Why one size does not fit all social networks

Why one size does not fit all and
how you should approach each.

| Social Advertising Part 1: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn

Executive summary...................................................................................................4
Social ad network summary............................................................................................ 5
Facebook....................................................................................................................... 7
Learnings.........................................................................................................................................7
Users want to stay in the network where possible...................................................... 7
Facebook wants you to stay in its network.................................................................. 7
Social ads perform better................................................................................................ 8
Other best practices for Facebook advertising................................................................9
Images and branding........................................................................................................ 9
Title copy........................................................................................................................... 9
Body copy........................................................................................................................ 10
Calls-to-action................................................................................................................. 10
Targeting........................................................................................................................... 11
CPC vs CPM....................................................................................................................... 11
Sponsored Stories: your opportunity for brand advocacy......................................... 12
Sponsored Stories in the News Feed............................................................................12
Sponsored Stories in mobile..........................................................................................13
The Wildfire Storyteller application............................................................................ 14
Managing your advertising mix.................................................................................... 14
Twitter............................................................................................................................15
Logistics......................................................................................................................................... 15
Promoted Accounts.........................................................................................................15
Promoted Tweets.............................................................................................................16
Placement in Search........................................................................................................16


Placement in the Timeline..............................................................................................17
Promoted Trends.............................................................................................................17
Best practices for Twitter advertising................................................................................18
Keep content fresh and engaging.................................................................................18
Geography........................................................................................................................18
Mobile................................................................................................................................18
LinkedIn.........................................................................................................................19
Logistics....................................................................................................................................19
Best practices for LinkedIn ddvertising............................................................................20
Imagery and branding....................................................................................................20
Linking your title and copy to your audience.............................................................20
Strong calls-to-action....................................................................................................20
Running promotions to drive ad efficacy....................................................................21
Weekly trends when timing your campaigns..............................................................21
Targeting..........................................................................................................................22
Optimization....................................................................................................................22


What you need to know before
you jump into the details
As a marketer, you have likely dipped your toes into “social”
waters, and developed a branded presence and audience.
But have you mastered the art of moving that audience into
action, or tapping into the incredible population of users inter-
acting on social networks that have not yet joined the ranks
of your brand’s community? It’s only in building an engaged
audience that you can tap into the holy grail of all advertising:
“Word of Mouth (WOM) at Scale.”
A new era in marketing is here, and the dividing line between what makes a good ad and what
inspires user engagement has all but dissolved. Going forward, an effective social ad strategy
must pull in new fans and followers, and also optimize for the types of users that want to engage
with your brand for the long haul.
In order to develop an ad strategy that results in long-term engagement, you have to develop
a campaign that plays off the existing, organic “rules of engagement” unique to each social
network. After all, what inspires Susan to share your brand post on Facebook will be quite
different from what moves John to re-tweet your brand message on Twitter. However, the clues
to building an effective ad campaign on either network can be found by observing what content
and ad strategies engaged both Susan and John.
In this report, Wildfire offers you a framework for understanding how users interact with
paid and owned content on Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin, and how to pay for the
kinds of ads now that will lead to additional “earned media” later. Let’s start by looking at
the differences between social advertising on these platforms…


Social Network Ad Summary
If we had to describe each social network with one word, what would it be?
Facebook = Connection
Twitter = Information
LinkedIn = Professions
See how those differences play out in our “Social Network Ad Summary” Table below:
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn
Purpose Connection Information Professions
Consdierations
for Audience/
Targeting
1) Users want to stay in
network (and Facebook
charges less for ads to
internal destination)
2) Utilize social ads to
leverage users’ intent
to connect with friends/
family
1) Users expect fresh or
“breaking news” content
2) Target promoted
tweets to Timeline rather
than search
3) Target only relevant
geographies during
international campaigns
1) Users identify by their
professions – target
accordingly
2) For maximum ad efficacy,
focus on targeting specific
groups of users, versus by
targeting members of LinkedIn
“Groups,” as these groups can
include a broader selection of
users (which dulls the effects
of extensive targeting efforts!)
Key ad units Sponsored Stories =
highest engagement
Promoted accounts,
tweets, trends (note:
“trends” are higher cost
and require a Twitter
ad rep)
Two placements available –
right hand side and bottom of
page
Channels/
Timing
Newly available: ads for
Newsfeed and Mobile
Strong mobile
consumption
Traffic peaks Mondays
and Wednesdays; minimal
weekend traffic
User traffic peaks during
working hours— keep this
in mind when targeting
geographies and time zones


