Stuck in a content marketing rut? Relying on your existing newsletter, social followers, or email outreach won't do your launches justice. Boosting your signal with paid social both introduces your brand to new audiences and improves your launch's traffic and results. In today's Whiteboard Friday, we're welcoming back our good friend Kane Jamison to highlight four straightforward, actionable tactics you can start using ASAP.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans. My name is Kane. I'm the founder of a content marketing agency here in Seattle called Content Harmony, and we do a lot of content marketing projects where we use paid social to launch them and get better traffic and results.
So I spoke about this, this past year at MozCon, and what I want to do today is share some of those tactics with you and help you get started with launching your content with some paid traction and not just relying on your email outreach or maybe your own existing email newsletter and social followers.
Especially for a lot of companies that are just getting started with content marketing, that audience development component is really important. A lot of people just don't have a significant market share of their industry subscribed to their newsletter. So it's great to use paid social in order to reach new people, get them over to your most important content projects, or even just get them over to your week-to-week blog content.
Social teaser content
So the first thing I want to start with is expanding a little bit beyond just your average image ad. A lot of social networks, especially Facebook, are promoting video heavily nowadays. You can use that to get a lot cheaper engagement than you can from a typical image ad. If you've logged in to your Facebook feed lately, you've probably noticed that aside from birth announcements, there's a lot of videos filling up the feed. So as an advertiser, if you want to blend in well with that, using video as a teaser or a sampler for the content that you're producing is a great way to kind of look natural and look like you belong in the user's feed.
So different things you can do include:
- Short animated videos explaining what the project is and why you did it.
- Maybe doing talking head videos with some of your executives or staff or marketing team, just talking on screen with whatever in the background about the project you created and kind of drumming up interest to actually get people over to the site.
So everybody's instant reaction, of course, is, "I don't have the budget for video." That's okay. You don't need to be a videography expert to create decent social ads. There's a lot of great tools out there.
- Soapbox by Wistia is a great one, that's been released recently, that allows you to do kind of a webcam combined with your browser type of video. There are also tools like...
- Bigvu.tv
- Shakr
- Promo, which is a tool by a company called Slidely, I think.
All of those tools are great ways to create short, 20-second, 60-second types of videos. They let you create captions. So if you're scrolling through a social feed and you see an autoplay video, there's a good chance that the audio on that is turned off, so you can create captions to let people know what the video is about if it's not instantly obvious from the video itself. So that's a great way to get cheaper distribution than you might get from your typical image ad, and it's really going to stick out to users because most other companies aren't spending the time to do that.
Lookalike audiences
- You could have a pixel, a Facebook pixel or another network pixel on your website that just tracks the people that have been to the site a number of times or that have been through the shopping cart at a certain dollar value.
- We can take our email list and use the emails of customers that have ordered from us or just the emails of customers that are on our newsletter that seem like they open up every newsletter and they really like our content.
We can upload those into a custom audience in the social network of our choice and then create what's called a lookalike audience. In this case, I'd recommend what's called a "one percent lookalike audience." So if you're targeting people in the US, it means the one percent of people in the US that appear most like your audience. So if your audience is men ages 35 to 45, typically that are interested in a specific topic, the lookalike audience will probably be a lot of other men in a similar age group that like similar topics.
So Facebook is making that choice, which means you may or may not get the perfect audience right from the start. So it's great to test additional filters on top of the default lookalike audience. So, for example, you could target people by household income. You could target people by additional interests that may or may not be obvious from the custom audience, just to make sure you're only reaching the users that are interested in your topic. Whatever it might be, if this is going to end up being three or four million people at one percent of the country, it's probably good to go ahead and filter that down to a smaller audience that's a little bit closer to your exact target that you want to reach. So excellent way to create brand awareness with that target audience.
Influencers
- Bloggers
- Journalists
- Or it could just mean people like page managers in Facebook, people that have access to a Facebook page that can share updates. Those could be social media managers. That could be bloggers. That could even be somebody running the page for the local church or a PTA group. Regardless, those people are probably going to have a lot of contacts, be likely to share things with friends and family or followers on social media.
Higher cost but embedded value
When you start running ads to this type of group, you're going to find that it costs a little bit more per click. If you're used to paying $0.50 to $1.00 per click, you might end up paying $1.00 or $2.00 per click to reach this audience. That's okay. There's a lot more embedded value with this audience than the typical user, because they're likely, on average, to have more reach, more followers, more influence.
Test share-focused CTAs
It's worth testing share focus call to actions. What that means is encouraging people to share this with some people they know that might be interested. Post it to their page even is something worth testing. It may or may not work every time, but certainly valuable to test.
