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Conference Video: SOCi's Six Steps to Social-Local Marketing

Mike Boland — Tue, 19 May 2015 20:38:25 +0000

Content and intelligence drive results in social media marketing according to SOCi founder and CEO Afif Khoury. He presented findings during a segment on social media at BIA/Kelsey NATIONAL (video below). This takes form in an actionable six-step process.

Social media continues to come in proximity with localized marketing, shown most recently by Facebook’s announcement that 40 million SMBs now have active Pages. And BIA/Kelsey’s own survey data indicate that social is the most prevalent marketing channel.

But the opportunity is greater among national advertisers that are increasingly localizing campaigns. National entities are generally more adoptive than SMBs when it comes to emerging media like social. And their size makes branding (conducive to social media) critical.

The why has largely been made evident, per the above and lots of evidence in the marketplace for social’s collision with local. The remaining question is how, and that’s where we’re seeing lots of experimentation and standards development from companies like SOCi.

“Most national brands seem to think they can capture a national audience with a single page,” said Khoury. “What they’re leaving behind is the hundreds of local pages that are getting reviews, getting comments, getting activity, but there’s nobody there.”

The session clip is embedded below and stay tuned for much more conference video and highlights.

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New SMBs Choose Social Media to Advertise, Retain & Acquire Customers

Suzanne Ackley — Fri, 13 Feb 2015 21:09:32 +0000

While the top media used for advertising and promotion by new SMBs are a mix of digital and social channels, social media is also a tool for these new SMBs to connect and communicate with customers. Facebook Page, LinkedIn and Twitter were the most used social media channels, while email marketing and websites were the most used digital channels, according to BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor™, Wave 18 survey of small and medium businesses.

New SMBs do not just use social media to advertise they are also using it to communicate and stay connected to their customers, including activities such as tracking “likes” on social media and using customer lists to engage with customers. New SMB respondents said they use social media to acquire new customers and build awareness of their business.

When it comes to purchasing online advertising, half of new SMB respondents preferred “do it yourself” models, while 38% preferred some level of paid assistance, be it “do it with me” or “do it for me.” For sellers to this coveted group of SMBs, offering a DIY service is key and with their affinity for social media offering a simple managed social media service is also attractive.

While digital and social were their most used channels, new SMBs gave their highest ROI ratings to various mobile channels, such as enhanced listing in mobile apps and mobile location aware, although they don’t budget much to, or spend much on, mobile advertising.

It is clear from the survey that new SMBs are open to digital presence and social media solutions, but there is also an opportunity for mobile advertising solutions.

Clients of the BIA/Kelsey Advisory Services can find the full New SMBs spotlight report here. This report is one of a series of drill-down reports on the findings from Wave 18 of BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor survey of small-and-medium businesses. In the coming weeks and months we will be looking at even larger SMBs with between 10-99 employees, established and growing SMBs, Franchises and more. To learn more about our LCM survey, click here.

The post New SMBs Choose Social Media to Advertise, Retain & Acquire Customers appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

New SMBs Choose Social Media to Advertise, Retain & Acquire Customers

Suzanne Ackley — Fri, 13 Feb 2015 21:09:32 +0000

It is clear from the survey that new SMBs are open to digital presence and social media solutions, but there is also an opportunity for mobile advertising solutions.

The post New SMBs Choose Social Media to Advertise, Retain & Acquire Customers appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Facebook’s Q4 Big Wins: Mobile Ads and SMBs

Meshach Cisero — Thu, 30 Jan 2014 17:14:00 +0000

On yesterday’s Facebook Q4 earnings call, COO Sheryl Sandberg reiterated a point she’s made repeatedly, “SMBs are the holy grail of online advertising and a segment that I’ve been particularly focused on throughout my career.” She then noted that Facebook has 25 million active SMBs who are engaged with their Facebook pages monthly. Despite this, Facebook’s real challenge was to upsell more of these SMBs into the active advertiser category. The company made a big investment to simplify its ad products, and that investment is now working to convert these SMBs into advertisers; of new SMB advertisers acquired in Q4 that started with pages, 72% started with Facebook’s most simple ad products.

BIA/Kelsey’s LCM Wave 17™ data shows Facebook pages at 52% percent penetration among SMBs, more than any other media channel used for advertising/promotional purposes. Facebook Ads only have 15% penetration rate, marking a huge upsell opportunity for Facebook. It was made clear on the company’s last earnings call that Facebook sees SMBs ultimately driving big revenues.

In the third quarter, Facebook revealed that mobile ad revenues accounted for 41% of ad revenues, precipitous growth considering that the company had only introduced its first mobile ad product in June 2012. Now, three months later, mobile ads to account for 53% of total ad revenue. The increase in mobile advertising revenue is represented in our LCM 17 data, in which 55% of SMBs said mobile advertising was a future marketing priority.

Another key driver of ad revenue growth continued to be the strong performance of Facebook’s News Feed Ads on mobile and desktop, which helped the company attract more advertiser demand. Mobile ad revenue increased from approximately $881 million in Q3 to approximately $1.25 billion in Q4, a healthy increase that benefited from seasonal effects.

Other Q4 and Annual Earnings Release Highlights:

— Revenue for the full year 2013 was $7.87 billion, an increase of 55% year-over-year.

— Daily active users (DAUs) were 757 million on average for December 2013, an increase of 22% year-over-year.

— Mobile DAUs were 556 million on average for December 2013, an increase of 49% year-over-year.

— Monthly active users (MAUs) were 1.23 billion as of December 31, 2013, an increase of 16% year-over-year.

— Mobile MAUs were 945 million as of December 31, 2013, an increase of 39% year-over-year.

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