Myles Harris appears on Trevor Young’s ‘Brand Builders’ on ticker TV to discuss Facebook Advertising and social media in 2020.
Transcript
Trevor Young:
And for our last guest for today’s show is Myles Harris from Petrol Digital, and we’re going to be talking all about Facebook advertising and Instagram advertising, social advertising as it’s known in the trade. Welcome Myles.
Myles Harris:
Thank you Trevor. Thank you for having me.
Trevor Young:
Myles, a new year, lots of changes. You look back at 2019, look ahead to 2020 much happened, much always happens in the Facebook arena. Let’s focus more on Facebook, but obviously when we talk Facebook we’re probably talking Instagram as well. Where do you see things currently? How did you see last year in terms of the whole Facebook advertising side of things? Lots of changes, as I said, lots of issues with Facebook as we know. And where do you see things going? Let’s start in a broad sense.
Myles Harris:
Okay. Well, Mark Zuckerberg’s appearance in Congress and the U.S. Government scrutiny certainly had an effect. There’s a lot more eyes on every ad that goes out in everything that we do. So, knowing the rules of Facebook advertising has never been more paramount to a strategy. It’s certainly still the king of the social platforms, and in terms of its maturity there’s certainly a lot more product available and space to advertising on Facebook. And they keep on increasing that year on year, month on month.
Trevor Young:
Yep. So some of those rules just for people that probably aren’t across it all the time, and if you’re a client, you’ve got someone doing it for you or you’re going to do it for yourself. I take it one thing is things are being scrutinised more. So does that mean because Facebook, not that you know it necessarily seeing what comes out of it, but is Facebook actually scrutinises the ads and has to check them off?
Myles Harris:
They do. So there’s AI that goes over an ad first and that artificial intelligence will pick up words and phrases that will send it through to a human for review. So for example, in terms of investments you can’t promise an end outcome, but typically these rules align with your industry standard rules anyway. You just got to be more compliant. Stuff like before and afters as well. Everything’s a case by case situation, and Facebook doesn’t want to be seen as promising or tied up in that loop of promising something that can’t be delivered.
Trevor Young:
So anything but political advertising is scrutinised, but political advertising seems to be a fair [inaudible 00:02:26].
Myles Harris:
Oh, it does. And typically in countries that have it, you’ve got to be pre approved which is a long, many, many months process to get approved to do political ads. And anything that is worded politically that will come up as flagged as political as well might be allowed to run.
Trevor Young:
So 2020, where do you see things you see a lot more change? I mean, I know you’re in the groups all the time and the groups get the chatter and what’s going to happen. And sometimes it’s based on just rumor and innuendo and sometimes someone knows something and is dug deep because of course it’s the relationships they have with people within Facebook. What are you hearing at the moment?
Myles Harris:
The big thing for 2020 is that Facebook for the past year, nearly two, has been moving to what we call CBO, so campaign budget optimization, which is a budget set at a campaign level instead of traditionally an ad set level. And Facebook has been learning how to optimize those for better results. So just to visualize that, your campaign would be Australia and your ad set would be at the States, and Facebook would allocate budget and reach according to whose actually in those markets and those categories. And the more I continue to do Facebook advertising, the more it integrates into a more traditional advertising space a lot better than it had. So, I suppose acting bigger than you are having better ad advertisements that are more like advertisements out there, focusing on the quality of those ads works in a better sense in Facebook then the sort of quick and dirty approach that we used to be able to do years ago, because-
Trevor Young:
As it does with, as you’re saying, traditional advertising. If you’ve got a good ad then it might stop people.
Myles Harris:
It is and branding works. There’s actually a branding awareness optimization there that works very, very well, which Facebook brings back a metric on how many people will recall your brand from seeing those ads. So you get a lot of reach.
Trevor Young:
A lot of data to sift through-
Myles Harris:
I love to add data.
Trevor Young:
You love data, don’t you.
Myles Harris:
I do. Well it’s effectively what it is. I can’t do my job unless I understand the data coming back. So yeah, you’ve got to really come from an analyst perspective.
