Facebook Ads Convert Web Traffic to "Foot Traffic"

The Los Angeles Marathon was looking for a way to make more use of social media and draw more attention to their videos. Zoom Communities stepped in to help.

With the help of their webmaster, Cory Glauner of WebDog Services, we created a special landing page, just for this campaign.

On that landing page we placed a Brightcove player that contained three videos the LA Marathon had already produced. PLUS we also took two of their shortest videos and stitched them together, effectively resulting in a two-in-one video that we placed in the player as well.

The Brightcove player contained several sharing features, including sharing by email, embedding blog code, and posting to a Facebook page or as a link in Twitter. (Learn more about Brightcove here.)

Those who encountered the video outside of the landing page (due to sharing) could always find their way back to lamarathon.com, just by clicking the logo or the related link below the player. The client knew that getting more people to their website would result in more registrations over time.

We researched Facebook member demographics and learned that 30,000 Facebook users have "marathon" in their profile in some form. For six weeks we deployed Facebook ads that targeted those users.The results were astounding! The videos saw an average of 260 viewers a week.

What's more, the group's Facebook fan page increased from 1,700 fans to 2,400 fans -- an increase of over 40 percent!

As an added bonus, by loading the videos into the Brightcove system, we were able to report to the marathon marketing team that when someone watched a marathon video, they were likely to watch a majority of that video before clicking away. Brightcove's video analytics can be used to fine-tune a video to make it longer or shorter depending on length of engagement.

The marketing director of the LA Marathon, Peter Abraham, had this to say: "(Zoom's) strategic thinking and targeted outreach program helped us increase registration and grow our social media footprint. I would happily use (them) again."

A Zoom Facebook Ad Campaign costs just $500 to set up, plus the cost of the ads ($100 per month minimum), plus 25 percent of ad costs in order for us to maintain the campaign and run reports for the length of the campaign.

Included in that price are the following features:

• Work with client to identify specific demographic market (geographic area, gender, age, interests, etc.)
• Provide estimate of number of FB users that fall into that demographic.
• Set up campaign budget and targeting according to best pay-per-click practices.
• Write text for at least two ads promoting your company/product/service.
• Help identify and create the images to go with the text (added graphic design fees MAY apply).
• Ongoing management and optimization of campaign.
• Provide analytical reports once per month detailing ad performance, # of impression, # of clicks, demographic breakdown of respondents, and more.

The advantages of Facebook advertising are several:

• Ideal for advertisers who want to target a specific demographic group.
• Highly accurate demographic information because users have an incentive to truthfully and completely describe themselves and their interests.
• Target by location, gender, age, interests, keywords, relationship status and more.
• 350+ million worldwide users, 90+ million in the United States provides a huge market even for businesses targeting a small fraction of Facebook users.

You can choose to concentrate your Facebook ad dollars within a single month, or spread your ad dollars over several months.

Contact us for a free consultation to see if a Facebook Ad campaign is right for you!

Oh, and all this talk of marathons has our president, Eric Larson, training for one. "I'm going to try to do a half-marathon in Nasheville in April, 2010, then pick a full marathon for the Fall or early Winter 2010. Zoom on!"