This document summarizes Radio France's use of Facebook ads from 2012-2013. Some key points:
- Radio France is France's largest public radio broadcaster with 7 stations and over 5 million daily listeners.
- In 2012, they began using Facebook ads to increase their fan base and drive traffic to their websites.
- They made several mistakes initially like using the wrong ad formats and poor targeting, but improved over time.
- By optimizing targeting, creative content, and tracking analytics, they increased their CTR 17x and lowered CPC by 90% between early 2012 and late 2013.
3. About us
1st broadcasting group made of 7 complementary radios
More than 5 million listeners everyday
Monthly podcasts download : 15 millions worldwide
3.5 million unique visitors every month
1.75 million Facebook fans
1.3 million Twitter followers
4. Social Media at Radio France
8 CMs (one per radio and one to
manage the corporate page)
+ 1 Social Media Product Manager
in the marketing team
Strategy, budgets, training,
reporting and studies are
concentrated within the
Marketing team
Campaigns are implemented by
the CMs to meet the needs and
opportunities of each radio
7. We have redesigned our entire online editorial
offer in 2011
We wanted it to be known and did not have any email database
Therefore we chose social media
15. History
January 2012 : First test on FiP
February 2012 : Globally the test is
conclusive
Mars 2012 : Display on the 8 Radio
France’s major pages
Radio France’s page-fangrowth in 2012 : 355%
16. First campaign
First test : The Pink Floyd on FIP
From 05/12/2011 to 01/01/2012
Budget : 350$ / CPM
Target : #Pink Floyd
Estimated audience : 800 000 people
Results :
CTR : 0.027%
CPM : 0.09€
254 087 persons seen it, 98% paid.
19. Mistake #2
Wrong Ad format :
The search result Ad
Some ad format don’t work on
your market.
Give it a try and know when to
give up
Not expensive but gave few
results. Useful only for events.
Facebook withdrew it last
summer
20. Mistake #3
Bad/No targeting
Large targeting :
More expensive, poor efficency
Precise targeting :
Cheaper, good efficency
Better 10 small welltargeted campaigns than a
widely targeted one
21. Mistake #4
Targeting only your
country, not your
language
For several months, we’ve targeted
French-speaking countries
Now everything’s fine. The traffic from
North Africa is huge, but organic.
This contributes to our public service
mission
Many French-speaking countries around the globe
23. Mistake #5
Not working out the
headlines
They are at least as important as
the pictures if not more for a
media website
It’s tricky at Radio France as
editorial content ads are
managed by publishers
Huge need for regular training
24. Mistake #6
Choosing the wrong
photos
An effective Ad needs a beautiful ,
strong, engaging picture
Emotion leads to « like » and
sharing
26. Mistake #7
No Analytics tracking
You need to know :
-The Facebook paid traffic part
-The number of generated PV’s
-What they read, what they listen
to, what they do,…
-Who they are
Our CM use bitly to track and
analyse clics.
27. Analytics traffic
- Social Media traffic share on a local news website like France Bleu in November 2013 : 20%
- 84% of the social media traffic comes from Facebook.
- 25% are paid.
Source : AT Internet
29. Tip #1 Target similar audiences
Promoting the new France
Info advertising campaign
“I learned it on France Info“
We targeted fans of several
news media press, TV and
Radio.
About 0,15/0,20€ per fan
Quite expensive but highly
qualified fans, good
retention & audience
generation to come
30. Tip #2 Ads that works
Page Post Link Ad
Used on a daily basis
It works very well because we have
a strong brand and a very good
catchy content
Source : TechWyse
31. Tip #3 Ads that works
Page Like Ad
Used for long term campaigns
Very useful for a fair increase in our
fanbase
Source : TechWyse
32. Tip #4 Ads that works
Page Post Photo Ad
Page Post Video Ad
Used on a daily basis
Very useful to engage
Very useful to generate video views
Source : TechWyse
33. Tip #5 Ads that works
Mobile App Install Ad
Used in long term campaigns for
existing apps
Used heavily in the launching of
new applications
Very useful to generate installs
37. 2014 Strategy
utur
Accelerating on Mobile App Install Ads
Bringing CRM ad Social CRM together
Testing new formats
For example, UPPA (Unpublished Page Post Ads)
Performance
10% of traffic from social networks, maintaining a
great engagement rate without increasing investments
Very happy to be here today and share with you what we’ve learned about FB ads these years
First of all, I’d like to say a few words about RF, then
I’ll present you some key figures of the EMEA market
Then, I’ll explain why we chose ads at Radio France and how we measure it
We’ve made several mistakes and I hope the 7 examples I’ll show you will be of usefull interest
Then I’ll give you five tips might be usefull for your next campaigns.
To conclude, I’ll present you our two thousand thirteen achievements and what we plan to do next year.
A few words about Radio France.
Radio France is the french public radio, as NPR is in the US.
We are the 1fst broadcasting group on podcast downloadi with fifteen millions of downloads every month
We are aslo leaders on social media on the radio french market
However, on the web traffic, we still have to catch up
Our social media organization, is, I believe quite original and I’m convinced that it’s one of the main reasons wihich explains our success.