Filters
So the way we recommend reaching most of these users is through something like a job title filter. Somebody says they're a blogger, says they're an editor-in-chief, that's the clearest way to reach them. They may not always have that as their job title, so you could also do employers. That's another good example.
I recommend combining that with broad interests. So if I am targeting journalists because I have a new research piece out, it's great for us to attach interests that are relevant to our space. If we're in health care, we might target people interested in health care and the FDA and other big companies in the space that they'd likely be following for updates. If we're in fashion, we might just be selecting people that are fans of big brands, Nordstrom and others like that. Whatever it is, you can take this audience of a few hundred thousand or whatever it might be down to just a few thousand and really focus on the people that are most likely to be writing about or influential in your space.
Retarget non-subscribers
So what we can do is convert this into more of a social ad unit and just show the same messaging to the people that didn't sign up on the site. Maybe they just hate pop-ups by default. They will never sign up for them. That's okay. They might be more receptive to a lead ad in Facebook that says "subscribe" or "download" instead of something that pops up on their screen.
Keep testing new messaging
The other thing we can do is start testing new messages and new content. Maybe this offer wasn't interesting to them because they don't need that guide, but maybe they need your checklist instead, or maybe they'd just like your email drip series that has an educational component to it. So keep testing different types of messaging. Just because this one wasn't valuable doesn't mean your other content isn't interesting to them, and it doesn't mean they're not interested in your email list.
Redo split tests from your site
We can keep testing messaging. So if we are testing messaging on our site, we might take the top two or three and test that messaging on ads. We might find that different messaging works better on social than it does on pop-ups or banners on the site. So it's worth redoing split tests that seemed conclusive on your site because things might be different on the social media network.
So that's it for today. What I'd love for you guys to do is if you have some great examples of targeting that's worked for you, messaging that's worked for you, or just other paid social tactics that have worked really well for your content marketing campaigns, I'd love to hear examples of that in the comments on the post, and we'd be happy to answer questions you guys have on how to actually get some of this stuff done. Whether it's targeting questions, how to set up lookalike audiences, anything like that, we'd be happy to answer questions there as well.
So that's it for me today. Thanks, Moz fans. We'll see you next time.
We used to target journalists etc. by job title. However, Facebook does not allow us to select job titles anymore. They even killed some of my old target groups. Does that problem only exist in Germany or has anyone else been affected?
Yes, lots of people being affected by that - its a new change affecting a lot of people since news a few weeks back that Facebook was allowing racist/bigoted targeting options: https://marketingland.com/facebook-removes-four-ad... (unfortunately it happened after we filmed this WBF).
Frankly I think they're simply doing a review of those fields and will bring them back, because they're a big deal. In the meantime, you can still target those individuals easily on Twitter, and on Facebook you can still target by "people who have Page manager access," which is common for many bloggers and social media managers.
Yes this change has killed a lot of my winning strategies for my clients.
Great to see you Kane here on WBF.
I had used Facebook to boost traffic for one of my client project and I have collected so many subscribers when they came on my website through ads.
Now without ads we are getting good traffic and shares through emails that we have generated through ads.
Thank you, Kane, for the video with several ideas that were new to me.
If the clicks can cost a dollar each and only a small percentage of the people who click take action, how can a person determine if the money is being spent well? That might involve collecting the right data and then doing a value assessment?
Well, when we're measuring a broader campaign, costs are often a lot less than $1 each. Usually we'll run a number of campaign tests with 10-20% of our budget, and then pick the best ad combinations and run the remainder of our budget on those ads. We've gotten those as low as pennies per click on Facebook for popular content though $0.25-0.75 is much more common. As far as measuring results - we're measuring multi-touch attribution outcomes in Google Analytics like any other campaign.
For example, we have one ongoing project where we spend $3k on Facebook Ads per month and typically track 1-3 conversions valued at $5k each. That covers the cost for the content we're promoting, too, so that campaign is clearly paying for itself shortly after we launch it (especially because it's content with strong organic potential beyond the launch phase).
Specifically referring to influencers and journalists, where costs are much more likely to be around $1 per click, we've measured results as links and social shares attributed to those users before we've reached out to them organically. It's tenuous, but, we've found it to be helpful on past campaigns.
Thank you for sharing, Kane.
Very interesting. It seems that the content is tied to or related to transactions. Great idea.
Hi Kane, great WBF with a great topic.
As a new e-commerce site owner it is paramount for me to reach out to new audiences all the time, audiences which would be interested in our products. My ultimate aim at the moment is not having more sales but pursuing visitors to sign up to our newsletters.
