Wildfire Report - Social Advertising Best Practices Guide

7/27/2019 Wildfire Report - Social Advertising Best Practices Guide

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Why one size does not ft all and

how you should approach each.


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PAGE 2 | Social Advertising Part 1: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn

Executive summary ..................................................................................................4Social 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 perorm 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 Wildre Storyteller application ........................................................................... 14

Managing your advertising mix ................................................................................... 14

Twitter...........................................................................................................................15

Logistics ........................................................................................................................................ 15

Promoted Accounts ........................................................................................................15

Promoted Tweets ............................................................................................................16

Placement in Search .......................................................................................................16


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Placement in the Timeline .............................................................................................17

Promoted Trends ............................................................................................................17

Best practices for Twitter advertising ............................................................................... 18

Keep content resh 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 efcacy ...................................................................21

Weekly trends when timing your campaigns .............................................................21

Targeting ......................................................................................................................... 22

Optimization ................................................................................................................... 22


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What you need to know beoreyou 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 o moving that audience into

action, or tapping into the incredible population o users inter-

acting on social networks that have not yet joined the ranks

o your brands community? Its only in building an engaged

audience that you can tap into the holy grail o all advertising:

Word o 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 orward, an eective social ad strategy

must pull in new ans and ollowers, and also optimize or the types o users that want to engage

with your brand or the long haul.

In order to develop an ad strategy that results in long-term engagement, you have to develop

a campaign that plays o the existing, organic rules o engagement unique to each social

network. Ater all, what inspires Susan to share your brand post on Facebook will be quite

dierent rom what moves John to re-tweet your brand message on Twitter. However, the clues

to building an eective ad campaign on either network can be ound by observing what content

and ad strategies engaged both Susan and John.

In this report, Wildfre oers 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. Lets start by looking at

the dierences between social advertising on these platorms


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Social Network Ad Summary

I we had to describe each social network with one word, what would it be?

Facebook = Connection

Twitter = Inormation

LinkedIn = Proessions

See how those dierences 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 innetwork (and Facebookcharges less or ads tointernal destination)

2) Utilize social ads toleverage users intentto connect with riends/amily

1) Users expect resh orbreaking news content

2) Target promotedtweets to Timeline ratherthan search

3) Target only relevantgeographies duringinternational campaigns

1) Users identiy by theirproessions targetaccordingly

2) For maximum ad efcacy,ocus on targeting specifcgroups o users, versus bytargeting members o LinkedInGroups, as these groups caninclude a broader selection o

users (which dulls the eectso extensive targeting eorts!)

Key ad units Sponsored Stories =highest engagement

Promoted accounts,tweets, trends (note:trends are higher costand require a Twitterad rep)

Two placements available right hand side and bottom opage

Channels/

Timing

Newly available: ads orNewseed and Mobile

Strong mobileconsumption

Trafc peaks Mondaysand Wednesdays; minimalweekend trafc

User trafc peaks duringworking hours keep thisin mind when targetinggeographies and time zones


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Ater you consider the dierent rules o engagement on each network, its essential to think holistically about howthe individual parts o your users experience connect within one network. Specifcally are you thinking about how the

ollowing 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 avor o a new concept o paid placement or quality content (i.e. in Facebooks case

sponsored stories that the user would have seen anyway, just higher up in the eed and more persistent).

When your paid, owned and earned media are optimized together (through a virtuous cycle o testing and learning),

youll decrease your advertising costs and have money let over to reach more new users! So please keep this con-

text in mind as we dig into the specifcs o ad optimization in the report ahead.

Summary

When considering advertising on the dierent social networks, you should be aware o the dynamics

specifc to that network to ensure you receive the most bang or your advertising buck.

In this report, youll learn specifc best practices on the messaging, design, content, targeting, and

optimization o social ads on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.


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FacebookWhat is Facebooks 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, thats a tremendous audience that has the potential to bump into your

brand. In the US itsel, Facebook will account or 6.5% o all online ad spending in 2012.

Facebooks ad revenues will swell more than 60% this year to reach $5.06 billion worldwide, a-

ter posting growth o 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 eective.

