Digital Pulp Blog

Many clients ask their search marketing groups to also run text ads on Facebook. When the campaigns yield less than stellar results it’s easy to think Facebook ads just don’t work. To avoid  losing a potentially wonderful digital channel to reach you audience here are a few tips to getting it right:

Facebook is a people engine.

If a user wants to know something, they’ll use google, yahoo or bing. If they want to find someone, they’ll use Facebook. This fundamental understanding of why people search should effect the copy and approach to your ads. If not you’ll end up wondering why Facebook is underperforming.

Go broad before rushing to target.

It’s easy to think you know who you’re going after and using Facebook tools to target that group but you may be surprised by who responds to Facebook ads. We suggest casting a wider net thought the “broad match” and optimize from there.

Keep it fresh. Avoid creepy.

Unlike traditional search engines you can target audiences by age, location, gender and interests which helps when initial ads start to fatigue. But be careful not to get too personal with your ad or you run the risk of coming off creepy. You’ll not only lose the click but it could have a negative impact on your brand image.

A recent article from MediaPosts revealed some astounding statistics about the digital link between students and universities:

“About 72% of college-bound high school seniors found a school’s homepage by searching online”

As a result NYU has put paid search at the center of their digital market strategy saying… “NYU runs between 50 and 70 campaigns simultaneously, focusing on specific keywords like bioethics, cinema studies, playing the double bass, dentistry or dramatic writing, as well as marketing for geography. Each campaign initially gets between 20 and 30 keywords. Croce-Galis reviews all campaigns every three days.”

And results that show… “About 85% of applicants who applying to NYU’s MFA programs come from Google ads”.

It great to see higher ed institutions using the digital medium so successfully to draw in prospective students. For more details read the full article from MediaPost at:

NYU Back To School: Higher Ed Search Terms Rise 42%

TopRank asked its readers, “What 3 online marketing channels & tactics will you emphasize in 2011?” The number one answer? Not social media, not email marketing. The top digital marketing tactic for OMB readers in 2011, out of 44 choices provided, is Search Engine Optimization.

Excerpt from Article:

“While social media marketing continues to get a lot of media attention and companies are investing more ($1.2 billion 2011, Forrester), search marketing (PPC and SEO) gets the lion’s share of digital marketing budgets ($20.7 billion 2011, Forrester).”

Read More at: SEO Tops Digital Marketing Tactics for 2011

At Digital Pulp, we recommend monitoring organic search and reporting the findings at least quarterly. For paid search we like to see a sustained effort, so optimization is possible and learnings can be built upon. If search is on your mind and you have questions let us know.