Indeed, the campaigns are not managed day-to-day by the marketing team but by the editorial teams.
As a matter of fact, we are more like an expert and support team than a supervising one
We have totally internalized the FB ads campaign management
which allows us a better reactivity and a weekly contact with Facebook
Each radio has a dedicated monthly budget and a great freedom of action.Advantages :- High reaction speed to hot news- Many low cost small thematic fine targeted campaigns which engage very well
It’s very difficult to obtain french market data from Facebook. Here are EMEA key figures
I am convinced that the numbers are quite similar for France
CPC remains low for the moment, but I don’t think it will last forever
For a public service group like us with such a strong broadcasting power, one might wonder why social media are so important for us.
Here is the answer
Radio France’s sub investment on digital for more than 10 years resulted in a huge delay
In 2011, everything changed, a new strategy and significant resources were settled
We tackled on social media for two main reasons
Firstly, to create a community
Then, to engage with our listeners and increase in visibiity
To measure our actions, we mainly use 4 KPI’s
nothing really new but still a good thing to remenber
First of all, our reach :
Is the number of people we reach increasing properly ?
Secondly, the trafic we generate from our social media actions.
In the end, what we want is bringing people on our sites and applications
On french media sites, the traffic share from Facebook is about 4%. Ours is now about 6%
Thirdly, the number of pages per visit we generate. Why ?
Because we can therefore check the good quality of the visits and if the visitors are likely to become a regular audience
Finally, engagement of course
Because we want to interact with our readers and listeners
You cannot succeed at the beginning
Thanks to Facebook ads we have noticed a huge increase in our number of fans within one year.
The ads have enabled the starting of an organic growth engine which is now largely self feeds
lessons:The link is not very attractive, the holiday season is not exactly the perfect moment for traffic generation, the targeting is not well advised
We could have targeted on : Pink Floyd without hashtag, the name of the group leader the group member names, the well known album tracks ...)
I woukd like to show you seven major mistakes we made, which might be useful to know
Firstly: ad positioning.
We’ve tried out the sidebar ads. We failed
Usually, the sidebar is not effective
Secondly, the ad format itself.
Some are not very effective. This is probably why Facebook decided to remove a lot of them few months ago
We’ve tried the search ad format. We used it until it was withdrawn, but only occasionally and for LIVE events
Targeting is probably what explains our good performance.A large number of small campaigns is more effective than few big onesBut it requires a work organization and ressources to do so.
This is a specificity of Radio France to be listened to in many countries around in the world
Firstly we used ads to takle the French-speaking countries. Now, everything’s fine
Here you can see that seventy five percents of France Culture fans are not French fans.
And I can assure you that they are not fake fans
This is a very important point : the copyrighting rules !
You need to carefully work out your headlines.
Advantage of our organization: headlines are very editorializedDrawbacks of our organization: they are sometimes not enough marketed and catchy
You need a beautiful, strong engaging photo.
A picture means more than 10 words
Here are two examples
On the left hand side a post On Jacky O
« Everything you didn’t know about Jackie O ».
Catchy headline, short, efective
+ a link
+ a hashtag
+ a nice photo
On the right hand side
A far too long text
Misplaced arrows
An unattractive photo
The lack of precise measure is a big mistake
Here You can see the evolution curve of the Facebook traffic on France Bleu
As you can see the traffic has ben significantly growing for one year. The new France Bleu website was launched in November 2012.
As you can also see, Google+ doesn’t break out in France…
OK, enough about our mistakes, Let’s talk about what works now
Targeting users according to other brands they like works fine.
To be clear, the ads in the timeline are what work the best for a while now. It is more expensive but much more effective.
We use page post link ads on a daily basis with great success.
This ad allows us to generate engagement and traffic
Tip 3, page like ad. We use it for long term campaigns
It allows us to support the increase of our fan base
Quite simple to monitor and set-up and very effective
Page post photo and video ads are the best ads to engage.
This kind of ad generates a lot of shares and likes
This ad is just the most effective in generating apps downloads.
Particularly useful for Google Play rankings which require a steady increase in downloads
There are still few advertisers in France on this format but it is already changing. To be monitored closely
let us set a record of the past year for Radio France
After a learning curve of almost 2 years, we are very satisfied with the CTR and CPC we reach now, much far much better than the French market ones.
As we’ll probably be unable to improve these figures, we will focus on other KPIs next year
Let me talk about next year strategy now
We have four keys for our strategy
Firtly, Accelerating on Mobile App Install Ads
Mobile traffic explodes in Europe also, we need to win more and more users everyday
Secondly, Bringing CRM ad Social CRM together
As a state company we are concerned about providing Facebook with more data on our listeners than they already have
Thirdly, Test new formats
New formats should be tested as soon as possible, in order to benefit from them while there are few advertisers
Finally, Performance
We still need to significantly improve the traffic generated on our sites and applications via Facebook
Thank you for your attention.
I hope this presentation has been helpful and I wish you succesful campaigns