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 dont like to be taken outside o Facebook. Studies have confrmed that in

comparison to ads on Facebook that stay in-network, ads that drop the user outside o Facebook lead to signifcantly

higher bounce rates.

One study by SEOMoz confrmed that bounce rates rom Facebook ads

increased 41% over the typical bounce rates rom those brands websites. In

addition, the users that stayed around the site ater 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 o Facebook ater interacting

with an ad, Facebook itsel 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 osite.

Facebook is intentionally charging more avorable 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 efcacy

you have built into your ads will be lost when users are sent to an untargeted page

with no ollow-thru-action (like your Timeline home page, or example, i your ad

promised something more specifc, such as a special promotional code or item).

41%higherbouncerates

57% lesstime spenton site

CPC costs29% lesswhen in-network


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Ultimately, you, as a marketer, want your paid media (ads), owned media(your branded destinations) and earned media (the additional share o voice

rom people commenting, sharing, liking your content) working together

in the most efcient way, and staying in network with a dedicated landing

page tab enables this to happen.

Check out our blog or more tips on content and engagement:

http://blog.wildfreapp.com/

Social ads perorm better

The core o the Facebook network centers around connection.

People are there to connect with their riends and amily, and they

also want to discover what other users are doing.

We see greater response rates when a brands message is paired

with content that shows how a users riends or network have

interacted with that brand. Essentially, your advertising message

includes a trusted reerral or endorsement rom someone your

users know.

Gokul Rajaram, Facebooks Product Director or Ads, confrmed

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 Likebutton and list

o riends who also liked the ad

Branded messages paired with a socialcontext result in a 68% higher ad recall

and 4x greater likelihood that a viewerwill purchase.

Note: due to the enhanced perormance o social ads, we

will be ocusing exclusively on this ad ormat or 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 trafc outside o Facebook. While this strategy has

its time and place, we will not be covering it in this report. A

ull breakdown o other types o ads Facebook oers can be

ound here:https://www.acebook.com/business/ads/
http://blog.wildfireapp.com/http://blog.wildfireapp.com/


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Other Best Practices for Facebook AdvertisingImages and Branding

You have 99x72 pixels o image space available to you. Ads with people, and

especially close-ups o aces and eyes, tend to get a higher click through rate.

O course, its best to use an image thats relevant to your ad. Its best to upload

horizontal (landscape) images to ensure youre maximizing the space available in

the small size available. You dont want to use a vertically oriented picture, which

leaves a gap o white space on the right hand side.

Where possible (like when you have the space), include branding in your image.

Only a tiny percentage o people exposed to your ad will actually click on it, butmany will see it (ree impressions!) so its a great opportunity to maximize branding.

Firenze Jewels, on the right, is a good example o strong branding with in the ad:

Title Copy

The title copy o your advertisement is oten a fxed eature. Facebook will

automatically pull in the title o your Fan Page, or the title o your app, to serve as

the title o your ad i youre driving trafc to thoselocations. The one ad unit where

you have control over the title is the ad that drives outside o Facebook (and has

no social plugins). While we dont dive deeply into this ad ormat, one o 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.I your question is compelling enough, they will want to click through to see the

answer. Another way to think o this is to try titles that will elicit some kind o

reaction rom your audience, like making them laugh or think. And o course

keep it succinct and limit your titles to one line.

This ad or Dillards demonstrates

several best practices, including a

horizontal image orientation, a close-

up o a ace (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 traic

outside o Facebook, the ad can also have a customized Title.


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Body Copy

The body copy o your ad should describe what you are oering 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 perorm better. Facebook ad body copy is limited to

90 characters, so brevity is very important.

I you are targeting users based on certain Likes & Interests or demographic inormation, tie that inormation into

your copy to make it eel more relevant or the user. For example, an ad targeting users living in Palo Alto, CA, willhook a user better i the words Palo Alto or Bay Area are in the copy.

Calls-to-Action

A critical ad actor, that oten gets missed, is having a strong call-to-action (CTA). It seems logical that a user should

know to click on an ad i they like it, right? Wrong. The truth is they arent likely to click unless theyre explicitly told.

