It seems that everywhere you turn there is something being said about social media. According to research* the use of social networking increased by 21% worldwide in 2009. While it’s growing and more and more people are talking about it, it also seems that most businesses are still trying to understand why they should be using it in the first place. What’s that about?

1. It’s all about the bottom line

Well, the why is related to “how and what” a business does to engage in marketing with the aim of creating an opportunity for a transaction – that means sales. Why do businesses exist? Primarily to create value, attract a market who wants the value and engage the market in transaction. Again that means … yep sales.

How then does social media become about sales and not just messaging, conversations and feedback? By understanding that social media’s very point is about engagement, interactivity and completely solicited information in a friend to friend referral sense, this makes it a highly effective channel to gain solicited and qualified leads. Leads handled properly turn into quotes and quotes mean sales. All you have to do is know how to ask in the right way.

2. Replace your push with pull

The “how” of how business engages with consumers, has changed from “push marketing” to “pull marketing” via relevant and relative conversations and interaction that attract the market you seek, to you. That really boils down to the fact that digital has a quality that no other medium has – the power of viral. Most marketers want viral. Why? Because viral is really just good old fashioned “word-of-mouth” and viral means money spent to make a transaction opportunity “better bang for your buck”.

In the traditional direct marketing models you can expect a 2% to 3% conversion rate. Yep that’s right 3% is considered good. But social media done right can give you at least 20% – If not 40 to 65%! That’s what most companies want. Leads that convert to sales and as many as possible.

If you make viral your priority with any activity in social media then you easily move from the push of a static online banner ad to the pull of an interactive competition, promotion, game video, widget etc.

3. Word of mouth (still) rules

Advertising relies on cool design, creative concept, clever words and often quite an enormous leap of faith by the consumer to follow and make a transaction opportunity real. PR relies on influencing the influencers to get the message across. Social media is about one friend telling another friend. Forester’s research says that a friend’s opinion is the most trusted source – weighing in at a whacking 83% trustworthy. Well then where would you spend your buck to make a sale?

Social networks are popping up left right and centre. Social networking provider Ning hosts half a million “self made” social networks on its platform. This from Ning’s launch in February 2007. It’s tempting to think “I’ll just create my own Social Network then”.

Social media means changing how you market and conduct your marketing, it’s also about giving over some power to the consumer not necessarily creating your own collection of people.

So to be effective in a space that has a different “how and what” is best to head for where you can find critical mass.

Numbers give you safety but numbers also give you leads.
The stats say that Facebook grows weekly by 5 million people. The service has gained around this amount every month starting about midway through last year, and it doesn’t appear to be slowing.

Well of course you might say- “Well that’s America where everybody is connected to the Net”. But Facebook’s market in South Africa is hardly shabby… a cool 2.4 million. Gaining access to an audience of 2.4 million Facebookers tomorrow seems like a no brainer. Leveraging that audience to interact with your brand just makes sense.

More about Popimedia Innovations

Popimedia Innovations is an Interactive Social Media Marketing Services Company providing a full-service online marketing service with a unique focus on interactive and viral marketing.
With over 100 Social Media campaigns across many industries under their belt, Popimedia Innovations’ brand of social media marketing is recognisable by its leverage of social media networks like Facebook and its definitive success in terms of lead generation for clients. Popimedia Innovation’s services deliver results for marketers venturing into the social media space.

For more information visit innovations.popimedia.com or contact us on 011-268-2640.

After two years, over 100 Social Media campaigns across many industries including Banking, Insurance, FMCG, Motor, Mobile, Airline and more, we would like to share some of our experiences, good and bad, with Social Media and Facebook in particular.

It all started with a BUZZ, yes that’s right, BUZZ is what started this business, within 1 week of launching the business we had our first client. A standard banner ad campaign on Facebook it was to be. Our client said “Yes but we had 14 Million impressions and only 4300 clicks” That’s 0.05% CTR (Click Through Rate) – “Facebook is not for us”… and so this was the story of most early adopters. Then came along “Social Ads”, “Fan Pages” and with the opening of the Facebook platform a multitude of applications and developers who rushed to find out what was possible.

click to enlarge

In the meantime, within 2 months the South African Facebook user base grew from 680,000 to 880,000. We learned that in order to run a successful campaign, a simple banner ad, or social ad was not good enough even though Facebook advertising may be cheap. What is more valuable, is the fact that users share information, pictures, videos and comments – All this information is consumed by a user through their “NewsFeed” – the page that is displayed as a user logs into Facebook.

