A whopping $8.4B is going to be spent on Halloween this year. So, check out these tips and tricks to capture those treats (and to plan some tricks for next year). Read the full article at MarketingProfs
Trick or Treat Your Way Into Halloween Sales [Infographic]
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Saturday, October 29, 2016
Trick or Treat Your Way Into Halloween Sales [Infographic]
Friday, October 28, 2016
#SocialSkim: Twitter Kills Vine, Instagram Tests Live Video, Facebook Bulks Up for Businesses
Twitter, Pinterest suffer cyberattack; Instagram's live-streaming foray; Microsoft's challenge to Slack; Facebook's newest features for businesses; Twitter's plans for big layoffs; Snapchat's viewership dip; how B2B marketers can use Facebook. Read the full article at MarketingProfs
#SocialSkim: Twitter Kills Vine, Instagram Tests Live Video, Facebook Bulks Up for Businesses
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Facebook Reach Objective: Cap Ad Frequency While Maximizing Reach
I love my Power Hitters Club community because members often stumble on new features before I do. Case in point: Reach Objective.
Way back on June 23, one of our PHC – Elite members shared the following screen shot…
He said it was for the Brand Awareness objective, but it allowed him to cap frequency. I didn't have it. Very few people - if anyone - had it. I completely forgot about it.
Four months later, another member stumbled on the Reach objective…
I still didn't have it for my main ad account. But after poking around, I realized that I do have it for one of my other ad accounts.
It's not clear whether this feature remains a test or if it is now being rolled out globally. But let's take a closer look at what we know…
Reach Objective Defined
The tip Facebook provides for the Reach objective is simple:
Choose this objective if you'd like to show your ad to the largest audience for your budget.
That sounds fair enough. But we could already do that before - or at least something similar. Using one of several different objectives, you could optimize for impressions within the ad set. Facebook would then “deliver your ads to people as many times as possible.”
Okay, so there's a slight difference there. If you take that definition literally, Facebook is focused more on volume of impressions than the number of people reached. On one hand it's controlled on the campaign side and on the other, the ad set. But the results - in theory - shouldn't be much different.
So why is Reach objective a big deal? Frequency capping.
This Isn't Reach and Frequency Buying Type
I know what you're thinking: “Come on, man. This isn't new. This is the Reach and Frequency buying type.”
While 99.9% of advertisers (don't quote me on that number, but it's A LOT!) use the default “Auction” buying type at the campaign level, Reach and Frequency is an option. But it isn't an objective. When Reach and Frequency is selected, only seven objectives are available (including the new Reach objective).
Yes, the Reach and Frequency buying type does allow you to cap frequency. But the entire ad set creation process is different…
You can't target Custom Audiences. You can't use manual bidding. You can't do a lot of things. And you need a minimum audience size of 200,000 people in a single country to use it - typically with a rather high minimum budget.
Hands On With the Reach Objective
The Reach objective, though, is like selecting any other objective. You may have it either within the Ad Create Tool or Power Editor…
Even using Quick Draft campaign creation in Power Editor…
From the ad set, you can target Custom Audiences and multiple countries at once - just as you'd target normally.
The only eligible placements for this objective are News Feed (desktop and mobile) and Instagram.
No right hand column or Audience Network for you.
Within Optimization & Delivery, you can choose between optimization options, manual or automatic bidding and frequency capping…
And the big key here, of course, is frequency capping.
This is a pain point for advertisers who often run into frequency issues. You can set a minimum number of days that need to pass before someone will see your ad again.
Within optimization options, you can also select Impressions…
We talked about this earlier. There's a minor difference, but here Facebook is focusing on volume of impressions as opposed to volume of unique people reached.
And as you can see here, there's no frequency capping in this case (which makes sense)…
Advertisers only have the option to be charged for the impression. This would again be obvious. The focus here is on impressions, not on clicks.
Your ad creation options for this objective are as follows:
- Promote an existing post
- Promote a single link from scratch
- Promote a carousel
- Promote a video or slideshow
- Promote a Canvas
Compared to Daily Unique Reach
Up until now, advertisers could minimize frequency by using the Daily Unique Reach bidding option.
It's actually something I've used quite often - and recommended - when targeting a very small and (extremely) relevant audience. When targeting 500 people who opted in to a specific offer for an up-sell, for example, you wouldn't want Facebook to optimize and reach only some of those people. But you'd also probably want to control your frequency.