Trevor Young:
And so that’s an interesting take too, isn’t it? You’ve got the creative which needs to be really creative and then the analytics and maybe the two don’t go hand in hand sometimes within agencies that do it. Maybe there might be a little bit of clashing. We want to do this creative, but no, but this is what the data tells us. So, I don’t think that’s changed in all of advertising, but it’s probably more at the pointy end. Okay, so let’s get into tin tax. Let’s look at the good, the bad, and the ugly in terms of advertising on Facebook. And let’s throw in string, given that it’s owned by Facebook and they’re the two powerhouses at the moment. So, and what I want, I just want to talk to you about LinkedIn and maybe YouTube a little bit later, but in terms of the good, the bad, the ugly, what have you seen that’s been good? What do you see that works and what are some commonalities of what good looks like in terms of social advertising, specifically around Facebook?
Myles Harris:
I think the brands that I’ve seen, the brands that I’ve worked with that have, and this is a crude way of putting it, dropped their ego before heading into a space. So say if they’re a corporate and they try and put their traditional Australian financial review style advertising into a social space, it just doesn’t work. You’ve got to adapt. You’ve got to that people scroll Facebook in their lunch break really, really, really quickly. So how do you get their attention yet still stay on brand.
Myles Harris:
And so those that have worked out how to do that, how to adapt to actually who’s looking at the ad on Facebook perform a lot better than say a Troy McClure style character that introduces themselves traditionally, but you’ve lost them and they’ve already skipped scrolling on. The other one is adapting your media to the platforms. So using a one by one ratio video on Facebook won’t work so well on an Instagram story where it’s a 9.15 to whatever ratio it is. So it’s got to look like it actually belongs in that space. And so, those that do a better and add the polish generally perform much better.
Trevor Young:
So, really it goes back to, and this is probably the same with content that I talk to clients about, is that the content and the content in the creative, content for advertising has to suit the platform that you’re going with and understanding your audience because there could well be different audiences and even the messaging might be a little bit different as well. So are you saying, so under the good banner, are you seeing that brands that get it are doing that? Just that they’re adapting their creative and it might be different across various platforms?
Myles Harris:
Yeah, yeah. They’re adapting their creative. They’ve seen that those competitors in their space might have a header and a footer title on their videos and they get a lot of engagement at that. So they do that and it looks like they fit in and that’s what the users are used to seeing. That obviously goes in into the ugly where it looks like a square peg in a round hole, they don’t look like they belong there. Yeah, it looks dry, it looks stale and they haven’t really gotten to know the place that they’re in beforehand. So you obviously have to try-
Trevor Young:
Sorry, just breaking for David, but what you’re saying is sometimes it’s good to look at what’s working and maybe trials, experiment and you can experiment for virtually hardly any money down and just to test what works, but if you just go and blatantly copy all the time, you’ll end up looking like everyone else.
Myles Harris:
Yeah, exactly and that then takes you into say a brand awareness style campaign, where you are going out there so people get to know you and warm up to you a bit and they start to consider you and then they start to purchase from you. And too many go straight in for the sale because Facebook is easy, they’ve heard but it’s also quite crowded now. So, people see a lot of brands and they need to get to know you first before they even start going through to your website before they even start to purchase your products.
Trevor Young:
The show’s called brand builders and it’s all about, you could go on to Facebook advertising, any of the platforms or just start spouting stuff and it’s almost like spam, whether it’s in your email or whatever, it can still be classified as spam. What do you think? I mean I’m a great believer that you warm your audience up. If they don’t know who you are and you haven’t warmed them up and given them a reason to care, then your ads going to be less likely to work, but if you’ve added value, added value, added value, added value you’ve got the ask and the ad pops up, they might actually stop their thumb if there’s relevance there and they’ve already know, like, and trust you so to speak because you’ve been around and you’ve added value. You’ve turned up as Steve Ellis would say, you’re turning up to the rooms. It’s kind of like the Gary Vaynerchuk name of his books many years back, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. And jab being, add value, add value, add value, ask for the sale or a more call to action.
Myles Harris:
Works very well. It works very well and especially in a content space it just really should be part of your strategy period. Don’t go into the Facebook world thinking that you’re going to get organic reach because the bang of posts that gets a lot of reach is becoming increasingly rare. So adding value with short videos, the Dennis Yu method of a dollar a day or he now says $5 a day and it’s running for months and months and months at a time, but you’re right at the end of the time you’re reaching nearly a million people for all of a hundred dollars, right? So his videos keep on rolling, rolling any product-
Trevor Young:
This is about Dennis Yu?