After you consider the different “rules of engagement” on each network, it’s essential to think holistically about how
the individual parts of your user’s experience connect within one network. Specifically are you thinking about how the
following all connect?
• your paid media (ads)
• your owned media (branded destinations like your Facebook page and all the custom content you create for it)
• your earned media (the viral reach being generated by users clicking, sharing and commenting on your content).
In the not-so-distant past, marketers may have thought about and managed these three media types independently
in social, but we are experiencing a sea change in our industry. Social networks like Facebook are reinventing tra-
ditional “push advertising” in favor of a new concept of paid placement for quality content (i.e. in Facebook’s case
“sponsored stories” that the user would have seen anyway, just higher up in the feed and more persistent).
When your paid, owned and earned media are optimized together (through a virtuous cycle of testing and learning),
you’ll decrease your advertising costs and have money left over to reach more new users! So please keep this con-
text in mind as we dig into the specifics of ad optimization in the report ahead.
Summary
When considering advertising on the different social networks, you should be aware of the dynamics
specific to that network to ensure you receive the most bang for your advertising buck.
In this report, you’ll learn specific best practices on the messaging, design, content, targeting, and
optimization of social ads on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.


Facebook
What is Facebook’s relevance to you as a marketer and advertiser? According to VentureBeat,
American users spend over 6 hours a month interacting on Facebook. And with over 900 million
monthly active users, that’s a tremendous audience that has the potential to bump into your
brand. In the US itself, Facebook will account for 6.5% of all online ad spending in 2012.
Facebook’s ad revenues will swell more than 60% this year to reach $5.06 billion worldwide, af-
ter posting growth of 68.2% in 2011 (according to eMarketer). Additionally, social ad (Facebook
ads with social context such as a “Like” button) click-thru-rates (CTRs) have improved by 18% in
2011. This could mean that users are engaging more or ads are becoming more effective.
So what should you consider with respect to Facebook advertising?
Users want to stay in network where possible
We see time and time again that users don’t like to be taken outside of Facebook. Studies have confirmed that in
comparison to ads on Facebook that stay in-network, ads that drop the user outside of Facebook lead to significantly
higher bounce rates.
One study by SEOMoz confirmed that bounce rates from Facebook ads
increased 41% over the typical bounce rates from those brands’ websites. In
addition, the users that stayed around the site after clicking through to it were
much less engaged with the content: SEOMoz reported a 57% decrease in
time spent on the site as compared to typical page visitors.
Facebook wants you to stay in network
No surprise here, but in addition to users reacting poorly to being dropped outside of Facebook after interacting
with an ad, Facebook itself appears to be incentivizing advertisers to grow their Facebook applications and Pages,
with cost per click (CPC) campaigns that point to a page or tab within Facebook costing 29% less than those
linking offsite.
Facebook is intentionally charging more favorable rates to advertisers who keep
users inside the Facebook ecosystem, as this promotes what Facebook wants:
more time spent on the network. This does, however, mean that you need to have
a destination page or tab with engaging content to drive to; otherwise the efficacy
you have built into your ads will be lost when users are sent to an untargeted page
with no follow-thru-action (like your Timeline home page, for example, if your ad
promised something more specific, such as a special promotional code or item).
41%
higher
bounce
rates
57% less
time spent
on site
CPC costs
29% less
when in-
network


Ultimately, you, as a marketer, want your paid media (ads), owned media
(your branded destinations) and earned media (the additional share of voice
from people commenting, sharing, liking your content) working together
in the most efficient way, and staying in network with a dedicated landing
page tab enables this to happen.
Check out our blog for more tips on content and engagement:
http://blog.wildfireapp.com/
Social ads perform better
The core of the Facebook network centers around connection.
People are there to connect with their friends and family, and they
also want to discover what other users are doing.
We see greater response rates when a brand’s message is paired
with content that shows how a user’s friends or network have
interacted with that brand. Essentially, your advertising message
includes a trusted referral or endorsement from someone your
users know.
Gokul Rajaram, Facebook’s Product Director for Ads, confirmed
this. According to Rajaram, branded messages paired with a
social context result in a 68% higher ad recall and 4x greater
likelihood that a viewer will purchase.
Social ads are Facebook ads that are set up to include
Facbook graphic elements such as the “Like”button and list
of friends who also liked the ad
Branded messages paired with a social
context result in a 68% higher ad recall
and 4x greater likelihood that a viewer
will purchase.
Note: due to the enhanced performance of social ads, we
will be focusing exclusively on this ad format for our report.
Ads with no social context, which are ads that have no “Like”
button or any tie-in with Facebook social data, can be used to
drive user traffic outside of Facebook. While this strategy has
its time and place, we will not be covering it in this report. A
full breakdown of other types of ads Facebook offers can be
found here: https://www.facebook.com/business/ads/