And so, to access this rich channel of communication and tap into trusted referrals between friends we launched PIActionsTM – . This enabled our campaigns to achieve between 20% and 65% conversion from click to acquisition, and in some cases a ROI (Return on Investment) that achieved multiples above any TV, Radio or billboard spend. We even launched a new car on Facebook – yes that’s right no TV. no Radio, no Print, just Facebook with PIActionsTM.

But that’s not where the story ends, add to this customized applications; rich media; interactive widgets; mobile; how about your own Social Network around your niche interests? (Just ask Ellen DeGeneres); giving the customer live access to campaign metrics to make real time decisions; the 2 Millionth South African Facebook User; Twitter; the iPhone; Amazon’s Kindle and… and… and what you have is a battle for consumer attention in this space. So what becomes valuable in today’s fast paced world is“Beyond Advertising” – An ability to navigate through the BUZZ and innovate, move with the times, conceive of creative engaging campaigns across a multitude of platforms.

Popimedia Innovations, South Africa’s predominant Social Media specialist, is a full-service online media company that focuses on social media and viral marketing. From creative strategy through to campaign implementation; monitoring and live feedback, we are able to formalise your online marketing requirements and ensure your objectives are met.

Contact us to help formulate a social strategy today – act on it!

www.innovations.popimedia.com or 011-268-2640

Fenomenal Woman, underwritten by Hollard, renowned for innovative thinking, products and media campaigns ventured into the social media space through Popimedia and Wunderman with their “Insurance that Fits” campaign.

Objectives included brand awareness, building a database and a channel of communication for future offerings and driving sales.

The campaign ran for one month with a limited budget during the month of October utilizing Popimedia’s PIActions^TM system.  Facebook Banner ads and www.FrogsLuck.com were used to seed the campaign and introduce the exact target audience to Fenomenal Woman’s offering.  A prize of a two-day style makeover including a one-on-one styling workshop, professional hair styling, a R4 000 shopping spree and a professional photo shoot worth R30,000 was available for one lucky entrant.

The campaign once again proved that a sound digital strategy executed with a limited budget and the right expertise can achieve measurable results beyond expectations. Popimedia congratulates both the Wunderman and Fenomenal Woman teams for realizing that Digital and Social Media campaigns should form part of an integrated and upfront  approach to marketing and sales.

The campaign achieved over 9000 clicks in the month with 35% conversion to competition entry and a further 24% conversion to quotation.

26% of quotes were generated through PIActions^TM (trusted referrals) once again demonstrating that Social Media is carving out its place in lead generation.

For the latest Social Media trends, statistics and thinking on how to make digital work for you.

Facebook ads can be targeted to users based on various criteria; amongst others; age demographic; gender; key words and networks. Facebook operates using the “Search” model of selling advertising space, which relies on the bidding system. Therefore the greater the value you attribute to your ad the better your chances of out bidding another ad vying for the same placement.

The Search model is part and parcel of Cost-Per-Thousand Impressions (CPM) and/or Cost-Per-Click (CPC).

Cost-Per-Thousand Impressions (CPM)

CPM pricing is defined as a cost attributed to every 1000 impressions your ad will have on a website. The CPM model is used by most content web portals, whereby you buy X number of impressions for X Rand over X period of time and you do not have to bid for preferential placement thereby guaranteeing the exact number of impressions over the period (That is of course assuming that the web portal has enough impressions and unique visitors to serve those impressions too.)

The Search CPM model is similar but different! This model was actively promoted by the big portals such as Yahoo and AOL. It was a great guaranteed revenue generator for them that had the added bonus of being largely risk free (for them). That is, the client did all the creative work and made the payments while the only thing the web portals had to do was display the ad as often as they could until the advertiser’s budget was exhausted. No guarantees are made in respect of the number of impressions served as it is the value you attribute to your ad as well as the popularity thereof that will determine this and this is at the discretion of the web portal.

It’s this one-sided nature of both the Search CPM and content web portals CPM models that has pushed clients (marketing and advertising departments) to seek an alternative that can offer them some sort of guarantee of performance and a better return on investment (ROI).