One of the issues with Daily Unique Reach, though, was that while you wouldn't reach the same person more than once per day, you still may reach that person every day for a week. And that may not be preferred.
That's why Reach and Frequency was a disappointment to me and many others. I wanted to use it in place of Daily Unique Reach to give more control without changing my budget and targeting strategies.
Use Cases for Reach Objective
And that, my friends, is the beauty of the Reach objective using frequency capping. I will prefer this over Daily Unique Reach going forward.
So if you have a highly relevant audience and you want to reach all of them without bombarding them with ads every day, this is a tremendous option. I'll likely cap it at somewhere between 3 to 7 days. Onced a week may not be enough, and three three times may be too much. Ideally, I want to aim for twice per week.
But of course, you won't be optimizing for an action. I still wish Facebook would allow me, for example, to optimize for website clicks and cap the frequency.
As a result, I personally wouldn't use this for cold traffic. I wouldn't even use it for what most people would consider very relevant and targeted traffic. For me, it's got to be a specific case where the audience is small and incredibly valuable, and I want to reach every single one of those people.
That said, it doesn't mean that advertisers won't find reason to use this for larger audiences. It can be used as a Reach and Frequency substitute when targeting broad audiences that aren't allowed with R&F (more than one country or Custom Audiences, for example). There will be awareness value here, too.
Your Turn
Let me be clear that I don't know whether this is a test or a rollout. I don't know whether Facebook has immediate plans for it. But it does appear that more advertisers are getting access to it, which can lead us to some conclusions.
Do you have this feature yet? How do you plan to use it?
Let me know in the comments below!
The post Facebook Reach Objective: Cap Ad Frequency While Maximizing Reach appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.
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Facebook Reach Objective: Cap Ad Frequency While Maximizing Reach
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
Instagram vs. Snapchat, Facebook Notes, Buffer Hacks & Personal Emojis – Bonus Episode [002]
We are super excited to share our second, very special bonus podcast episode with you!
Our bonus episodes offer a fun change of pace from our traditional “interview-style” episodes on The Science of Social Media. Get to know the hosts Hailley, Kevan, & Brian a bit better as they share some of the things they're working on this week in social media – complete with actionable takeaways and useful insights.
This week we're chatting all about Snapchat vs. Instagram Stories and how brands and people are using the platforms in very unique ways. We also discuss our Facebook Notes experiment, if it's possible to brand your own emoji, and how to build your own content hub within Buffer!
A huge thank you to all of you for joining us every week for brand new episodes of The Science of Social Media. We appreciate you taking the time to listen and for your amazing support over the last few weeks. We'd love to hear from you on iTunes or using the hashtag #bufferpodcast on Twitter.
This episode is available on:
Here's what we chat about in this episode:
- Snapchat vs. Instagram Stories and how brands and individuals are using the platform in very different ways
- Our recent experiment with Facebook Notes and how they performed in comparison to normal links
- If it's possible to brand your own emoji and what effect that may have on your social media
- We play a fun game called “Top 10” – We'd love for you to tune in to play along with us!
4 Key Takeaways from the Show from Hailley, Brian, and Kevan
Quotes pulled from the show!
1. Facebook Notes experiment & learnings
Within the Facebook composer there's a great feature called Facebook Notes which essentially looks like a Medium post directly within Facebook. There's a cover photo, you can format the post, and it posts natively within Facebook. The hypothesis going in was that Facebook would reward a native blog post with more reach and engagement. To our surprise, it did not perform as well as we thought it would.
Although the post didn't work, it sparked people's curiosity. I'd highly recommend that you all give Facebook Notes a try and see how it works for you. I would love to hear how it goes in the comments below!
2. How brands and people are using Snapchat vs. Instagram Stories
“The biggest thing for me, and I've been experimenting with this a lot, is testing and learning about Snapchat Stories vs. Instagram Stories. I'm coming at this from a personal user perspective and what I've been doing is using Snapchat as a 1-to-1 communication tool. Then I take the content that I used to put on Snapchat and post that to Instagram Stories because I have a much bigger audience there. Instagram is more of that one-to-many strategy. But for many marketers and brands it is quite the opposite. It's interesting to see how it is playing out in the social media world.”
3. Creating a hub of great content in Buffer and “can I brand an emoji?”
“I love to have some go-to Tweets and go-to Facebook posts when I'm out of content. So I've built myself a content repository within Buffer. What I've done is created a fake Twitter account for myself and connected it to Buffer. Every so often I will run through the Tweets from my main Twitter account, find the ones that are best performing, and then drag them over into the fake account. I also have a IFTTT recipe that connects my favorite Pocket reads into my fake Twitter account. From there, I can drag them from the fake account into my real account whenever I'm dry on content.”