Other Best Practices for Facebook Advertising
Images and Branding
You have 99x72 pixels of image space available to you. Ads with people, and
especially close-ups of faces and eyes, tend to get a higher click through rate.
Of course, it’s best to use an image that’s relevant to your ad. It’s best to upload
horizontal (landscape) images to ensure you’re maximizing the space available in
the small size available. You don’t want to use a vertically oriented picture, which
leaves a gap of white space on the right hand side.
Where possible (like when you have the space), include branding in your image.
Only a tiny percentage of people exposed to your ad will actually click on it, but
many will see it (free impressions!) so it’s a great opportunity to maximize branding.
Firenze Jewels, on the right, is a good example of strong branding with in the ad:
Title Copy
The title copy of your advertisement is often a fixed feature. Facebook will
automatically pull in the title of your Fan Page, or the title of your app, to serve as
the title of your ad if you’re driving traffic to thoselocations. The one ad unit where
you have control over the title is the ad that drives outside of Facebook (and has
no social plugins). While we don’t dive deeply into this ad format, one of the best
pratices when you have the option to change the title is to ask a question. Ques-
tions automatically trigger readers’ subconscious or conscious minds to answer.
If your question is compelling enough, they will want to click through to see the
answer. Another way to think of this is to try titles that will elicit some kind of
reaction from your audience, like making them laugh or think. And of course—
keep it succinct and limit your titles to one line.
This ad for Dillard’s demonstrates
several best practices, including a
horizontal image orientation, a close-
up of a face (as it is relevant to the ad
content), and a great call-to-action.
Since Jun Group has opted to set this ad up to drive traffic
outside of Facebook, the ad can also have a customized Title.


Body Copy
The body copy of your ad should describe what you are offering and also convey why a user should pay attention
or care. By pairing your advertising with a compelling reason to click (e.g. access to deals or promotions such as
coupons, sweepstakes, contests, and giveaways), your ads will perform better. Facebook ad body copy is limited to
90 characters, so brevity is very important.
If you are targeting users based on certain “Likes & Interests” or demographic information, tie that information into
your copy to make it feel more relevant for the user. For example, an ad targeting users living in Palo Alto, CA, will
hook a user better if the words “Palo Alto” or “Bay Area” are in the copy.
Calls-to-Action
A critical ad factor, that often gets missed, is having a strong call-to-action (CTA). It seems logical that a user should
know to click on an ad if they like it, right? Wrong. The truth is they aren’t likely to click unless they’re explicitly told.
It’s a very strange phenomenon, but our learnings show that users respond to instruction, but will seldom act without
it. That is why you’ll see a lot of “Click ‘LIKE’ if you enjoyed this” copy appended to posts within your News Feed.
You don’t want users to be passive in their consumption of your content - passive consumption fails to generate that
super-valuable earned media.
Ask people to click “Like”, “Comment” or “Click Here.” At Wildfire, we have seen up to a 4x increase in these types
of behaviors when there is a clear ask, whether it’s in a Facebook post, an ad, or even a promotion.
All of the ads on this page have very specific calls to action within the body copy.