Its a very strange phenomenon, but our learnings show that users respond to instruction, but will seldom act without

it. That is why youll see a lot o Click LIKE i you enjoyed this copy appended to posts within your News Feed.

You dont want users to be passive in their consumption o your content - passive consumption ails to generate that

super-valuable earned media.

Ask people to click Like, Comment or Click Here. At Wildfre, we have seen up to a 4x increase in these types

o behaviors when there is a clear ask, whether its in a Facebook post, an ad, or even a promotion.

All o the ads on this page have very speciic calls to action within the body copy.


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Targetingbalancing relevance with reach

Facebook lets you fnely target which groups o people should see your ad.

You can target ads based on users profle inormation, such as age, gender,

location, college, relationship status, and interests. You can target those who

are ans o your companys Facebook page or riends o your ans. Or you can

avoid your ans altogether, i your goal is growing your base with new, never-

beore-seen users.

O course, by targeting very specifcally to a group, you can increase the eec-

tiveness o your ad, but be careul 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 o times people see the ad, or on

cost-per-click (CPC), the number o times people actually click on it. Most ad-

vertisers choose CPC, but it is worth testing both options to see which is more

aordable.

One way to optimize a campaign or reach and spend is to blend a CPC and

CPM approach. You start by running a series o ads on a CPC basis (note: you

will need a person, or a service, to monitor results requently). Once youve spent 48-72 hours optimizing your ads or

the lowest CPC (by pausing the ads that perormed poorly and reallocating the budget to better perormers), youllhave a good idea o what exact ad (copy, image, title, CTA) works best or 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, youd be getting the

most bang or your buck by optimizing the ad frst, then launching it in a way that was cheaper to serve.

Note: Facebook defnes

Reach as the count o

people who have seen any-

thing associated with your

page over a given length o

time. One eective way to

understand i your targeting

and demographic profles

are eective is to test a

variety o campaigns across

a selection o demographic

buckets. This way, you can

see i your ad resonates

dierently across various

types o users, while main-

taining your messages wide

coverage.


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Sponsored stories are an opportunityfor unprecedented brand advocacy

Sponsored Stories are posts rom 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 o mouth. They are the only ad unit that

Facebook has integrated into the newseed. Sponsored Stories

are just one type o ad unit on Facebook, but one that is receiving a

lot o attention because it consistently outperorms other ad types.

Facebook Ads API service provider TBG Digital has revealed that

in a 10-day, 3-client, 2 billion impression test, Facebooks new

Sponsored Stories ad units received a 46% higher click through

rate, a 20% lower cost per click, and an 18% lower cost per an

than Facebooks standard ad units.

Facebook is increasing the span o coverage achieved by

Sponsored Stories. Starting in January 2012, Facebook gradually

began showing Sponsored Stories social ads in the main News

Feed o the web version o the site. Considering that users spend

up to 27% o 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 o Sponsored Story ad units. You canread about them all here:http://ads.ak.acebook.com/ads/Face-

bookAds/Sponsored_Stories_Guide_042511.pd

Sponsored Stories ad units receiveda 46% higher click through rate, a20% lower cost per click, and an 18%lower cost per an than Facebooksstandard ad units.

Logistics o Sponsored Stories

in the News Feed

Ads will be marked Sponsored at the

oot o the post.

Facebook is imposing a rate limit for

appearances o a Sponsored Story in a

users 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 eed or having their

activity turned into Sponsored Stories in

others eeds. Thats 901 million active

Facebook users having potentially

sponsored conversations about brands

an awul lot o mouths creating WOM!
http://%20http//ads.ak.facebook.com/ads/FacebookAds/Sponsored_Stories_Guide_042511.pdfhttp://%20http//ads.ak.facebook.com/ads/FacebookAds/Sponsored_Stories_Guide_042511.pdfhttp://%20http//ads.ak.facebook.com/ads/FacebookAds/Sponsored_Stories_Guide_042511.pdfhttp://%20http//ads.ak.facebook.com/ads/FacebookAds/Sponsored_Stories_Guide_042511.pdfhttp://%20http//ads.ak.facebook.com/ads/FacebookAds/Sponsored_Stories_Guide_042511.pdf


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Sponsored Stories or mobile

Sponsored Stories are not only set to be the frst ad units to appear

within the Facebook News Feed; they are also the frst units to be

released to the mobile Facebook platorm! And with 55% o active

Facebook users (~500MM) accessing the network rom their mobile

devices, advertisers utilizing Sponsored Stories in their advertising

mix will have exclusive access to a majority o Facebook consumers

who may not have otherwise seen their ads.