Cost-Per-Click (CPC)

CPC sometimes called Pay-Per-Click (PPC) involves risk from the media owner’s side in that they are only paid for every click on the ad. This forces them to ensure that the ad is relevant to what is being offered so that it has a good chance of turning into an action (click). At the same time, the client takes on the responsibility of displaying the ad in appropriate places and multiple times so that it will receive clicks. No clicks, no revenue. It’s a very simple formula for both sides.

Search CPC is the same thing, however, you will have to bid to attribute a value to your click which would otherwise be an agreed fee with a content web portal. In this case the media owner needs to also take into account the quality of such placements ensuring that ads are actually relevant and have a high chance of a click.

This sharing of risk and the simplicity in measuring performance is why Search CPC and CPC have become so popular. It has been so wildly successful that Google (using Search CPC) generates most of its billions in revenue by playing the middleman between advertisers and media owners. In the case of the ads on the search engine results, Google actually is the publisher. An entire industry has sprung up around this model where big name companies’ pay search engine marketers to handle their advertising campaigns. These CPC campaigns are so successful that there has been a measurable shift in advertising spend with more and more going toward the online world.

It is a well known fact that online ads do not get immediate responses the first time a user sees it much like one does not react to a TV advert immediately. Users have to see an advert multiple times in order to get them to action (click) the ad. A Search CPM model used to create multiple impressions would require very deep pockets to pay for a significant number of impressions to justify a reasonable ROI. 100% of the risk would be with you the advertiser. However, on a CPC basis, you only pay for the click, so you are guaranteed the multiple impressions and on Facebook this amounts to millions of impressions!

By way of example –

Search CPM and CPM is tantamount to saying to the web portal – “here is R5000, spend it wisely!” Search CPC and CPC, on the other hand, is tantamount to saying to the web portal – “here is R5000, if you want it, go work for it!”

How revenues effect business models and offerings?

The CPM (not Search CPM) model is the only model most content web portals offer as it would not be financially viable for them to offer CPC. The simple reason for this is due to the fact that these small web portals don’t have the critical mass traffic required for them to rely on CPC alone from a revenue perspective. At a few cents; Rands or Dollars per click, no small web portal would make money.

Facebook on the other hand, offers a Search CPM model as this is a good business offering from their revenue perspective, however with over 200 million users around the world growing at a rate of five million people per week – they do not need to rely on the Search CPM model for revenues, and therefore offer the Search CPC model too as this is more attractive to the client.

As Facebook has critical mass traffic they are able to serve as many ads as possible, to your desired target audience, in order to convert the clicks into revenue. Utilising the Search CPC model on Facebook ensures millions of impressions in a short space of time which guarantees ROI and ensures that they work for their money!

What next?

As clients get more familiar with what works online and what does not and with ever increasing options for placement, a few more models have come to the fore with exciting prospects for marketers:

1. Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA): Affiliate marketing has expanded and today’s technology is pushing the length that media owners are willing to go to prove that their offering actually works. In this case the advertiser calculates what the cost of acquisition is (the cost of obtaining a new lead or converting that lead into a sale). They can then understand what they should be willing to pay for a lead. It should be stressed though that CPA although fairly new to some, should currently form part of any online campaign’s metric in order to quantify ROI.
2. Cost-Per-Call (CPT): With technologies such as Skype, a click can effectively mean a call from the prospects computer directly to the clients sales call centre. Click fraud now becomes a thing of the past, and clients are only paying for genuine sales leads.
3. Stay tuned to Popimedia who has launched South Africa’s first homegrown CPC model in the form of FrogsLuck.com.

Social media are primarily Internet and mobile based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. ….. activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction, …… “building” of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories and experiences.

Consider the latest trends in internet traffic and the picture is clear – today’s technology is enabling communication and social interaction in a way that is becoming simpler and more effective:

Alexa Top 60

Alexa – The web information company reports on the top websites from around the world.  Interpreting and categorising the South African results paints an interesting picture and shows us the speed that South African consumers are integrating their everyday lives with Social Media:

Alexa Top 60 - Site Category share

35% of the top 60 South African ranked sites are Social, followed by news at 28%.

Categorised top 60 SA sites

Viewed in another way – we can see that uptake of Social Media in South Africa is certainly gaining traction.

What does this all mean?

This does not mean that the way we communicate has changed much since the dawn of time. Instead what has changed is the visibility and impact of our conversations. This in turn means the consumer voice is becoming ever more powerful. One only has to look at sites like Hello Peter; Trip Advisor or Yelp and this becomes evident.

