Takeaways from the Social.com Advertising Benchmark Report

In January, Salesforce Marketing Cloud released its ‘Social.com Advertising Benchmark’ report. As someone who is getting back into social advertising, after about a year and half away from the game, I found the report very informative and a worthwhile read. It’s a great snapshot of how social advertising has progressed over the past year, and where it appears to be heading (mobile!). The report also covers the trends for each of the major social advertising platforms (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn), and highlights some of their new product offerings and the impacts that they’ve had thus far. The benchmark data that the report provides could be really useful as talking points with clients as well.

After I read through the report, I was left with a couple of tangible takeaways that I’d recommend most practitioners keep in mind:

It’s better to target both mobile and desktop users simultaneously through Facebook Ads.

• This was fairly surprising for me to learn, as this is a pretty big difference from how Google AdWords performs. Generally, with AdWords, it’s better to segment campaigns as much as possible. However, that’s clearly not the case with Facebook.

• In the U.S. in Q3 2014, campaigns targeted to both device types have a 57% lower cost-per-click than mobile-only campaigns, and a 83% lower CPC than desktop-only campaigns.

• In the U.S. in Q3 2014, campaigns targeted to both device types also have a 56% higher click-through rate than mobile-only campaigns, and a 305% higher CTR than desktop-only campaigns.

Promoted Tweets > Promoted Accounts 

• The conversion rate of a promoted tweet in Q3 2014 was 3.59%, which is 322% higher than that of a promoted account.

• The cost-per-action of a promoted tweet in Q3 2014 was just $0.34, 35% less than that of a promoted account.

• Over the first three quarters of 2014, promoted accounts saw a 173% increase in CPA, while promoted tweets saw just a 10% increase. 

To summarize: promoted tweets are generally a more efficient use of your money, and a better way to engage audiences.

(Photo: “Black Styled Office From Above” by Viktor Hanacek via picjumbo.com)