I you want to try Sponsored Stories or your brand, you have to

do something crucial frst: you must generate conversations and

content (i.e. user activity) on your brand page so you have organicstories to use or a Sponsored Stories campaign.

The Wildre Storyteller application

One way to do this is with the Wildfre Storyteller app. Using the

Wildfre Storyteller app, you can create a tab in your Facebook Page

to ask your users un and engaging questions about your brand. You

can then set up an entire customized Facebook Feed Story that gets

published alongside that users generated response. This eed story

is especially powerul in that you can include a branded video or

image with the story and you can also customize the eed story title,

URL and description.

For example, a coee brand could

ask about how people preer to get

their caeine fx. The ad generated

rom the response would include

your riends name and their com-

ment, but it could also include a link

to a daily coupon which users could

pass on to their riends.

At Wildfre, we recently integrated

Adaptly into our Social Marketing

Suite. Adaptly is an ads management

technology that allows you to

automatically optimize ads instead

o manually testing or the best-

perorming ads. Its some seriously

advanced tech.

The idea is that you load up a

selection o creative assets (titles,

images and body copy), and Adaptly

will launch and run through every

conceivable permutation o the

options, all the while optimizing or a

specifc perormance result. The

technology will actively launch ads,

assess their perormance in real-time,

and immediately pause poor perorm-

ers while reallocating budget to the

stars in order to maximize the efcien-

cy o your campaigns according to

the perormance metrics you set (e.g.

cost-per-action or cost-per-an).

We cant wait or 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 Wildfres same holistic platorm

where you manage the rest o your

paid, owned and earned media.

55% o activeFacebookusers accessthe network

rom theirmobile devices


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You can see the Storyteller app in actionon the Facebook tab in these images.

Managing your advertising

mix

Because we believe that social ads

signifcantly enhance your ads per-

ormance 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 an growth

ads (Marketplace Ads) with engage-ment-ocused ads (Sponsored Stories)

in your advertising mix.

Marketplace ads can be targeted at

non-ans hence you can expect higher

reach with Marketplace Ads due to

broad targeting beyond your existing

ans or riends o ans. On the other

hand, you can expect better conversionsthrough Sponsored Stories due to WOM

benefts shown in the ad units. A combi-

nation o these ormats working together

will maximize your reach and eectiveness

while keeping costs as low as possible.

The Storyteller app is used to start a conversation around customer preernces at the

Java Bean Cae

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.


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TwitterTwitter has been the ocus o much hype because o its addictive, real time inormation broadcasting, particularly in

the global political arena.

It has 140 million monthly active users but those users, who are doing a broad range o activities on Twitter. Twitter is

a less mature advertising platorm than Facebook, rolling out advertising unctionalities or brands in 2010. Uptake by

advertisers, however, has grown very ast. With the introduction o Twitter Brand Pages in 2011, more advertisers are

investing ad budgets in the network. In act, according to eMarketer, you can see that rom Mid 2011 thru 2012,the number o companies on Twitter jumped our-old. In addition, advertising revenue on the network is steadily

increasing.

Use Promoted Accounts to boost your ollower rate

and build your baseA Promoted Account a type o ad that is eatured within search results

and within the Who To Follow section on users Twitter pages, which helps

ollowers 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.

Twitters ads marketplace is less mature than Facebooks.

(eMarketer)

However, it has come up to speed with advertisers very quickley.

(eMarketer)

MetroPC is promoted as an account to ol-

low, together with two organically selected

accounts.


