fMC FB Marketing Conference

So... let me tell you about the first conference done by Facebook, addressed to clients about their marketing opportunities and the launch of Facebook's new products:

What? When? Where? Facebook’s Marketing Conference, New York City February 29^th, 2012. 

Goodbye pages, hello Timeline! Some of you may already know about
this function because since September, Facebook user pages start becoming a Timeline, and you maybe FB users, advertisers, or in the best of cases, MEC employees like myself (that's more likely).  These new display of pages allows brands pin posting of important stories on the top of the Timeline for 7 days and having a direct dialogue with consumers through private messages.

"We can’t forget that users spend most of their time at the News Feed and not in Brand Pages. These pages are the place where content is originated, but not the way to engage with users." MEC.

Premium Ads? What's that? The old classic ads are gone, and now Facebook launches a new kind of social ads designed to amplify owned and earned media, through paid. How? Well, through a reach generator. Nowadays, posts that brands distributed in an organic way, just reaches 16% of their fan base. This new reach generator will increase these posts through paid media, so that brands have the opportunity to reach 75% of their fan base instead.  The importance of this feature is that for the first time, the ads are going to be able to be distributed on Facebook’s mobile experience. Also, Facebook added updated premium placements that's gonna focus on fan growth to maximize engagement. With these improved formats, Facebook pretends to increase 40% of engagement, 80% increase in recall and significant increase in purchase intent. The placements of these new premium ads created by Facebook are: Right-hand side of homepage, News Feed on the homepage, News Feed on the mobile and Logout experience.

"This new kid of ads will only be effective if the content of the page posts are optimal in terms of optimization and performance. Media teams should start working together with community managers to maximize these new opportunities. Users may initially complaint about this, but they are used to paid ad vehicles that are hardly distinguished from organic content  (ex. Google Paid Search)" MEC.

And there's more! Marketplace ads are not like premium placements... they are the best efficient approach to pure fan acquisition efforts. This is what people share directly from the brand page or other ads.  Offers are a vehicle that allows sharing a specific discount or promotion directly from a Facebook page.

Implications for marketers

MEC anticipate the opportunities and implications that these changes can have for our partners, and the strategic approach to leveraging these opportunities which are to design brand experiences to maximize reach and impact to shift engagement, start working together with community managers to effectively amplify page posts and earned stories through paid media vehicles and observe best practices to obtain organic page post content and paid content.

Remember: This is just a quick overview! If you want more information on the topic you know where to find me!