things like “The Breakdown Effect” to make your reporting look a little strange at first. “The Breakdown Effect” occurs when discount pacing (how frequently your ads show) intersects with discount bidding and makes it look like the system is overcharging you for conversions. What’s actually happening is the system is trying to find the most affordable conversions first, then it tries to find more expensive conversions.

If you do a lot of testing, this breakdown effect pattern may be familiar. It’s similar to how one cell of a test can look like a winner at first but as the data accrue, that early winner falls away and another cell is shown to perform better in the long-term.

Closing thoughts

Facebook is evolving. Everyone knows this, but the CBO change in September for Ads Manager is yet one more example of it happening again. And because Facebook’s advertising platform is evolving, advertisers have to evolve with it, too. If you’re still doing Facebook advertising like you were a year ago, you’re losing money and missing out on better ROAS.

Brian Bowman is the CEO of ConsumerAcquisition.com.