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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 o search results, or to show up on user timelines.

Placement in Search

Promoting Tweets to Search, while it seems like a

amiliar strategy (in its striking resemblance to SEM)

is not a very eective way to achieve high engage-

ment or interaction with Twitter users. Generally,

users arent on Twitter to search (its not typically

aligned with their Twitter engagement behavior). At

certain times, however, piggybacking your keywords

against #hashtags and trending topics can have a

signifcant impact.

For example, i 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 o resulting

searches, thereby inserting your ad messaging into

the conversation about the Earth day event.


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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 o your ollowers are regularly missing your tweeted content because they werent online to read

it at the same time you were there to write it, and by the time they did scan their eed, your content was replaced with

more resh items posted by the other accounts they ollow. Promoted Tweets targeted to users timelines appear at

or near the top o their timeline when they log on or reresh their homepage, no matter what time it is. They can be

targeted to your ollowers, so you can make sure they see your tweeted content anytime, or people that are similar

to your ollowers. You are essentially paying or persistent visibility o your content.

Targeting to timeline is vastly more eective and engaging as peoples natural behavior is to read through their eed:

targeting followers puts your message in front of your brand advocates, who will hopefully re-tweet on yourbe hal, perpetuating your content or 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 ollowers.

Promoted Trends

Use Promoted Trends to ramp awareness and drive buzz and

engagement by being eatured as a trending topic at the top

o the Trends list on Twitters homepage.

A Promoted Trend gets massive exposure as it is placed next

to the hottest topics o the moment, and is optimally placed or

kick starting or ampliying a conversation. The Promoted Trend

unctionality is currently in Beta, and it comes with a signifcant

price tag (approximately $120,000 or 24 hours), so contact

your Twitter rep or more details. AMC purchased the promoted trend The Walking Dead toptomote the popular show.

Note: you are likely to see ar higher numbers o

qualifed ans, i.e. those who are truly interested inyour product or service, when you target to a geogra-

phy where your product is available rather than opening

it up to regions where you dont have a presence. I you

dont 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.


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Best Practices for Twitter AdvertisingKeep Content Fresh and Engaging

One o the core concepts o the Twitter platorm is the dissemination o whats happening/news and real time

inormation. As you can imagine, reshness o content is important. As a result, it is critical to reresh and re-promote

new tweets regularly.

Marketers are seeing engagement numbers reach up into the single digits or Twitter advertising (which is much

higher than the average 0.02% or online advertising in general).

Advertise by Geography

Twitters geographic targeting allows you to increase the relevance o your campaign by targeting your message to a

specifc geography. This results in boosted engagement rates because o relevance.

Mobile advertising

Youll be heartened to hear that both Promoted Accounts and Promoted Tweets are rolling out on Twitter mobile. As

55% o Twitters monthly active users access the inormation network via mobile devices, mobile is really where the

new money is waiting to be made.

Additional targeting can only beneft advertisers, because you get more bang or your buck by allowing more

specifcity through being able to select certain mobile OSs to have your promoted items show to:


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LinkedInLinkedIn is commonly known as the Proessional social network.

According to LinkedIn, the network has a higher composition o

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 powerul venue or

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 o its ad dollars rom outside the US. This year, when the

site will see $226 million in ad revenues, a 46.1% increase over

2011, 32% o that money will come rom abroad. But, by 2014, it

is anticipated that US advertisers will account or 60% o LinkedIns

revenues o $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 o

the page

Market place ad units are identied

by the phrase Ads by LinkedIn

Members

Ad units are composed of image,

title, body and source o the ad unit

- Image

- Title = 25 characters max

- Body = 75 charters max

- Source = Citation o advertising

company


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Imagery and Branding

Since there is such a small amount o space to play with (50 pixels wide by 50 pixels high), images should be clean

and minimal. Do not use an image composed solely o text, and be sure that the contents o your image are readable

at this size.

As on Facebook, include an image with your ad thats relevant to what you oer. A best practice is a version o your

logo or mascot. Anecdotally, images o smiling proessionals also tend to perorm well.