The social media advert tactics differ of how established your website is, but having a series of ads definitely helps having a greater and valuable traffic. Before planning the ads it is hugely important to set up a goal you want to achieve with your ads and execute exactly that particular tactic.
The good news is that generating email subscribers will be a lot easier from content promotion than moving people directly to a sale. Don't be afraid to retarget them for a sales opportunity, however, or show a pop up with a discount if it's an impulse purchase.
Otherwise - make sure you're giving something valuable for their email. Nobody wants another email, but plenty of people will trade an email for a helpful guide, checklist, etc.
Good luck!
At the moment we are offering a 15% discount voucher for the new subscribers, but I don't really see this as an awful lot, so we're working on an ebook at the moment
I believe that advertising content is fundamental to make them known, improve their organic positioning and reach the target audience in a faster way. We advertise all the contents of our blog through Facebook especially to achieve that greater visibility in less time.
Outstanding article Kane! Content marketing is something I've been really looking to improve on for the sake of my business and my clients as well.Great resources for video production and excellent ideas for targeting and testing.Keep up the good work!
Welcome Kane and thanks for bringing us WBF. I'll have to make it to a MozCon and see you speak in person. I'll have to check out tools you suggested for making video shorts. I know that one thing that I really can't stand about pop up videos is when the volume is way to loud. Pop ups are obtrusive without having to be an earful.
Really appreciate this post Kane, very timely for the company I work at. I passed this to our Social Media Coordinator and am anxious to hear his thoughts. We've been looking to amplify some blog posts to potential customers, but then we also have posts we want to get in the hands of people like you, and other authorities in the industry. Going down the paid amplification route was something we just started testing, and these strategies are something we will definitely test. Thanks again!
Have a great weekend!
So timely, I was about launching a blog and thinking on a paid social launch campaign, and this article just gave me more tips on how to do it. Thank you very much for that!
Solid post Kane! Getting your content in front of influencers in your industry is definitely critical, and retargeting non-subscribers is definitely a great way to get some low-hanging fruit + increase your brand awareness as a whole. Good stuff man!
Hi Kane
I still remember my first few days when I hardly had traffic and I was lucky that an influencer found my blog and disseminated my content (free, it would be nice ...). From that day, this website has not stopped having visitors ..
Great video: clear, well-structured, interesting. Did you ever try to do Linked-In advertising for this purpose? I mean its horribly expensive, but you can reach the right people with that for sure.
Yup - quite a bit on LinkedIn particularly when company size, job function, seniority, and industry are important. We will get the audience to the site and then retarget them on other networks to cut down on LinkedIn costs.
Hi Kane, thanks for a great article. I thinks this tool is very under utilised and i a powerfull way for new companies to connect with their audience and build one through newsletter signups. I can also be used as way to improve your backlink profile to that content
Great tips, Kane.
One tip I'd add is considering a phased approach. Sometimes it's useful to invest in promotion of an ungated piece (like a blog post) on week 1 to get them to your site before asking people for their information on week 2.
Also, do you have any tips for maximizing ROI for gated pieces for very niche audiences? I find that the CPC for those campaigns tends to be high, while the conversion rate tends to be low.
I've tried Paid Social for content marketing as well and it worked really great. Much faster (and cheaper in the end because the time is the most valuable asset) solution.
One tip I'd add is considering a phased approach. Sometimes it's useful to invest in promotion of an ungated piece (like a blog post) on week 1 to get them to your site before asking people for their information on week 2.
Also, do you have any tips for maximizing ROI for gated pieces for very niche audiences? I find that the CPC for those campaigns tends to be high, while the conversion rate tends to be low.
Good video. This video covered two trends SEOs and marketers need to really focus on. One is importance of video and second is Facebook advertising platform, lookalike audience, etc.
Dear Moz staff, thank you for this video, hope you can keep talking about content marketing tactics we can all use (and we all know it helps SEO too, directly or indirectly).
Cheers Kane, some good stuff there.
I wrote something last year which complements and overlaps these ideas: https://webvibes.com/blog/content-marketing/why-co...
Excellent video. I highly recommend using advance targeting features of Facebook ads and never use the default settings. Advance targeting helps you get more clicks and genuine traffic from social media. It also reduces the cost per engagement. You can get good leads and engagement with $5 per day ad if used properly.
Great article. Love the specific suggestions you gave such as tools we can use for short promo video without investing much $.
Great ideas, thanks for this.
Kane,
Great idea on targeting fans of specific stores, brands and such. I have been marketing for a med spa and have found great success targeting cosmetic companies and reality tv stars when advertising.