This isn’t a blog post about how you should stop using Facebook or why Facebook may or may not be suitable for your business. It’s quite the contrary if you couldn’t tell by the title. We’re actually here to say that if Facebook works for you, you should keep engaging your audiences on Facebook.
…But also consider layering your media plan. Here’s why.
Why Facebook shouldn’t be the only channel on your media plan
One of the main draws to Facebook is that it has one of the largest audiences available to advertisers. However, it only drives engagement on one platform. That’s it — one. On average, people spend 144 minutes on social media sites every day. What about the other 21 or 22 hours? Although Facebook offers great scale, it’s not the only platform that consumers choose to engage with.
Savvy marketers know that effective advertising requires reach and frequency. Ensuring that your media plan enables vast reach with frequency controls across all your audiences’ favorite channels is critical not only to your campaign success but also to your business. Including other channels in your media plan or marketing mix can enable brand lift across most brand health metrics (like share of voice, unprompted brand recall, prompted brand recall, purchase intent, and brand equity), improve customer-acquisition-costs (CAC) and lower cost-per-acquisition (CPA)
CEO of Sharma Brands and recent Real Time Banter guest, Nik Sharma, talked to us about what’s beyond Facebook and Google, the importance of layering one’s channels, and what metrics to consider for quantifying success. Check out the video clip below to hear his insights:
US consumers spend an average of five hours per day checking email. And as a marketer, you already know that email is a powerful channel for forging one-to-one connections with consumers. Not to mention it’s also a less crowded, less noisy channel than most, which gives you a better opportunity to capture shopper attention. With the right technology, you can reach the audiences you engage on Facebook and retarget them on email newsletters. Here’s how.
Use LiveConnect and Dynamic Audiences for retargeting
By implementing LiveIntent’s LiveConnect tag on your website, you enable tracking capabilities on your web properties. With LiveConnect, not only can you track website visitors, but you can also track engagement signals that hint at their interests, like product page visits, items added to cart, and purchases, to name a few. So when your target audiences click your ads and visit your website, LiveConnect starts tracking. Similar to how you may use Facebook’s tracking pixel as your first step to setting up retargeting within Facebook and Instagram, LiveConnect is the first step to setting up people-based targeting within email newsletters (except with email addresses instead of third-party cookies). And unlike the walled gardens, LiveIntent gives your data back to you so that you can build your first party-data footprint, a major key to business success.
Equipped with your first-party data, you can then layer new channels onto your media strategy by activating it with Dynamic Audiences. Dynamic Audiences enable you to turn data into segments and retarget audiences — even without third-party cookies — in their favorite email newsletters. Need to move those who visited your product page for your new lipstick line down the funnel? Create a segment of those shoppers tied to a specific page view event with an offer for first-time buyers. Maybe you need to re-engage shoppers that put sneakers in their cart but never completed their purchase. Go on and create a segment of folks who abandoned their cart and retarget them to move them down the funnel.
Retargeting audiences on email newsletters is a powerful tactic for driving business results. But don’t just take our word for it. Nordstrom Rack drove online purchases — more than 4,000 conversions, actually — with a full-funnel customer acquisition campaign by leveraging LiveConnect and Dynamic Audiences.
These are just a few examples of how you can improve customer acquisition and retargeting efforts by layering your media plan. If you’re interested in learning more about how you can purchase email newsletter inventory check out our blog post or contact our team.