Targeting—balancing relevance with reach
Facebook lets you finely target which groups of people should see your ad.
You can target ads based on users’ profile information, such as age, gender,
location, college, relationship status, and interests. You can target those who
are fans of your company’s Facebook page or friends of your fans. Or you can
avoid your fans altogether, if your goal is growing your base with new, “never-
before-seen” users.
Of course, by targeting very specifically to a group, you can increase the effec-
tiveness of your ad, but be careful to balance this with a broad enough audience
reach to ensure enough people see your content
CPC vs CPM
Ad prices on Facebook are determined by auction. You can pay based on cost-
per-impression (CPM), which is the number of times people see the ad, or on
cost-per-click (CPC), the number of times people actually click on it. Most ad-
vertisers choose CPC, but it is worth testing both options to see which is more
affordable.
One way to optimize a campaign for reach and spend is to blend a CPC and
CPM approach. You start by running a series of ads on a CPC basis (note: you
will need a person, or a service, to monitor results frequently). Once you’ve spent 48-72 hours optimizing your ads for
the lowest CPC (by pausing the ads that performed poorly and reallocating the budget to better performers), you’ll
have a good idea of what exact ad (copy, image, title, CTA) works best for your target demographic.
Then, you can pause the CPC campaign and re-launch that very same ad on a CPM basis, to the same
demographic. Assuming it continued to be popular and engaging to the same demographic, you’d be getting the
most “bang for your buck” by optimizing the ad first, then launching it in a way that was cheaper to serve.
Note: Facebook defines
“Reach” as “the count of
people who have seen any-
thing associated with your
page over a given length of
time”. One effective way to
understand if your targeting
and demographic profiles
are effective is to test a
variety of campaigns across
a selection of demographic
buckets. This way, you can
see if your ad resonates
differently across various
types of users, while main-
taining your message’s wide
coverage.


Sponsored stories are an opportunity
for unprecedented brand advocacy
Sponsored Stories are posts from users on Facebook that a busi-
ness, organization or individual has paid to highlight on other users’
pages. Facebook calls these ads “a way to create organic and
scalable word of mouth.” They are the only ad unit that
Facebook has integrated into the newsfeed. Sponsored Stories
are just one type of ad unit on Facebook, but one that is receiving a
lot of attention because it consistently outperforms other ad types.
Facebook Ads API service provider TBG Digital has revealed that
in a 10-day, 3-client, 2 billion impression test, Facebook’s new
Sponsored Stories ad units received a 46% higher click through
rate, a 20% lower cost per click, and an 18% lower cost per fan
than Facebook’s standard ad units.
Facebook is increasing the span of coverage achieved by
Sponsored Stories. Starting in January 2012, Facebook gradually
began showing Sponsored Stories social ads in the main News
Feed of the web version of the site. Considering that users spend
up to 27% of their time on Facebook reading through the News
Feed, this is an enormous opportunity to capture users’ attention
(ComScore, 2012).
Note: there are seven types of Sponsored Story ad units. You can
read about them all here: http://ads.ak.facebook.com/ads/Face-
bookAds/Sponsored_Stories_Guide_042511.pdf
Sponsored Stories ad units received
a 46% higher click through rate, a
20% lower cost per click, and an 18%
lower cost per fan than Facebook’s
standard ad units.
Logistics of Sponsored Stories
in the News Feed
• Ads will be marked “Sponsored” at the
foot of the post.
• Facebook is imposing a rate limit for
appearances of a Sponsored Story in a
user’s News Feed, ensuring that each
user will see only 1 per day.
• Users will only see stories about friends
or pages that they already like.
• Users cannot opt out of seeing Sposored
Stories in their own feed or having their
activity turned into Sponsored Stories in
others’ feeds. That’s 901 million active
Facebook users having potentially
sponsored conversations about brands—
an awful lot of mouths creating WOM!


