When Sheryl Sandberg announced the launch of Timeline for Brands and premium ads at the Facebook Marketer’s Conference in February, the platform opened up a range of new opportunities for marketers looking to make a lasting connection with their audience.

The social media environment is now primed for advertisers. Recent figures from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) predict that the global online advertising market is set to reach $106 billion by 2016,  while social media ad spends are expected to take up 20% of budget in the next five years [...] Read more

We have pulled together an infographic to help demystify the world of Twitter advertising and provide some clarity around the new functionality – such as enhanced pages and geographical targeting – and how you can use these tools in your campaign planning. Hope you find this helpful!

We would love to hear your thoughts on Twitter advertising and how you think you think it will be most useful for the brands you represent.

Social media is rapidly enabling a shift in how brands understand and engage their customers. Advice abounds on the value of a data driven approach to your social media efforts, and whether heeded or not, thanks to contributions by the likes of @mich8elwu, @briansolis and @kdpaine, social marketers are increasingly aware of the importance of measurement.

However even if you know what to measure on social media, there is much less guidance on how to interpret what you find once you are crunching through the data – and how to benchmark a good or bad result [...]

Read the rest of this article at The Drum

I had an interesting meeting yesterday with a few marketing pals, one of whom whose company doesn’t have a Facebook account. Said person, who is a leading marketing professional, asked ‘Well, why would we have a Facebook page? We are B2B marketers, Facebook is all about B2C.’

That may have been true a few weeks ago; however since the launch of the ‘brand timeline’ feature, companies should ignore Facebook at their peril. The question they should be asking themselves is:  ‘Why haven’t we embraced it sooner?’

It is a common misconception to assume that if you are a B2B marketer, your aim is to target businesses and therefore feel that targeting a broad range of consumers via a somewhat social ‘scattergun’ approach is a waste of time; however, why not consider the fact that every business you are selling to has staff, and there is a strong likelihood that the majority of staff members will have a Facebook account?

As a marketer in any type of industry, you should be utilising every channel available to you and staying ahead of the game. If you want your business to be seen as dynamic and forward-thinking, having an active branded Facebook page should be a standard part of your marketing plan. Twitter should also be a consideration if you are really pushing out the social boat…

Have a look at your competitors – the majority of them will display Facebook and Twitter icons on their website Homepage. In fact 90% of B2B Companies actively participate on Facebook* and 53% of B2B Companies actively participate on Twitter*. If you are one of the 10% of B2B companies that does not engage in regular Facebook activity, can you afford NOT to put your brand on Facebook?

*Source: SocialMediaB2B.com – Jan 2012

London UK, 23 February 2012 – Techlightenment, an Experian company and leading provider of Facebook marketing technology and services, today announced the launch of Alchemy 2, its second generation platform for creating, managing and optimising Facebook advertising campaigns. Alchemy 2 enables marketers and advertising agencies to maximise the return on investment and impact of social advertising spend by focusing on improving the scale, performance and agility of every marketing campaign that is delivered through Facebook.

Recent research[1] indicates that social media marketing is the fastest-growing channel in terms of investment, with almost 70 per cent of marketers planning to increase their budgets for off-site social media in 2012, yet the paradox remains that social media investment is difficult to measure. Almost 40 per cent of companies believe they are poor at measuring ROI from this channel.

The Alchemy 2 platform helps marketers overcome traditional Facebook advertising challenges of scale and performance with new features that reduce what were previously manual processes so that marketers can focus on higher value decisions to optimise campaign performance.

Campaigns managed using the Alchemy 2 platform receive 80 per cent higher click through rates (CTRs)[2] and 50 per cent lower cost per click (CPC) [3] levels than the average Facebook campaign.  The new platform is designed to allow users to take full advantage of the new Facebook features and ad units such as Timeline, Sponsored Stories and Custom Action Ads.  New features in the platform include:

• Rapid ad version development -  create thousands of highly tailored Facebook adverts in under 30 minutes, immediately understanding exactly how many end users they will reach and receive real-time intelligence on how the campaign is performing.
• Rules-based optimisation – automate 70 per cent of the manual processes associated with managing Facebook advertising campaigns. The Alchemy 2 automated optimisation engine allows users to set up rules based on which actions, such as the pausing of ads and changing of bids, are taken. This allows campaign managers to spend their time getting to grips with the less obvious elements of their campaigns’ performance, such as the impact of images or creative on the audience.
• One-touch budget management – with Alchemy 2’s simple drag and drop slider function, campaign managers have complete control over how their budgets are allocated. Once a campaign is live, they can focus improving campaign ROI by increasing budgets for best performing or cost effective campaigns or reducing budgets for expensive or underperforming adverts.

Will Ashton, Managing Director of Alchemy, at Techlightenment, an Experian company said: “Alchemy was the first Facebook advertising platform to market in 2010. We have redesigned the platform for the release of Alchemy 2 to make it even more sophisticated and agile. As Facebook makes updates to its platform, Alchemy 2 is well positioned to be updated as near to real-time as possible, allowing users to make near immediate use of new features and ad formats”.

David Hengartner, Online Marketing Manager at Deindeal, a group buying site based in Switzerland, commented:  “We’ve depended on Alchemy for a couple of years and with the release of Alchemy2, Techlightenment has really improved our ability to manage campaigns in real-time; delivering better control and lower CPA than what was previously possible.”

Will Ashton continued: “We have already migrated our existing customers across onto the Alchemy 2 platform and have received great feedback on the new features. Alchemy 2 has been developed based on feedback of hundreds of users and builds on our understanding of the Facebook platform and what makes a successful campaign.  In just a few short years, the social media market has developed enormously and we believe that Alchemy 2 is the best product out there for staying ahead of the curve and delivering results.”

Ends

Contact:

Alexandra Banks

Digital PR Manager, Experian Marketing Services

+44 (0) 7966102823

Alexandra.banks@uk.experian.com

About Experian

Experian is the leading global information services company, providing data and analytical tools to clients in more than 80 countries. The company helps businesses to manage credit risk, prevent fraud, target marketing offers and automate decision making. Experian also helps individuals to check their credit report and credit score, and protect against identity theft.

Experian plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange (EXPN) and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 index. Total revenue for the year ended 31 March 2011 was US$4.2 billion. Experian employs approximately 15,000 people in 41 countries and has its corporate headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, with operational headquarters in Nottingham, UK; California, US; and São Paulo, Brazil.
For more information, visit http://www.experianplc.com.

About Techlightenment
Techlightenment, an Experian company, was founded in 2007. Techlightenment develops technology to power social media campaigns for multinational businesses and global advertising agencies.

Techlightenment products and consulting services help brands understand current customers, attract new ones and keep them longer. Clients have included GlaxoSmithKline, Universal Pictures, Paramount, Royal Bank of Scotland and Dr. Martens. Techlightenment is one of the only Facebook Preferred Developer Consultants and Advertising API Beta participants, it is also a Twitter Ads Partner.  For more information, visit www.techlightenment.com.

Read Alchemy’s white paper ‘Social Media Maturation and further industry implications’ below

Social Media Maturation_white paper AL