Last week, our CEO Nathan, and I had the opportunity to present in Atlanta during a MasterClass. The focus of this half day of presentations and roundtable discussions was mobile. Certainly just the word ‘mobile’ is a broad subject, so the conversations varied from marketing tactics to app development to online reputation.

2015 has been the year of “mobile” with mobile search exceeding desktop and the resulting Mobilegeddon from that change. So, with the changing landscape, of course brands need to make sure their site is mobile friendly. With the increased app usage, make sure your app is not only functional, but beautiful and solving your consumer’s problems.

But even as an SEO person, let’s have a real moment here:

• 1 in every 8 minutes spent online on a mobile device belong to Facebook.

Yep, you read that right. 1 in 8.

So for brands who have developed a significant Facebook fanbase and are sharing/creating/curating relevant content on a regular basis, this is good news right?

The answer is maybe.

Certainly, creating a large fanbase is a feat in of itself and should not be downplayed. But in true return, what does that mean? In 2013, only 20% of your fanbase would organically see the content you post. 2014 comes along and that number drops to 6-8%. So what’s happening in 2015? Here enters the PTAT score. When any user goes to a public Facebook page, they can click on the number of fans and then see the number of “People Talking About This.” A review of some of the top brands in Atlanta who were also at the MasterClass averaged 1.3%. This means of the content that big brands are sharing, less than 2% of their audience actually interacts or engages with the brand.

So how can companies gain back the eyeballs of the fans they already won? Facebook advertising.

With 9 types of advertising available (listed at right), brands have significant opportunity. With the organic reach of brands becoming smaller and smaller, Facebook is becoming a pay to play environment.

We recently had a regional client go through a re-brand; we chose a targeted, mobile leaning, Facebook video views campaign as the primary story telling platform.

By paying the right price, focusing on peak times of day on the channel, and targeting the right audience, the reasonably priced campaign produced over 100 million in reach, 30 million people engaged, and 17 million views. Paid views cost $.003.

The campaign produced over 14,000 news fans and 21 new views per second. 

During peak times of the campaign, the brand maintained a PTAT score of over 11,000%.

Learning how to use Facebook advertising effectively will be essential for big brands to continue to win in the digital space. This also means, however, that even large brands must create campaigns that are more targeted and relational than current automation tools allow. Facebook allows an unbelievable set of tools to target an audience. For example, national restaurant chains will need to be able to implement local awareness campaigns per location. From here, targeting particular customer types will further the success of these campaigns. Advertising a dinner special between 5-7 during the work week will be valuable, but imagine the success of an ad that targets the local audience and only shows to working parents for a family meal special on a Friday night. Combining this with an offer or coupon code would also allow big brands to track the exact return of that campaign, whereas continuous TV spots and other branding efforts cannot be associated with an exact transaction.

While large and small brands begin to grasp the potential of Facebook advertising, it’ll certainly be an exciting next few months to see who wins back their audience and the reward they gain from it.

By: Samantha Torres