Sponsored Stories for mobile
Sponsored Stories are not only set to be the first ad units to appear
within the Facebook News Feed; they are also the first units to be
released to the mobile Facebook platform! And with 55% of active
Facebook users (~500MM) accessing the network from their mobile
devices, advertisers utilizing Sponsored Stories in their advertising
mix will have exclusive access to a majority of Facebook consumers
who may not have otherwise seen their ads.
If you want to try Sponsored Stories for your brand, you have to
do something crucial first: you must generate conversations and
content (i.e. user activity) on your brand page so you have organic
stories to use for a Sponsored Stories campaign.
The Wildfire Storyteller application
One way to do this is with the Wildfire Storyteller app. Using the
Wildfire Storyteller app, you can create a tab in your Facebook Page
to ask your users fun and engaging questions about your brand. You
can then set up an entire customized Facebook Feed Story that gets
published alongside that user’s generated response. This feed story
is especially powerful in that you can include a branded video or
image with the story and you can also customize the feed story title,
URL and description.
For example, a coffee brand could
ask about how people prefer to get
their caffeine fix. The ad generated
from the response would include
your friend’s name and their com-
ment, but it could also include a link
to a daily coupon which users could
pass on to their friends.
At Wildfire, we recently integrated
Adaptly into our Social Marketing
Suite. Adaptly is an ads management
technology that allows you to
automatically optimize ads instead
of manually testing for the best-
performing ads. It’s some seriously
advanced tech.
The idea is that you load up a
selection of creative assets (titles,
images and body copy), and Adaptly
will launch and run through every
conceivable permutation of the
options, all the while optimizing for a
specific performance result. The
technology will actively launch ads,
assess their performance in real-time,
and immediately pause poor perform-
ers while reallocating budget to the
stars in order to maximize the efficien-
cy of your campaigns according to
the performance metrics you set (e.g.
cost-per-action or cost-per-fan).
We can’t wait for you to try it!
We are excited about this for two
reasons:
1) It helps marketers optimize their ad
budgets while reducing time spent
with manual ad building.
2) You can now optimize your ads
within Wildfire’s same holistic platform
where you manage the rest of your
paid, owned and earned media.
55% of active
Facebook
users access
the network
from their
mobile devices


You can see the Storyteller app in action
on the Facebook tab in these images.
Managing your advertising
mix
Because we believe that social ads
significantly enhance your ads’ per-
formance in driving engagement, we
have covered them in great detail in this
report. It is worthwhile to note however
that it is important to balance fan growth
ads (Marketplace Ads) with engage-
ment-focused ads (Sponsored Stories)
in your advertising mix.
Marketplace ads can be targeted at
non-fans hence you can expect higher
reach with Marketplace Ads due to
broad targeting beyond your existing
fans or friends of fans. On the other
hand, you can expect better conversions
through Sponsored Stories due to WOM
benefits shown in the ad units. A combi-
nation of these formats working together
will maximize your reach and effectiveness
while keeping costs as low as possible.
The Storyteller app is used to start a conversation around customer prefernces at the
Java Bean Cafe
Once a user inputs an answer, each answer is conversted into a potential sponsored
by story, but with the page administrators pre-set image, custom links, and
descriptive text.


Twitter
Twitter has been the focus of much hype because of its addictive, real time information broadcasting, particularly in
the global political arena.
It has 140 million monthly active users but those users, who are doing a broad range of activities on Twitter. Twitter is
a less mature advertising platform than Facebook, rolling out advertising functionalities for brands in 2010. Uptake by
advertisers, however, has grown very fast. With the introduction of Twitter Brand Pages in 2011, more advertisers are
investing ad budgets in the network. In fact, according to eMarketer, you can see that from Mid 2011 thru 2012,
the number of companies on Twitter jumped four-fold. In addition, advertising revenue on the network is steadily
increasing.
Use Promoted Accounts to boost your follower rate
and build your base
A “Promoted Account” a type of ad that is featured within search results
and within the “Who To Follow” section on user’s Twitter pages, which helps
followers discover new businesses, content, and people on Twitter. The rec-
ommendations are made based on the Promoted Accounts that are most
likely to appeal to a user.
Twitter’s ads marketplace is less mature than Facebook’s.
(eMarketer)
However, it has come up to speed with advertisers very quickley.
(eMarketer)
MetroPC is promoted as an account to fol-
low, together with two organically selected
accounts.


Promoted Tweets
Use Promoted Tweets to extend your reach to a broader audience and be in the right place at the right time.
Promoted Tweets can be targeted to show up at the top of search results, or to show up on user timelines.
Placement in Search
Promoting Tweets to Search, while it seems like a
familiar strategy (in its striking resemblance to SEM)
is not a very effective way to achieve high engage-
ment or interaction with Twitter users. Generally,
users aren’t on Twitter to search (it’s not typically
aligned with their Twitter engagement behavior). At
certain times, however, piggybacking your keywords
against #hashtags and trending topics can have a
significant impact.
For example, if people are talking about #earthday
and you sell biodegradable containers, you are
able to advertise against #earthday to have your
promoted tweet show up at the top of resulting
searches, thereby inserting your ad messaging into
the conversation about the Earth day event.