Myles Harris:
Dennis Yu. @dennisyu on Twitter, he keeps adding value about what works in Facebook advertising and advertising space. And they’re very short, 15, 30 second videos and he just keeps putting them out, putting them out, putting it out, but he’s got videos that have run for six, seven months.
Trevor Young:
So what would therefore your advice be for someone who’s running a business, whatever the brand might be, whatever they’re doing. And obviously retailers tend to be more sell, sell, sell where others are probably more, most other businesses they are only a small part of obviously Facebook advertising. But if you’re trying to build that profile, that reputation, that brand, but also sell stuff at the same time. What are a couple of tips do you think that you’d recommend in a generic sense that sort of your go to rules?
Myles Harris:
There’s a lot of information out there so I don’t think there’s really any excuse to go into it naive before you start. And I think that advertisers now have to know what their appetite is for their spend because it’s not a get in and get out play anymore. You have to think that you’re going to be in it for at least three months, six, 12 before people really start to buy from you. So be aware that you’re going to have significant budget to brand awareness and significant budget to clicks to your site and then record those audiences and then target retarget them for sales. So you just got to take a longterm view of the advertising and also know that, I mean you’re good at what you do in your business, but you may not be necessarily great at creating an advertising video. So use services such as Ad Zombies to create videos that work in your space and you won’t be wasting money that way. You’ll be getting an ad that works. You’ll be paying $150 for it, but you’ll be getting the conversions and what you need from it.
Trevor Young:
But it’s also understanding your brand too, because if you’re just spamming people coming in again and again and again, they don’t know who you are you’re actually doing damage to your brand as well.
Myles Harris:
It is.
Trevor Young:
They also can block you too, can’t they?
Myles Harris:
They can block you, but you’ve got to be comfortable about what you are about and go out there. I’m not saying certainly change what you’re about just to fit Facebook advertising, I’m saying that the message can only fit into 15 seconds, right? Instead of like a long video, but if you’re not comfortable, you’re not going to keep on doing it. You’re going to get a negative result.
Trevor Young:
And Instagram? Any sort of more different types of advertising strategies for Instagram and how’s that working that you see?
Myles Harris:
Instagram’s continuing to mature. It’s still, in my opinion, an immature product. Stories work very, very well, but it depends on if you are a brand that fits in well with a demographic that consumes stories all the time. And look at some of the stories that appear in your feed or your family member’s feeds such as your wife and daughter or something because those stories are very, very different to what I as a male would see in my feed. And you can shoot simply with a phone and do filters over the top of with some software or something that adapts well to the feed. So, Instagram is continuing to mature, it’s just I suppose almost a specialised sort of space for the age group.
Trevor Young:
And is your audience there is the… but the targeting and all that’s there as well. So the tools and the data are there. And I just before we wrap up, Myles I’d love to chat quickly about LinkedIn because I’m starting to see a little bit of movement. What’s your take on LinkedIn at the moment? I think it’s only a matter of time before they start chopping back on the organic reach and making you pay for your audiences. What are you saying hearing out on the tracks?
Myles Harris:
I’d suggest that they already are with it. I mean my first ad I set on LinkedIn in 2013 and it was a very, very different crude platform and very, very expensive exercise to experiment in. Now it’s certainly matured, they certainly going with the awareness, consideration ,and conversion principles. And you can see that their ad centers divided up into that. So, I’ve seen them add products last year and they continue to add products to be more in line with Facebook’s way of advertising. But if I was B2B or business to corporate, LinkedIn would be something that I’ll be spending probably more time in.
Trevor Young:
Just experimenting a bit and checking out and being an earlier adopter rather than late adopter.
Myles Harris:
Exactly.
Trevor Young:
Okay, Myles. How can people track you down? Where can they find you online?
Myles Harris:
Find me via company’s website, at petroldigital.com or on Twitter @millionsofmyles.
Trevor Young:
Excellent. Thanks for your time.
Myles Harris:
Thank you.
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