A tip the LinkedIn background color is white, so images with bright colors are more likely to capture the attention o

your audience.

Link your title and copy to your audience

As mentioned, LinkedIn is job related so people identiy heavily by proession and industry. Take advantage o this by

creating ads and copy that are targeted by title, (e.g. have the term CEOs and Co-Founders in the title o the ad) as

this calls out specifc users and increases their likelihood o paying attention. On LinkedIn, like on Facebook, ques-

tions in the title can work well.

Have a strong CTA and keep it brie

Include strong call-to-action phrases like Try, Download, Sign up, or Request a Quote.


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Consider running promotions to drive ad efciency

Our initial tests show that running a Wildfre 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 or LinkedIn users can be up to several times higher than on other leading social networks.

Consider weekly trends when timing your campaigns

Its no surprise, but weekend activity is very low on LinkedIn. Monday mornings tend to see increased impressions

and click volume trafc grows through Wednesday. As a result, always try to launch new campaigns at the beginningo the week, in line with weekly trafc 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.


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Optimization

LinkedIn will average the CTR o all ads in a campaign to

create your overall quality score. The higher the quality score,

the higher likelihood o your ad being served in the uture.

Its important to know that the auto-optimize eature in

LinkedIn pauses campaigns that are generating less than

0.025% CTR. I your CTR is lower than 0.025%, create and

test several additional ad variations. LinkedIn recommends

that you create at least 3 dierent ad variations or 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 eective to target LinkedIn

member groups, as these can include users

who are not necessarily part o your desired

target audience.

Targeting

LinkedIn provides robust targeting parameters:

- Age and geographic region

- Company title

- LinkedIn member groups

I your CTR islower than 0.025%,create and testseveral additional

ad variations.

In Summary:

This report has covered a multitude o best practices in

relation to the dierent 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 yourexpectations and measurement ramework. You can

expect to see 0.05% on Facebook, 1% (and hopeully

more) on Twitter, and 0.025% on LinkedIn.

2) A strong call-to-action (CTA) is universally important

across the dierent networks dont expect users to

know what you want them to do. Be specifc.

3) Think holistically about the entire experience you pres

ent to users. For example, once you have created a

high perorming, optimized ad creative, are you

delivering the best post-click experience possible?Does your landing page or destination seamlessly

reinorce your ad message? Is it intuitive and well

designed? Does it maximize social sharing o your

content through built in stream stories and sharing

capability? Ensure you have your paid, owned and

earned activities working together.


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Sources:http://partner.linkedin.com/ads/bestpractices/index.html#ads

https://business.twitter.com/en/advertise/

https://www.acebook.com/advertising/

http://ads.ak.acebook.com/ads/FacebookAds/Pages_Overview.pd

http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/mobile-twitter-ads-smart-phones_b21191

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/three-pitalls-that-every-smb-should-avoid-on-acebook

http//:EMarketer.com

http://press.linkedin.com/about

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008858

http://www.emarketer.com/PressRelease.aspx?R=1008806
http://partner.linkedin.com/ads/bestpractices/index.html#adshttps://business.twitter.com/en/advertise/https://www.facebook.com/advertising/http://ads.ak.facebook.com/ads/FacebookAds/Pages_Overview.pdfhttp://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/mobile-twitter-ads-smart-phones_b21191http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/three-pitfalls-that-every-smb-should-avoid-on-facebookhttp://www.emarketer.com/http://press.linkedin.com/abouthttp://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008858http://www.emarketer.com/PressRelease.aspx?R=1008806http://www.emarketer.com/PressRelease.aspx?R=1008806http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008858http://press.linkedin.com/abouthttp://www.emarketer.com/http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/three-pitfalls-that-every-smb-should-avoid-on-facebookhttp://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/mobile-twitter-ads-smart-phones_b21191http://ads.ak.facebook.com/ads/FacebookAds/Pages_Overview.pdfhttps://www.facebook.com/advertising/https://business.twitter.com/en/advertise/http://partner.linkedin.com/ads/bestpractices/index.html#ads


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Wildfire Report - Social Advertising Best Practices Guide

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