Placement in the Timeline
The second option is targeting tweets to the Timeline. As you are aware, Twitter is 100% chronological. This means
that it is likely many of your followers are regularly missing your tweeted content because they weren’t online to read
it at the same time you were there to write it, and by the time they did scan their feed, your content was replaced with
more fresh items posted by the other accounts they follow. Promoted Tweets targeted to users’ timelines appear at
or near the top of their timeline when they log on or refresh their homepage, no matter what time it is. They can be
targeted to your followers, so you can make sure they see your tweeted content anytime, or people that are similar
to your followers. You are essentially paying for persistent visibility of your content.
Targeting to timeline is vastly more effective and engaging as people’s natural behavior is to read through their feed:
• targeting followers puts your message in front of your brand advocates, who will hopefully re-tweet on your
be half, perpetuating your content for you.
• targeting users like your followers extends the reach of your campaign and brand to additional users who
are likely to be receptive to your message, based on demographic and psychographic similarities to your
existing followers.
Promoted Trends
Use Promoted Trends to ramp awareness and drive buzz and
engagement by being featured as a “trending topic” at the top
of the Trends list on Twitter’s homepage.
A Promoted Trend gets massive exposure as it is placed next
to the hottest topics of the moment, and is optimally placed for
kick starting or amplifying a conversation. The Promoted Trend
functionality is currently in Beta, and it comes with a significant
price tag (approximately $120,000 for 24 hours), so contact
your Twitter rep for more details. AMC purchased the promoted trend “The Walking Dead” to
ptomote the popular show.
Note: you are likely to see far higher numbers of
“qualified fans”, i.e. those who are truly interested in
your product or service, when you target to a geogra-
phy where your product is available rather than opening
it up to regions where you don’t have a presence. If you
don’t pay attention to geographic targeting when you
set up your Twitter campaigns, you may inadvertently
blow through your budget very quickly to produce low
quality results.


Best Practices for Twitter Advertising
Keep Content Fresh and Engaging
One of the core concepts of the Twitter platform is the dissemination of what’s happening/news and real time
information. As you can imagine, freshness of content is important. As a result, it is critical to refresh and re-promote
new tweets regularly.
Marketers are seeing engagement numbers reach up into the single digits for Twitter advertising (which is much
higher than the average 0.02% for online advertising in general).
Advertise by Geography
Twitter’s geographic targeting allows you to increase the relevance of your campaign by targeting your message to a
specific geography. This results in boosted engagement rates because of relevance.
Mobile advertising
You’ll be heartened to hear that both Promoted Accounts and Promoted Tweets are rolling out on Twitter mobile. As
55% of Twitter’s monthly active users access the information network via mobile devices, mobile is really where the
new money is waiting to be made.
Additional targeting can only benefit advertisers, because you get more bang for your buck by allowing more
specificity through being able to select certain mobile OS’s to have your promoted items show to:


LinkedIn
LinkedIn is commonly known as the “Professional” social network.
According to LinkedIn, the network has a higher composition of
high income earners, business decision makers, and college or
post-college graduates than other leading social media networks.
Additionally, with 150 million monthly active
users, LinkedIn serves as a powerful venue for
companies seeking to interact with customers and
prospects, build positive brand awareness, and
drive revenue. Consider the latest statistics:
• Approximately two professionals sign
up to join LinkedIn every second
• Executives from all Fortune 500
companies are LinkedIn members
• More than 2 million companies have
LinkedIn Company Pages.
Interestingly, LinkedIn, which has lower ad revenues and a lower
growth rate overall than Twitter, is getting an increasingly greater
share of its ad dollars from outside the US. This year, when the
site will see $226 million in ad revenues, a 46.1% increase over
2011, 32% of that money will come from abroad. But, by 2014, it
is anticipated that US advertisers will account for 60% of LinkedIn’s
revenues of $405.6 million, according to eMarketer estimates, due
to a stronger-than-expected advertising program on the site.
Logistics:
• There are two placement areas for
Ads –the right bar and bottom of
the page
• Market place ad units are identified
by the phrase “Ads by LinkedIn
Members”
• Ad units are composed of image,
title, body and source of the ad unit
- Image
- Title = 25 characters max
- Body = 75 charters max
- Source = Citation of advertising
company