Not only has Social Media become important for marketers and advertisers to leverage, but it also enables productivity in large organizations and allows for collaboration in new and simple ways that can be more effective than a standard boardroom meeting….Stay tuned

(Stay tuned to Popimedia on Social and we will bring you the latest trends on Social Media from around the world)

What better way to do direct marketing than if it is sent directly from a friend. Would you rather act on the call to action from a company or from your best friend? This is what Facebook can add to traditional direct marketing campaigns.

If Google is the ‘Yellow Pages’ of today’s world, then Facebook is the ‘White Pages’. It has become the biggest trend in the world today with its 200 million users, growing at a rate of 5 million per week.

Facebook has turned its Newsfeed into a stream of information flowing from each user’s network. If the Facebook user becomes a fan of a product or brand then this brand in essence is part of their network. This means that content is consumed on a many-to-one basis, as opposed to a one-to-many strategy that is more common of traditional media. Consumers create a stream of information that is their own, and that they find relevant to themselves on an individual basis.

Business cannot afford to ignore Facebook – Consider that the average Facebook user has 120 friends; imagine the result if this user encourages their network to engage with your brand, creating word of mouth referral that is credible and widespread.

Add to this – through 3^rd party applications and systems – the ability to track friend-to-friend referrals, and to collect rich data on a real time basis and what you have is a powerful direct marketing and market research tool.

Rules of engagement

Businesses can interact with Facebook in any number of ways  - from; amongst others; social competitions; applications; widgets and standard advertising banners to creating a Fan Page or Group. However before selecting a strategy to engage with users, the following should be considered:

1. Identify objectives – sales, leads, conversions, brand building, etc.
2. Outline a time-frame (short term, campaign based, or long term)
3. Consider budget
4. Creative concept
5. Decide whether to leverage trusted referrals.

The most common initial engagement with Facebook has been the creation of a Fan Page or Group. Problems manifest when companies try this on their own and find that it does not work – that’s because there are a lot of added features, applications and rich content options that can be added, including custom applications that will pull in information from other content sources. The main issue is that consumers are not always passionate enough about a brand to become its Facebook fan. Businesses therefore have to keep there page relevant, simple, and perhaps add an incentive such as a competition.

The basic steps to follow in creating a Facebook Fan Page for a brand/company:

1. You should already be a Facebook user – if not, sign up its free.
2. Visit this link (http://www.facebook.com/pages/) and browse some of the more popular pages to try to understand what makes a page successful
3. Then visit http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php and Facebook will take you through the step by step process.

Once the initial engagement has brought a user to the brand’s Fan Page, it is important that they opt in to receive communications from the brand – there’s no point in having a one-sided conversation. Thus over time, the brand starts to build up a database of users, and hopefully, will also segment this base in a richer manner than traditional methods might allow.

Other Media & negative sentiment

Integration of the Facebook platform with other media is a viable means of bringing the brand alive, as well as making the brand profile more interesting and attractive to the user. A movie or sound clip can appear on the fan page and be integrated into the campaign. A television or radio advert can promote the fan page of the product and in doing so create more interest and drive traffic.

Widgets, that can be embedded in Facebook Pages and across the web for example, enable and optimise common online tasks, such as research and basic transactions, as well as providing entertainment and unique content. A bank might develop a widget that allows the user to track shares, or the stock exchange on a minute by minute basis. The use of widgets can translate into relevant offers, cross-selling opportunities, and a real return on investment.

A concern for brands is the level of control they should have over the interactions and conversations in this space. Facebook does allow the Fan Page owner to delete entries (such as negative consumer comments about a brand, for example). But the more brands try to control a conversation in this manner, the more harm they are actually doing. Brands should grow with their consumers and will find if they listen and address negative comments, the brand will inevitably get stronger.

Measurement

Measuring the impact of a Facebook campaign will depend on a brand’s objectives. However, the traditional online measure of CTR (click through rates) needs to be transformed into CPC (cost per click), CPA (cost per acquisition) and CPS (cost per sale) metrics. These should be implemented at campaign launch.

Market perceptions usually follow the buzz, and the buzz usually follows phrases like “Are you on Twitter? ….We want to do something on twitter, but we don’t know what”

We will use this blog to post some insights, case studies and sometimes crazy questions we get from the public and clients. So check back about once a week and let us know of any particular areas of interest you may be curious about.