The conference had a lot of takeaways, but if you had to boil it down to just one it would be this: desktop is dead, long live mobile!
Here are four key points to retain from this year’s Facebook conference:
It’s all good and well to have a lot of clicks, an astronomical click rate, or a cost-per-view of $0.01, but in the end what counts is getting people to buy your products or sign up for your service. I often tell clients that I would rather see my campaigns perform badly but hit their business objectives, than produce great results on Facebook but miss their targets. The platform has evolved over time, and there are now many ways to optimize Facebook campaigns so that they can be successful and achieve their business results. Here are a few tricks!
When you’re planning a television campaign, frequency is super important. You would never launch an initiative without a significant GRP (Gross Rating Point). Why should it be any different on Facebook? Here’s why it’s important, essential even, to target your audience with the right frequency for your campaign. This is especially true for brand campaigns, where frequency is critical to establishing your message.
How can you reach your target customers, especially if you’re aiming for millennials? By prioritizing mobile. More than 85% of Facebook traffic comes from mobile. That’s where your focus needs to be. Which brings me to my third point.
You have to think differently. The days of 16:9 are over. Welcome to the era of 9:16! This mobile format allows you to show full-screen video, on your mobile. Forget about all the rumors about videos produced for television being reused for Facebook and other platforms. Those days are done. Videos used on Facebook need to be produced using best practices for the platform:
Ideally, creative material should be adapted to different audiences. For example, during the conference we were presented with a creative for a coffee brand that was adapted for millennials (very dynamic) and then for baby boomers (more low key). It was a big success. They were able to capture the attention of both groups by adapting their creative to the realities of their audiences.
It is also important to remember that not only is your creative competing against your competitors, it’s also competing with cat videos, pictures of newborns, the Habs’ newest acquisition, and posts from a favorite group. You have to find a way to stand out from the crowd.
It’s great to put all the pieces in place for a successful Facebook campaign, but you’re dead on arrival if you haven’t first decided on an attribution model and a source of truth. Here are a few questions you should be able to answer before launching your marketing efforts:
The answers to these questions will influence how you measure the results of your digital campaigns. I invite you to consult this article to learn more!
Again this year, the Facebook Summit was an excellent source of information on the platform and digital marketing in general. Moreover, not only is it a great way to get up to date on the latest market trends, it’s an opportunity to network with clients, colleagues and experts from the industry and learn more about the realities of each.
A few things I retained from the conference:
I’m already looking forward to next year’s conference that I’m sure will be just as instructive. In the meantime, I’m going to go optimize my mobile campaigns as much as I can… And maybe desktop too…