Imagery and Branding
Since there is such a small amount of space to play with (50 pixels wide by 50 pixels high), images should be clean
and minimal. Do not use an image composed solely of text, and be sure that the contents of your image are readable
at this size.
As on Facebook, include an image with your ad that’s relevant to what you offer. A best practice is a version of your
logo or mascot. Anecdotally, images of smiling professionals also tend to perform well.
A tip— the LinkedIn background color is white, so images with bright colors are more likely to capture the attention of
your audience.
Link your title and copy to your audience
As mentioned, LinkedIn is job related so people identify heavily by profession and industry. Take advantage of this by
creating ads and copy that are targeted by title, (e.g. have the term “CEO’s and Co-Founders” in the title of the ad) as
this calls out specific users and increases their likelihood of paying attention. On LinkedIn, like on Facebook, ques-
tions in the title can work well.
Have a strong CTA and keep it brief
Include strong call-to-action phrases like Try, Download, Sign up, or Request a Quote.


Consider running promotions to drive ad efficiency
Our initial tests show that running a Wildfire promotion in connection with a LinkedIn advertising campaign can
double ad click-through rates and decrease cost per lead by more than 60%. Additionally, our tests have shown that
the viral sharing rate for LinkedIn users can be up to several times higher than on other leading social networks.
Consider weekly trends when timing your campaigns
It’s no surprise, but weekend activity is very low on LinkedIn. Monday mornings tend to see increased impressions
and click volume traffic grows through Wednesday. As a result, always try to launch new campaigns at the beginning
of the week, in line with weekly traffic trends.
Additionally, activity on LinkedIn is highest during business hours. Keep this in mind when targeting ads by
geographic region— their time zone will also determine their business hours, which is another reason to segment one
ad campaign into many variations (like by time zone).
GIA paired a LinkedIn promotion with an adversting campaign
and saw a 60% lowered cost per lead.


Optimization
LinkedIn will average the CTR of all ads in a campaign to
create your overall quality score. The higher the quality score,
the higher likelihood of your ad being served in the future.
It’s important to know that the auto-optimize feature in
LinkedIn pauses campaigns that are generating less than
0.025% CTR. If your CTR is lower than 0.025%, create and
test several additional ad variations. LinkedIn recommends
that you create at least 3 different ad variations for optimiza-
tion and you can create up to 15 within a single campaign.
You can also try narrowing your target audience so that
your ad becomes more relevant and receives more clicks.
Tip: It is not as effective to target LinkedIn
member groups, as these can include users
who are not necessarily part of your desired
target audience.
Targeting
LinkedIn provides robust targeting parameters:
- Age and geographic region
- Company title
- LinkedIn member groups
If your CTR is
lower than 0.025%,
create and test
several additional
ad variations.
In Summary:
This report has covered a multitude of best practices in
relation to the different social networks across imagery,
copy, calls-to-action and targeting. In addition to these,
three key takeaways we recommend you remember are:
1) Engagement rates vary by network. Build this into your
expectations and measurement framework. You can
expect to see 0.05% on Facebook, 1% (and hopefully
more) on Twitter, and 0.025% on LinkedIn.
2) A strong call-to-action (CTA) is universally important
across the different networks – don’t expect users to
know what you want them to do. Be specific.
3) Think holistically about the entire experience you pres
ent to users. For example, once you have created a
high performing, optimized ad creative, are you
delivering the best post-click experience possible?
Does your landing page or destination seamlessly
reinforce your ad message? Is it intuitive and well
designed? Does it maximize social sharing of your
content through built in stream stories and sharing
capability? Ensure you have your paid, owned and
earned activities working together.


Sources:
http://partner.linkedin.com/ads/bestpractices/index.html#ads
https://business.twitter.com/en/advertise/
https://www.facebook.com/advertising/
http://ads.ak.facebook.com/ads/FacebookAds/Pages_Overview.pdf
http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/mobile-twitter-ads-smart-phones_b21191
http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/three-pitfalls-that-every-smb-should-avoid-on-facebook
http//:EMarketer.com
http://press.linkedin.com/about
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008858
http://www.emarketer.com/PressRelease.aspx?R=1008806

Redwood City
info@wildfireapp.com
(888) 274-0929
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sales.ny@wildfireapp.com
(646) 503-2166
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sales.la@wildfireapp.com
(310) 280-2098
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sales.chi@wildfireapp.com
(312) 496-7971
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+44 (0)20 7189 8344
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