4. Branding your own emoji
“I would like to brand my own emoji – the French Fry emoji
Social Media, CX, and Lessons From Working With Steve Jobs: LiveWorld's Peter Friedman on Marketing Smarts [Podcast]
Peter Friedman, former Apple vice-president, and founder and CEO of LiveWorld, shares insights on social media for brands, customer experience, and business. Read the full article at MarketingProfs
Social Media, CX, and Lessons From Working With Steve Jobs: LiveWorld's Peter Friedman on Marketing Smarts [Podcast]
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How Social Automation Can Be Good, Not Evil
Social media automation has a dicey reputation, as many people believe that it robs social media of its humanity. I understand and appreciate that sentiment. I miss the days when Twitter was the best place to go for real conversation, and Instagram didn't have “stories” comprised of “look at me” mini-broadcasts. But my job-and the jobs […]
How Social Automation Can Be Good, Not Evil
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How to Grow Revenue 130% Using This 7-Step Customer Retention Process
LINDSAY WILLOTT, CEO, CUSTOMER THERMOMETER
Six years ago I founded a SaaS business (Software as a Service). Back then, every effort went into winning the first customer, then the second and so on. Before long, we'd shaken off the trappings of startuphood and embraced the realities of a mature business. This meant getting our heads around customer retention.
Customer churn is inevitable. Whilst we tried incredibly hard to keep every customer, as well as delighting them, some churn is always going to happen. We'd largely accepted it. Over time you lose some customers, but you work hard to keep everyone you can. You go out and sell more too. Net gain. Success.
But deep down, I suspected we could do more.
Becoming 100% customer retention focused
We could have carried on the way we were, winning more than we were losing. Customers were hardly leaving in droves. In 2015, our churn was low and our net sales growth was strong.
Like every other business, we'd put more effort into winning new customers, rather than fully understanding the nature and lifecycle of our existing ones. Throw into the mix the already dramatic growth of Customer Thermometer, and the fact that industry niches were changing over that time, we had some real knowledge gaps.
So we decided, customer retention would be our major focus for the next 365 days. Every decision we made would have our customers at its heart. We would still facilitate new business acquisition, but our energies would be more focused on existing customers. After this experiment we put together our customer retention guide and case study for other startup and SMEs to learn from our experience.
7 changes that transformed our customer outlook
We saw this as more than just sales and marketing. Every aspect of our business was a candidate for change.
This is what we did. We hope you could apply some or all of these to your business today.
1 – Branded our customer support team
Support people are capable of miracles, and I'm proud of what ours do. When a customer told our customer support team, “you should call yourself magicians” we jokingly started referring to them as The Ministry of Magic. I had no idea of the difference of the effect this would have.
It's become a brand, a vision and a reason to go the extra mile. It has empowered our team to pursue the highest possible standards and constantly out-do their achievements. New support recruits have a tangible sense of something to live up to. It's given us the confidence to reject customer support metrics (like minimum enquiry response times) and concentrate instead on giving the best possible response(s) to a customer requirement as soon as one arises.
Customers understood the value straight away and enjoyed knowing that high expectations will always be met. It's also made our support environment a positive, effortless place to interface with customers, not a stressful one.
2 – Stopped forcing people to cancel when they just wanted a break
Our product helps businesses take the temperature of their customers, but not everyone wants to do this month-in, month-out – though they still want occasional access to historic data.
Consequently, we were losing valued customers because our pricing plan was too rigid, pushing them through a cancellation process and hoping they'd come back when they wanted to restart.
Our 'At the Beach' option now provides that pause button at a negligible cost, which has not only stopped churn but put it into reverse gear. We were keeping accounts live and secure for no fee which was wrong. Free isn't valued. Our paused plan is now win-win for all.
Digital entrepreneurs should be aware of overlooking the importance of having a fully customer-centric approach to their plans and how they are priced.
3 – Started policing credit card declines more positively
'Dunning' is the process of chasing payments and automated dunning management is where a billing system polices credit card declines to ensure revenues keep flowing and accounts remain uninterrupted. This is really important for SaaS providers, but we were getting it wrong. The revenue flow wasn't so much the issue – it was infuriating customers who had no intention of missing their payments.
Our old system was noisy and intrusive. It focused on single payments rather than customer accounts. That's a bad recipe for policing valued customers effectively. We've now replaced it with Recurly, because it's calmer, friendlier and handles this process seamlessly.
Changing your billing system as we did feels like a heart transplant and my advice to anyone attempting it, is to allow six months of planning to get it right. Even better, put the right billing platform in place from the start.
4 – Moved to a continual release cycle
Big releases distract focus and resources away from your other efforts. They are harder to get right, take longer to test, and necessitate big changes to the self-serve support resources on your website. Big releases also inevitably get delayed.
You can't claim to be customer-centric just because the bulk of your product development is driven by customer feedback. That's just par for the course. And saving it all up for two releases a year might be conventional wisdom, but it doesn't actually help anybody.
Key customers might wait 6-8 months to see us implement a product change, because we thought that's what mature SaaS companies did. When each new release went out, the seismic shift in unfamiliarity would create extra support tickets as customers came to terms with it.
Hence we now have an ongoing roadmap for development, and new releases are put out every few weeks. Just last month, a key customer had a specific request and we added the feature within 10 days.
5 – Discovered the value of our content – and shared it all
So often in business, content is prepared lovingly for an audience of one. As part of the sales process, lists of URLs, slide decks, videos and documents are diligently researched and created. This is not smart use of time.
The change was to start sharing this content with other customers, taking care to redact references identifying who the content was originally for. We also used the content to inspire new guides, blogs and documentation. Now more than 5% of our blog traffic now comes from a single 'new content' ad on our app's login page.
The test of really valuable content is whether it makes you question if you're giving away too much. Learn to embrace that anxiety as a sign that you're doing the right thing. (This blog post is a good example of opening that kimono!)
6 – Augmented automated onboarding with a sincere welcome
Like other SaaS providers, we use autoresponders during the customer lifecycle – predefined email sequences sent at predefined intervals.
For all their advantages, we felt we were leaving our sincerity in the hands of a machine, and missing opportunities to reach out and add value to a recently acquired customer.
As founders, Mark (Copeman) and I now invest more time finding out about new customers and getting in touch. Can we help? Have you thought of this or that? The objective is to help them feel confident we will personally help them if they need us to, not to elicit the maximum % response.
Look at autoresponders as a framework, rather than a rulebook, for your onboarding communications. Mix it up once in a while – go and talk to a real customer or prospect whenever you can. It's hugely rewarding.
7 – Ensured regular customer-founder contact
Our customers are spread across 50+ countries and there are a lot more of them than us. Coupled with our low cost of product (typically sub $50/month), visiting them all in person is sadly a pipedream.
But existing customers are massive users of webchat, and Mark and I personally staff it at least twice a week. This isn't a vanity exercise; there is no reason to make a point that “you are chatting with a founder today.”
Do this to discover a real-time intimacy with customers that you haven't had before, understand their perspective and give the highest possible level of service. Being on the front line is a good place to spend your time as a business owner.
What you get for challenging the revenue status quo
We'd hoped to create a foundation for future growth. What we weren't expecting was significant, immediate growth of nearly 130%.
The ultimate, unintended consequence of focusing entirely on existing customers was to have won lots of new customers. This is exactly what happened.
It's hard to measure, but we believe that referrals from happy customers have increased significantly. We're also seeing existing customers spend more, largely because we've made it easier for them to upgrade and we're concentrating on showing them the value they get through better interaction and content.
Worksheet: Benchmark your unique customer retention potential
There are no shortcuts to being more successful at customer retention. Review the following questions and have in the back of your mind: “Do we do it this way for our own needs or for our customers' needs?”
- What is your product development/release cycle? Are you putting your organization under undue stress and making customers wait too long to see changes realized?
- How do you onboard customers? Is it entirely automated or do you take the opportunity to inject some humanity?
- As a founder, how connected to customers are you? Do you get the full picture?
- Is your customer support team just set up to deliver against a series of minimum requirements, or are they inspired to go the extra mile?
- Do your pricing plans reflect how your customers want to consume your product, or is it solely based on your costs and revenue/margin expectations?
- How do you treat customers when they appear to have stopped paying their bills? Are you noisy and insistent, or more quietly effective?
- What's your approach to creating content? To produce thinly-veiled versions of your value proposition, or create insight that's almost too valuable to give away?
Guest Author: Barrie Adams
The post How to Grow Revenue 130% Using This 7-Step Customer Retention Process appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.
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How to Grow Revenue 130% Using This 7-Step Customer Retention Process
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